by Avi Asher-Schapiro, Jeff Ernsthausen and Mica Rosenberg

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The first time a Pennsylvania consultant named Charles Sowell connected with border czar Tom Homan was when Sowell reached out on LinkedIn in 2021, looking for advice about border contracting work. Homan had finished a stint as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, capping a three-decade career in federal government. He and Sowell built a rapport, based partly on their shared criticisms of then-President Joe Biden’s border policies.

By 2023, the men had gone into business together. Sowell was paying Homan as a consultant to his boutique firm, SE&M Solutions, which advised companies — in some cases for a fee of $20,000 a month — seeking contracts from the agencies where Homan had once worked. In 2024, Sowell became chair of the board of Homan’s foundation, Border911, which championed tougher border security.

During his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump made it clear that if he won reelection he would appoint Homan to oversee the sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration that he’d promised his supporters, which would likely involve billions of dollars in new contracts for private companies. At the Republican National Convention speech in which Trump accepted his party’s nomination in July, he said Homan would have a role in launching “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.”

“Put him in charge,” Trump said, “and just sit back and watch.”

After Trump won and formally announced Homan would be returning with him to the White House, Sowell kept Homan on his payroll until the end of the year. Once named as the border czar, Homan said he would recuse himself from contracting, saying he would have no “involvement, discussion, input, or decision of any future government contracts.”

But several industry executives who spoke with ProPublica said at least half a dozen companies vying for a slice of the $45 billion Congress has allocated for immigration detention work had hired Sowell because he had led them to believe his connections to Homan would help their chances of winning government work.

Homan's business relationships are under greater scrutiny after MSNBC reported an FBI sting that allegedly caught him on tape accepting $50,000 in cash from undercover agents posing as would-be government contractors before he took the border czar post.

His relationship with Sowell raises fresh questions about the integrity of the billion-dollar contracting process for immigration enforcement, ethics experts say.

Just last month, Sowell and Homan’s senior adviser Mark Hall visited one of Sowell’s clients seeking to cash in on an unprecedented plan by the Trump administration to build temporary immigrant detention camps on military bases, sources told ProPublica. As recently as February, Hall too had been paid by Sowell’s firm, records show. At the same time, the extent of Homan’s recusal has been called into question: Records of internal meetings obtained by ProPublica showed that over the summer Homan was in conversation with industry executives about the government’s contracting plans.

ProPublica gleaned more details than previously reported by examining federal disclosure forms, government documents and internal communications from firms in the Homeland Security industry, and from interviews with Sowell and several current and former government officials, as well as executives at companies seeking contracts in the burgeoning detention sector. Most spoke on condition of anonymity because of their ongoing work in the sector.

Government officials in Homan’s position are required to steer clear of any activity that could impact their former business associates for a year after........

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