Trump considers tough-talking former ICE director for DHS chief

White House

Trump likes Thomas Homan’s frequent and often fiery appearances on cable news defending the White House’s immigration policies.

President Donald Trump is considering Thomas Homan, former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to succeed Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, three people familiar with the process told POLITICO.

Homan’s name has surfaced amid a flurry of media reports that Nielsen could be asked to resign before the end of the month.

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Tapping Homan to run the Department of Homeland Security would almost certainly energize Trump’s base. The tough-talking lawman once recommended charging so-called sanctuary city politicians “with crimes” and has pugnaciously defended even Trump’s most controversial immigration moves, including separating children from their parents at the border.

“Trump wants John Wayne on the border and Tom Homan is John Wayne,” said a former Homeland Security official, who cited Homan’s frequent, and often fiery appearances on cable news as a part of his résumé that Trump would especially like.

Homan joins a list of possible new DHS chiefs that has been growing in recent days as rumors swirled that Nielsen is on her way out. According to a senior White House official, the president has been itching to fire Nielsen for months over what he views as weak leadership on border security, along with other enforcement policies that he has sought to implement. Going forward, Trump has told aides he wants an agency chief who will fervently defend his hard-line approach to illegal immigration, particularly with an incoming House Democratic majority that has promised to thwart his agenda at every turn.

While Trump has portrayed illegal immigration as a pressing crisis, the number of a border arrests in fiscal year 2018 — a proxy for crossings — remained below average annual levels over the past decade and far below levels in the 1990s and aughts.

The White House declined to comment on Nielsen’s status. However, the same senior White House official confirmed that discussions about her job status have taken place.

In addition to Homan, other potential Nielsen replacements include Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and David Pekoske, administrator of the Transportation Security Administration. Both have already been confirmed by the Senate.

The president is also being urged to consider Maj. Gen. Vincent Coglianese, who currently runs the Marine Corps Installations Command, according to a person familiar with the process. However, because Coglianese remains on active duty, nominating him would introduce certain challenges to the confirmation process for such a role.

Tapping Homan would send a strong law-and-order signal. An ex-cop who later became a Border Patrol agent and rose to a senior-level role during the Obama administration, Homan was named acting director of ICE shortly after Trump took office.

As the top official at the law enforcement agency, Homan was responsible for implementing some of the president’s most contentious immigration policies, including increasing the number of arrests of people living in the U.S. illegally and battling local jurisdictions that refused to cooperate with federal immigration agents.

While that background has endeared Homan to Trump, it would also make for a brutal Senate confirmation fight.

“Tom couldn’t get confirmed to be dog catcher,” a former DHS official told POLITICO, adding that Senate Democrats could “peel off a couple moderates and ice him” in the confirmation process.

Beyond the possibility of less-than-unanimous Republican support, any senator could place a hold on Homan’s nomination, thus preventing a vote from reaching the Senate floor.

Homan’s role as an unapologetic mouthpiece for the administration, even after he retired from ICE, could also complicate a confirmation process.

In a heated exchange with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer this summer, Homan defended the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border — a practice the drew bipartisan condemnation.

“I think it is the law,” Homan told the network. “The parents are making a choice. They’re choosing, they are taking it upon themselves to enter illegally and have the children taken away. So if anybody is to blame here, it is the parents who made a decision to break the law.”

Homan has appeared on Fox News several times as a contributor since retiring from ICE, including last month when he applauded Trump for threatening to deploy thousands of U.S. troops to the border to assist Border Patrol agents preparing for the arrival of a caravan of Central American migrants.

“I think the president threw down the gauntlet, as he should have,” Homan said in an Oct. 18 appearance.

It’s also unclear whether Homan would be open to the position, an ICE official said Tuesday.

Homan was tapped in November 2017 to lead ICE permanently, but instead chose to retire in June of this year, citing the need to spend more with his family. The ICE official confirmed that family commitments might preclude Homan from keeping his hat in the ring for DHS chief.

If Trump fires Nielsen, or if she resigns — something she has yet to offer to do, according to one DHS official — the next official in the DHS chain of succession is Claire Grady, the Senate-confirmed undersecretary for management. Grady is serving as the agency’s acting No. 2 official because the White House has yet to nominate someone to fill that spot.

Grady, who previously managed procurement and acquisitions at the Defense Department, is considered an exceptional manager, but not overtly political, according to former colleagues.

“When you’re a career, you’re executing policy, some you personally believe in and some you don’t personally believe in,” said a former DHS official. “That’s different than being someone who stands out there on the news and says, ‘I believe this is the right thing.’”

Current and former DHS officials have marveled at the lack of urgency to tap a deputy at the department, which oversees a vast portfolio of national security issues.

One former official called it “malfeasance,” while a current administration official said the departure of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, combined with Nielsen’s expected exit, would create a major “leadership vacuum … at two of the agencies that have the most equities in border security and immigration enforcement.”

Annie Karni contributed to this report.