White House border czar Tom Homan lashed out Thursday night at a heckler who called him a “racist” and a “traitor” during an event hosted by Turning Point USA at the University of Texas at El Paso.
“Call me what you want, I don’t care,” Homan responded to the taunts, later adding: “Why don’t you grow a backbone, put a Kevlar vest and a gun on your hip and go secure this border?”
Later, during a question-and-answer period, a man who appeared to be the earlier heckler suggested the gunman in a deadly 2019 shooting at an El Paso Walmart was inspired by Homan’s anti-immigration statements.
“Why don’t you grow a backbone, put a Kevlar vest and a gun on your hip and go secure this border?” Homan asked the protester. Paul Martinka
“Patrick Crusius, your everyday conservative, drove hundreds of miles to our city based on your belief that Hispanics are replacing the white race of white people and we need a scare to deter Hispanics from coming into the country,” said the man.
Crusius, now 27, is serving a life sentence for the Aug. 3, 2019, mass shooting, which killed 23 people and wounded 22 others.
Most of those murdered were Hispanic
“What I said was, the open border was an action, was a mess, and it was by design,” Homan responded.
In June, the border czar told The Post’s Miranda Devine on an episode of “Pod Force One” that the Biden administration and Democrats had “sold” out the US “for future political power” by allowing millions of illegal migrants to stream into the country.
“They wanted to overwhelm the system … because they knew it’d be millions of people that they thought would be in their corner in the future,” Homan said in the June 25 episode.
“There is no other reason why you would open a border. There’s no downside on a secured border. There’s only one reason you would do this: Because you saw a future political benefit in doing it.”
Homan was speaking about immigration enforcement operations when an event attendee shouted “racist” and “traitor” at him on Dec. 4, 2025.
Under the Biden administration, millions of migrants poured across the border illegally, most of whom were released into the US — and into a badly backlogged immigration court system.
After taking office Jan. 20, the Trump administration immediately halted the so-called “catch-and-release” policy and began expelling migrants en masse after they crossed illegally into the US.
“I’ve worked for six presidents, starting with Ronald Reagan,” Homan told Devine. “Every president I ever worked for took steps to secure the border. Even [Bill] Clinton, [Barack] Obama, took some steps. No one was more successful than President Trump. His success was unprecedented.
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“But Joe Biden, I’ve said this many times, Joe Biden is the first president in the history of this nation who came in office and unsecured a border on purpose,” he added. “They opened it, they meant to open it, and knew exactly what they were doing.”