Border czar Tom Homan carried a Culpeper County sheriff's deputy badge and credentials issued by a sheriff now convicted of selling law enforcement appointments for cash — and those credentials were found abandoned in a hidden compartment of a used Cadillac.
The discovery raises uncomfortable questions about who gets deputized, why, and what it means when federal officials accept honorary badges from corrupt local sheriffs.
According to Augusta Free Press, Arlington police contacted current Culpeper Sheriff Tim Chilton after a woman who purchased a used Cadillac in 2023 found Homan's identification and badge in a hidden glove box compartment. The White House confirmed to NBC4 Washington that Homan never performed any work for Culpeper County.
The badge came from Scott Jenkins, Culpeper's sheriff from 2012 to 2023, who was convicted last year on one count of conspiracy, four counts of honest services fraud, and seven counts of bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds. Court documents showed Jenkins accepted $75,000 in cash bribes and campaign contributions in exchange for appointing donors as auxiliary deputy sheriffs — untrained, unvetted, and performing no legitimate services. Jenkins was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. Donald Trump later pardoned him.
The White House defended Homan by saying he knew Jenkins from "several events" and had requested use of the sheriff's firing range for a legally required firearms test. Jenkins, they said, offered to make Homan a reserve deputy to advise on the 287(g) immigration enforcement program and potential ICE partnerships.
Augusta Free Press framed the entire episode as symptomatic of Trump-era corruption, noting Jenkins styled himself a "constitutional sheriff" who vowed in 2020 to "deputize thousands of my citizens" to circumvent Virginia gun-control legislation. The outlet's framing leans hard into the Jenkins corruption angle, implying Homan's badge was functionally identical to the ones Jenkins sold.
What Augusta Free Press buries: the 287(g) program Homan was supposedly advising on is the actual mechanism for local-federal immigration enforcement cooperation — the very tool that allows sheriffs to assist ICE in detaining illegal aliens. Whether Homan's badge was a vanity item or a good-ol'-boy handshake, the program it connected to is the one sanctuary city politicians have spent years trying to dismantle.
The factual problem remains: Jenkins was a crook selling badges to anyone who paid. Homan's credentials ended up forgotten in a car, not used to enforce anything. The current sheriff's office had to be informed by a used-car buyer that a federal official's badge was floating around unaccounted for.
Americans who want the border enforced deserve better than honorary badges from convicted sheriffs and credentials left in glove boxes. The 287(g) partnerships that let local law enforcement work with ICE are serious business. They don't need the taint of a bribe-for-badge operation to work — they need clean sheriffs and real accountability.
