White House Pulls Trump's ICE Director Nominee After Rand Paul Blocks Confirmation

The White House quietly killed its own nominee to run Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Thursday, September 17. A short memo posted to the White House website withdrew Lance Schroyer's nomination without explanation, according to BBC and NBC News.

Schroyer, a former Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper who spent 29 years in that job and also served in the U.S. Marines, never got a confirmation hearing. Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul, a Republican, refused to schedule one, according to the Guardian and CBS News.

Paul's holdup wasn't about ideology. He wanted answers about ICE and Border Patrol agents fatally shooting two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in separate confrontations in Minneapolis in January, according to BBC. Those killings sparked national protests. Then-acting ICE Director Todd Lyons drew criticism for refusing to apologize to the two families before he left the job in April, according to the Guardian.

Trump nominated Schroyer in June, calling him on Truth Social a "PATRIOT with real operational experience" who has "firsthand experience getting Illegal Aliens OFF our streets," as reported by NBC News. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican who knew Schroyer from the state, praised his "strong leadership and firsthand experience" and pushed for quick confirmation. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also backed the nomination.

That firsthand experience is real, but it's not ICE experience. Schroyer ran the Oklahoma Highway Patrol's partnership with ICE, which trained state troopers in a 40-hour online course to make immigration arrests alongside federal agents, according to the Washington Post as cited by the Daily Wire. Supporters of the pick can fairly point out that Schroyer has decades in law enforcement and direct experience coordinating with ICE on the ground, unlike a career bureaucrat with no arrest record at all.

But that argument didn't win over everyone inside the department Schroyer was picked to help run. Unnamed DHS employees told Politico in August they didn't want Schroyer taking over and making changes, according to the Guardian. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, also opposed the nomination, according to the Daily Wire.

ICE has now gone unled by a Senate-confirmed director since 2017, spanning three presidential terms. David Venturella, a former private prison executive, is currently the senior official performing the director's duties, a role he stepped into after Lyons' departure in April, according to CBS News and NBC News. An ICE spokesperson told NBC News that Venturella is expected to stay in that acting capacity for now.

The withdrawal is a setback for Trump and Noem as the administration pushes what it has called the largest deportation effort in U.S. history. It also shows a single Senate Republican can still stop a nominee cold when he decides the administration hasn't answered basic oversight questions. Paul chairs the committee with jurisdiction over the nomination, and neither the White House nor DHS has released the information he requested on the Minneapolis shootings.

No charges have been filed against the agents involved in the deaths of Good and Pretti, and no public investigation findings have been released as of this writing. Paul's core demand remains unresolved: what exactly happened in Minneapolis in January, and why two American citizens ended up dead in encounters with the agency Schroyer was nominated to lead.

The White House has not said who it will nominate next, or when. Neither the White House nor the Department of Homeland Security had responded to requests for comment from BBC, CBS News or NBC News as of Thursday afternoon.