By Rory Dulock | Copy Editor
A protest that challenged “Border Czar” Tom Homan’s arrival in Waco was held by various organizations across Central Texas Wednesday evening at the Interstate 35 underpass of 4th and 5th Streets.
Homan was in Waco for Turning Point USA’s “This is the Turning Point” tour, which started at 6:30 p.m. at Waco Hall.
Among the crowd of protesters holding signs and prompting car honks along Jack Kultgen Expressway was Mikayla Jedlicka, a Waco resident and active event organizer for the Waco branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. She said the idea for the protest came immediately after the TPUSA tour announcement that they were coming to Waco.
“Tom Holman is not welcome in Waco, and he’s not welcome in Texas,” Jedlicka said. “What ICE has done under his leadership has been insanely violent and ripped apart families, has been terrorizing our communities, and we’re not going to let him come through into our communities and [we’re going to] let it be known that he is not welcome here.”
PSL initiated the rally alongside Waco Friends of the Climate, Indivisible CenTex, General Strike Waco, Vision 4 Youth and “other community members,” according to a press release given to The Lariat.
The initial reasoning given for the gathering was “calling on the community to join us in saying that Tom Homan is not welcome in our city.”
“Tom Homan has caused so much hurt in our communities across the country,” the press release read. “Although he was recently appointed by Trump, he also held a similar role under Barack Obama. His track record speaks for itself: he does not care about the safety and well-being of immigrant children and hardworking families across the country that contribute to society everyday [sic]. We will not allow him to enter our city without it being known that the Waco community stands strong in saying that ICE does not belong in our community.”
Jedlicka emphasized that the protest was specifically targeted at the Waco community.
“This is an event that is full of Waco people, working-class Waco people who really care about our communities, who really care not only about how Waco is represented, but care about how the people in our community are represented,” Jedlicka said. “And we care about protecting them and being the voice for them when they feel as if they can’t come out and speak for themselves.”
The protest brought together members of the initiating organizations and the Waco community and offered an alternative for those unable to attend the TPUSA tour. Several members of the Waco were turned away due to an announcement made hours before the event that only students would be permitted. TPUSA said it was Baylor’s decision to make it a student-only event, to which the university responded that those were the terms from the beginning.
Wendy Pethtel and her daughter Lucy are both Waco locals who attended the rally. Wendy Pethtel said they came to show the community that they are “not alone in being angry” about how current issues are being handled across the country — and at Baylor.
“I think it was good of Baylor to allow for a secondary event of opposition,” Wendy Pethtel said. “I’m a little curious as to why they decided they should host a Turning Point event. The organization hasn’t brought much positives … there’s just a lot of negatives that they’ve brought, and I don’t understand why you’d want to bring those negatives to campus.”
All Are Neighbors, an alternative event to the TPUSA tour, also occurred at 5 p.m. in the Cashion Academic Center. It was hosted by Baylor’s College Democrats, the NAACP, Students Demand Action, Hearts for the Homeless and Texas Rising, and was available to all who had a ticket.
However, Deborah and Dean Michals, Waco residents who participated in the protest, said they were interested in the All Are Neighbors event but didn’t think they would be able to participate.
“The messaging was becoming very confusing, and it appeared that we wouldn’t be able to [go to All Our Neighbors], that it was student and faculty only at both events,” Deborah Michals said. “And so we wanted to find a place to at least visually show that the community is behind our immigrants in our community … and so we just wanted to provide an alternative to that message.”
Homan was one of the original three keynote speakers for the TPUSA tour, along with Executive Vice President Donald Trump Jr. and political commentator Benny Johnson, before it was announced on Tuesday morning that Attorney General Ken Paxton would replace Trump Jr.
Homan is a former police officer, immigration official and political commentator who was appointed as Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s executive associate director of enforcement during the Obama administration, served as acting director for ICE during the first Trump administration and is now serving in the second Trump administration as border czar.
