Trump names immigration official as 'border czar'

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK — US President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday he was bringing back hardline immigration official Tom Homan to oversee the country's borders in the incoming administration.

The 78-year-old Republican tycoon has pledged to launch — on day one of his presidency — the largest deportation operation of undocumented immigrants in US history.

"I am pleased to announce that the Former ICE Director, and stalwart on Border Control, Tom Homan, will be joining the Trump Administration, in charge of our Nation's Borders ('The Border Czar')," Trump posted on his social network Truth Social.

"I've known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders."

Trump said Homan will be in charge of "all deportation of illegal aliens back to their country of origin".

Homan, who led immigration enforcement during part of Trump's first administration, said at the Republican National Convention in July, "I got a message to the millions of illegal immigrants that Joe Biden's released in our country: You better start packing now."

Late on Sunday, Trump told the New York Post he has offered Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik the job of US ambassador to the United Nations.

Stefanik, in her fifth term in office, told the newspaper she had accepted the role and was "truly honored".

In another development, a New York judge is set to decide this week whether Trump's criminal conviction on charges involving hush money paid to a porn star should be overturned in light of the Supreme Court's July ruling on presidential immunity.

Justice Juan Merchan said he will make his decision by Tuesday. It is the first of two pivotal choices that the judge must make after Trump's election victory. Merchan must also decide whether to go ahead with sentencing Trump on Nov 26 as currently scheduled. Legal experts have said sentencing now is unlikely to happen ahead of Trump's Jan 20 inauguration.

A favorable ruling by Merchan for Trump on the immunity question or a sentencing delay would pave the way for him to return to the White House largely unencumbered by any of the four criminal cases that once appeared to threaten his ambitions to win back the White House.

Officials at the Justice Department are assessing how to wind down the two federal criminal cases brought against Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith because of its long-standing policy against prosecuting a sitting president.

A separate case in Georgia involving state criminal charges concerning Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss remains in limbo.

Trump, 78, pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing in all four cases, which he portrayed as political persecutions by allies of Democratic President Joe Biden designed to thwart his campaign.

Trump in May became the first US president to be convicted of a crime when a jury in Manhattan found him guilty of state charges of falsifying business records to cover up a potential sex scandal shortly before his first presidential victory in 2016.

Agencies via Xinhua