This morning on "Fox and Friends" President Trump announced that he will declare former ICE chief Tom Homan as a new "border czar." "Tom Homan's coming back," President Trump told the hosts of the morning talk show via phone-call adding, "I would say that would be announced next week except I'd rather announce it now."
Tom Homan was acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the first 18 months of the Trump Administration. He later retired in frustration when the White House failed to move his nomination forward toward Senate confirmation, as reported by The Washington Post. Homan spent the time between his role in ICE and now as a Fox News analyst on immigration and border security; he repeatedly made headlines for his frank opinions and support for President Trump's attempts to ramp up border security and end mass illegal immigration. Trump stated the role Homan would take up:
He'll be a border czar, he'll report directly to me. He'll probably be working out of the White House but spending a lot of time at the border . . . He's going to be very much involved with the border.
Immigration is a central issue of the Trump Presidency, and frustrations both inside the White House and throughout the rest of the country have grown due to the rising number of Central American immigrants who have been streaming into the United States through the southern border. In May, U.S. officials detained over 144,000 migrants along the border with Mexico, the highest level in May for the past 13 years. Due to this exceptionally high number, the president threatened Mexico with tariffs if the country did not do more to stem the crisis. This resulted in President Trump securing a deal with Mexico, which required the country to step up its efforts to stop illegal immigrants from entering the United States.
Top officials in the White House have been requesting an overreaching position based out of the White House to help coordinate efforts across agencies - these calls included Kirstjen Nielsen's who advocated for the creation of a job to help increase communication and collaboration between the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and Justice.
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