L ike a litter of kitties around a milk bowl, government and business leaders assembled in Phoenix last week. They were there for the immigration industrial complex’s annual Border Security Expo, where they patted themselves on the back for closing the southern border and helping President Donald Trump implement mass deportations across the country — all at a staggering price to the American taxpayer. Civil unrest and civilian dead. Citizens beaten, pepper-sprayed and unlawfully detained. The Constitution treated like toilet paper. Immigration detainees imprisoned in Third World-style condi- tions. These are the proud accomplish- ments of the Trump administration’s war on immigrants. And, as with every war, there are those who make bank and those who help them make bank. Trump’s immigration crackdown, the signature piece of the president’s domestic agenda, is now unpopular with a majority of the public, according to one poll. Still, you wouldn’t know it from the more than 2,000 attendees who packed the Phoenix Convention Center to enthu- siastically applaud speakers such as “Border Czar” Tom Homan and acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche. The event featured an exhibition floor with 193 vendors hawking everything from drones and military vehicles to AI services and combat boots. Many of the exhibitors already have dipped their beaks into the $170 billion allocated to immigration enforcement and border security in 2025 by the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Some were just wannabe beak- dippers, looking to make a buck. Here are some of the most ghoulish things Phoenix New Times heard and saw at the carnival of human-herding cruelty that was the Border Security Expo — things not always ghoulish in and of themselves, but in how they might be used against others. SHOW ME THE MONEY The two-day event kicked off with a rousing, profanity-laced tirade from Tom “Bagman” Homan, who is alleged to have taken a $50,000 bribe from undercover FBI agents posing as businessmen seeking lucrative government contracts. Once Trump came into office, the DOJ — unsurprisingly — shut down the investigation. You might say Homan is the perfect mascot for an assembly of merchants and government apparatchicks looking to divvy up the immigration enforcement pie. Homan’s address was full of threats, brag- gadocio and bullcrap. “You ain’t seen shit yet,” he crowed at one point. “This will be a good year. Mass deportations are coming, but as the president said from day one, criminals, public safety threats and national security threats have to be priority.” But that doesn’t mean everyone else is “off the table,” he added, claiming that “about 65 percent of everyone arrested right now are criminal, 35 percent are non-criminal.” Almost the exact opposite is true, according to the numbers-crunchers at Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. The site reports that as of April 2026, more than 70% of those in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement have no criminal convictions, and of the remaining 30%, many “committed only minor offenses, including traffic violations.” ARRESTING CITIZENS? WHY NOT? Homan was followed by a panel discussion that included acting ICE director Todd Lyons, who’s leaving the post at the end of May, and Customs and Border Protection commissioner Rodney Scott. At one point, Lyons admitted that the U.S. is “removing people to countries that I didn’t even know existed.” Indeed, immigration detainees are being shipped off to locales other than their countries of origin, like the African nations of Eswatini and Equatorial Guinea. Scott joked that some of those deported to obscure third-world nations are calling home, telling their friends, “I just wasted $10,000 on a smuggler.” Quite the rib- tickler, that Scott. Scott and Lyons later took questions from the audience. When New Times asked about an October ProPublica report revealing that over 170 U.S. citizens have been arrested by federal authorities during immigration raids and protests — many of them brutally manhandled in the process — the pair owned the stat. “We arrest crimi- nals, period,” said Scott, adding that “everyone on the stage has arrested U.S. citizens and we’ll keep doing that.” Lyons doubled down as well, exclaiming, “If you put your hands on a law enforcement officer in the middle of a law enforcement operation, you’re going to be arrested.” Nice try, Todd, but in the examples cited by ProPublica, it’s ICE and Border Patrol agents who go hands-on with Americans who — more likely than not — just happen to not be as pasty white as the panelists and who have committed no crimes, much less an immigration offense. Federal gendarmes have been caught using chokeholds against minors, kneeing people in the back and indiscriminately using pepper spray and PepperBall guns against civilians exercising their First Amendment rights. And, as both Renée Good and Alex Pretti found out the hard way, just being in the vicinity of immi- gration cops can be a deadly proposition. BLOW ‘EM UP, BLOW ‘EM UP REAL GOOD Blanche gave a soporific address on day two of the event, forgiving his audience’s possible brain fogginess “on a morning when I’m sure at least some of you had a drink last night,” assuring them, “I’m not telling your wives or husbands, don’t worry.” After all, no one parties harder than a government vendor. Blanche recently took over from the hapless Pam Bondi, who fumbled the scat- tershot, incomplete release of the Epstein Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche spoke at the 2026 Border Security Expo. (Gage Skidmore/Getty Images) The immigration-industrial complex descended on Phoenix for the Border Security Expo. Here are the most ghoulish things we saw. BY STEPHEN LEMONS
