WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House said Thursday that it was withdrawing its nomination of Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper, to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ensuring 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 latest setback comes as the agency remains under withering scrutiny over its handling of enforcement operations. Critics have question how ICE has recruited and trained officers as it raced to hire thousands to carry out Trump's promise of mass deportations. Officers have shot and killed multiple people, including two American citizens in Minneapolis earlier this year.
Sen. Rand Paul, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, had refused to hold a hearing on the nominee until DHS provided him with information he had been seeking 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, R-Ky., told The Associated Press.
"And I'm still waiting."
When Mullin took over DHS in March, he pledged a lower-profile approach to immigration enforcement, pulling back on the aggressive, tumultuous crackdown on the streets of large cities that sparked 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.
Paul said he intended to hold a hearing on Schroyer's nomination but it never came to that. He only heard about the nomination being withdrawn when the White House made it public Thursday.
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, Trump said on his Truth Social platform that his 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.
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