Farage wants to ‘hijack’ Trump’s ICE czar to fix UK border

Nigel Farage has declared he wants to “hijack” Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s so-called border czar who oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and bring him to Britain to advise on securing the UK’s southern coastline. The Reform UK leader made the comments publicly this week, framing the American hardliner’s approach to immigration enforcement as a model the British government should be studying rather than dismissing.

What Farage actually said — and why it matters now

Farage said he’d spoken with Homan and was keen to get him in front of British policymakers, describing the ICE chief as someone who “knows how to seal a border.” It’s a deliberately provocative framing — the word “hijack” lifted straight from Farage’s own vocabulary — and it landed exactly as intended: all over the front pages and political commentary shows within hours.

But there’s a serious political calculation underneath the bluster. Farage is betting that immigration remains the defining issue heading into the next local elections, and aligning Reform publicly with the Trump administration’s most aggressive border official sends an unmistakable signal to his base. Small boat crossings in the English Channel hit roughly 36,000 in 2023, and the numbers for 2024 remained stubbornly high despite repeated government pledges to bring them down. That’s the raw material Farage is working with.

Homan, a 35-year law enforcement veteran who previously led ICE under Trump’s first term, has become one of the most recognisable faces of the administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. Since returning to the role in January 2025, he’s overseen a dramatic escalation in arrests and deportations, and he hasn’t been shy about touring conservative media to defend the approach. Whether he’d actually fly to Westminster for a policy consultation is another matter entirely.

Labour’s response and the broader political context

The government wasn’t slow to push back. A Home Office spokesperson said ministers were “focused on practical solutions to small boat crossings, including our Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, not on photo opportunities with American television personalities.” That last phrase was pointed — a deliberate attempt to reduce Homan’s credibility in a British context.

Still, the criticism only amplifies the story, which is arguably what Farage wants. Labour has struggled to shake the perception that it lacks a credible answer on Channel crossings. Keir Starmer scrapped the Rwanda deportation scheme shortly after taking office, replacing it with a Border Security Command and a broader asylum overhaul. The new legislation is working its way through Parliament, but it hasn’t yet produced a visible drop in crossing numbers that ministers can point to.

And that gap — between the government’s stated ambition and the public’s lived perception — is exactly where Reform plants its flag every single week.

How realistic is the Homan visit, and what would it achieve?

Practically speaking, the “hijack” scenario is more rhetorical than logistical. Homan is a sitting senior official in a foreign government, and any formal advisory role in UK policymaking would raise serious constitutional eyebrows on both sides of the Atlantic. That’s almost certainly not the point.

What Farage gains is the association — the implication that tough, results-oriented border enforcement is available if only Britain’s political class had the stomach for it. He’s done this before, importing the aesthetics of American conservative politics to reframe British debates.

The deeper question is whether voters find the comparison flattering or alarming. Trump’s immigration crackdown has generated enormous controversy in the United States, including legal challenges, reports of wrongful detentions, and international diplomatic friction. Farage is betting British audiences will see the results — lower crossings, faster deportations — rather than the methods.

Whether the government can produce its own visible numbers before the next electoral test will determine how much oxygen this kind of intervention continues to get. If crossing figures drop sharply in 2025, Farage’s Homan gambit looks like noise. If they don’t, it looks like prophecy. That’s the bet he’s making — and he’s made worse ones.