“I help Stephen Miller” - Homan just revealed who’s really running ICE

Tom Homan stood on the White House driveway and tried to turn a violent attack outside Federal Plaza into a shield against every question ICE now faces. But the reporters kept pressing, and what came through was bigger than one outburst. Homan confirmed that Stephen Miller is driving the strategy, defended deadly operations as if compliance should decide who lives, dismissed questions about training and accountability, and wrapped it all in language designed to make human beings easier to disappear. This is what happens when an unelected ideologue demands quotas, when oversight is gutted, when private detention money sits underneath public policy, and when fear is treated as a governing strategy.

Based on the events of 7-20-2026

The Breakdown:

* Tom Homan spoke to reporters on the White House North Lawn driveway after an attack outside New York's 26 Federal Plaza, where Andrew Arrabaca allegedly used fireworks and gasoline to set fire to the steps of a federal building.

* Three people were injured in the Federal Plaza attack, and the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force is investigating the case.

* Homan said it was too early to comment, then immediately used the attack to blame "mis-messaging and vilification" of ICE for violence against agents.

* Reporters pressed Homan about recent fatal ICE encounters and whether the agency needed to change training, tactics, or oversight.

* Homan answered that the men killed in recent encounters would still be alive if they had "simply comply with law enforcement," reducing the government's position to comply or die.

* When asked about the difference between his role and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin's role, Homan said, "I'm here; I help Steven Miller," confirming Miller's central role in immigration enforcement strategy.

* Stephen Miller is not Senate-confirmed, yet reports describe him running daily enforcement calls, demanding arrest totals, deportation numbers, and detention capacity updates.

* The Atlantic described Miller operating less like a government adviser and more like a wartime general, while officials said he yells at agencies and pushes them to the limit.

* The Wall Street Journal reported that Miller told ICE field office directors to "just go out there and arrest illegal aliens" when arrest numbers were not rising fast enough.

* Miller reportedly demanded 3,000 ICE arrests per day and pushed operations into places like Home Depot parking lots where day laborers gather for work.

* After Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed in Minneapolis, Miller told ICE officers on Fox News that they have federal immunity in the conduct of their duties.

* Legal experts called Miller's immunity message chilling because it could encourage agents to act as though consequences do not apply.

* Homan dismissed a question about an ICE officer in Maine whose ex-wife publicly raised concerns about severe mental health challenges, saying only that it was under investigation.

* Homan said "I don't think they were mistakes" when pressed about Democratic criticism of the Minnesota operation, then later admitted the operation was "not perfect."

* Homan repeatedly used the word "aliens," language that strips people of humanity and makes abuse easier for the public to accept.

* The episode connected ICE sweeps, third-country deportations, body camera rollbacks, and detention expansion to a broader system built on fear and impunity.

* Homan's own record raises corruption questions after reports that the FBI recorded him accepting $50,000 in cash from undercover agents posing as contractors in 2024.

* GEO Group, a former Homan client, received new ICE contracts worth more than $130 million in 2025 and projected hundreds of millions more from expanded detention.

* The political frame Homan offered is that ICE is under attack and critics are dangerous, while the deeper reality is that accountability questions keep exposing the system underneath.

