Trump Doubles Down on Anti-Immigrant Agenda, Nominates Former Trooper Lance Schroyer as ICE Director
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President Trump has nominated Lance Schroyer, a former state trooper and current adviser to the homeland security secretary, to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement, signaling a continued embrace of hardline, punitive immigration policies.
On Saturday, President Donald Trump announced his latest move to escalate the administration's anti-immigrant crackdown by nominating Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper and senior adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, as director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The announcement, made on Trump's social-media platform, called on the Senate to rush the confirmation, highlighting that Schroyer would be the first Senate-confirmed ICE director since 2017—a period marked by ICE's controversial actions and lack of accountability.
"Lance has firsthand experience getting illegal aliens off our streets and, just like me and our Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, he loves the men and women of ICE," Trump wrote, using dehumanizing language that has become a hallmark of his administration's rhetoric.
Schroyer, whose background includes serving as a major in the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety and as a U.S. Marine, has never worked within ICE itself. Currently, he advises Secretary Mullin and was part of Mullin’s security detail in Washington, raising questions about his qualifications for leading an agency with such a troubled record. ICE, which has been under acting leadership by David Venturella since May, has faced mounting criticism after a string of high-profile abuses, including the killing of two American citizens by immigration agents in Minneapolis earlier this year. The agency has not had a Senate-confirmed director since an Obama-era official retired in January 2017, reflecting the ongoing instability and controversy surrounding its operations.
