White House border czar Tom Homan has effectively assumed the role of de facto DHS secretary after President Trump dispatched him to Minneapolis on January 26 to take command of federal immigration enforcement operations that had spiraled into dysfunction under Secretary Kristi Noem's leadership.
Homan negotiated with state and local officials, restructured the chain of command, and on Thursday announced the conclusion of "Operation Metro Surge" — a massive enforcement campaign that produced more than 4,000 arrests statewide. The move cemented what multiple administration insiders describe as a decisive shift in who is actually running immigration enforcement.
A former Trump White House official put it plainly:
"I think it's the best thing that the president could have done. He's been so happy with how all this is going that Tom Homan, essentially, is going to be the de facto DHS secretary."
According to the Washington Examiner, the trouble started well before Homan's arrival. Beginning in June 2025, Noem directed Border Patrol agents — traditionally posted at the border — to assist ICE with interior enforcement, starting in Los Angeles. The agents moved city to city through the second half of the year. By December, more than 3,000 federal police from ICE, Border Patrol, CBP customs officers, and Justice Department agents had converged on Minnesota.
The scale was staggering. Motorcades of a dozen government vehicles pulled into neighborhoods. Half a dozen or so federal officers piled out to pursue targets. Activists trailed the processions and interfered with operations. Two fatal shootings — Renee Good on January 7 and Alex Pretti on January 24 — ratcheted tensions further. Republicans on Capitol Hill demanded an investigation into Pretti's death. Democrats threatened a partial government shutdown.
And through all of it, according to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison's Senate testimony on Thursday, neither Noem nor her Border Patrol point man, Greg Bovino, had bothered to sit down with a single Minnesota state official during two months of operations.
A former CBP senior official offered a blunt assessment:
"It was an unsustainable immigration enforcement plan that had no true strategy in mind, no achievable outcome."
Trump sent Homan to Minneapolis on January 26. The same day, Noem was told to fire Bovino. Trump personally called Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey.
Homan moved fast. He placed all federal police in Minnesota under ICE's authority — previously, ICE and CBP had been operating on separate tracks, a recipe for confusion. He negotiated a deal: 700 federal police would leave Minneapolis in exchange for county and state jails agreeing to turn over select illegal immigrants in their custody. He implored local police to respond to 911 calls about attacks on immigration officers — not to enforce immigration law, but to keep the peace.
A retired senior administration official in frequent contact with those carrying out operations described the shift:
"He absolutely saved the day. This isn't a retreat, it is a tactical reassessment. The arrests will not stop, but the abysmal tactical inefficiencies will."
Going forward, federal police would focus on arresting illegal immigrants with criminal records — a prioritization that reflects operational discipline, not softness. A senior White House staffer framed it clearly:
"He's just been so clear-eyed about wanting to stop the chaos — prioritizing the violent illegal criminals as opposed to the Greg Bovino round-'em-all-up school of thought — but stressing to the base that 'we are 100% committed to carrying out President Trump's mass deportation promise.'"
What makes Homan's approach particularly effective is that it strips the left of its preferred narrative. When enforcement looks chaotic, Democrats can play the victim. When it looks competent, coordinated, and focused on violent criminals, the political ground shifts beneath them.
A source close to the White House laid out the calculus:
"With [Homan], it's going to be very difficult for the Democrats to continue their strategy of objecting and fighting back. Because Homan, and the strategies that he employs, show that the White House is the true good actor in the situation."
The administration had suggested that Walz and Frey shared blame for the unrest, pointing to their calls for Minnesotans to resist deportation efforts. An aide for Walz acknowledged that Trump "also agreed to look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota and working with the state in a more coordinated fashion on immigration enforcement regarding violent criminals." That's a Democratic governor's own staff conceding the framework Homan set — enforcement continues, just smarter.
The same source close to the White House noted the electoral stakes with midterms under nine months away:
"Now, the question is, was Tom tapped in [time] to fix the mess too late? The November elections will be the judge."
The operational failures in Minnesota weren't just tactical — they were reputational. A retired senior agent at CBP's Washington headquarters offered the most damning assessment of what Noem and Bovino left behind:
"The previous enforcement posture negatively impacted the Border Patrol brand and overall credibility that will take us another 100 yrs to repair."
That's a career law enforcement official saying the damage done by sending thousands of federal agents into neighborhoods without a strategy or communication wasn't just inefficient. It was the kind of institutional wound that outlasts any single administration.
Jason Owens, the previous national Border Patrol chief, took a more measured tone but landed in the same place:
"At the end of the day, we're all on the same side, and that is, we all want what's best for this country, and to be able to keep that in mind means that you can maintain open lines of communication and dialogue, and that is everything for our system to work. I congratulate Tom on going in there and establishing those lines of communication and taking an approach that looks over the horizon, that focuses on not just enforcing the law and making the community safe, but also maintaining those critical relationships that have to exist between the federal, state, and local governments."
Open lines of communication. Relationships between federal, state, and local governments. Basic governing. These shouldn't be revolutionary concepts, and the fact that they read as a correction tells you everything about what came before.
A White House official confirmed the new posture in a statement:
"Thanks to Tom's work in Minnesota, the Administration was able to secure unprecedented cooperation with local leaders which put us in a position to end the surge without compromising on immigration enforcement. Tom has done an excellent job striking the balance of coordination with local democrats while always upholding the President's promise to enforce immigration law and conduct mass deportations."
More than 4,000 arrests statewide. An operational framework that forces Democratic officials to cooperate rather than grandstand. A drawdown that looks like strategic confidence, not retreat. And a border czar who, in the words of one insider, "goes about his business uninterested in the photo ops and gets s*** done."
Conservatives watching this should take note of the pattern. The enforcement mission didn't fail because it was too aggressive — it stumbled because it lacked the kind of operational seriousness that turns political will into durable results. Homan brought that seriousness. The question now is whether the rest of DHS catches up, or whether one man continues doing the job that an entire department was built for.
Minneapolis got the message. The rest of the country is watching.