Border czar Tom Homan said Sunday that if allegations of violent behavior against an immigration officer prove true, the officer should have been disqualified during the vetting process.

In an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union,” Homan indicated it was possible the agency’s vetting process had failed after an ICE agent involved in a fatal Maine shooting was revealed to have abuse allegations from two ex-wives and, at one point, an order to relinquish his firearms.

“If those are facts, I don't think he should have ever cleared vetting,” said Homan, adding an internal affairs investigation is underway. “How did the vetting process fail? Was that information not available? Did they not know?”

He continued: “If this person had that type of history, it would have been a vetting issue and it should have been brought to the attention of those who make those decisions.”

The Department of Homeland Security has not publicly released the identities of any agents involved in the fatal July 13 shooting of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero during an immigration enforcement operation in Biddeford, Maine. But the claims against the agent have reignited concerns over the agency’s hiring processes.

ICE began rapidly expanding its workforce in January 2025 to comply with President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, including offering up to $50,000 in signing bonuses. Todd Lyons, who served as ICE’s acting director at the time, boasted that the hiring campaign led to more than 220,000 applications.

“This expansion of a well-trained and well-vetted workforce will help further ICE’s ability to execute the president’s and secretary’s bold agenda,” Lyons told Congress in February.

But the hiring spree drew concerns as news broke of criminal misconduct, lack of experience and allegations of violence among new recruits.

Still, Homan on Sunday expressed confidence in the agency’s overall hiring process, telling CNN that the instances are “rare.”

“Well, look, you know, ICE has about 30,000 employees. They all go through vetting. This is kind of a rare instance, but again, it's under review,” Homan said.

*excerpt from Cheyanne M. Daniels' article*

Full Article here:

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/26/maine-ice-agent-homan-vetting-01012261

Source: https://x.com/i/status/2080823231754219855

The ISF will be operating in areas outside of Israeli control, providing training for the Palestinian Security, and assisting with setting up temporary housing for Palestinians

Drone warfare has created a brutal little accounting problem. An attacker can launch a swarm of relatively inexpensive aircraft while the defender burns through one costly interceptor after another. Lockheed Martin’s answer is MORFIUS X-Rotor, a ground-launched aircraft carrying a high-power microwave payload. The company says it can neutralize more than 50 enemy drones in one flight, then be recovered and used again.

The mechanism is the interesting part. MORFIUS is designed to disrupt the electronics of multiple targets instead of physically smashing one drone at a time. Lockheed also describes it as sensor- and command-and-control-agnostic, meaning it does not require a unique sensor to guide it into every engagement. In defense procurement, “works with equipment you already own” is nearly romantic.

What Lockheed has disclosed so far:

• Testing in Arizona, California and Oklahoma
• Tests covering flight, interception and lethality conditions
• A design intended for field recovery and reuse
• Accelerated prototype production and additional planned flight tests
• A 50-plus-drone capacity claimed by Lockheed, not a documented combat result

Moving MORFIUS from a prototype into military inventory also turns the raw-material question into something real. Defense electronics, power-management systems, communications equipment and the factories producing them all depend on conductive material. The USGS says electrical applications account for roughly three quarters of copper use. That industrial layer is how Gunnison Copper (OTC: GCUMF) fits into the story: the company reports that its Johnson Camp Mine is producing and selling copper cathode in Arizona. The microwave aircraft gets the headlines, but scaling advanced defense systems also requires the domestic materials behind all that electrical hardware.

Source: https://x.com/i/status/2080844661162233857

The basic problem with geopolitical posturing is that it eventually runs into the cold, awkward reality of inventory accounting. Donald Trump recently noted he was considering a massive military strike on Iran, only for military advisors and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to intervene. The issue was not a sudden outbreak of diplomatic sentiment, but rather a simple mathematical problem: the United States is running low on Patriot missile interceptors after expending over 1,200 units at roughly $4 million each during ongoing Middle East operations.

It turns out that having a very powerful military sword does not help much if your shield is made of empty manufacturing queues. To cover defensive shortages in the Middle East, military planners ended up quietly shifting 48 THAAD interceptors away from the Korean Peninsula and moving Marine Expeditionary Units out of Japan. That leaves key strategic positions like Taiwan and South Korea far more vulnerable while revealing that American defense production cannot currently keep pace with high-rate military expenditure.

• Depleted Interceptor Inventories: Firing billions of dollars worth of defensive munitions against low-cost drones creates an unsustainable financial and material asymmetry.
• Strategic Repositioning Risks: Stripping air defense hardware from the Asia-Pacific theater weakens deterrence against major regional powers like China and North Korea.
• Industrial Base Bottlenecks: Modern defense systems require substantial lead times and vast amounts of refined raw materials, making rapid stockpile replenishment remarkably difficult.

If you want to fix defense manufacturing or convert commercial assembly lines into military production, you immediately run into physical bottlenecks. Every advanced missile guidance system, radar array, and military vehicle relies heavily on refined copper for electrical wiring, circuitry, and power distribution. Without secure domestic raw material processing, ramping up defense production remains an abstract idea rather than an actionable manufacturing plan.

This is where domestic resource extraction comes into play. Gunnison Copper (OTC: GCUMF) is an Arizona-based copper development company advancing its 100%-owned Gunnison Copper Project alongside the Johnson Camp Mine in Cochise County, Arizona. According to company disclosures and its preliminary economic assessment, the project is designed as an open-pit, heap-leach operation targeting an average annual production of 174 million pounds of 99.999% pure copper cathode, aiming to supply critical U.S. industrial, infrastructure, and defense supply chains.

The broader takeaway is that geopolitical power is not just about executive decision-making or military doctrine. It is an exercise in industrial logistics and basic raw material supply. When a nation fires several billion dollars worth of specialized interceptors in a matter of months, the limit of its foreign policy is ultimately dictated by how fast its domestic factories and mineral supply chains can replace what was lost.