The Bullies Of Trump 1: Tom Homan

Whether or not we have been victimized, I expect that all of us have run into a bully at some time in our lives.

Bullies and terrorists have a lot in common. The primary purpose of both is to instill a sense of fear into their victims, to keep them off balance and make them so paranoid they feel the need to keep looking over their shoulder.

Of course there is a difference in scale. Bullies ply their trade on playgrounds, in offices and online. Terrorists work on the world stage. Bullies typically target individuals. Terrorists aim at groups. Bullies enjoy inflicting psychological pain. Terrorists get satisfaction from destroying things and killing people.

DonJohnny is himself a bully, and has selected many of his lackeys for their ability to do his bidding and to emulate him. This open ended series will look at the bullies under Trump's command as they come to our attention.

We begin with Tom Homan, Trump's "border czar."

Homan's official title is "White House executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations." "Removal operations" means deportation. The use of that term dehumanizes Homan's victims, reducing them to the status of objects.

Homan is a career ICE officer who entered government service as a border patrol agent in 1984. He was appointed to a position with a title similar to his present one by President Obama and became ICE director in the first Trump administration.

In "The Secret History Of The U.S. Government’s Family-separation Policy," a Pulitzer prize-winning article published Aug. 7, 2022 in The Atlantic, Caitlin Dickerson describes Homan as an early and strident proponent of family separation as a deterrent to immigration, and "The intellectual 'father' of the idea to separate migrant families as a deterrent,"¹ which he first promulgated in 2014 but which was not implemented until Trump became president.

Homan has claimed that the policy is meant "to help families, not hurt them,"² which sounds very much like the Vietnam-era anonymous quote, "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."³

But I digress. 

Homan displays behaviors found in both bullies and terrorists. To the groups of people rounded up en masse, forced to frog march in front of the public and the press, then shipped off to a brutal prison in a foreign country with no due process, he most certainly is acting like a terrorist.

One could argue that Homan is more successful as a terrorist than he is as a bully.

The act that got him first in line for this series was his continuing attempts to intimidate Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The spat between the two is hardly new, but Homan won't give up. He has, in so many words, begged the Department of Justice to find any excuse to charge her with something--anything. Sounds a whole lot like Trump begging Brad Raffensperger to find votes, doesn't it?

Like all bullies, Homan uses vague threats and innuendo meant to intimidate his victims. His comment, "Maybe AOC is going to be in trouble now,"⁴ is a classic bullying tactic. Bullies use oblique, vague threats of unspecified danger to keep their victims off balance. In the final analysis, Homan is a coward, as are all bullies. He hides behind threats and bluster, frequently threatening some kind of legal action against his victims.

The "crime" Homan is claiming AOC is guilty of? Informing immigrants of their Constitutional rights--an act undertaken daily by USCIS, a sister agency of Homan's own ICE. Is he going to shut them down? Better not ask.

Homan calls AOC's work "impeding" the business of mass deportation. We call it what it is: exercising and protecting the Constitutional rights of vulnerable American residents.

--- Diogenes, 11 May 2025   

¹ Dickerson, Caitlin, "The secret history of the U.S. government’s family-separation policy," The Atlantic, Aug. 7, 2022. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/09/trump-administration-family-separation-policy-immigration/670604/ accessed 7 May 2025.

² Ibid.

³ Arnett, Peter, "It Became Necessary To Destroy The Town To Save It," Associated Press, Feb. 8, 1968. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_B%E1%BA%BFn_Tre, accessed 9 May 2025 

⁴ Rahman, Billal, "Ocasio-Cortez's War of Words With Tom Homan Heats Up," Newsweek.com, 18 Feb. 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-tom-homan-immigration-2032712, accessed 11 May 2025.