Fox News is attempting to spin Border Czar Tom Homan as the new, professional face of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation program, but all signs suggest the administration’s draconian policies will remain unchanged. The network’s attempts to cast Homan in the role of the good cop — in contrast to Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino’s bad cop — is absurd based on even a cursory glance at Homan’s previous statements and actions. 

Homan, for example, was a key architect of the first Trump administration’s so-called family separation policy, an immoral and inhumane practice that was a public relations nightmare to boot, and that’s just for starters. 

On January 26, The Atlantic reported that Trump decided to reassign Bovino — the Border Patrol “commander at large” who has been the face of the administration’s anti-immigrant raids in Minneapolis and elsewhere — to his old position in California and to tap Homan as his replacement. 

The swap comes after federal forces under Bovino’s command shot and killed two people in Minneapolis, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, sparking nationwide protests and outrage. 

With Bovino apparently sidelined, Homan, a veteran of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, will now “assume control of the federal mobilization” in Minnesota, according to The Atlantic, though the move appears to be little more than a rebranding of the same fascistic approach to immigration Trump has taken for the last year. 

Fox host Brian Kilmeade captured the not-so-new marketing campaign well in a comment he made the morning of January 27. Homan’s “focus is gonna be on the worst of the worst, and I sense that Bovino and company were just scooping up some people that I don't think the president was for,” Kilmeade said.

The only issue with this spin is that it’s the exact same one Fox has been using for the last month. As Media Matters previously reported, Fox hosts and anchors have relentlessly and falsely claimed that Trump’s deportation forces are targeting “the worst of the worst.” The network has also repeatedly amplified a wildly misleading statistic about the supposed criminality of ICE arrestees — in effect, suggesting to their viewers that 70% of people arrested by ICE are violent criminals, when the reality is closer to 7% who have a conviction for a violent offense. Homan himself is one of the greatest purveyors of that inflated datapoint, and has been defending the Trump administration’s harsh tactics over the last year. 

And for all the discussion of Homan’s experience, it’s worth underscoring that the agent who killed Good has been with the Department of Homeland Security for more than 10 years — including as a firearms instructor — and the agent who killed Pretti had eight years of experience. Inexperience isn’t an adequate explanation for the chaos Trump’s forces are causing in cities around the country.

It’s in that light that Fox’s boosterism of Homan and his long record in government needs to be seen. Prior to Trump’s personnel change, Fox’s Kilmeade said he “would love to see Tom Homan just be asked to go in there and settle things down.”

Fox News analyst Guy Benson expressed mild criticism of the administration’s response to Pretti’s killing. “Well, I think the shakeup from President Trump was necessary because this was not handled — this incident over the weekend — not handled well at all,” Benson said. “Some of the assertions being made by high ranking officials were not true.” 

“And so, the president said enough of this, we need a reset,” Benson added. “And I think Tom Homan is the man to do it. That's a prudent choice.” 

Fox host Laura Ingraham, who earlier this month practically begged Trump to deploy the military against civilians by invoking the Insurrection Act, said on January 26, “The man the White House called experienced tough and fair … Tom Homan is now on the ground there to help solve this mess. That's more good news.”

On January 27, Fox News correspondent Matt Finn characterized Homan’s elevation as a marked break from the previous approach. “Tom Homan is going to be calling the shots,” Finn said. “Fox has previously reported that Homan operates differently than Bovino, whose aggressive tactics are considered more aligned with DHS secretary Kristi Noem and top White House adviser Stephen Miller."

It remains to be seen whether Homan will pull back on those “aggressive tactics,” but his record suggests there will be significant continuity with Trump’s posture over the last year. In December 2023, Homan promised that he would “run the biggest deportation operation this country has ever seen.” The following July, he told the audience at a conference hosted by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation that when it came to mass deportation, “no one’s off the table.” 

At the same event, he made it clear that he viewed his upcoming task in sweeping terms. “If you’re in the country illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder,” Homan said. “The bottom line is: every illegal alien is a criminal.”  

In a December 2024 interview with the Washington Examiner, Homan said the mass deportations will include “collateral arrests” of immigrants without criminal records.   

During a podcast interview last January, Homan promised to use the “private sector” and “deputize” citizens to help round up suspected undocumented immigrants.

Fox may be attempting to position Homan as a corrective, but last July he articulated his hard-line, zero tolerance attitude towards pro-immigrant organizers and activists. “Mr. Homan, you saw the blonde in the lululemons obstructing ICE,” host Jesse Watters said in response to a clip he’d aired. “Can she be arrested?”

“If she obstructs, if she interferes, if she puts hands on an ICE officer, if she gets between them and the illegal alien — yes, she can be prosecuted,” Homan said. 

“President Trump made that commitment several weeks ago, zero-tolerance,” Homan added. “You step in front of us, you interfere with us, you put a hand on an ICE officer or throw a stone, you’re going to be criminally prosecuted and going to jail.” 

That kind of rhetoric may play well on Fox, but it’s that exact policy that resulted in the fatal shootings of Good and Pretti. As the country turns on Trump’s deportation tactics, Fox may want to convince their audience that they’re selling a new product, but all signs suggest the leadership swap is nothing but slapping a different label on the same draconian approach.