Trump's Immigration Picks Are Terrible

Just over a week after winning the presidential election, Donald Trump has begun to assemble a team that leaves no doubt he intends to implement a punitive immigration platform come 2025.

Trump has announced that South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem will serve as secretary of Homeland Security, former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Thomas Homan will serve as “border czar,” and former immigration adviser Stephen Miller will serve as deputy chief of staff for policy. Homan and Miller are both known hard-liners who served in much-publicized roles during the first Trump administration, and Noem has emerged as an active-on-the-border governor. All three picks are a sign that Trump will again lean into—and hire people willing to realize—his worst impulses on immigration policy.

Noem, who served for eight years in the House of Representatives before becoming governor of South Dakota in 2019, has scant immigration policy experience at the federal level. After Trump suspended refugee resettlement and barred the entry of people from seven Muslim-majority countries for several months in 2017, she praised the move, saying she supported a “temporary pause on accepting refugees from terrorist-held areas.”

Noem has been far more active in border policy as governor, and Trump has taken notice. “She was the first Governor to send National Guard Soldiers to help Texas fight the Biden Border Crisis, and they were sent a total of eight times,” said Trump in a statement Wednesday. Noem has called the U.S.-Mexico border a “war zone” and argued an “invasion” is taking place there. Though she marketed the National Guard deployment as a way to stop drug smuggling and human trafficking, a 2022 Associated Press report indicated that “the South Dakota troops didn’t seize any drugs” during their two-month deployment and “had little if anything to do” some days.

Noem will work closely with Homan, who has decades of experience in immigration enforcement and previously served as acting director of ICE under Trump. Controversial—and cruel—episodes dotted his tenure. Homan was an unapologetic proponent of separating migrant families as a deterrent policy, first pitching the idea during the Obama administration. (The Trump administration separated thousands of children from their families, and many of them still haven’t been reunited.) Homan once argued that politicians who govern sanctuary cities should be charged with crimes, and ICE under his watch swept up undocumented immigrants trying to make an honest living.

This time around, Homan will likely play a central part in Trump’s mass deportation effort, which the president-elect claims could target millions of undocumented immigrants. Workplace raids will again be on the table, Homan has said, and on Monday, he warned blue-state governors to “get the hell out of the way” of the administration’s enforcement activities. Like before, Homan’s efforts could put migrant families in the crosshairs. When 60 Minutes host Cecilia Vega asked Homan whether there is “a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families,” he replied, “Of course there is. Families can be deported together.” Over 4 million U.S. citizen kids live with at least one undocumented parent, the Congressional Research Service estimated in 2022.

Even among a cast of controversial staff picks, Miller stands apart. As a senior adviser to Trump during his first term, Miller was behind some of the administration’s worst immigration policies. He was an architect of the family separation policy and the ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries. Miller repeatedly tried to get the administration to use public health law to keep out migrants, which Trump ultimately did in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He lobbied for policies curtailing legal immigration, including by “adding new requirements on approving visa applications that slowed processing and drove up denial rates,” per The Wall Street Journal.

Miller appears to be fully on board with Trump’s vision for immigration enforcement in the coming term. Miller has “suggested supplementing ICE resources with military planes and National Guard troops, including sending troops from Republican-governed states into neighboring states with Democratic governors,” The Washington Post reported. “The immigration discussion” needs to move beyond just a “legal/illegal” distinction, Miller posted on X in January, deriding refugee resettlement, “chain migration,” the diversity visa lottery, and “Islamist green card migration” as “‘legal,’” in scare quotes.

Trump’s second-term team is still growing, but the immigration-related picks so far signal a return to restrictive and often logic-defying policymaking. Noem, Homan, and Miller peddle a narrative about immigration that is seemingly devoid of any benefits. They describe a problem that must be solved by a punishing, militaristic government—an approach that will inevitably tear apart families, face legal challenges, and incur a hefty price tag. These all happened during the first Trump administration, and given the people the president-elect has chosen to staff his next, he’s decided they’re simply part of the mission.

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