This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

I'm Heather Claney Reese, and you're listening to Hope for America, where every day I bring you the truth about our politics, our country, and the forces trying to destroy them. Together, we cut through the noise, expose the lies, and stay focused on what really matters, fighting for the survival of our country.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Just after 1 p.m. yesterday afternoon, Tom Homan, Donald Trump's order czar, adjusted his suit jacket, unbuttoned the top button, and walked directly towards the press gathered on the Pebble Beach area of the White House North Lawn Driveway. He was there to get ahead of two stories rapidly consuming the day's headlines, the morning attack outside New York's 26th Federal Plaza, home to an ICE field office, and the growing scrutiny surrounding a series of fatal ice shootings that have sparked new questions about the agency's tactics, training, and accountability. When asked whether ICE needed to change the way it trains its agents, Holman brushed aside the question with a lengthy response, eventually insisting all they had to do is simply comply with law enforcement, referring to the men killed during recent ICE encounters. During the 13 minutes and 27 seconds that Homan spent speaking to the press, he grew visibly more agitated with every question until he could no longer keep the conversation focused where he wanted it. He eventually became overwhelmed by his emotions and blurted out, I can't even go get a quart of milk at a grocery store without a security detail. Why? Because I'm enforcing laws of this country. It's pathetic and it's disgusting. And then he abruptly walked away without so much as a glance back at the reporters, still waiting to ask more questions. It was all a performance. Homan came to that driveway with a script. He wanted to talk about body cameras and arrest numbers. He wanted to convince the country that ICE agents are mom and dads who fight for their country every day. He wanted to use the Federal Plaza attack, a man who set fire to the steps of a federal building in Manhattan this yesterday morning using fireworks and gasoline as proof that his agents are the real victims. And he might have gotten away with it if not for the reporters who kept asking questions about issues like why the administration gutted the very body camera program it now claims to support. And about why a man whose own ex-wife raised concerns about his fitness for the job was ever given a badge and a gun in the first place. And Holman, unable to answer any of them, did what people like him always do when the truth gets too close. He lashed out, blamed everyone else, and then he left. The federal cause attack yesterday morning was a launching pad for everything Holman wanted to say. What we know so far is that the suspect, Andrew Arabica, launched fireworks at a federal building, poured gasly on its steps, and set them on fire. Three people were injured. The FBI's joint terrorism task force is investigating. Violence is always wrong and it should be condemned without qualification. And what Holman did with that attack is what this administration always does. He weaponized it. He said he would not comment because it was too early, then immediately commented, calling it just another example of someone attacking ICE because of the constant mismessaging and vilification of the men and women of ICE. That's a single breath he turned a criminal act into a political indictment of everyone who has ever questioned how ICE operates. And he used it as the emotional backdrop for every answer that followed so that every question about ICE accountability could be heard not as journalism, but as an extension of the violence his agents face. The question we have to ask is not who lit the fire yesterday morning. The question is who has been raising the temperature in our country? And the answer is standing on that White House driveway. But before he stormed off, Holman said something that will matter for far longer than his outbursts. Asked to describe the difference between his role and that of DHS Secretary Mark Way Mullen, a question he tried to dodge about twice, Holman finally answered, I'm here. I helped Stephen Miller. We developed strategies to send down to the programs for implementation. On camera from the White House driveway, the man running the largest domestic enforcement operation in modern American history confirmed what reporters have been piecing together for over a year. Stephen Miller is the architect. Tom Holman is the enforcer, and Mark Wayne Mullen, like Christine known before him, is just the yes man. Stephen Miller was never confirmed by the Senate. He holds no title that requires a vote. He is Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy, an unelected advisor who has, by every credible account, seized control of the immigration enforcement in this country. It's been reported that he runs daily conference calls at 10 a.m. in the morning, including Saturdays, where he demands arrest numbers, deportation figures, and detention capacity updates from every relevant agency. The Atlantic described him running those calls less like a government advisor and more like a wartime general. One senior official who participated told the Atlantic he pushes everybody to the absolute limit because he knows the clock is ticking. Another said he gets on the phone and he yells at everybody. Nobody is spared from his wrath. He demanded that ICE hit 3,000 arrests per day. When the numbers did not move fast enough, he called an emergency meeting with ICE's top 50 field office directors and told them, according to the Wall Street Journal, to just go out there and arrest illegal aliens. He directed agents to target Home Depot parking lots where day laborers gather for work. Acting ICE director Todd Lyons was hospitalized at least twice due to stress-related episodes brought on by the pressure and had to be relieved of duty during the Los Angeles operations. A source on those calls told the Daily Mail Stephen was just crushing him. After the killings of Renee Good and Alex Predi in Minneapolis, Miller went on Fox News and addressed every ICE officer in the country directly. To all ICE officers, he said, you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties. And anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony. Legal experts called it utterly chilling. Critics called it a green light for abuse, an open invitation for agents to act without fear of consequence. And that is exactly what has happened. Steve Bannon called Miller Trump's prime minister. Trump himself said Miller is at the top of the totem pole. White House press secretary Caroline Levitt told the Atlantic he oversees every policy the administration touches. I can't tell you the number of times a policy matter is discussed in the Oval, and Trump will say, Where's Stephen? Tell him to get that done. And that's the man that Homan just confirmed he works for. Not the Secretary of Homeland Security or the President, Stephen Miller. When a reporter asked about that ICE officer in Maine, whose own ex-wife has publicly raised concerns that he had severe mental health challenges that would not be compatible with the work of law enforcement agency, let alone one conducting armed vehicle stops on American streets, Holman shut it down. That's a question for ICE that's under investigation. When another reporter asked whether the administration is more concerned about the quantity of ICE operations than the quality, Holman could not even bring himself to answer directly. I can't speak for everybody in the administration, but quality agents are very important. He can't speak for everyone in the administration because that administration's priority has never been quality. It has been volume. Holman said something else on that driveway that he clearly did not intend to become the headline that it did. When a reporter pressed him on the Democrats' claims about what went wrong in Minnesota, the operation that resulted in the deaths of two American citizens, Holman responded, all the mistakes they say happened in Minnesota, and he added some other jargon there. He said, I don't think mistakes, you know, I don't think