The White House on Thursday withdrew President Trump's nomination of Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper, to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement, after the nomination spent weeks stalled in the Senate. The withdrawal was reported by NPR and Time, with no explanation offered by the administration.
Trump named Schroyer, who had been serving as a senior adviser at the Department of Homeland Security, to the ICE post in June, calling him a "PATRIOT with real operational experience" in announcing the pick. But Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, declined to schedule a confirmation hearing, saying in August he was withholding action until DHS provided further information about the investigations into the fatal shootings of two US citizens by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis earlier this year, a case that has become a flashpoint in the administration's deportation push.
A Post Vacant Since 2017
ICE has not had a Senate-confirmed director since 2017, and the agency remains without one now that Schroyer's nomination has been pulled. Day-to-day leadership currently falls to David Venturella, the senior official performing the duties of director, who took over after Todd Lyons departed the post in April. Paul's committee holds jurisdiction over the confirmation, and his office has said he had not formally announced opposition to Schroyer, only that he was withholding a hearing pending more information from the department.
The withdrawal leaves the administration searching for a new nominee at a moment when it has made expanded immigration enforcement a central second-term priority, backed by a sharply increased ICE budget and hiring drive under the reconciliation package Congress passed earlier this year. It also leaves unresolved the underlying scrutiny of the Minneapolis shootings that prompted Paul's holdout in the first place; DHS has not publicly released the material the senator requested.
What Happens Next
The White House has not indicated when, or whether, it will name a replacement nominee, and Paul's committee has given no signal it would move any successor more quickly absent the information it sought on the Minneapolis cases. Until a new nominee is confirmed, Venturella is expected to continue overseeing the agency's operations, including its expanded enforcement campaign, without the accountability structure a Senate-confirmed director would bring.
