Lying among the 16 or 17 dead bodies, Tom Homan spotted the corpse of a little boy, only 5 years old. The child died inside a sweltering truck trailer in Victoria, Texas, while being smuggled into the U.S. in May 2003.
These are the memories that today’s images from the border evoke in Homan, a father himself. Children are victims here, not only of America’s broken immigration system and wide-open border, but also of the ruthless cartels that see children—particularly unaccompanied children—as a resource to exploit.
Homan was working for the newly formed Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the time that trailer was discovered. ICE is an agency he would later serve as the acting director of in the Trump administration.
At the crime scene, Homan directed the men bagging the bodies to save the child until last, because “I couldn’t deal with it at the time,…
