“Islam is the enemy.” These are the words of Tom Trento, founder of The United West, an organization designated as an anti-Muslim hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It is also the same organization that Tom Homan – the Trump administration’s ‘Border Czar’ – has reportedly collaborated with as recently as May 2025, and even apparently tapped in 2020 to help run his border project, described as a “two-year educational program on the crisis at our southern border.”
Tom Homan is currently the White House Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations – or, the ‘Border Czar.’ The former acting director of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spent the first months of his term supporting the Trump administration’s approach to immigration – justifying, for example, the deployment of hundreds of Marines in response to Los Angeles protests critical of immigration raids and threatening to take legal action against elected leaders, such as referring Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the Department of Justice. Homan has in particular taken issue with Muslims and Palestinians. He strongly supported the administration’s unconstitutional targeting of immigrants who exercised their free speech right to protest for Palestinian rights. Homan notably called anti-genocide activist Mahmoud Khalil, who was detained by ICE in March 2025, a “national security threat” and claimed that he would be “just one of many.”
At first blush, Homan’s recent work appears to be an extension of his extreme stance on immigration; Homan has been called the ‘architect’ of family separation policies at the border, a policy so severe it “may have constituted torture.”
Yet, it appears that there may be something more behind the ‘Border Czar’: an apparent comfort with the ideology and company of anti-Muslim bigots and Islamophobic hate groups.
Since at least 2020 and continuing until at least May 2025, Homan has publicly collaborated with anti-Muslim extremist and conspiracy theorist Tom Trento. Trento’s hate group The United West touts a mission to “educate and activate freedom-minded people to effectively develop strategies and tactics… against the Satanic choke-hold of Islam…” Among Trento’s many other anti-Muslim statements include explicitly claiming that “Islam is the enemy” and spreading the Islamophobic conspiracy theory that the “Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated America” through American Muslims.
Despite Trento’s long-standing record of anti-Muslim rhetoric, Homan was apparently slated to participate in a tour to Israel alongside Tom Trento in 2025. The tour was framed as both a visit to biblical sites and a “fact-finding expedition to learn why border walls, barriers and fences work to secure national sovereignty & save lives.”
Homan had also in the past promoted the Israeli border system, seemingly co-authoring a report published by the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) after touring alongside members of the Israeli military. Despite reports by esteemed human rights bodies and experts that Israel’s West Bank wall violates international law and Gaza’s barrier creates an ‘open-air prison,’ and despite Israel’s documented policies of apartheid, Homan’s IRLI report praises the Israeli system as a blueprint for the U.S.
“This country takes border security seriously,” Homan reportedly said, referring to Israel.
The May 2025 trip appears to be an extension of Homan’s work on border security, as it was promoted under the tag “Defend the Border and Save Lives,” which is also the name of his book and a project that Homan established in collaboration with Trento and The United West. Indeed, in 2020, Homan apparently tapped the anti-Muslim hate group to help run his border project – a “two-year educational program on the crisis at our southern border” – though it appears that the project continues to publish content and is now housed on The United West’s site.
The ties between Homan’s border project and The United West appear to be extensive. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Homan’s project “shared an address and staff” with the organization.
“We have entered into an agreement with Tom Homan to tell his story,” Trento reportedly said in a promotional video regarding Homan’s project. As SPLC notes, “On the [Defend the Border and Save Lives] donation page, checks can be mailed to the same post office box in Lake Worth, Florida, that is associated with The United West. A link to the Defend the Border and Save Lives website is also on The United West’s website.”
Homan and The United West have also hosted numerous joint fundraising events at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. On April 13, 2022, Homan and The United West reportedly launched their project “Defend Borders & Save Lives” at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, where Trump himself was seemingly in attendance. Additionally, on November 1, 2022, The United West reportedly held a fundraising event for Homan’s “Defend Borders & Save Lives” project at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, with ticket prices reportedly ranging from $1,000 to $25,000.
Based on the publicized May 2025 tour to Israel, it appears that Homan still maintains a close relationship with Trento and The United West despite his White House role.
Trento’s The United West is not the only Islamophobic organization with which Homan has been associated. In 2018, Homan was listed as a “special dinner gala honoree” at the national conference of ACT for America, which the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has also designated as an anti-Muslim hate group.
In 2017, ACT was considered the nation’s largest grassroots anti-Muslim group. ACT for America’s founder Brigitte Gabriel reportedly promotes the notion that Muslims are inherently at odds with the U.S. Gabriel infamously once said to an audience of U.S. military and national security personnel, “If a Muslim who has — who is — a practicing Muslim who believes the word of the Koran to be the word of Allah, who abides by Islam, who goes to mosque and prays every Friday, who prays five times a day — this practicing Muslim, who believes in the teachings of the Koran, cannot be a loyal citizen to the United States of America.” She has also advanced the conspiracy theory that “radicals” have infiltrated U.S. institutions, including the CIA, FBI, Pentagon, and State Department.
Homan’s extensive ties to Islamophobic hate groups begs the question if, amid the administration’s escalating attacks on migrants, and particularly its focus on threatening and detaining Muslim and Palestinian immigrants, his actions are more influenced by the company that he keeps rather than any wrongdoing on the part of his targets.
