Trump’s DHS Chief Faces New MAGA Backlash Over ICE Decision

Politics admin August 10, 2026 0 Comments

Trump’s DHS Chief Faces New MAGA Backlash Over ICE Decision

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s pick to run Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown on the ground has sparked a firestorm among MAGA ranks.

Mullin, 49, took over the department after President Donald Trump, 80, fired Kristi Noem earlier this year. The former Oklahoma senator has since been dogged by immigration hardliners who see him as weak on enforcement. Some want him gone altogether.

His ICE nominee, Lance Schroyer, 54, worked as a highway trooper in Mullin’s home state and was a part of the former senator’s own security team. Schroyer has no experience enforcing immigration law at the federal level apart from participating in what’s known as a 287(g) partnership agreement, which lets local police help ICE with some enforcement work.

Sources told Axios on Monday that Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, 64, has now become the highest-ranking member of the administration to oppose Schroyer’s appointment. He joins other figures in the MAGAverse like Steve Bannon, 72, Trump’s former strategist, who has objected to Schroyer’s nomination on his podcast, calling the ICE post one of the toughest in Washington.

Schroyer would take over an agency currently run by David Venturella, who took over the acting director’s job in June from Todd Lyons, 52. At the time, Lyons told Mullin in a letter reviewed by ABC News that his sons were at a turning point in their lives and he wanted the time with them. Politico had revealed weeks earlier that Lyons was taken to hospital at least twice over seven months for what officials described as “stress-related issues,” and that White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller had shouted at him during morning calls.

“ICE is an enormously complicated job,” Bannon said. “And now with the heightened visibility on interior enforcement, it may be in the top three or four hardest jobs in government.” He added that “you can’t pick a cop from Oklahoma and think he’s going to walk in and be able to do that,” and that Mullin is “asking too much of somebody.”

Mullin, speaking with Fox News, has said he took two months on the search for a new ICE chief and that Shroyer had been “literally right in front of me the whole time.”

Backlash to the pick comes as the secretary faces growing pressure on his job performance in other respects, too. At a National Governors Association gathering two weeks ago, Mullin signaled openness to immigration reform, which online activists read as amnesty by another name. He then backed halting ICE vehicle stops after fatal shootings involving officers in Maine and Texas. Trump reversed that, with Homan’s blessing.

In June, Mullin said on CNN that Haitians losing Temporary Protected Status could seek a different legal status to remain in the country. Haiti is subject to Trump’s travel ban, and its citizens are shut out of the usual channels. He has also fumbled his department’s acronyms, saying “CPB” when he means CBP, or U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The Daily Beast has contacted DHS and the White House for comment on this story. A spokesperson for the department told Axios it “stands firmly behind President Trump’s nominee, Lance Schroyer.” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said, “the president has confidence in his cabinet.”