Washington: US President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Tom Homan, a hardline anti-immigration border official, as his “border czar”, and Stephen Miller, a top adviser on immigration, as the White House deputy chief of staff for policy. Trump has also picked Elise Stefanik, a critic of the United Nations and a hawkish supporter of Israel, as his ambassador to UN.
The appointments reflect the fact that next US administration will institute strong measures to close America’s borders and deport at least a segment of those who entered US illegally, and staunchly and publicly oppose any effort by multilateral bodies to restrain Israel or risk US funding and support altogether.
Separately, in a sign of the likely ascendance of the “Make America Great Again” faction in the Congressional leadership, Trump’s strongest allies have backed Rick Scott, a Senator from Florida, to be the Senate majority leader against two other contenders, John Thyne and John Cornyn. The race remains close, the vote is on Wednesday and Trump personally hasn’t endorsed any of the candidates.
All four positions have implications for India, given the increased flow of illegal Indian immigrants into America and presence of legal migrants, the intensified exchanges between India and the US at UN, and the role of the Senate in shaping the India-US relationship.
Border czar
With a crackdown on immigration and the deportation of “illegal aliens” ranking his top election promise, Trump announced the appointment of Homan on Truth Social. “I am pleased to announce that the Former ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Director, and stalwart on Border Control, Tom Homan, will be joining the Trump Administration, in charge of our Nation’s Borders (“The Border Czar”), including, but not limited to, the Southern Border, the Northern Border, all Maritime, and Aviation Security.”
Trump said he had known Homan for a long time, and there was nobody “better at policing and controlling our Borders”. The president-elect also said that Homan will be “in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin”.
American media outlets reported that Trump also intends to announce Stephen Miller, his top hardline adviser on immigration, as deputy chief of staff on policy — a wide ranging role that will allow Miller to coordinate across agencies to implement both deportation plans and change immigration rules. Miller and Homan were architect of the policy to separate families at the border in Trump’s first term, a policy that drew widespread condemnation.
Trump’s immigration-related policies will have implications for India.
In a recent paper for the Niskanen Center, researchers Gil Guerra and Sneha Puri said that since October 2020, the US Customs and Border Patrol had encountered 169,000 Indian nationals at the southern and northern land borders, the highest from any country outside the western hemisphere. In descending order, the languages most wide spoken by migrants include Punjabi, Hindi, and Gujarati. The paper points out that Indians primarily used El Salvador and Nicaragua as the entry points on the south till November 2023, when El Salvador rescinded its visa free policy, but there has been an increase in encounters with Indian immigrants in Panama. More significantly, there has been an increase in Indian immigrant flow through the US-Canada border on the north.
Trump’s immigration policy will also impinge on legal migrants, in terms of the pace at which their applications for residency and citizenship are being processed, the eligibility norms for work visas, the restrictions on family unification, a possible cap on number of legal migrants to be admitted annually, new rules and restrictions for even student visas, and even possible reframing around birthright citizenship provisions.
Dealing with both illegal and legal immigration will now fall within Miller and Homan’s ambit, a domain where Trump is expected to give them maximum leeway.
US in UN
Trump’s other significant appointment is Stefanik, a 40-year old Congressional representative from New York, as the US ambassador to the UN, a cabinet rank position. The President-elect said in a statement, “I am honoured to nominate Chairwoman Elise Stefanik to serve in my Cabinet as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Elise is an incredibly strong, tough, and smart America First fighter.”
Stefanik shot into prominence last year for her aggressive questioning of the presidents of three top Ivy League universities for anti-Israel student protests, which Stefanik framed as anti-Semitism, in their campuses. Stefanik’s line of questioning eventually triggered events that led to the resignations of a set of university presidents, earning her accolades in the Trump ecosystem that sees liberal universities as a challenge.
She had also been a fierce critic of the UN for its criticism of Israel. In a letter to President Joe Biden on October 16 this year, Stefanik slammed his administration for being weak in supporting Israel and said that should the Palestinian Authority succeed in its “antisemitic pursuit” of trying to expel Israel from the UN General Assembly, it would result in a “complete reassessment of US finding of UN”. “American taxpayers have no interest in continuing to fund an organisation that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have allowed to rot with antisemitism”.
India’s permanent mission in New York will have to work with Stefanik on a range of issues — including the UN Security Council reform agenda on which the Trump administration’s approach is not yet clear, the listing of terrorists in the UN sanctions committee, countering China’s growing influence in the multilateral body, Security Council votes on issues that touch on Indian interests, as well as the approach to conflicts in Africa that occupy a fair bit of the UN’s agenda.
Stefanik has been a supporter of the US-India strategic relationship, and welcomed PM Narendra Modi to the US Congress during his state visit to the US last June. In a statement then, she called India an “important ally”, working on “technological development and military cooperation”. “India continues to be a critical partner in the region, countering China’s malign influence and supporting a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Stefanik said, adding that House Republicans will continue to strengthen the partnership.
Senate race
With Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell announcing he won’t seek another term — a prospect that would have been unlikely in any case given the bitter ties between Trump and McConnell who is a part of an older Republican establishment — the leadership race in the Senate has revolved around Thune, Cornyn (a co-chair of the India caucus and a supporter of the strategic relationship), and Scott. With the Republicans winning a comfortable majority in the Senate, the position will be critical for the Trump administration in navigating its appointments through the chamber.
On Sunday, the Trump ecosystem backed Scott, the Florida senator whose campaign manager was once Susan Wiles, who led Trump’s campaign in this cycle and will be the president-elect’s chief of staff.
In response to a Trump social media post that demanded that any future Senate leader commit to allowing “recess appointments” — which will allow Trump to nominate officials even if Senate is not in session — and standing against any move by Democrats to nominate judicial personnel in the remaining months of this Congress. Scott responded to the post and said, “100% agree. I will do whatever it takes to get your nominations through as quickly as possible”.
Scott’s post on X then triggered an avalanche of supportive posts from those closest to Trump and seen to be speaking for him often. Elon Musk posted, “Rick Scott for Senate majority leader.” Trump supporters Robert F Kennedy Jr, Charlie Kirk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tucker Carlson have all backed Scott.
Given the scale of Trump’s mandate and the fact that Senators would not want to antagonise him, Scott is emerging as a strong contender for the spot. But given that the vote will be secret and many senior Senators do not owe their position to Trump, the outcome remains certain and Thune and Cornyn remain in the race.
India, under the previous ambassador Taranjit Singh Sandhu, had engaged closely with Scott. In 2020, Scott had also written a letter to PM Modi after the Galwan clashes, expressing full US support for India.
“The United States stands with India as you fight against Communist China’s aggression…Unfortunately, we know Communist China never lives up to its commitments. The tyrants of Communist China continue to steal technology and refuse to open their markets to foreign goods as required by their agreement to be part of the WTO. They continue to attack religious freedom by detaining more than one million Uyghurs in internment and re-education camps, and have not lived up to the agreement to give Hong Kong autonomy and freedom. They are militarising the South China Sea, even after they promised President Obama they would not, and now, they continue to try to assert their military dominance wherever they think it would serve their quest for world dominance,” Scott said.
He added that China believed that for it to be stronger, America, India and other “freedom loving” countries had to be weaker. “As you continue to stand strong against Communist China and General Secretary of the Communist Party Xi, I want to offer help in any way I can to the Republic of India, the world’s largest democracy and our ally,” Scott had told Modi then.
Put together, the contours of Trump 2.0 are becoming clearer and the President-elect is appointing personnel with the background and views aligned with exactly what Trump said he would during the campaign.
