Who is Tom Homan, the White House border czar Trump is deploying to Minnesota?

By Michael Williams, Priscilla Alvarez, Kristen Holmes, CNN

(CNN) — The White House border czar who President Donald Trump is dispatching to Minneapolis following the fatal shooting of two US citizens is a longtime law enforcement official who has pushed for some of the Trump administration’s controversial immigration-related policies.

Trump said Monday he was sending Tom Homan to Minnesota following Saturday’s fatal shooting of Minneapolis ICU nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents. The incident has inflamed tensions and drawn bipartisan criticism of the Trump administration’s portrayal — without evidence — of Pretti as someone who sought to commit an act of domestic terrorism and wanted to massacre law enforcement. Federal officials have so far declined to provide to the public critical details substantiating their claim an agent shot Pretti in self-defense.

The move to send Homan to Minnesota was met with some relief by Republican lawmakers and Homeland Security officials as the 64-year-old border czar has decades worth of law enforcement experience, beginning his career as a police officer in New York before becoming a Border Patrol agent in California in 1984. Homan also led Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation efforts during the Obama administration.

As acting director of ICE during Trump’s first term, Homan served as the public face and vocal defender of some of the administration’s most contentious immigration policies, including the separation of children and families who crossed the border.

He said at a public event in September 2017 that his agency would arrest undocumented people who came forward to care for the children, which previous administrations had avoided. He has also virulently opposed “sanctuary city” policies that restrict local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration efforts.

But the president sending Homan to Minnesota also suggests a potential sidelining of the more heavy-handed tactics used by top Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino and underscores the ongoing internal dispute within the administration over how they’re carrying out the president’s immigration agenda.

CNN reported Monday that Bovino and some of his agents are expected to leave Minneapolis on Tuesday and return to their respective sectors, according to three sources familiar the discussions. The White House has said Homan is expected to manage ICE operations in the city. One official said it was a “mutual decision” to have Bovino depart.

While Bovino’s enforcement style has been backed by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Homan has generally taken a more stringent approach to immigration enforcement — wanting to focus on public safety and national security threats. That is slightly different from the broad sweeps that have been occurring in cities nationwide during Trump’s second term.

While Trump was campaigning in 2024, Homan said in an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” that the president’s massive deportation campaign would involve targeted arrests.

“It’s not gonna be – a mass sweep of neighborhoods. It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous,” Homan, who was also a contributor to Project 2025, said at the time.

But as the Department of Homeland Security has lagged behind internal quotas for immigrant arrests, the agency had broadened its focus to include generalized sweeps and stops in immigrant-heavy communities. The agency has asserted sweeping law enforcement powers in ways that have not been attempted by previous law enforcement agencies — including in an internal memo that said ICE officers do not need judicial warrants to search a person’s home. Experts have told CNN that this directive disregards fundamental guardrails that are enshrined in the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution.

While Homan has publicly been in line with the Trump administration, there has been infighting between factions who back him and those who back Noem. Homan and Noem have generally not spoken to each other in recent months, according to US officials.

At a press briefing on Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Homan will now be the “main point of contact on the ground in Minneapolis” while Bovino will “continue to lead” Border Patrol nationwide. She also tamped down any appearance of conflict between Noem and Homan.

“Secretary Noem is also in charge of FEMA and we’re in the wake of a brutal winter storm where hundreds of thousands of Americans have been impacted by that. Border czar Homan is in a unique position to drop everything and go to Minnesota to continue having productive conversations with state and local officials,” Leavitt said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune praised Trump’s decision to have Homan oversee immigration operations in Minnesota, calling it a “positive development” that could lead “to turning down the temperature and restoring order in Minnesota.”

“He knows what he’s doing. He’s gets it,” one Republican lawmaker also told CNN, saying that Homan understood the system and how to do enforcement operations the “correct way.” Allies and advisers also view him as being “a grown up,” one source said.

Homan has come under some scrutiny since taking on his current role. The New York Times reported in September that Homan was recorded in 2024 accepting a bag that contained $50,000 in cash by undercover FBI agents in an investigation the Trump Justice Department later closed.

A person familiar with the operation had told CNN that Homan accepted the cash as part of a sting operation, and that Homan was being investigated for potential bribery and other crimes after he agreed to help the undercover agents secure government contracts. Homan, meanwhile, has said he didn’t “take $50,000 from anybody.”

The Department of Justice shut down the investigation after Trump began his second term last year over doubts prosecutors could prove Homan had agreed to a specific act in exchange for the cash and because he was not in a government position at the time. The White House later called the investigation into Homan “blatantly political.”

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Isabelle D’Antonio contributed.

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