Trump pulls nomination of Schroyer as ICE director

By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Updated: 5:59 p.m. on Thursday, September 17, 2026

The White House has pulled its nomination of Lance Schroyer to be the new head of ICE, marking the latest in a long line of failed nominees for the position.

Richard “Lance” Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper, had been held up in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee by Chairman Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who had wanted more information on shootings of U.S. citizens in Minnesota during President Trump’s deportation surge earlier this year.

The White House and Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to inquiries about the reasons Mr. Schroyer was nixed.

David Venturella has been serving as acting director since June 1.

Mr. Paul told The Associated Press he didn’t have an issue with Mr. Schroyer himself.

“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,” he said.

In addition to Mr. Paul’s delays, Mr. Schroyer’s lack of experience on immigration had irked some of Mr. Trump’s supporters.

ICE director is among the toughest jobs in Washington — there hasn’t been a successful vote to confirm one since Dec. 23, 2014.

That’s when the Senate approved Sarah Saldana, an Obama nominee, for the job.

She left at the start of the first Trump administration and since then, every Trump and Biden pick has failed to clear the chamber.

Among the picks who went nowhere was Tom Homan, a longtime ICE officer who served as acting head at the start of the first Trump administration, and who is now White House border czar. Another Trump pick, Ronald D. Vitiello, now serves as acting deputy commissioner at Customs and Border Protection, ICE’s sister enforcement agency.

The Biden administration tapped Ed Gonzalez, sheriff of Harris County in Texas, in 2021 but withdrew him a year later.

ICE has three separate divisions. One includes the lawyers who pursue deportation cases in immigration courts, another is Homeland Security’s criminal investigative branch and the third — and most controversial — is the migrant detention and deportation division, formally known as Enforcement and Removal Operations.