Trump's ICE Pick Spent 2025 Deputizing Local Police. Now He'd Run the Whole Agency.

President Trump announced on June 27, 2026, that he will nominate Lance Schroyer, a longtime Oklahoma law enforcement officer, to be director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Schroyer would run the agency carrying out the largest deportation push in modern history, and the Senate must confirm him, CNN reported.

Who Lance Schroyer Is

Schroyer spent 29 years in Oklahoma law enforcement. He served as a major in the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety’s Emergency Services Unit, where he directed teams for disaster response, civil disturbance, and immigration enforcement. He is a former Marine.

For the past stretch he has worked inside the administration as a senior adviser to the Secretary of Homeland Security, coordinating how federal immigration authorities work with state and local police.

The Job He Would Be New To

ICE is a federal agency of roughly 20,000 employees with a budget near $9 billion. It runs two very different operations: Enforcement and Removal, which handles deportations, and Homeland Security Investigations, which pursues transnational crime like trafficking and money laundering.

Schroyer has led state tactical and emergency units, not a federal agency. He has no background on the investigations side. If confirmed, he would be new to the federal workforce, stepping in over career officers who have spent decades inside ICE. The last acting director, Todd Lyons, a longtime federal agent, resigned in May, and the agency has had no Senate-confirmed leader.

His Recent Résumé Is the 287(g) Buildout

Schroyer’s current federal work centers on the program that defines this administration’s deportation strategy. Section 287(g) of immigration law lets ICE sign agreements that deputize local police to act as immigration agents during routine policing.

600% growth in local agencies signed up to act as ICE deportation partners in the first eight months of the administration, per the ACLU.

By June 30, 2025, ICE had 287(g) agreements with 737 state and local agencies across 40 states, and DHS said it had trained or was training more than 10,000 officers. The administration revived the “task force” model, the version that lets officers question and arrest suspected noncitizens during everyday stops. The ACLU has documented that model’s long record of racial profiling and civil rights violations. New Mexico, Maine, and Maryland banned 287(g) participation in 2025 and 2026, joining six states that already prohibit it.

Coordinating that expansion is the credential Schroyer brings to the top job.

Two Oklahomans Over Immigration

The Homeland Security Secretary, Markwayne Mullin, is a former Oklahoma senator and Trump ally whom the Senate confirmed in March 2026, after Trump fired Kristi Noem. Schroyer has been Mullin’s senior adviser.

The pick keeps the chain inside the same circle. The cabinet secretary who would oversee Schroyer is the same person he has been advising.

The Independence Question

Trump framed the nomination around enforcement, saying Schroyer will carry out the administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. DHS described Schroyer as a specialist in “constitutional safeguards in policy implementation.” Those two descriptions sit in tension, and the record of the 287(g) program he has been expanding is the place to test which one holds.

An ICE director decides how aggressively agents detain people, whether due process is honored before deportation, and how much the agency answers to the law versus to political direction. A senator weighing this nomination has to ask whether Schroyer would run ICE as an independent law enforcement agency or as an arm that executes orders without question.

Why It Matters

The ICE director controls the machine behind the deportation numbers. That includes the for-profit detention system that now holds 86% of ICE detainees and the 287(g) deputization push that overrides local sanctuary policies. Who runs the agency shapes whether arrests follow the law or sweep people up by appearance.

A confirmation hearing is the one moment the public gets to put those questions on the record before the job is filled.

What You Can Do Now

Use the letter below to ask your senators to demand a rigorous confirmation hearing. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee holds the nomination. Tell them to get Schroyer on the record before any vote.
Call your senators at (202) 224-3121. Ask them to press three things at the hearing: his lack of federal-agency leadership experience, the racial-profiling record of the 287(g) task force model he has expanded, and whether he will protect due process and act independently of political direction.
If your senator sits on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, say so when you call. That committee writes the questions and holds the first vote.