In an exclusive interview in Washington, DC, with The Alex Marlow Show podcast, President Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan told Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow why he decided to join the president in his quest to secure the southern border and explained in graphic detail the devastation wrought by those who advocate for mass immigration at all costs.
Homan, who started in the United States Border Patrol in 1984 and later became the first Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director who worked his way through the ranks of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has been trying to secure the nation’s borders for decades.
He served for six presidents, dating back to President Ronald Reagan, and had long been a neutral figure in Democrat and Republican administrations.
After having appointed Homan as ICE’s executive associate director of Enforcement and Removal Operations in 2013, then-President Obama was so pleased with the former New York police officer’s efficiency in deporting illegal aliens that he awarded him the Presidential Rank Award in 2016.
The Left has changed since then, and today, Homan is one of the most attacked political appointees in the second Trump administration — a job he came out of retirement to take.
“I don’t care,” Homan told Marlow when asked about the attacks and threats against him on a daily basis from the Left.
“I mean, this is the second time I came out of retirement for the president. It’s hard to say no to the president of the United States and help him fix something where thousands of lives have been lost,” Homan said. “So I knew the hate was coming. And, you know, unfortunately, my family pays the price. I haven’t lived with my family in months because of the death threats against me. But my family understands the important mission.”
In an emotional moment, Homan said that if his opponents wore his shoes for the last three and a half decades, they would have a very clear understanding of why he fights to secure the nation’s borders — and with tremendous success.
“If they held the dead children I’ve held, talked to little girls as young as 9 who were raped multiple times by handlers from the cartel, standing on the back of a tractor-trailer when 19 people are at your feet because they baked to death, including a 5-year-old boy, running operation in Arizona where alien smuggling cartels are ripping bodies from each other with drugs, and when someone couldn’t pay their smuggling fees, they’d torture them and call their relatives and let them listen while they torture them and kill them because they couldn’t pay the fees. These are just a few things,” Homan said.
“If you wore my shoes for three and a half decade, you wouldn’t ask that question because I’ve seen so much tragedy in my life, it’s who I am today,” he continued. “So when I’m getting asked to come back and secure the border and you know it’s going to save lives, how do you say no to that?”
It was the stories of the five-year-old migrant boy and nine-year-old migrant girl, whom Homan choked up retelling their stories and the impact it left on him.
“The two that break my heart is the 19 dead aliens in the back of a tractor-trailer. When I arrived on that crime scene, when I got to the back of that tractor-trailer, there were several bodies that already hit the ground and when the doors finally opened, people rushed out to get air and some of the dead bodies, that were fighting for a small hole where the break light used to be to breath, were pushed out,” Homan detailed. “When I looked back in there, I saw a little boy in his underwear, turned out to be five years old, dead. With … his father who was cradling him on top of him. Most of them, if not all of them, were in their underwear because they were trying to get some relief from the serious heat in that steel box.”
“So I look at that and I say, okay these people are in a steel box, it’s 107 degrees or higher, black, couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, no air, no water, no food, they baked to death. And I stood there looking at that and I saw that little boy and I had a little boy that same age and I remember, I looked at that little boy, true story, he had the same underwear on that mine did,” Homan said, fighting tears. “And so before I could process this scene, what’s going through my head is ‘Why did he have to die this way? Why did any of them have to die this way?’ Because if we had a secured border, it wouldn’t happen. And when you talk to the survivors … when you hear the stories, how that little boy begged his father, he didn’t want to die. Any 5-year-old that has to beg their father not to die because he wanted to see his mom again, he wanted to see his sisters again … a 5-year-old knew he was dying and asked his dad to save him, what’s his dad going to do? They’re in a locked steel box. His dad is the reason he’s there. So think what the father’s going through watching his child die in his arms. That changed me forever.”
In the case of the nine-year-old migrant girl, Homan said he spoke to her after her rescue from cartel smugglers. In his conversation with her, Homan learned that she had been repeatedly raped by cartel members as she made her way to the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Now that little girl, her life will never be the same. Everything innocent and pure was ripped from her. So that’s why I fight hard. And a lot of people ask, ‘Why do you get emotional when you’re on TV?’ Why do you get emotional in front of Congress? Because we can fix this,” Homan said.
Under Biden, Homan said he would wake up every morning “very pissed off because I knew, based on my years of experience and my investigations, okay, how many people died last night? How many women or young little girls got sexually assaulted last night? How many have been forced into labor to pay off smuggling fees? How many pounds of fentanyl came across last night to kill Americans? How many people from the terrorist countries got in last night? How much money did the cartel make last night?”
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One particular point of contention for Homan are the establishment media’s comparisons between the Trump administration and the Biden administration — a comparison that he said is based on utter lies and dishonesty about immigration enforcement.
“They compare the two administrations. [They say] the Trump administration is inhumane, the Biden administration, they’re very humane. Really? Let’s compare the numbers. Under Biden in four years, over 4,000 aliens died making that journey — historic record,” Homan said. “We never came close to that number ever. Over a quarter of a million Americans died from fentanyl coming across that border. Those policies were killing Americans at record numbers and aliens at record numbers.”
“Under President Trump, when 96 percent less people aren’t coming, how many women aren’t being raped, how many children aren’t dying making that journey, how many Americans aren’t dying? Trump’s policies are saving thousands of lives every year,” Homan continued.
