Qualification questions haunt Trump’s new choice for ICE director

The Republicans’ domestic policy megabill, which President Donald Trump signed into law a year ago this week, was remarkable in a great many ways, but one of the arguably underappreciated elements of the far-right package was how much money it threw at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

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The overall bill set aside $150 billion for immigration enforcement, with about $30 billion of that total going directly to ICE. To put that in context, Republicans nearly quadrupled the agency’s budget and ensured that ICE is far better funded than other law enforcement agencies, including the FBI.

Nearly a year later, the GOP majority in Congress narrowly approved a spending package that will fund ICE and Customs and Border Protection for the remainder of Trump’s second term, agreeing to spend an additional $70 billion on immigration enforcement.

As ICE’s budget, powers and workforce grow in unprecedented ways, it is going to be a challenge to lead this rapidly expanding agency. That task will not fall on Todd Lyons, who recently stepped down after serving as ICE’s acting director for more than a year.

If the president has his way, the job will instead fall to someone with a surprisingly low public profile. The Wall Street Journal reported:

Before backing Lance Schroyer to head U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin got to know him in an unusual way: Schroyer led an Oklahoma Highway Patrol security detail at the home of the then-U.S. senator.

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Mullin invited Schroyer in for dinner, and the two struck up a friendship, according to people familiar with their relationship.

The Journal’s report added that Schroyer’s personal connection to Mullin has catapulted him to one of the biggest jobs in the federal government, despite being “a relative unknown in national law-enforcement circles” and despite his inexperience in leading large departments or in a leadership role at the Department of Homeland Security.