Tom Homan, the man at the center of President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration agenda, has found himself under an intense spotlight—not just for his policies, but for a now-closed criminal bribery investigation that has sent shockwaves through Washington. The saga, which began in the sweltering summer of 2024 in western Texas, has raised thorny questions about corruption, oversight, and the boundaries of political accountability at the highest levels of American government.
According to The Economic Times and MSNBC, the FBI launched an undercover sting targeting Homan after a subject in a separate case alleged that he was soliciting payments in exchange for steering lucrative government contracts, should Trump reclaim the White House in the November 2024 election. The U.S. Attorney’s office in the Western District of Texas spearheaded the operation, working closely with the FBI and the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section. The case quickly became one of the most closely watched investigations involving a senior Trump official.
In September 2024, undercover FBI agents—posing as business executives—met with Homan and, according to multiple reports, gave him $50,000 in cash. The meeting was covertly recorded on both hidden cameras and audio devices, with the agents seeking explicit promises from Homan to facilitate government contracts in the event of a Trump victory. The evidence, as described by sources familiar with the probe and reviewed by MSNBC, appeared damning enough that several Justice Department officials believed they had a strong case for conspiracy to commit bribery.
But the legal terrain was anything but straightforward. As Randall Eliason, a former chief of public corruption prosecutions in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C., explained to MSNBC, “If someone who is not yet a public official, but expects to be, takes bribes in exchange for agreeing to take official acts after they are appointed, they can't be charged with bribery. But they can be charged with conspiracy to commit bribery. In a conspiracy charge, the crime is the agreement to commit a criminal act in the future.” In other words, the case hinged on whether Homan’s status at the time of the alleged transaction met the threshold for criminal prosecution.
The investigation, which was initially kept under wraps, gained urgency as the 2024 election approached. Homan, a former upstate New York police officer and longtime federal border official, was widely expected to return to government if Trump was re-elected. His reputation as a fierce immigration enforcer had already been cemented during his stint as acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from 2017 to 2018, where he championed the controversial “zero-tolerance” policy that led to the separation of thousands of migrant children from their families.
After retiring from ICE in 2018, Homan launched Homeland Strategic Consulting, a firm that boasted of its ability to “open doors and bring successful relationships to our clients, resulting in tens of millions of dollars of federal contracts to private companies.” This business, along with his continued advocacy for hardline immigration policies as a Fox News contributor and Heritage Foundation fellow, kept him in Trump’s inner circle. When Trump named him border czar in November 2024—a position that did not require Senate confirmation or a full FBI background check—Democrats raised immediate concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote to Homan last month, “As Border Czar, you are uniquely positioned to help your former business client reap a huge windfall from the Trump Administration's spending on immigration enforcement.” Raskin, joined by Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Jasmine Crockett, demanded documents and communications with major immigration detention contractors, including Geo Group. Homan, for his part, publicly denied any conflict, announcing that he would shutter his consulting business and recuse himself from specific contract discussions to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.
Despite the mounting evidence and political pressure, the investigation lost momentum after Trump’s inauguration in January 2025. According to MSNBC and IBTimes, Trump appointees took charge at the Justice Department and FBI Director Kash Patel requested a status update on the probe. Former acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove was briefed on the case in late January or February and reportedly expressed his lack of support for its continuation.
In early 2025, the Justice Department officially closed the investigation. In a joint statement to MSNBC, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said, “This matter originated under the previous administration and was subjected to a full review by FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors. They found no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing. The Department's resources must remain focused on real threats to the American people, not baseless investigations. As a result, the investigation has been closed.”
The White House was quick to defend Homan, with Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson calling the probe “a blatantly political investigation, which found no evidence of illegal activity, is yet another example of how the Biden Department of Justice was using its resources to target President Trump's allies rather than investigate real criminals and the millions of illegal aliens who flooded our country.” Jackson added, “Tom Homan has not been involved with any contract award decisions. He is a career law enforcement officer and lifelong public servant who is doing a phenomenal job on behalf of President Trump and the country.”
Not everyone was convinced. Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff told IBTimes, “The American people deserve accountability when officials are accused of corruption.” Civil liberties groups and ethics watchdogs echoed his call for greater transparency, arguing that the closure of the case without a full public accounting undermined faith in government oversight.
Through it all, Homan has remained defiant, dismissing the allegations as partisan attacks. He continues to play a central role in Trump’s immigration policy, overseeing mass deportation operations, advocating for National Guard deployments to major cities, and even overseeing plans for a 30,000-bed migrant detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, as reported by Reuters. Homan has also spoken out forcefully against sanctuary cities and warned of national security threats posed by illegal border crossings.
Despite facing death threats and living apart from his family for security reasons, Homan’s influence within the Trump administration shows little sign of waning. As he declared at the National Conservatism Conference in July 2024, “Trump comes back in January, I'll be on his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation operation this country's ever seen.”
For now, the case of Tom Homan stands as a lightning rod in the ongoing battle over immigration, ethics, and the rule of law in American politics—serving as a stark reminder of just how high the stakes can be when power, money, and public trust collide.
