Here is what to know about Homan ahead of his arrival in the Twin Cities.
Despite unwavering enthusiasm for Trump and withering criticism of President Joe Biden, he is seen by some as a voice of restraint and moderation compared with some in the current administration.
Homan was at his retirement party in January 2017 when Trump’s choice for homeland security secretary, John Kelly, asked him to stay at ICE. Homan accepted after taking a weekend to think about it and became a leading figure in the Trump administration through four tumultuous years.
Homan portrays illegal immigration as black-and-white and has made no apologies for Trump’s policy of targeting everyone in the country without status, not just those with criminal histories, public safety concerns and recent border crossers.
“If you’re in the country illegally, you should be concerned,” he said in a 2018 interview with The Associated Press. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be. Just like if I go speeding down the highway, are you worried about getting a ticket? If you lie on your taxes, are you worried about an audit?“
“People ask me all the time, why did you remove that guy who’s been here 12 years and has two U.S. citizen kids. I said because he had his due process,” he told the AP. “People think I enjoy this. I’m a father. People don’t think this bothers me. I feel bad about the plight of these people. Don’t get me wrong, but I have a job to do.”
He also said, in a separate interview, that worksite immigration enforcement operations — which the Biden administration largely stopped — would be necessary.
“I will run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen,” Homan said in 2024.
“You concentrate on the public safety threats and the national security threats first, because they’re the worst of the worst,” he said on the show. He also said ICE would move to implement Trump’s plans in a “humane manner.”
On a separate “60 Minutes” interview before the 2024 presidential elections, Homan called suggestions of mass neighborhood raids or building camps to hold people “ridiculous.”
When asked whether there was a way to carry out deportations without separating families, he said, “Families can be deported together.”
Homan was accused of accepting the cash during a 2024 encounter with agents posing as businesspeople seeking government contracts that Homan suggested he could help them get in a second Trump term.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt characterized Homan’s encounter with the undercover agents as an effort by the Biden administration to “entrap one of the president’s top allies and supporters, someone who they knew very well would be taking a government position.”
