Dark money and charity organizations led by former intelligence officers and ex-feds have been spreading propaganda and laying the groundwork for presidential election challenges.
For a retired federal employee, Tom Homan, an acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the Trump administration, is a very busy man. For the last year, he’s crisscrossed the country with a team of former state and federal law enforcement officers, who call themselves Border911, speaking in theaters and event halls from Phoenix, Arizona, to Mission, Texas, to Ronkonkoma, New York, to promote the propaganda that the U.S.-Mexico border is under invasion and that President Joe Biden and his allies are admitting “illegal aliens” so that Democrats will “be in power for years to come.”
Homan, the president and CEO of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Border911 Foundation, Inc., and his group’s members have largely flown under the radar, receiving little coverage outside of right-wing media. But if Trump were to win this November, Homan, the architect of Trump’s family separation initiative, and his allies could receive prominent posts. Trump already promised at a rally this summer that he is “bringing back” Homan in 2025.
“Trump comes back in January, I’ll be on his heels … and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen,” Homan vowed during a July immigration panel in Washington, D.C. “They ain’t seen shit yet. Wait until 2025.”
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Homan’s cavalry, who are publicly featured as team members, includes former state and federal law enforcement, some of whom have intelligence backgrounds, including Rodney Scott, former Border Patrol Chief; Derek Maltz, a former Drug Enforcement Agency special agent; Victor Avila, a former agent with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI); Sara Carter, a Fox News contributor; and Jaeson Jones, a former Texas Department of Public Safety captain turned NewsMax correspondent.
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For the last several months, the group’s members have been targeting battleground states and cities “to educate them [about the] border crisis,” Homan said on a March podcast. At a July conference in El Paso, Homan claimed that “Millions of people heading to sanctuary cities will be counted in the next census.”
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Since Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee in August, the gruff-talking and pugnacious Homan has attacked her on Fox News, where he is a contributor. The former federal agent, who got his start as a police officer in West Carthage, New York, before becoming a Border Patrol agent then moving to ICE, characterized Trump’s Democratic opponent on Fox as “disgusting” and said that Border Patrol and ICE agents did not respect her. She “broke the border,” he said.
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If Trump does prevail, Homan and other Border911 members may get the chance to fundamentally reshape national security and immigration policy.
If Trump loses, Homan and his former military and law enforcement allies [...] will likely be on the frontlines sowing doubts about the election for months to come.
At speaking events, Homan sounds confident in Trump’s victory [...] Homan said he’d pledged to Trump, as they dined together in Las Vegas, that the former president would win the November election and he’d serve under him again. “I can’t wait to be back,” Homan said. “He’s going to be our next president whether you like it or not, and I will be at the White House with him.”