The Dictatorship
The former ICE officer who led the FBI to Tom Homan
Tom Homan, the White House border czar, became entangled in an FBI sting last year after an associate of his suggested to undercover FBI agents that Homan could facilitate future government contracts in exchange for big money, according to four sources familiar with the investigation and a government document.
Julian “Jace” Calderas, a former U.S. immigration official who worked under Homan in the Obama administration, allegedly proposed to the agents — who were posing as businessmen — that Homan, in exchange for $1 million, could help them win lucrative federal contracts if Donald Trump became president again, according to an internal Justice Department document describing the investigation reviewed by BLN.
Calderas, co-owner of a detention services and government contracting firm in Texas, first allegedly proposed the scheme in May 2023. He held several subsequent conversations with the agents about his cash-for-contracts proposal, culminating in a Sept. 20, 2024, meeting in Dallas at which agents recorded Homan accepting $50,000 in cash, according to the document and sources.
At that same meeting, the document shows, Calderas accepted $10,000 from the undercover FBI agents. His alleged proposal to undercover FBI agents, which had not been previously reported, led to a full-blown Justice Department investigation of Homan, who at the time was a private consultant helping clients obtain government contracts.
A former ICE officer and associate of the White House border czar sparked a full-blown criminal investigation of Homan after he proposed a contracts-for-money scheme to undercover FBI agents.
“I know nothing about this,” Calderas told BLN by phone last Monday when asked if he was aware of the criminal investigation and his alleged role in it. “If this is the case, I’m going to need to talk to my lawyer.”
Calderas then ended the call. He did not answer whether he had accepted $10,000 or whether he remembered such a meeting with Homan in Texas. He did not respond to follow-up messages or emails seeking comment from him or his lawyer. BLN reached out directly to Calderas and to his company, XFed Global, which he founded with fellow former officials from the Department of Homeland Security, according to the firm’s web site.
The White House has criticized the investigation as a politically motivated inquiry started under the Biden administration. Homan said during an interview on Fox News last Monday that he did nothing wrong, but he did not address whether he accepted the $50,000.
On Thursday, the White House dismissed the significance of internal investigative accounts describing Calderas’ role in allegedly suggesting that Homan could influence future contracts in exchange for payment. A spokesperson said the revelations did not change the White House’s view that Homan was unfairly targeted.
“This changes nothing,” White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson said in a statement to BLN. She called the now-shuttered federal criminal probe a “blatantly political investigation, which found no evidence of illegal activity” and one she said was driven by Biden Justice Department appointees “to target President Trump’s allies.”
The Justice Department referred questions to the FBI, which declined to comment. Jackson said that Homan “has not been involved with any contract award decisions” and that he is a “doing a phenomenal job on behalf of President Trump and the country.”
Calderas’ role in the Homan investigation, which multiple sources described on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, runs counter to the Trump administration’s narrative since BLN published its initial exclusive story this month that the FBI had been investigating Homan for possible bribery.
BLN also reported that the investigation stalled after Trump became president for a second time in January. His political appointees at the FBI and Justice Department shut down the case last month.
FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, in an unusual joint statement, said FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors “found no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing” by Homan and that “as a result, the investigation has been closed.”
Last Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters from her podium in the briefing room: “Mr. Homan never took the $50,000 that you’re referring to, so you should get your facts straight.”
Yet Homan, during the Fox News interview, did not specifically deny accepting the cash. “I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal. It’s hit piece after hit piece after hit piece,” he said.
Sources familiar with the probe told BLN that the FBI felt duty-bound to begin investigating Homan after Calderas told agents in an unrelated investigation that Homan was willing to influence which companies would win federal contracts in a second Trump administration in exchange for money.
In the fall of 2024, Homan was running his own consulting firm to help contractors win border-related contracts and publicly touting that he would serve in a senior role carrying out Trump’s promised mass deportations if the GOP candidate won the election. Calderas, a former border agent and Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, could stand to benefit from his longstanding ties to Homan as CEO of the San Antonio-based XFed.
Launched in 2016, the company promotes its status as a veteran- and minority-owned business with “insider perspective” on Department of Homeland Security procurement, a lure for prospective clients seeking government contracts.
The company web site of an associate of Tom Homan who proposed a cash-for-contracts scheme to undercover FBI agents, boasts that the firm’s “operational expertise, regulatory knowledge, and small business agility makes us the ideal partner for organizations seeking to excel in the federal contracting arena.”
“Our leadership team brings unparalleled expertise from senior executive positions within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection,” its web site reads. “This insider perspective, combined with decades of operational experience managing billion-dollar federal contracts, positions XFed Global as the definitive partner for complex government contracting challenges.”
The site says those who partner or seek to consult with XFed will gain “competitive advantages” in large-scale contracts. “XFed Global’s unique combination of operational expertise, regulatory knowledge, and small business agility makes us the ideal partner for organizations seeking to excel in the federal contracting arena,” it reads.
That Calderas attended the meeting at which Homan allegedly accepted $50,000 in exchange for offering to facilitate future government contracts would have been an important factor for prosecutors. A conspiracy charge requires that more than one person enter into a corrupt agreement, and undercover federal agents can’t be part of a conspiracy.
