Originally published at National Catholic Register
If the second Trump administration does what the president-elect says about immigration — finish the wall, stop unauthorized border crossings, keep asylum applicants in Mexico while their case is pending, and deport millions of foreign-born people here without legal residency — it will be a Catholic overseeing the effort.
Tom Homan, a former U.S. Border Patrol agent, is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for border czar.
Homan, 62, who served as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the first Trump administration, grew up in West Carthage, a village in far upstate New York about 30 miles southeast of the border with Canada. He is one of seven children. His father was a police officer and later a local magistrate; his mother was a homemaker.
“Our upbringing was very conservative and very Catholic. We went to Mass every Sunday and sat in the same pew every time. God help anyone who arrived before us and sat in our seats!” Homan writes in his 2020 book Defend the Border and Save Lives: Solving Our Most Important Humanitarian and Security Crisis.
It’s the last time in the book he mentions his religion, something he doesn’t ordinarily speak about in public interviews
