In September 2024, Homan was reportedly recorded accepting a bag containing $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents posing as business executives. The FBI was investigating allegations that Homan was accepting bribes from border security companies in exchange for the promise of government contracts if Trump won the 2024 election. In September 2025, the Department of Justice closed the investigation, citing insufficient evidence.
Homan was a supervisor on the Texas border with Mexico in 2003.[8]
Obama administration (2014–2016)
Homan was appointed by President Barack Obama as Immigration and Customs Enforcement's executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations in 2013.[7]
By 2014, under the Obama administration, Homan began to argue that separating children from their caregivers would be an effective way to discourage illegal border crossings. The journalist Caitlin Dickerson has called him the "intellectual father" of the policy, which he outlined years before the Trump administration adopted it. "Most parents don't want to be separated", Homan told Dickerson. He argued that this makes separation an effective tool for immigration enforcement: "I'd be lying to you if I didn't think that would have an effect."[9]
On January30, 2017, President Trump demoted acting ICE director Daniel Ragsdale to deputy director, a position Ragsdale had held since 2012, and appointed Homan as acting director.[12]
In May 2017, Homan announced ICE had arrested 41,319 people between Inauguration Day and the end of April, a 38% increase from the same period in 2016.[13] In June, Homan said that illegal immigrants "should be afraid"[14] but disputed that such aliens commit more crimes than US citizens.[15]
On November 14, 2017, Trump nominated Homan for ICE director.[16]
In February 2018, Homan said that politicians who support sanctuary city policies should be charged with crimes.[17] In April 2018, he and Kevin McAleenan formally advised Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen to implement the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy on immigration, including the prosecution of parents and the separation of children from their families. Homan participated in the May 2018 press conference announcing that the policy was going into effect.[9] On June5, 2018, he appeared for a discussion with the policy director of the Center for Immigration Studies and defended the separation of children from their parents.[18][19]
Homan retired as acting ICE director in June 2018.[20]
Between Trump administrations (2018–2024)
After 2018, Homan began contributing to Fox News as a commentator.[21]
Homan published "Defend the Border and Save Lives: Solving Our Most Important Humanitarian and Security Crisis" in March 2020.[23][24]
In February 2022, Homan joined the Heritage Foundation, and became a contributor to its Project 2025, which proposes mass arrests, detentions and deportations of illegal immigrants across the nation, though his name is not listed on any specific chapter or policy ideas.[25][26]
In November 2022, Homan launched a border-focused project called "Defend the Border and Save Lives" in collaboration with the United West, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-Muslim hate group. The project, which shares staff and an address with the United West, held a fundraising event at Mar-a-Lago that month, and has been criticized for promoting inflammatory rhetoric about immigration and Muslims.[28]
At a July 2024 National Conservatism Conference meeting, Homan said that if "Trump comes back in January, I'll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen. They ain't seen shit yet. Wait until 2025."[29] On July17 at the 2024 Republican National Convention, he called Biden's immigration policies "national suicide" and told "millions of illegal aliens" to "start packing". Homan said that drug cartels would be designated as terrorist organizations and that Trump would "wipe them off the face of the earth".[30][31]
Homan received at least $5,000 in consulting fees from GEO Group in the two years before he joined the second Trump administration.[32][33] GEO Group is the United States' largest prison operator, with facilities including for-profit private prisons and immigration detention centers.