Calderas retired from Immigration and Customs Enforcement as deputy field office director in San Antonio in 2016, when Homan worked in senior ICE leadership as executive assistant director of enforcement and removal operations.
Calderas has expressed support for Homan in public comments and on social media. And Homan served as an advisor to Calderas’ company. In 2019, Calderas publicly praised Homan on a LinkedIn profile bearing his name for “speaking truth to power” at a House Oversight hearing on the U.S. border.
That LinkedIn account, which detailed Calderas’ work experience and promoted XFed Global’s services, was deleted at some point after BLN contacted him and his lawyer last week about the contractor’s role in the federal criminal investigation of Homan.
Two years later, on the same LinkedIn page, a posting under Calderas’ name said: “Tom doing a great job of speaking truth to power! We need more of this.”
On his company’s Facebook accountwhich remained active on Monday afternoon, Calderas posted on March 30, 2017: “My retired badge arrived today. This is the badge I wore from the time DHS was created in 2003 after 9/11.” He added, “If these badges could talk they would tell some incredible stories.”
It featured a photo of a hand holding a small blue plaque containing a “retired ICE officer” badge with three lines underneath it: “Julian ‘Jace’ Calderas. Deputy Field Office Director. 30 Years Service To Country.”
Carol Leonnig is an investigative reporter and four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Rep. Julia Letlow won Louisiana’s Republican Senate primary runoff Saturday, defeating former Rep. John Fleming.
Her win comes as a victory for President Donald Trump, who has endorsed her repeatedly throughout the race — including before she was even officially running.
Letlow made history in 2021 when she became the first Republican woman to represent Louisiana in Congress. In that special election, she won the seat that her late husband, Luke Letlow, had won prior to dying of complications related to Covid-19 in December 2020.
Letlow had no political experience prior to running for her late husband’s seat. She holds a doctorate in communication from the University of South Florida and worked as an administrator for Tulane University and the University of Louisiana, according to her LinkedIn page. Nonetheless, she won the special election House race with nearly 65% of the vote.
In Congress, she has served on the appropriations and education committees, and has been a reliably MAGA Republican.
Letlow’s win also comes as a rebuke to Fleming, who loaned himself more than $11 million, according to the Federal Election Commission, and tried running for the same seat in 2016 only to finish in fifth place in the nonpartisan primary. (Letlow did not loan her campaign any money, and took in more than $5.35 million compared to Fleming’s more than $12.1 million, FEC filings show.)
Trump has played a key role in the race. In addition to backing Letlow early on, the president also helped tank Republican incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy’s re-election campaign in last month’s primary, based on the senator’s record of bucking his party and voting in favor of Trump’s second impeachment. In the primaryLetlow earned nearly 45% of the vote, giving her a healthy lead over both Fleming, who received about 28% of the vote, and Cassidy, who earned nearly 25%.
Ahead of Saturday’s runoff, polling showed Letlow and Fleming in a close race, with Letlow retaining a small lead in several polls.
Letlow will now proceed to the November general election to face off against the Democratic nominee, farmer Jamie Davis, who came out on top in tonight’s Democratic primary runoff.
The state has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2008, when Mary Landrieu won her last term in office.
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligencehas stirred fear by choosing as his chief of staff a GOP election lawyer who oversaw a poll watching program that included Jack Posobiec and other conservative conspiracy theorists. The lawyer, Christina Norton, also appears to have no experience working in the intelligence community.
“It is horrifying,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official told MS NOW Saturday. “Not only does Norton have absolutely no background, experience or expertise in national security or intelligence, but her principal qualifications appear to be loyalty to Pulte and an embrace of absurd election-interference conspiracies.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who has been a vocal critic of Pulte, also raised concerns about election integrity on Sunday while taking shots at the director of national intelligence and the office itself.
“We should eliminate the DNI, and we should eliminate Pulte from the DNI until that happens,” he said on BLN, adding, “I am concerned that we’re gonna continue to cast doubt on elections in November and erode what has been a 250-year tradition of a peaceful transition of power.”
Pulte’s choice of Norton is also likely to increase concerns among Democrats that President Donald Trump intends to use the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to interfere in the midterm elections. Pulte, a loyalist with no intelligence experience, has used his current position as head of federal mortgage agencies to refer political rivals of the president for federal criminal prosecution.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told MS NOW on Sunday that the choice “just confirms” that the “only job qualification is absolute political loyalty and devotion to Donald Trump.” But he expressed faith in the judicial system during an appearance on “The Weekend,” noting that “right now we have federal courts across the land that are rejecting their various attempts to take over the election process. Nine different federal courts have rejected the claim that the president, by executive order, can compel the states in the union to turn over all of their voter lists to Donald Trump and to the White House.”
The New York Times first reported Norton’s appointment.
The former senior intelligence official, who requested anonymity due to concerns of retaliation, told MS NOW the choice also “signals as clearly as could be that Pulte has been put at ODNI to misuse the awesome power of the U.S. intelligence community to interfere in the upcoming midterm elections.”
