Mass deportation architect Thomas Homan, who tore families apart as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), will step down from his position this June to spend more time with his, the agency said Monday.
“It has been the honor of my life to lead the men and women of ICE for more than a year,” Homan said. “The decision to leave federal service after more than 34 years is bittersweet, but my family has sacrificed a lot in order for me to serve and it’s time for me to focus on them.”
America’s immigrant families have little time to breath a sigh of relief—under Trump’s executive orders and Homan’s watch, unleashed agents have detained Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, targeted activists and journalists, and routinely flouted ICE policy dictating that churches, schools and hospitals should generally be “off-limits” to enforcement.
Homan, an Obama-era holdover who reportedly planned to retire early last year, became radicalized in the Trump era, weaponizing an agency that’s supposed to be tasked with “homeland security” and targeting dangerous people into a brutal police force whose overarching goal has become to terrorize moms, dads and their kids because they lack papers.
“If you’re in this country illegally,” Homan bellowed last year, “and you committed a crime by entering this country, you should be uncomfortable, you should look over your shoulder, and you need to be worried.”
When immigrant and human rights activists expressed outrage over the remark, Homan doubled-down, also going on national television to say that the leaders of so-called “sanctuary cities” should be locked up for trying to protect their immigrant residents. “We gotta start charging some of these politicians with crimes.”
Under Homan’s watch, the arrests of undocumented immigrants with no criminal record surged over 170 percent in 2017. The engine of the ICE deportation machine was already running—with Trump’s go-ahead, Homan revved it up and left a trail of broken families and human devastation in its wake.
Remember them, their faces, and their names:
JESUS LARA
Lara, an Ohio father of four American citizens, was deported to Mexico in July after nearly two decades in the U.S. Lara had no criminal record, was a taxpayer and followed ICE’s rules by checking in regularly for years. That didn’t matter to immigration officials, who treated Lara no differently than they would someone who actually did pose a danger to public safety. Instead, ICE ordered him to leave his family and country. "These are the darkest times I've ever seen as an attorney,” said former American Immigration Lawyers Association president David Leopold, who represented Lara. “When the best and the brightest that we have to offer are taken from their homes and sent away. The law is so broken.”
MARIA MENDOZA-SANCHEZ AND EUSEBIO SANCHEZ
Mendoza-Sanchez and her husband were deported to Mexico this past August after two decades in the U.S. Neither had criminal records. ICE didn’t care. San Jose Mercury News: “At the airport, the 46-year-old mother related how she had arrived in Oakland in 1994 when she was young and in love. She began working in a nursing home, where she was promoted several times, then studied to become a nurse. Eusebio had started working in construction, and later graduated to become a truck driver for the last 12 years. Asked by a reporter Wednesday night if not getting the stay of the deportation order was a failure, she said no. ‘I’m not leaving this country defeated, because I graduated from the university and that was not in my plans when I came here, or when I was a kid,’ she said.”
DAVID CHAVEZ-MACIAS
Chavez-Macias was deported to Mexico last March, despite having no criminal record, a serious medical condition, and three decades in the U.S. Chavez-Macias’s advocates and doctor pleaded with ICE to allow the dad to stay here, where he would continue to undergo surgery and take medications for Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder that has no cure but can be treated. "If he gets moved or deported to a different country,” Dr. Jason Crawford said, “then I can't pick up the phone and talk to a doctor there, because I don't know who that would be nor where will he be.” But ICE not only ignored their pleas, but Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s as well. "President Trump continued his assault on communities in Nevada by forcing a father from his kids, a husband from his wife, and a hard working man from his community,” she said. "David's deportation is a loss for the Reno community."
Homan’s nomination was officially submitted last November, but the Senate hadn’t so much as held one confirmation hearing since, perhaps knowing his confirmation would face immense backlash from the Democratic base. After all, few nominees have gone into their hearings with a years’ track record as destructive and inhumane as Homan—and few have gone into their hearings after having lost a spokesperson who said on the record he’d rather quit than keep lying for Homan and ICE.
So just days after “nearly 20 Senate Democrats said they want the Department of Homeland Security to hand over documents shedding more light on Homan and his formal nomination,” Homan announced his retirement. Coincidence? Perhaps. Afraid of being asked about ICE’s questionable and illegal practices while under oath? Perhaps. Complicit in turbocharging Trump’s racist, immoral mass deportation force? Yes.
“We’re glad to see Homan go,” said Frank Sharry, founder and executive director of America’s Voice. “He has been Trump’s unleashed pitbull. He has targeted hard-working immigrants and their families in order to terrorize millions. He added insult to injury with statements meant to dehumanize and denigrate immigrants in a nation that once welcomed them. He will go down in history as the Bull Connor of federal immigration enforcement.”