President-elect Trump announced on November10, 2024, that Homan would join the incoming administration as the "border czar",[34][35][1] writing, "Homan will be in charge of all deportation of illegal aliens back to their country of origin."[36] Trump planned to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 in efforts to deport illegal immigrants.[37]
In February 2025, Hatewatch reported that Homan met multiple times with Proud Boys associate Terry Newsome. Two encounters occurred after the 2024 United States presidential election, presumably to discuss mass deportation. The Southern Poverty Law Center noted that "Homan was also a guest on Newsome's podcast in October 2024 and was a featured speaker at an anti-immigration event Newsome hosted in Chicago in June 2024."[38]
Also in February 2025, while appearing with New York City mayor Eric Adams on the Fox News program Fox & Friends to discuss Adams's cooperation with ICE on immigration issues, Homan said, "If he doesn't come through, I'll be back in New York City, and we won't be sitting on the couch—I'll be in his office, up his butt, saying, 'Where the hell is the agreement we came to?'"[39]
The same month, Homan got into a dispute with U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over educating immigrants about their constitutional rights, which he said "impedes" law enforcement. He said that he had asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether Ocasio-Cortez's actions impede ICE and whether she could be prosecuted, telling Fox News host Laura Ingraham, "maybe AOC's gonna be in trouble now." Ocasio-Cortez responded on social media: "'MaYbe shE's goiNg to be in TroUble nOw.' Maybe he can learn to read. The Constitution would be a good place to start."[40]
In March 2025, two planeloads of people the Trump administration alleged were Venezuelan gang members were deported to El Salvador, defying a court order blocking the deportations.[41][42] Homan told the media that the administration completed the deportations despite the court order because the court order was made when the planes were above international waters after leaving the U.S. He also said of deportations: "Another flight every day. [...] We are not stopping. I don't care what the judges think."[41]
On April 17, 2025, Homan was interviewed by Kaitlan Collins about the deportation of American citizens to foreign prisons. He said that was "out of his lane" and threw the question over to Attorney General Pam Bondi.[43]
The Trump administration said that around 140,000 people had been deported as of April 2025, though some estimates put the number at roughly half that amount.[44]
On May 27, The Washington Post reported that Homan has disclosed consulting fees from the private prison firm GEO Group,[45] one of the two publicly traded companies that profit from Trump's remigration policy.[46]
Homan has been critical of U.S. citizens and others actively using their constitutional and legal rights, and of Americans sharing knowledge of their rights, framing it as "defiance", and said people knowing their rights was harmful to law enforcement activities.[47]
Bribery investigation
Homan was the subject of a federal bribery investigation after reportedly being recorded accepting a paper bag with $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents in September 2024.[48][49] The agents were posing as contractors seeking to secure government contracts during a potential second Trump administration. On the tape, Homan appeared to indicate his willingness to help them if Trump returned to office. The payment was tied to a broader counterintelligence probe, not initially focused on Homan. Investigators reportedly began their inquiry into Homan after their initial target independently suggested that a payment to Homan would help the supposed contractors secure government business.
When Trump assumed the presidency in 2025, Justice Department officials including acting deputy attorney generalEmil Bove closed the case, citing insufficient evidence that Homan had agreed to perform specific official acts in exchange for the money, and noting that he was not in government at the time of the meeting. Bove, displeased with the case, called it an effort of the "deep state", invoking the belief that shadowy unelected officials controlled the government at the time of the probe.[50]White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt acknowledged that the meeting took place but denied allegations of wrongdoing, saying that Homan "never took the $50,000 you're referring to" and accusing the FBI of trying to "entrap one of the president's top allies."[51][48][52][53] In an interview later that day, Homan did not respond when asked if he had accepted the money but said he "did nothing criminal."[54] A nonprofit organization subsequently sued the Department of Justice to release key recordings of the bribery scheme.[55][56]
Personal life
Homan has described himself as "a lifelong Catholic",[57] has been described as "a devout Mass-goer", and was critical of Pope Francis's position on immigration.[58] He is married to Elizabeth Homan and they have four children.[59]
Lichtblau, Eric; Apuzzo, Matt; Landler, Mark (January 30, 2017). "Trump Fires Acting Attorney General". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 30, 2019. Retrieved January 31, 2017. The decision by the acting attorney general is a remarkable rebuke by a government official to a sitting president that recalls the dramatic "Saturday Night Massacre" in 1973, when President Richard M. Nixon fired his attorney general and deputy attorney general for refusing to dismiss the special prosecutor in the Watergate case. That case prompted a constitutional crisis that ended when Robert Bork, the solicitor general, acceded to Mr. Nixon's order and fired Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor.
↑Myers, Quinn; Lierderman, Mack (January 29, 2025). "Chicago 'Very Well Educated' In Defying ICE, Border Czar Says As Immigration Crackdown Leads To 100+ Arrests". Block Club Chicago. Archived from the original on January 28, 2025. And while immigrant communities are on edge, President Donald Trump's hand-picked 'border czar' Tom Homan said outreach efforts by immigration advocates in Chicago and elsewhere — such as 'Know Your Rights' workshops and pamphlets — are 'making it very difficult' to arrest people. 'Sanctuary cities are making it very difficult to arrest the criminals. For instance Chicago, very well educated, they've been educated how to defy ICE, how to hide from ICE,' 'Homan said. 'They call it 'Know Your Rights.' I call it how to escape arrest.'
↑Homan initially held the position of Acting Director. Following his nomination to become official Director on November 14, 2017, Homan became Deputy Director and Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Director to comply with the Vacancies Act, and held said title until his retirement.
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