Trump Withdraws Lance Schroyer as ICE Nominee

The White House said Thursday that it is withdrawing the nomination of Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper, to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The move ensures that an agency at the forefront of President Donald Trump's domestic agenda will remain without a Senate-confirmed leader for at least a while longer. Schroyer, who has little experience in immigration, is close to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a former U.S. senator from Oklahoma.

The White House offered no comment in a brief statement.

The withdrawal comes as ICE remains under scrutiny over its handling of enforcement operations. Critics have questioned how the agency has recruited and trained officers as it raced to hire thousands to carry out Trump's promise of mass deportations, and officers have shot and killed multiple people, including two American citizens in Minneapolis earlier this year.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, had refused to hold a hearing on Schroyer until the Department of Homeland Security provided information about civilian deaths during ICE enforcement operations.

"I don't have a concern with who the nominee was. I had asked them to give me an update on the internal investigation into civilian deaths," Paul told The Associated Press. "And I'm still waiting."

Paul said he had intended to hold a hearing on Schroyer's nomination, but it never came to that. He said he learned of the withdrawal only when the White House made it public Thursday.

When Mullin took over DHS in March, he pledged a lower-profile approach to immigration enforcement, pulling back on the aggressive crackdown on the streets of large cities that had drawn widespread public condemnation. Arrests have continued to accelerate, reaching nearly 51,000 in August, the highest single monthly arrest total during the second Trump administration.

ICE has not had a Senate-confirmed leader since the Obama administration. David Venturella, a former executive at a private prison operator, returned to the agency as acting director earlier this year after Todd Lyons resigned.

When Trump nominated Schroyer in June, he said on his Truth Social platform that the pick was "a PATRIOT with real operational experience" and a "proven leader with DECADES of experience locking up the worst of the worst."

The administration did not indicate when it might announce another pick for the position.