they were mistakes. Because what Holman was saying, even as his words tripped over himself, was clear, the killings were not heirs. They were the expected output of the system that they built. He tried to walk it back moments later, acknowledging the operation was not perfect and that he had problems with the targeting and the chains of command. But you cannot hold both positions. You cannot tell the country that the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretty were not mistakes and then say the operation was imperfect. What he said tells us everything about how this operation views human life. And then came the heartbreaking claim. All they had to do was simply comply with law enforcement. That's what Holman said. If they did, they'd be alive today. Comply or die. That is the operating principle of the United States government's immigration enforcement. But the videos tell a different story. The majority showed compliance, and it did not change the outcome of what happened. Throughout the gaggle, Holman referred to the people I says targeting as aliens, not undocumented immigrants, not migrants, aliens. He dehumanizes them and uses the language of invasion. It is designed to make us picture something other than a person, something foreign, something threatening, something that does not belong. It is the same rhetorical trick authoritarian movements have used for a century. Strip the humanity from the target before you strip their rights. When they are aliens, it becomes easier to accept that they can be arrested without body cameras, deported to countries they have never lived in or shot during a traffic stop and blamed for their own death. And that is the part we are still not talking about enough. This operation is not just arresting and deporting people. It's kidnapping them and sending them to third countries. Not their countries of origin, but third countries. People whose offense is being in the country without documentation is often a civil violation equivalent to jaywalking. And they are being sent to El Salvador torture prisons. We still do not have those people back. We do not know what has happened to them. Their families do not know where they are. And the administration does not care because to them, they are not people, they are aliens. And underneath all of that sits something even darker. The man delivering this performance, the man telling America that ICE agents are heroes who don't hang their hearts on a hook every day to do this job is himself the subject of one of the most damning corruption allegations in modern federal law enforcement. Between Trump's two terms, Holman launched a consulting firm called Homeland Strategic Consulting, which boasted on its website about a proven track record of opening doors and bringing successful relationships to our clients, resulting in tens of millions of dollars of federal contracts to private companies. He earned $360,000 in consulting fees. He was paid by Geo Group, the private prison giant that operates immigration detention facilities across the country. And on September 20th, 2024, six weeks before the election, the FBI recorded Homan on hidden cameras accepting $50,000 in cash inside a bag from the fast casual restaurant chain Kava from undercover agents posing as government contractors. He had indicated he could help them win contracts in a second Trump administration. The FBI planned to wait and see if Homan would follow through on the alleged promise once he took office. But the investigation stalled the moment Trump was inaugurated. Emile Bove, Trump's former personal lawyer turned acting deputy attorney general, called it a deep state probe. Trump appointees officially closed the case. The recordings have never been released. Congressional Democrats demanded them and they were ignored. Holman's denials evolved. First it was I did nothing criminal. Then it became I didn't take $50,000 from anybody. The White House said he never took the $50,000. Vice President Vance defended him while sidestepping whether the payment was accepted at all. And while all of this was unfolding, Geo Group, Homan's former client, entered new contracts worth over $130 million with ICE in 2025 and projected that increased detentions could generate between $500 million and $600 million for the company annually. Every word Holman spoke on that driveway yesterday was aimed at one audience, the voters, who will decide the midterms. The frame he is building is simple. ICE agents are under attack. Democrats and the media are getting people killed with their rhetoric. The only solution is more agents, more power, and for us to leave ICE alone and stop talking about the atrocities that they are committing. Because in their eyes, if you question any of it, you are putting officers' lives at risk. That is the frame they intend to carry through November. But the frame they are terrified of is the one that keeps breaking through. Unqualified agents are killing people because an unelected ideologue demanded impossible quotas. The man translating those quotas into operation is credibly accused of taking bribes. The body cameras that might have told the truth were deliberately withheld, and the entire apparatus exists not to protect the country, but to enrich private contractors and consolidate political power. That is the truth underneath the performance. And every question those reporters asked yesterday brought us one inch closer to the surface. While listening to him talk, I kept thinking about what this one man is the face of and what it is doing to communities across the country and to our children. The sweeps have gotten quieter since the early months. They are not on the news the way Minneapolis and Los Angeles were, but they have not stopped. They are moving through more and more neighborhoods, including mine, where unmarked cars are circling and the fear settles in without a single headline being written about it. You see, though, and you wonder who they will grab, because the reality is that they can grab anyone. They have. And it is not just the arrest that does the damage. It is the in-between. The father who stops walking his kids to school, the mother who skips the grocery store, the teenager who watches the vehicles and wonders if today is the day someone does not come home. Our children have already been through enough. They lost years of their childhood to a pandemic, separated from friends and classrooms, graduations, and so many of the moments that were supposed to shape them. We asked them to make those sacrifices because we believed it was necessary to protect one another. The crisis was real. It was largely out of our hands once it began to spread. This is different. This does not have to happen. There is no national emergency demanding that masked agents patrol our communities, that families live in fear, or that children grow up believing this is simply what America looks like. This fear is being manufactured by one man's ego and sustained by a Congress that refuses to do its job. And every single day lawmakers continue to fund this machine instead of dismantling it. They are telling our children that this is normal, that this is what America is now, that armed federal agents confronting people in our neighborhoods and deadly encounters that follow are simply the way government operates. They are wrong. This is not who we are, and it does not have to be who we become. I find myself grasping to small comforts to get through the day. One of them is this Stephen Miller, Tom Holman, Mark Wayne Mullen, and the others do not have presidential immunity. None of the people executing this operation, setting the quotas, stripping the oversight, and sending people to foreign torture prisons do. None of them are protected by the shield that covers the presidency. They seem to forget that. They act as though the power they wield right now will protect them forever. It will not. There will be a reckoning, hearings, and investigations. They're building their own case files. They just do not realize it yet. And that is why I still have hope for America and you should too. And remember, no matter how dark the days get, I will be here every single day, and together we will always find hope for America. I'll see you tomorrow.