There’s something quintessentially American about a lawman.

He is the ever-present hero in our mythology, a figure buried deep in our national psyche — like the Pledge of Allegiance or apple pie.

Western civilization values the rule of law as sacrosanct and promises order over chaos. This is what the lawman protects.

He volunteers to wear the badge. That shining metal beacon pinned over his heart symbolizes a sworn oath. It is the mark of the covenant he made with the American people to protect them at all costs.

Tom Homan is a lawman. And that’s exactly why we need him.

John Wayne redux

Reminiscent of a John Wayne character hell-bent on justice, Homan sees the world in black and white, right and wrong, legal and illegal.

I cheered when Donald Trump named Homan the next border czar. Formerly the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Trump’s first administration, Homan was a police officer and a Border Patrol agent. He’s worked under six presidents over a 30-year career and was the executive associate director of Enforcement and Removal Operations for ICE under President Obama, where he oversaw a record number of deportations.

Homan gets emotional about hunting down criminals. This is because he’s the one who finds the bodies of women and children who died at the hands of illegal immigrants. Just recently, he had to hear graphic details from a 9-year-old who was raped by one.

He’s passionate because he cares about American lives.

Homan states that if we don’t have a historic level of mass deportation, “we’re sending out messages to the entire world: You can cross the border legally, which is a crime …”

In a recent interview with Charlie Kirk, Homan reminded us that every illegal alien is a criminal, illegal aliens aren’t vetted to enter the United States, and over 86% are not qualified as asylum-seekers. When Kirk asked Homan if he had seen the clip of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow telling her viewers how to “think strategically” about fighting against things like deportation by promoting mass amnesty for illegal aliens with criminal records, preventing law enforcement from entering jails to deport convicted illegal aliens, and a host of other insane suggestions, Homan’s response was “No. But you’re pissing me off.”

The ‘kids in cages’ canard

The main criticism Homan faces revolves around his responsibility for the first Trump administration’s notorious “zero tolerance” policy. At least 5,500 illegal immigrant children were separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018, with 1,401 children still without confirmed reunification.

But a lawman always has a reason.

Homan, in fact, was saving those “kids in cages” by keeping them safe. While there may be 1,401 children without ”confirmed reunification,” there are at least 320,000 migrant children who have gone missing under the Biden-Harris administration as a result of not following Homan’s example. The real number is likely higher.

According to a recently released Homeland Security Inspector General’s report, many of those children were released to “qualified sponsors” who, as it turns out, weren’t always qualified. Some of these sponsors have been listed at strip club addresses. Other children were given to convicted criminals with known MS-13 gang ties. Biden’s Department of Homeland Security even released a final management alert stating, “ICE cannot monitor all unaccompanied migrant children released from DHS and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' custody.”

You don’t say. Maybe it would have been better if you had kept them, you know, in a secured building of some kind.

“Kids in cages” was a nice catchphrase for Democrats, but in the end, that’s all it was. The leftists were so obsessed with “optics” and not putting kids in safe holding facilities that they released them to potential sex traffickers, criminals, child labor exploiters, and pedophiles. They didn’t care about the migrant children any more than they cared about the Americans who have been killed.

Fighting for civilization

So criticize him all you want, but like a strict parent, Tom Homan knew where the migrant kids ICE encountered under his care were. The Biden-Harris administration cannot say the same.

But what of those who intend to fight Homan's execution of justice?

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and other state and city officials have said they will not comply with Homan’s deportation efforts. Johnston said he is even willing to go to jail for it. Homan replied in kind. “Look, me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing,” Homan said. “He's willing to go to jail. I'm willing to put him in jail.”

The law doesn’t bend. Homan is here to remind them of that fact.

Being a lawman can come across as being harsh. But there’s a reason why Lady Justice holds a sword in her right hand. It symbolizes the power and authority to punish injustice.

That’s the part we often forget.

What good are laws or policies if they go unenforced or, worse, blatantly and unapologetically violated without just recourse? What value does being a good citizen hold if the bad ones go unpunished for their crimes? Why care about doing what is right when injustice has no consequence?

Western civilization has always been set apart because it’s, well, civilized. It values the just rule of law as sacrosanct and promises order over chaos. This is what the lawman protects.

The appointment of Homan as border czar is meaningful because it represents a return to safety and peace of mind. It is the first step in Making America Safe Again.

Elon Musk recently dubbed Homan our Judge Dredd, but when Homan speaks, I hear John Wayne’s voice as the straight-shooting U.S. Marshal J.D. Cahill when he offers a very simple solution to outlaws he’d caught who were complaining that their handcuffs were too tight: "You call the tune and you pay the piper. … You don't like the treatment? Don’t rob the banks.”