The border wall, Homan said, is one of the biggest life savers, literally, that the Trump administration has focused on.
“Here’s what people don’t talk about — every place the barrier has been built, illegal immigration has declined, illegal drug flows have declined, but guess what, it also saves lives because women and children can’t get over that barrier and so they’re going to a place where there’s not a barrier and what’s waiting for them, the men and women of Border Patrol who are going to deal with the humanitarian crisis there, deal with the medical issues there because a lot of them are in bad shape when they get there,” Homan said. “Walls save lives.”
Beyond the establishment media, Homan said it is sanctuary jurisdictions and politicians that are attempting, but often failing, to fight the Trump administration. Their fight, Homan said, is egregious as they pitch ICE agents as the criminals and criminal illegal aliens as the victims.
For sanctuary politicians, Homan said he has three words for them: You are welcome.
“You’re welcome because ICE has taken thousands and thousands of public safety threats off the streets of California,” Homan said to Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) — the sanctuary state’s leading anti-enforcement officials.
“Whether it’s [Illinois Gov. J.B.] Pritzker, Newsom, Bass, or [Chicago Mayor] Brandon Johnson, you’re welcome for us making your communities safer,” Homan said. “If you want to sit on the sidelines and watch us make your communities safer, have at it. Shame on you.”
Democrats are most furious, Homan said, that the Trump administration is “ruining their end-game” on mass immigration to the United States.
“Their end game, which no one talks about, why did they release millions of people into the United States rather than detaining them? If federal law says if you come across the border without proper documentation, you shall be detained. That’s what the statute says. Not maybe, not thinking about it, not give them to an NGO and put them in a hotel for $500 a night,” Homan said. “The Biden administration released millions of people at the same time they had thousands of empty ICE beds, about $130 a night, sitting empty — already paid for … why did they do that? Why did they not detain them?”
“I’ll tell you why not. They’re playing the long game. If you’re in detention … you get a hearing in 38 to 40 days. Nine out of ten, you’re going to lose and you’re going to go home. That’s not what they want. If you release them on the non-detained docket to an NGO, their hearing is years out. And what happens? Maybe another Democrat administration will reward amnesty,” Homan continued.
Democrats, Homan said, are also deeply invested in counting illegal aliens when it comes to congressional apportionment so that sanctuary jurisdictions in deep blue states can continuously expand their House seats, albeit fraudulently through illegal immigration.
“We’re ruining their long-term plans. And people will say, ‘No, that’s racist, that’s replacement theory.’ Call it what you want, it is what it is,” Homan said. “I’m not racist. There has to be a reason you’re releasing millions of people on the non-detained docket rather than the detained docket so they have a hearing within a month and a half. Why not get due process as quick as you can. They don’t want due process, they wanted people to stay here until the next administration came in, and give a massive amnesty.”
All of these efforts, along with the attacks and rioting at immigration detention centers in recent weeks, are highly organized, Homan said, and not mere coincidences.
Homan pointed to several recent attacks on ICE agents and facilities, most prominently the attack at the agency’s Dallas Field Office where a left-wing gunman opened fire and ultimately killed a detainee.
In other recent instances, Homan noted, ICE agents have been assaulted and attacked by rioters in Portland, Oregon; Los Angeles, California; and Broadview, Illinois. Who exactly is funding such attacks, Homan revealed, is a question that the Department of Justice is currently investigating.
“It absolutely is organized,” Homan said of the violence and riots against ICE.
“You don’t think what’s happened in Portland is organized? What’s happened in Chicago is organized. Look at what happened in L.A., when you’ve got 300 people show up with the same masks, same shields, the same weapons, and that’s happened in Portland, New York, and Chicago. Are they all going to the same mini mart and buying the same stuff?” Homan said. “No, that’s being supplied to them, they’re being paid to do this. And that’s why I’m glad, the Department of Justice is all over this … it’s being worked [to find out who is doing this].”
Though Homan sees the second Trump term as already the most successful presidential administration in American history when it comes to reducing illegal immigration, a viewpoint backed up by DHS data showing historic lows in border crossings, he said there are a handful of things that still must be done.
President Donald Trump shakes hands with his Border Czar Tom Homan during an event in the East Room of the White House on June 26, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“We got a few more holes to plug. We have to finish building that wall because walls work,” Homan said, adding that the Trump administration is also hellbent on finding missing migrant children whom the Biden administration lost all contact with after resettling them with adults in the U.S.
“We’ve still got children to find. Half a million children were smuggled into the interior of the United States under the Biden administration, separated from their families and put in the hands of criminal cartels and smuggled into the United States,” Homan said. “The last administration lost track of 300,000 [children] … we’ve paid a lot of attention to that. I think we’ve located just under 24,000 already, saved a lot of them from sex trafficking and forced labor. I won’t rest until we run down every single lead we have and when we run down every single lead, we’ll go back to it again. I’m committed to finding all of these kids.”
Perhaps the most important, and most fitting to the president himself, is the message the administration wants to get across to the rest of the world.
“I don’t want people to spend their life savings to put themselves in the hands of criminal cartels coming across the border,” Homan said. “[T]here’s a right way and wrong way to come to this country.”
The Alex Marlow Show, hosted by Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow, is a weekday podcast produced by Breitbart News and Salem Podcast Network. You can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Rumble, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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