INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Indiana lawmakers and sheriffs gave at least three standing ovations to U.S. border czar Tom Homan Tuesday in the state capitol as he urged them to pass state legislation to bolster immigration enforcement.

“Despite all the hate and all the attacks on me, Tom Homan is not going anywhere. I promised President Trump I will finish this job,” the beefy 63-year-old stated from the speaker’s podium of the Indiana House floor, prompting one of the standing ovations.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, the first state attorney general to sue the Biden administration over its open borders policies, hosted the private statehouse event. He seeks stronger immigration enforcement powers from the legislature to help the Trump administration deport the tens of millions of unvetted illegal aliens the Biden administration admitted. Despite strong efforts to enforce U.S. laws under President Trump, 90 percent of those criminal aliens, Homan noted, are still inside the United States.

“Indiana, help us,” he said. Homan backed the Fairness Act, a bill being drafted for Indiana’s 2026 legislative session by Rep. J.D. Prescott, R-Union City, saying he “hopes that becomes law. … Every public safety threat removed from this country makes your communities safer.”

Homan was heavily protected by uniformed and non-uniformed security, who did not smile when greeted. Black SUVs with darkened windows encircled the statehouse, in addition to a strong local and state law enforcement presence.

Homan noted he hasn’t lived with his family since March to help protect them from “incredible” numbers of death threats. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says assaults on immigration officers have increased 1,000 percent this year, including in riots at Chicago immigration facilities featuring chants of “Shoot ICE!” and a fatal shooting targeting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Dallas three weeks ago.

Indiana Borders a State Harboring Terrorists

Northwest Indiana is part of suburban Chicago, a sprawling sanctuary city teeming with international terrorist activity including human and drug trafficking, noted several speakers at the event. Due to its central location and well-maintained transportation systems, Indiana is a drug distribution and money laundering hub for several Mexican cartels, notes a September 2024 Drug Enforcement Administration intelligence report cited at the event by the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s Shari Rendall.

Illinois and Chicago officials are warring with the Trump administration over its enforcement of immigration laws duly passed by Congress. Illinois, which shares most of its eastern border with Indiana, is one of 12 sanctuary states identified in a list published by the Department of Justice in August. Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently claimed requiring immigrants to follow U.S. laws — a basic practice since the beginning of the republic — “essentially” makes the United States into Nazi Germany.

Former Trump Acting ICE Director Tony Pham received a standing ovation after telling the audience that legal refugees like him and his family strongly support enforcing U.S. immigration law: “When you fight illegal immigration, you reinforce the value of following immigration law like I and my family did.” Pham oversaw an ICE detention center in Virginia before directing ICE and then moving over to the Trump movement’s policy arm, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI).

“We’re in a fight for Western civilization,” he said. “… We’re looking for partners who will join us in that fight.”

Republican Gov. Mike Braun recently signed agreements committing state law enforcement to help the Trump administration deport foreign criminals and devoting 1,000 beds in state correctional facilities to hold aliens on their routes home. Congress “doesn’t have 60 U.S. senators to pass better border laws,” said Braun, speaking at the event to support the Fairness Act. “That’s why it’s so important that states in our capacities do what we can to make a difference.”

Former Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, AFPI’s chairman, told the audience it’s likely the number of illegal aliens the Biden administration brought into the country well exceeds the common 12 million estimate, which he noted is itself double the population of Indiana and equal to the populations of swing states Ohio, North Carolina, and Georgia.

“Effectively, Biden and [Kamala] Harris added a 51st state,” Wolf said, also noting the influx included known and unknown Iranian terrorists, transnational terrorist cartel members, and Communist Chinese agents. Since everyone who crosses the U.S. border illegally must pay cartels a fee that ranges from $5,000-$13,000, Wolf said, Biden’s open borders gave terrorists an estimated $60-$150 billion solely in migrant trafficking fees.

“We’re not just in a political debate,” Wolf told the audience. “I think we’re in a battle for the future of Western civilization. The more America leads on this issue, the more the world will follow our example, so it matters what you do in Indiana.”

Border Crimes Increase In-State Crimes

Rokita and the “angel sister” of a Hoosier killed by an illegal migrant showed Hoosiers could have been protected from violent crimes if Indiana had beefed up its immigration enforcement this spring by passing the bill Prescott is reviving for next session.

Kendra Castner spoke to the lawmakers about her brother, Brad Castner, a 27-year-old Hoosier who was killed in a head-on collision by an illegal migrant driving without a license in March 2024. The criminal alien was out on pretrial release for a previous collision when he killed her brother, Castner said, and he was deported thanks to the Laken Riley Act President Trump signed days after taking office this year.

