Content warning: This article contains graphic and racist language. Reader discretion is advised.
The head of President Donald Trump’s immigration policy, Tom Homan, appears to have met with an associate of the Proud Boys on at least four separate occasions. At least one of these instances was a private meeting held in Chicago after the 2024 presidential election to talk about deportations, according to social media posts reviewed by Hatewatch.
Homan, who leads the Trump administration’s efforts to curb immigration at the border as well as deport migrants across the U.S., met with Terry Newsome in Chicago and Washington, D.C., according to posts on Facebook and X, formerly Twitter.
An article on a conservative news site written by Newsome’s podcast co-host also alleges that Newsome hosted a private meeting with Homan and local Chicago politicians Dec. 11, 2024, to discuss deportations in Chicago. In a Dec. 12, 2024, post to X, Newsome added, “During our meetings, Tom directed the politicians to follow up with me as his PoC.” “PoC” is an abbreviation for point of contact. Newsome then met with Homan on Jan. 19 in D.C. at a party to celebrate Trump’s upcoming inauguration. Homan was also a guest on Newsome’s podcast in October 2024 and was a featured speaker at an anti-immigration event Newsome hosted in Chicago in June 2024.
While specific details on the Trump administration’s deportation plans are vague, Homan posted to X on Nov. 16, 2024, that “mass deportation is coming,” and, at a December event for local Republicans, said that they will “start right here in Chicago.” During the presidential campaign, Trump and his allies advocated for deporting millions of undocumented migrants. According to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) memo dated Jan. 21, Trump administration officials seek to use military bases to house migrants, as well as create 14 new detention facilities capable of housing 1,000 migrants each and four more facilities with the capacity to house 10,000 migrants each. On Jan. 21, Trump authorized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the CBP to conduct raids at schools, churches and courthouses, which the Obama administration stopped in 2011.
Hatewatch attempted to reach Homan by emailing the White House press office, but did not receive a response before publication.
A previous Hatewatch investigation into Newsome’s activities in the Chicago metro region found him associating with Proud Boys, harassing participants at LGBTQ+-inclusive events as well as sharing bigoted anti-Black racist imagery online. The racist imagery Newsome shared multiple times to Gettr featured a racist cartoon depiction of a Black man drawn with exaggerated features. Gettr is a low-moderation social media platform that is popular with white supremacist groups. White supremacists have used dehumanizing caricatures of Black people for centuries. Hatewatch also found Newsome liking an anonymous comment that used the N-word on Gettr.
As Homan begins to implement the Trump administration’s deportation plans, his association with such figures as Newsome, who openly collaborates with violent groups like the Proud Boys, is particularly dangerous for targeted communities. In videos Newsome has posted to his social media accounts, he has harassed people outside migrant shelters hoping to create viral moments for his podcast. In an Aug. 4, 2024, post to Facebook, Newsome referred to these as his “Venezuelan gang member hunting trips.”
Newsome also appears to be in direct communication with ICE officials. In a Jan. 23 interview on Steve Bannon’s podcast, Newsome appeared alongside Ben Bergquam, a conservative podcast host, to talk about immigration raids in Chicago. Bergquam told Bannon, “We are in contact with folks in ICE, and getting updates as [raids] happen.” Three days later, on Jan. 26, Homan, ICE officers and other officials conducted raids in Chicago.
Newsome, whom Hatewatch contacted via email, responded to questions about his relationship to Homan and the Proud Boys, writing “You aren’t an investigator. Your (sic) shill for radical left winged Downers Grove extremists. I look forward to responding in kind after your story.”
‘Thanks to J6’
Newsome is the Illinois chapter leader of the anti-student inclusion group Parents Involved in Education, which is based in Darien, Illinois. The organization presents itself as a group of concerned parents. They oppose LGBTQ+-inclusive education and work to limit accommodations for trans students and silence classroom discussion of the U.S. legacy of systemic racism. In an Oct. 30, 2022, recruitment message Newsome posted to Facebook, he noted that the group’s goals included banning books and replacing “radical [school] board members,” writing, “No more placing pornography, anti-police rhetoric, CRT [critical race theory], grooming, and wokeness over reading, writing and arithmetic!”
An HBO Max documentary filmed Newsome, who was dressed as Santa Claus, appearing alongside members of the Proud Boys in December 2021 at a protest against an LGBTQ+-inclusive Christmas party at a Methodist church in Downers Grove, Illinois. In a clip of the documentary HBO Max shared online, Newsome told the camera crew, “We are protesting the indoctrination of children.” After their protest, Newsome joined the Proud Boys at a bar. Still wearing his Santa costume, Newsome and the Proud Boys took a photograph giving the “OK” hand signal, which hard-right activists use to signal their racist beliefs and troll anti-racists. In a February 2023 speech Newsome posted on Facebook, he admitted to dressing as Santa, but stopped short of telling his audience he was there with the Proud Boys.
Newsome also attended the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and was on restricted grounds as shown by his own videos. For years, Newsome claimed online and in interviews that he was back at his hotel before the violence started, writing on Gettr on Jan. 11, 2023, “We didn’t know people got past the police or in the Capital until we were back in our hotel.”
