If Tom Homan were of Italian lineage, he could easily have been cast as a foul-mouthed, bullying captain of the Soprano crime family. He’d fit right in during a meeting in the back room of the Bada Bing, alongside Silvio, Paulie, Christopher, Ralphie, and Tony, where the boys would be yukking it up and bragging about their latest takedown.
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But unlike the other characters, Homan wouldn’t need to be acting. In real life, as they say on Xitter, Trump’s border czar is a belligerent, aggressive, and profane loudmouth, prone to sweeping threats and bullying. I might also add that he’s as insensitive as he is downright obnoxious.
When he worked for Trump 1.0 as acting Director of ICE, a position for which he was never confirmed by the Senate, he headed up the zero-tolerance child separation policy that tore 5,000 children from their parents and shipped them off to overcrowded detention centers thousands of miles from the border.
ARREST THE MAYORS OF SANCTUARY CITIES
Indeed, he is known as the "intellectual father" of that inhumane policy. Even after the courts ordered it to be shut down in 2018, there are still hundreds of immigrant children who the U.S. government has yet to reunite with their families. Not to overstate it, but they were literally kidnapped 6 or 7 years ago by Homan’s policy, and there has been no legal accountability.
And now, Homan is back under Trump 2.0 in the newly invented role of "border czar," where he vows to pick up right where he left off. In the meantime, he joined the extremist Heritage Foundation and became a regular presence on Fox News, where he blamed immigrants for all of America’s ills. At one point, he even invented the phantasmagorical lie that immigrants were responsible for "200,000... 300,000 murders." He also joined the Project 2025 team.
He constantly rails against sanctuary cities, and when Denver declared last month that the city and local police would not cooperate with mass deportation plans, Homan responded: "Me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing: he's willing to go to jail. I'm willing to put him in jail."
He also bragged: "Trump comes back in January. I'll be on his heels, and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen."
While Homan has no authority to jail the mayor or anybody else, he thinks like a rough-and-tumble street cop. Or, he could pass for one of the fake, mouthy wrestlers in the WWE. Or a Soprano thug. That’s because Homan was a street cop before moving on to become a Border Patrol agent, where he enjoyed round-the-clock action chasing poor migrants through the bushes.
Obama brought him into government to oversee deportations, and he did a bang-up job, expelling nearly half a million immigrants in 2013, doubling George W. Bush’s record numbers. As early as 2014, he proposed the child separation policy to Obama, but was turned down. However, he got his way three years later when Trump green lit the policy, arguing it would terrify future migrants from crossing. It didn’t. The flow never stopped, and the policy resulted only in globally broadcast videos of toddlers in cages and the creation of several hundred orphans who the Biden administration has been working to resolve.
I DON’T GIVE A SHIT
Though Homan oversaw the separation policy, neither he nor his accomplices bothered to record nearly any of the data necessary to reunite families.
And he has no regrets. Speaking at a 2023 CPAC conference, he angrily declared: "I’m sick and tired of hearing about family separation, and I’m still being sued over that. So come give me... I don’t give a shit. Right? Bottom line is, we enforced the law."
For another taste of this thug, Mediaite reports:
“He made headlines in 2022 when he reportedly showed up at notorious neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes’s America First Political Action Conference in Orlando, but left before his scheduled speech. Homan reportedly claimed he backed out of the white nationalist event after reading online that Fuentes had praised Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine."
So, hanging out with neo-Nazis is no problem for him, but supporting Russia? That’s a step too far. This was two years ago, so who knows where he stands on Russia now.
Politico put together a 2-minute video on Homan that should give you a good sense of the guy, even though the mainstream media narration is somewhat milquetoast. It’s still worth watching.
As I wrote here a few weeks back, the atrocious high-profile nominations of incompetents, drunks, and quacks like Hegseth, Oz, RFK Jr., Bondi, and Gabbard are “shiny objects” of distraction. Yes, they should be opposed. Trump should encounter as many obstacles as possible. But I warned that, in the end, they were irrelevant, as they would merely and only be taking orders from Trump, and there was a pool of hundreds of MAGA sycophants and lackeys on call to replace any of them. The great danger, I argued, is that these MAGA fanatics would be appointed to all the executive and mid-level agency management positions that the Senate has no say on while our political capital gets spent on the five worst cabinet picks.
THE FOX GUARDING THE HENHOUSE
Marc Cooper.
The question is, What are we going to do about this evil.?
A key variable will be the resistance to mass deportations often organized in the free states. To consider resistance, we need to know the provisions of the Insurrection Act and the Posse Comitatus Act.
Here is a mass effort of cooperation among progressives to resist the deportations and other anti constitutional actions.
Democracy 2025.
Emphasis on legal responses.
This site is also listed on our NS site for promoting resistance.
Having states and localities taking action of non cooperation is probably more effective, or at least as effective as complaining on line.
North Star has created a new hub for participation in popular front activities and organizations to defeat MAGA fascism. We hope that you are engaged.
Resources for 2025 North Star
Defeat Fascism / Fight for Democracy:
Action Opportunities:
Similar to our NS 2024 hub, this site is for finding opportunities to take actions which make a difference. It is not a site for opinion essays. Essays should continue to be posted on this list serve. Reports on your engagement continue to be welcome on our list serve.
The hub is here. Feel free to share with others.
posted by
Duane Campbell
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