“We can’t bring Brad back, but we can make sure what happened to him won’t happen to someone else,” Castner told lawmakers. “His death was preventable, and that’s what hurts the most. … We owe it to Brad and every family to make sure laws have real consequences.”

In February, the illegally present foreign citizen Manuel Lopez was released pending rape charges on a plea deal near the Democrat-run city of Bloomington, which sits inside Democrat-run Monroe County. In July, Lopez was arrested again in the college town that houses Indiana University for allegedly attempting to rape a woman on a walking trail.

Rokita says the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office had been asked to hold Lopez for ICE after his first rape charges yet failed to do so. If Indiana had passed Prescott’s bill this spring, state law would have required the sheriff to hold Lopez for ICE when he was arrested on his first rape charges, thus preventing his alleged second assault.

Rokita is suing Bloomington over sanctuary city policies under a law Indiana’s legislature strengthened in 2024. In September, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of Indianapolis- and Bloomington-based nonprofit Exodus Refugee Immigration to prevent disclosures Rokita’s office requested in response to emails and social media postings showing Exodus, the local public school system, and the local Indiana University College Democrats chapter aided the escape of illegal aliens from ICE enforcement actions at a local jobsite this spring.

A FAIR study finds Indiana spent nearly $1 billion in 2023 on its estimated 200,000 illegal aliens and anchor babies, between law enforcement, public school tuition and translation services, Medicaid, emergency room visits, and other expenses. In 2025, Indiana faced a $2 billion budget shortfall that The Federalist estimated could have been closed solely by sending home the families of anchor babies, who comprise an estimated one-quarter of all U.S. public school enrollment.

ICE enforcement at meat plants in states such as Mississippi not only ejected hundreds of illegal workers and led to the near-immediate offer of better wages to hundreds of American workers, Rokita noted: “We have the same kinds of meat processing plants here in Indiana.”

“There is no country if we don’t have a border, one language, and a common culture,” Rokita told the lawmakers. “We can’t use the excuse that it’s a federal issue. … We can’t fail to act for a second session in a row.”

Second Attempt to Boost State Immigration Enforcement

The Fairness Act revises this spring’s House Bill 1531, which failed because Indiana Senate Judiciary Chairwoman Liz Brown, R-Fort Wayne, refused to allow it a vote after it passed with a two-thirds majority in the House. H.B. 1531 would likely have passed if Brown had allowed a vote because Indiana’s Republican supermajority knows its constituents strongly support immigration enforcement, say statehouse sources. Brown’s action protected some powerful Indiana senators from angering a few big business donors to take strong action on their voters’ No. 1 priority.

Brown’s block on the bill sparked a primary challenger, Darren Vogt, a former county councilman backed by Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Banks. He attended the event, taking notes. The primary will take place after the 2026 legislative session. Brown also attended the Tuesday event and a lawmaker-only meeting afterward with Homan, she noted in a statement to The Federalist.

“Following today’s event, I asked J.D. Prescott for his 2026 bill and I believe we can get law enforcement solutions that will be feasible for them,” she said in the statement. “State law enforcement is asking for training on how to work with ICE and carry out immigration enforcement under the law. Of course, training comes with cost and we need to figure out how we’re going to pay for that. Attorney General Rokita has a passion for this, so I look forward to hearing his solutions on how best to provide this training.”

Prescott told the Federalist in a phone interview Tuesday evening that many Indiana sheriffs support the bill and particularly want to see it include procedural training on how to cooperate with ICE, as well as legal protections against ACLU and other lawfare organizations that loot taxpayers while blocking constitutional laws their representatives have passed. Prescott says he will address these concerns in his draft bill, whose Senate companion is sponsored by Sen. Eric Koch, R-Bedford.

“I had senators today reaching out to ask me how they can help,” Prescott said. “Conversations are going very well. … I can’t speculate on where they will be [during session], but I am very optimistic things will go better this year.”

According to a fact sheet distributed at the event, the current draft of the Fairness Act would: require private employers to use E-Verify; allow the attorney general to defend any police department sued for cooperating with ICE; allow the state to revoke permits to businesses that knowingly employ illegal workers; allow the attorney general to investigate employers for labor trafficking; require police to honor 48-hour ICE detainers; increase enforcement against sanctuary cities; and require state agencies to track the immigration status of welfare beneficiaries.

House Speaker Todd Huston and Senate Pro Tem Rodric Bray decide whether to assign the bill to Brown’s committee again this spring, or to a different Senate committee.