However, shortly before Trump’s second inauguration, seemingly more confident that he would not be prosecuted for trespassing, Newsome shared a video on Facebook on Jan. 11 that showed him on restricted grounds at the west side of the U.S. Capitol. Newsome’s video features Trump supporters waving MAGA flags, chanting “USA” and attacking police guarding a barricade. Newsome’s video is edited, jumps around and repeats clips, but eventually shows about 75 people on the other side of the police line.
In his post to Facebook sharing the video, Newsome said he was there with a retired Cook County sheriff, and wrote, “Thanks to J6, history will reflect how evil and corrupt the Democratic Party is.”
Newsome maintains relevance in the hard-right movement through a podcast that he co-hosts with Paul Drabik. To promote his podcast, Newsome travels to migrant shelters and takes video of people outside. He also goes to areas where he thinks migrants congregate, like hotels sheltering migrants in the city and suburbs. In the videos Newsome posts to his social media channels, he drives slowly down alleys and parking lots and uses Google Translate to attempt to ask people where they are from.
In one video from March 14, 2024, taken outside a migrant shelter in the Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen, he filmed about 30 people gathering food and supplies from a mutual aid group. As Newsome walked through the crowd, he asked repeatedly, “Where are you from?” One by one, people replied, “No inglés” (no English). Newsome repeated “Yeah you do, you do.” He continued to film people after being told by an immigrant service volunteer to stop. Newsome then confronted a person who told him they don’t speak English, asking them: “How will you get a job? Trabajo? How?”
A video Newsome posted to X on Jan. 24 shows him harassing a pastor outside of a Methodist church in Pilsen. When her aide asked Newsome to stop filming, Newsome shouted back: “I can do whatever I want. You heard me. I’m doing it, now what?”
On his podcast, Newsome has interviewed Zuny Duarte, the mother of former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio, and Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers. In a Jan. 12 post on Facebook promoting his interview with Tarrio’s mother, Newsome remarked that he attended the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, “First, to see President Trump, and second, to protect Trump supporters from potential attacks by Antifa and BLM, who are the actual terrorists!” Newsome’s jibe about leftist groups is a popular talking point from the Proud Boys, seeking to legitimize their use of political violence.
Proud Boys associate ‘brokered closed-door meetings’ with Tom Homan
Newsome has met with Tom Homan at least twice since December 2024 to talk about deportations in Chicago. Homan was also a guest on Newsome’s podcast Oct. 2, 2024. In June 2024, Newsome hosted a panel discussion on immigration that featured Homan. Initially appointed to a top spot in ICE by former President Barack Obama, Homan became acting director of the agency in the first Trump administration. Homan is now overseeing the second Trump administration’s immigration policy as the so-called border czar.
Homan joined a meeting in Chicago on Dec. 9, 2024, that was hosted by supportive Republican and Democratic politicians, as well as conservative activists. In his remarks to the group, Homan said that President Trump’s deportation plan would start in Chicago. He also warned that Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, would be prosecuted if he impeded the administration’s deportation plans. Chicago is one of several Democrat-led cities that have passed ordinances to protect migrants from ICE. Commonly referred to as sanctuary cities, they have ordinances prohibiting local police departments from assisting ICE. These ordinances also provide other protections to migrants.
Drabik, Newsome’s podcast co-host, wrote an article on Dec. 11, 2024, for a conservative junk news site, where he claimed that during Homan’s visit to Chicago, Newsome “brokered closed-door meetings between Homan and high-level DEMOCRAT (sic) politicians, including Alderman Raymond Lopez.” In a video Newsome posted to X, referenced in Drabik’s article, Newsome gives Homan a tour of O’Hare International Airport and provides him with information about the process by which migrants enter Chicago. Since August 2022, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has flown or bused more than 51,000 migrants to Chicago, according to the city.
Drabik’s article added that Newsome participated in an interview with Lopez on a conservative radio station to talk about deportations in the city. Lopez, a registered Democrat, has appeared on conservative media over the years to assail Chicago’s efforts to welcome migrants. Earlier this month, Lopez attempted to gut Chicago’s sanctuary city ordinance and allow the Chicago Police Department to work with ICE. His proposal failed 39-11 in a city council vote. In a Jan. 28 post to X, Newsome promoted an upcoming podcast that will feature Lopez as a guest, writing, “Ray is like the old-school Chicago Dems that I grew up with.”
Newsome also claims to have met with Homan on Jan. 19 in Washington, D.C. In a Facebook post, Newsome claimed he was “headed to a black-tie event with Tom Homan, Rodney Scott and General Flynn.” Scott is Trump’s presumptive nominee to lead U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Michael Flynn, who was a guest on Newsome’s podcast earlier this month, is a former military intelligence leader who has become a primary driver of anti-democratic and anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. After the 2020 presidential election, Flynn advocated for martial law and has worked closely with militias.
Hatewatch previously reported that Homan spent time during the Biden administration associating with The United West — which is designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-Muslim hate group — on its “Secure the Border and Save Lives” project. He also worked as a fellow with the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the legal arm of anti-immigrant hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform, according to a press release from the group. Homan also contributed to Project 2025, an effort by the Heritage Foundation to shape federal policy in the next conservative administration, which advocated such draconian policy proposals as allowing ICE full range for deportation and removals without any guardrails, as well as plans to take aim at sanctuary cities and policies.
Picture at top: Terry Newsome (left) and U.S. border czar Tom Homan (right) pose for a photograph at a MAGA-themed conference in 2023.