General Discussion

He was appointed by President Barack Obama as Immigration and Customs Enforcement's executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations in 2013.[6]

By 2014, under the Obama administration, Homan began to argue that separating children from their caregivers would be an effective means of discouraging illegal border crossings. The journalist Caitlin Dickerson describes him as the "intellectual father" of the policy, which he outlined years before it was adopted by the Trump administration. "Most parents don’t want to be separated", Homan told Dickerson. He argued that this fact made separation an effective tool for immigration enforcement: "I’d be lying to you if I didn’t think that would have an effect."[8]

In 2015, Obama awarded him a Presidential Rank Award as a Distinguished Executive. The Washington Post article at the time stated, "Thomas Homan deports people. And he's really good at it."[9][10]