evidence to the contrary. One estimate found that nearly 72% of those detained by immi- gration authorities since Trump took office have never been convicted of a crime. Speaking at the Arizona Legislature, Homan blamed the detention of so many “collaterals” on so-called “sanctuary cities,” though the steady stream of stories about otherwise innocent people snapped up by ICE — some undocumented, some with protected status and even some U.S. citizens — suggests that “collaterals” haven’t been really collateral at all. Homan once vigorously defended the discretionary enforcement policy at which he now sneers. During 2013 testimony before a congressional subcommittee, Homan called prosecutorial discretion “smart and effective enforcement.” ICE had removed 410,000 people in 2012, he noted, most of whom met the agency’s “enforce- ment priorities.” Fifty-five percent were “criminal aliens” — a rate the current admin- istration isn’t even within shouting distance of reaching — while most of the rest had orders of removal or had recently and ille- gally crossed the border. Such “successes” could not have been achieved, he added, without the policies issued by Morton and then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. What’s more, Homan’s ERO division played a role in reining in one of Trump’s biggest immigration allies, a man Homan warmly praised during his speech to the Arizona Legislature earlier this year: Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. CUTTING ‘ILLEGALS’ A BREAK Arpaio was a problem for the Obama administration. For years, the swaggering Arizona sheriff had earned the ire of Democrats and progressive activists for turning his agency into a mini ICE, terrorizing local immigrants with large-scale sweeps of Latino neighborhoods and worksite raids. ICE and Arpaio initially worked hand in hand — through the 287(g) program, 160 sheriff’s deputies were cross-deputized as ICE agents in the early 2000s. But by the time Homan became top dog at ERO in 2013, the Obama administration was slowly boxing Arpaio in. In 2009, DHS stripped Arpaio’s deputies of the power to enforce federal immigration law, though that hardly slowed them. Two years later, the Justice Department issued a 22-page report accusing the sheriff’s office of biased policing toward Latinos, eventually suing Arpaio for the same reasons. Civil rights groups also took Arpaio to court. As a result, a federal judge eventually found the sheriff’s office guilty of widespread racial profiling, imposing independent monitoring of the agency that continues to this day. Despite that, ICE had still been detaining and deporting immigrants Arpaio had caught in his illegal dragnets. At the time, immigrants were subject to a sinister scheme in which ICE lawyers trained Maricopa County prosecutors on how to make sure the poor saps collared in Arpaio’s employment raids were deported. Under anti-immigrant stalwart county prosecutor Andrew Thomas (who was disbarred in 2012 for prosecutorial misconduct) and his successor Bill Montgomery (now an Arizona Supreme Court justice), prosecutors hit undocumented workers with Class 4 felo- nies for ID theft for using fake IDs to obtain work. That made them non-bondable under voter-approved Proposition 100, which denied bail to undocumented immigrants accused of certain crimes. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2014 struck down Prop 100 as unconstitu- tional, but not before county prosecutors foisted a Hobson’s choice upon Arpaio’s arrestees: plead guilty to a lesser charge involving criminal impersonation, or remain in jail and fight a losing battle. The catch: The lesser charge would ensure their depor- tation, and a 10-year bar from reentry, because ICE considered it a “Crime Involving Moral Turpitude.” According to Homan’s former colleagues, he eventually came around to the position that the cases were tainted due to the racial profiling accusations against Arpaio. Ultimately, these associates believe, Homan’s legal advisors convinced him that if Arpaio’s raids and arrests proved to be unconstitutional and racially motivated, then ICE should not use those convictions to remove those he arrested from the country. “That pipeline of people being arrested by the sheriff and prosecuted by MCAO and then going over to ICE was shut down,” one associate said. “Their (immigration) cases were dismissed without prejudice.” New Times was unable to reach Homan through ICE, the White House or even his publicist. Given the reluctance of those in the know to go on the record, verifying that Homan intervened to assist hundreds of criminal aliens in avoiding deportation might seem a tall order. That is, were it not for a lawsuit brought in 2014 by a high- ranking ICE attorney against then-Home- land Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Homan’s boss at the time. The lawsuit was brought by Pat Vroom, then the chief counsel for ICE in Arizona. She’d enjoyed a stellar, 30-year career as a government attorney until internal politics at the agency got the better of her. Her complaint dealt mainly with alleged age and sex discrimination — in 2015, the government paid her nearly $400,000 to end the suit — but part of the suit dealt with the “Arizona Identity Theft Initiative.” Vroom was tasked with reviewing the immigration files of hundreds of detainees who had been convicted of “low-level” identity theft under Arizona law. Specifically, Vroom was told to “look care- fully” at the cases and consider them for “administrative closure,” a form of dismissal that would allow the individual to be released from ICE custody. According to the suit, Vroom’s superiors explained to her that “the typical alien defendant convicted under these provisions of Arizona criminal law had simply been using fake ID to get and keep employ- ment.” Working with ICE’s local official in charge of removals, Vroom reviewed 480 cases in 2013, weighing the history of each case, the arresting agency, whether “the false identity belonged to a real person,” and, if so, if that real person had “suffered any perma- nent loss” as a result. In other words, prosecutorial discretion. ICE wouldn’t waste time on low-level offenders just trying to work when there were more serious criminals to target. In May 2014, according to her complaint, both Vroom and her local ERO counterpart received awards from the State Bar of Arizona “for their joint implementation of former ICE Director John Morton’s Prosecutorial Discretion Initiatives.” Homan was not a party to Vroom’s suit, nor does his name appear in it. But Homan’s ex-colleagues say it is “impossible” that he was unaware of ICE’s Arizona Identity Theft Initiative. Vroom’s orders were coming from ICE headquarters in Washington, D.C., from the highest echelons of the agency. Homan’s man in charge of removals in Arizona was working in tandem with Vroom. If Homan had any issues with it at the time, he doesn’t seem to have vocalized them. Speaking to the Arizona Legislature a decade later, Homan’s tune had changed. He blasted Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security Secretary under Joe Biden, for supposedly telling ICE agents that “you can’t arrest someone for being here illegally unless he is convicted of a serious offense.” Never mind that such a directive is a clear example of the same prosecutorial discre- tion that Homan had employed and defended years earlier. Now, empowered by Trump to be as cruel as he wanted to be, the mere idea of it struck Homan as “borderline treasonous.” HULK HOMAN In 2015, Barack Obama bestowed upon Homan the Presidential Rank Award for Distinguished Service, the highest honor a federal civil service employee can receive. Homan announced his retirement the following year, holding his official retirement party just days after Trump was inaugurated for the first time in 2017. At that point, the idea that Homan would cozy up to Trump struck his former colleagues as unlikely. In his 2020 book, Homan wrote that he was “amazed and surprised” by Trump’s win and “happy for the men and women of ICE” who would now be able to do their jobs “without ridiculous policies that limited their abilities.” But privately, former colleagues said, Homan was aghast at Trump’s victory, or at least allowed them to believe as much. In no uncertain words, they remember, he told them that he thought Trump would destroy the country. That’s not the way Homan tells it in his book or on the stump. In his book, Homan recounts how Trump’s pick to lead DHS called him during his retirement party, relaying Trump’s request that he postpone his retirement and become the next director of ICE — “a two-step promotion,” Homan noted. He took the gig, serving as Tom Homan once took it easy on immigrants arrested by former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (pictured). Now, Homan embraces Arpaio as a fellow immigration hardliner. (Griselda Nevarez) >> p 14 Tom Homan gave a shout out to former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in his speech before the Arizona Legislature in April. (ACTV) The Pull of the Dark Side from p 10
