Border Czar Taps Longtime Daily Wire Contributor To Help Secure The Border

White House Border Czar Tom Homan this week tapped an immigration expert, border reporter, and former Texas intelligence official to help enforce immigration law and deport illegals.

Todd Bensman joined the Trump administration Monday as a Senior Advisor to Border Czar Tom Homan. Bensman entered his new role after more than six years at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

“There’s a new administration in town that seems to have won the election on this issue and, at least according to the polls, the border crisis was an apex issue up there with inflation and the economy,” Bensman said while discussing his new role in his final podcast interview with CIS. “They made promises and those promises are being kept.”

Before joining the Trump administration, Bensman was also a frequent contributor to The Daily Wire, detailing the role of non-profits in pushing mass immigration and sharing his insights from his travels to the southern border and the Darien Gap, the narrow land bridge that connects South America and Central America.

Bensman’s reporting pulled from interviews with would-be illegal aliens as they opined on the political state of the United States, explaining before the 2024 election that they would abandon their plans to enter the country if President Donald Trump beat then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

Bensman offered his expertise to Congress last year when he testified on the security implications of the unprecedented rise of Chinese nationals encountered at the southern border under the Biden administration, warning that the Chinese government likely saw the border as “a new, wide-open avenue of approach through which to infiltrate its spies and intelligence operatives.”

Bensman was one of the first people to warn of the growth of Colony Ridge, the sprawling Texas land development that became a magnet for illegal aliens and attracted wanted murderers, drug runners, and cartel members.

“When people buy here, they’re buying peace of mind from law enforcement,” Bensman said of those who purchase land in Colony Ridge while speaking with The Daily Wire in September 2023. “The Mexican cartels are very active in that they run safe houses, they run drugs, they do marijuana grows, they commit crimes,” he explained in a chapter of his book dedicated to the Texas development.

The Daily Wire exposed Colony Ridge in a series of investigations, and the development was later hit with lawsuits from the Texas Attorney General and the Department of Justice. The development was also the target of multiple deportation operations earlier this year, which resulted in the capture of nearly 120 illegal aliens, including a previously deported MS-13 gang member and those suspected of homicide and child sexual abuse.

Before joining CIS, Bensman led the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division, managing teams of intelligence analysts and working with the FBI and other federal partners to identify terror threats. Bensman took on a specialized effort while in that role, investigating the human smuggling of migrants into the United States from nations with active Islamic terror groups.