How did Thomas Homan’s policies at ICE differ between the Obama and Trump administrations?
Executive summary
Thomas (Tom) Homan ran ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) under President Obama and served as acting ICE director under President Trump; the core difference in his policy role was not a sudden change in mission but a shift from enforcing Obama-era, criminal-priority removals inside a tacitly restrained bureaucracy to actively championing and operationalizing Trump-era, broad interior enforcement measures — including zero‑tolerance prosecution and family separation rhetoric — while adopting a far more public and antagonistic posture toward “sanctuary” jurisdictions [1] [2] [3].
1. Career and institutional context that shaped policy choices
Homan rose through Border Patrol and ICE ranks to lead ERO in 2013 and was awarded a Presidential Rank Award in 2015 for his deportation work, giving him institutional credibility across administrations; he did not serve as ICE director during the Obama years but was the senior official in charge of interior removals, a role that centered on the jail‑to‑ICE pipeline and removing those with deportation orders [1] [3] [2] [4].
2. Enforcement priorities under Obama: narrower, jail‑focused execution
Multiple accounts portray Homan in the Obama era as executing a more limited, criminal‑priority enforcement strategy: his ERO work prioritized individuals with criminal convictions and relied heavily on arrests that flowed from local jails rather than broad street sweeps, and contemporaneous administration metrics show high removal numbers during that period, for which Homan was recognized [5] [1] [6].
3. The Trump era: elevation to acting director and broadened mandate
When elevated to acting ICE director under Trump in January 2017, Homan became the public face and chief implementer of a presidential agenda that demanded higher interior arrests and removals; under Trump his office pushed for more resources, detention capacity, and aggressive use of prosecutorial tools to detain and remove migrants, even as overall removal numbers reflected complex border/operational dynamics [3] [6] [7].
4. Tactical and policy differences: zero‑tolerance, family separation, and sanctuary enforcement
Homan is widely identified as one of the architects or senior proponents of the Trump “zero‑tolerance” approach that included prosecuting parents, which led to family separations, and he publicly urged criminal charges against sanctuary city politicians and stricter legal action to end sanctuary protections; sources link his advocacy and formal advice to senior DHS officials in 2018 with the implementation of those policies [3] [4] [8].
5. Public posture and media strategy: from internal operator to vocal enforcer
Under Obama Homan was a career bureaucrat known for operational command; under Trump he became a visible media advocate and political warrior for enforcement, regularly appearing on cable outlets, testifying before Congress, and signaling a willingness to use ICE’s authority as a deterrent and a bargaining instrument with local officials — a notable shift in tone that some allies called necessary and critics called performative escalation [7] [9] [5].
6. Oversight, controversy, and competing interpretations
Critics argue that Homan’s Trump‑era posture revived and expanded harsh practices — family separations and broad interior sweeps — that human‑rights groups and some lawmakers condemned, while defenders stress continuity and legal duty to remove unlawful aliens and point to his Obama‑era awards as proof of nonpartisan effectiveness; reporting suggests both continuity in enforcement expertise and divergence in scale, public advocacy, and willingness to pursue prosecutorial deterrence [5] [9] [4].
7. Bottom line: continuity of mission, divergence in means and mien
The record in available reporting supports a nuanced reading: Homan consistently pursued removals across administrations (continuity), but under Trump he shifted from a principally jail‑focused, criminal‑priority enforcement executor to an activist implementer who endorsed zero‑tolerance prosecution, family separation as deterrence, and public legal fights with sanctuary jurisdictions — amplifying enforcement both rhetorically and operationally in ways distinct from his Obama‑era role [2] [3] [8].