Schroyer’s selection drew opposition from border czar Tom Homan

President Trump nominated Lance Schroyer to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement late last month, elevating a former Oklahoma Highway Patrol major whose primary tie to national immigration policy came through a personal friendship with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, according to people familiar with the selection.

Schroyer, who spent more than two decades with the Oklahoma Highway Patrol after serving in the Marine Corps from 1992 to 1996, previously led the security detail at Mullin’s home when Mullin was a U.S. senator, the people said. Mullin invited Schroyer in for dinner, and the two struck up a friendship.

“Just like anybody who does executive protection, you’re around” the person being protected a lot, said Oklahoma Department of Public Safety Commissioner Tim Tipton, who oversees the state Highway Patrol.

When Trump announced Schroyer’s nomination, Mullin lauded his friend as a veteran of the 287(g) program, which deputizes state and local police to make immigration arrests. Schroyer was instrumental in implementing the program in Oklahoma and helped coordinate a new push by ICE to conduct the training virtually, Tipton said.

The nomination has stirred internal administration tension. Tom Homan, the White House border czar who led ICE as its acting director during the first Trump administration, opposed the selection, according to people familiar with the matter. Homan had advocated to keep the agency’s acting director, Dave Venturella, an agency veteran he argued was better equipped to run ICE efficiently. Homan learned of Trump’s final decision to nominate Schroyer when the president posted the news on Truth Social, the people said.

A White House official said that the president’s advisers were involved in the selection process and supported his decision, and that ultimately everyone is working to enact his agenda.

Schroyer’s relatively low profile — he recently retired from the state Department of Public Safety as a major — and lack of exposure to Washington have raised eyebrows across the administration, according to people familiar with the matter. Officials at ICE and the White House have privately complained that, in choosing Schroyer, Mullin is putting his trust in a personal friend rather than someone with proven political acumen, the people said.

“The most important thing here is leadership, and who knows if he has it in him,” said Sarah Saldaña, the last person to be confirmed by the Senate as ICE director, during the Obama administration. “But the experience doesn’t look right.”

The ICE director job has been held for the past decade by acting officials, rather than presidential nominees confirmed by the Senate, in part because both Trump and former President Joe Biden struggled to find nominees who wanted the job and could garner enough Senate support, according to people familiar with past efforts.

Before Schroyer was tapped for the ICE job, Mullin hired him earlier this year as a senior adviser at the Department of Homeland Security. Until his last days with Oklahoma public safety before coming to Washington, Schroyer was combining field work with his managerial role. On April 19, a Leflore County, Okla., deputy was shot and killed by a gunman firing a high-powered rifle from the second story of his residence, and Schroyer was part of a team of troopers who drove in an armored vehicle to recover the fallen deputy’s body, according to a spokesman for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.

Mullin said at a National Sheriffs’ Association conference last month that Schroyer could help local law-enforcement agencies set up 287(g) efforts. “We have him on staff,” Mullin said at the conference, calling Schroyer up to the stage. “You guys want to talk to him? You guys want to utilize him, see how he does it? We’ll bring people to you to help you set up the program.”

Should he be confirmed, Schroyer would lead an agency that has swelled under Trump to the most well-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government. He would need to decide how to marshal the 12,000 new recruits ICE recently signed up and spend the $75 billion Congress allotted to the agency, which must be used by the end of Trump’s term.

Under acting Director Venturella, the agency has been on an upswing, according to Trump administration officials. This past week, ICE arrested an average of 2,000 immigrants a day, nearly double its totals for much of the spring, according to Department of Homeland Security officials and unpublished government data. The agency has done so without attracting the negative public attention that has often accompanied a surge of arrests.

The White House is expected to send the nomination to the Senate once the chamber is back in session. Some Senate aides said Schroyer might not be confirmed until later in the year, given the chamber’s schedule.

“I can’t think of anybody better suited to be able to accomplish that mission than somebody who’s lived that life,” Tipton said.