Norton, reached by MS NOW by telephone, declined to comment and referred questions to an ODNI spokesperson. The spokesperson declined to comment on Norton but defended Pulte’s tenure.
“Acting Director Pulte and his team are focused on carrying out President Trump’s national security priorities while faithfully executing ODNI’s statutory mission,” the spokesperson told MS NOW. “We are leading the Intelligence Community to provide President Trump with elite, apolitical intelligence that keeps America safe.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., appearing on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, said his objection to Pulte is “that he used personal information to target a political enemy of the president,” a reference to New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“You should not be using the force of government to crash upon somebody just because the person in charge does not like them or finds them inconvenient. The fact that Bill did that is disqualifying for someone to be the director of national intelligence,” Cassidy said.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on Friday that Congress would ensure that the ODNI under Pulte will “report on legitimate foreign threats to elections, not Donald Trump’s imaginary ones.”
Himes warned that, “Trump was explicit when he appointed Bill Pulte to a job he had no qualifications for that he had elections in mind.”
Trump has said in interviews with the news media that he would like to see Pulte shrink the size of the ODNI and investigate election fraud. Pulte’s predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard, participated in investigations in Georgia and Puerto Rico to find proof of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
Democrats and some former intelligence officials say they worry that Pulte may try to falsely claim that his office has found evidence that foreign governments are secretly funding Democratic candidates in the midterms.
Pulte could falsely claim foreign actors have hacked U.S. voting machines, they say, and altered vote totals in favor of Democrats during the midterms. Or Trump could instruct Pulte to be present if FBI agents seize ballots and election records in November as they did earlier this year in Fulton County, Georgia.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned in a statement on Friday that Pulte should not use his position to spread Trump’s false election conspiracy theories.
“The mission of ODNI is to identify and counter foreign threats, not to import election denialism into the Intelligence Community,” Warner said. “Americans have every reason to fear that this administration is once again eroding the wall between our intelligence agencies and domestic elections.”
David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.
Having lived with Donald Trump’s infamous and baseless insult against them — “they’re eating the dogs … they’re eating the cats” — Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are bracing for a far bigger injury.
More than 10,000 Haitians across Ohio and hundreds of thousands more around the country who had Temporary Protected Status now face the imminent prospect of deportation. The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration can halt those legal protections for Haitians and Syrians and resume forcing them to leave.
Justice Samuel Alito’s opinionfor the court’s Republican-appointed majority curbed the power of courts to review government decisions to terminate protections under the TPS program.
“They side with him on everything that he says or everything that he does, which means there is no check and balance,” said Viles Dorsainvil, a Haitian TPS holder and executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, a town Trump catapulted into a maelstrom of misinformation about immigrants when he was running to retake the White House in 2024.
“The president has that freeway in front of him to do whatever he wants to do, unfortunately, and most of the time to a minority group of people,” added Dorsainvil, who has lived in the United States since 2020.
In a country rife with political and economic instability, Haitians returning from the U.S. are in danger of being killed or kidnapped, said Dorsainvil’s colleague at the Haitian Support Center, Rose Thamar Joseph.
“There is this perception in Haiti that if you are living here in the United States, you have money, so you are living your good life, so sending people back to Haiti will put them in real danger,” Joseph said.
Staying in the U.S. without legal status creates a different crisis.
“We received calls this morning from people saying that, unfortunately, starting on July 1, they won’t be able to go to work anymore,” Joseph said Friday.
Joseph predicted that families would be separated during the deportation process.
“We know that there will be separation,” she said. “A lot of those parents with TPS … they have kids who were born in the United States, so we know that it will happen, not for everybody, not for all the families, but it will happen,” she said.
The oncoming nightmare for the Haitian community in Springfield was, in many ways, predictable after Trump notoriously targeted them on the debate stage against then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the fall of 2024.
“They are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump said without a shred of evidence, greatly amplifying an unfounded rumor that had been confined to smaller corners of social media.
That rhetoric continued Trump’s track record of racist languageparticularly when it comes to immigration, including during his first White House stint when he referred during his first to Haiti and other majority non-white nations as “shithole” countries.
Dorsainvil argued that the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday proved his beliefs are institutionalized, calling it “a validation of all those bad rhetorics of the president against us.”
Asked by MS NOW if those with TPS should expect to be deported, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said, “Well, of course. If you no longer have status in this country, then you’re supposed to be deported.”
Miller, the architect of the administration’s immigration policy, went on to single out the Haitian population by name.
But the outcry against the court’s ruling blurs party lines in Ohio.
“Changing the immigration status of these individuals is not in the best interest of the United States nor Ohio,” Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said.
Springfield’s Republican mayorRob Rue, has denounced Trump’s misinformation about his community as dangerous from the start.
“Many of the individuals affected by this decision are our neighbors, coworkers, business owners, taxpayers, and parents,” Rue said in a statement after the ruling came down. “They contribute to our local economy, support our schools, strengthen our neighborhoods, and have become part of the fabric of Springfield.”
Alex Tabet is a reporter for MS NOW.
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