In February 2022, #Tom #Homan went to the Orlando World Center Marriott in Orlando, Florida, and took a seat among a group of young #white #supremacists.
Homan — who oversaw former President Donald Trump’s brutal anti-immigrant regime as acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement
and who under former President Barack Obama was responsible for record-high levels of deportations as the head of ICE’s deportation branch
— had been invited to speak at the "American First Political Action Conference".
As HuffPost first reported at the time, Homan claimed he was unaware of what the #AFPAC was all about
— his assistant had booked him at the event, he said, and had likely confused America First, the event’s organizer, with another right-wing group.
Sitting at the table, waiting for the event to begin, Homan got out his phone and looked up Nick Fuentes, the leader of America First, and came across a bunch of articles labeling him a “white nationalist.”
This didn’t prompt Homan to get up and leave. He was skeptical of the label “white nationalist.”
After all, he knew what it was like to be unfairly labeled a bigot and a racist during his time overseeing ICE. Maybe Fuentes had suffered the same injustice.
But then he read that Fuentes had praised Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Homan got up from the table, leaving the conference before it began.
