Donald Trump’s choice of an obscure Oklahoma state trooper to run ICE has triggered a furious revolt inside the agency, with senior officials warning of mass retirements and suggesting Stephen Miller’s power is on the slide, PunchUp reports.
Trump, 80, announced on Saturday that he was nominating Richard “Lance” Schroyer—a former highway patrolman and ex-Marine with nearly three decades in Oklahoma law enforcement—to lead the agency at the heart of his mass-deportation drive. ICE hasn’t had a Senate-confirmed boss since the Obama administration.
The pick belonged to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, not border czar Tom Homan, 64, or Stephen Miller, 40, the White House deputy chief of staff and the president’s immigration lead—and DHS insiders say it landed like a grenade. “He’s Markwayne’s guy,” a senior official told PunchUp.
“Everyone was blindsided by the selection [of Schroyer], including Homan and Miller,” a source said, signaling that Miller’s power over the president may be draining away.
“He may be getting boxed out,” the source added of Miller.
Homan isn’t faring much better. It “seems Homan is losing some power,” a senior ICE figure told PunchUp, pointing to Homan being “not a fan” of Trump’s proposal to rename ICE to “NICE.” A second administration official put it more bluntly: “I think Homan is going to lose all power.”
The president himself hinted at the friction on Truth Social, writing of the name-change idea on June 20, “Everyone loves it, but I have been told by the legendary Tom Homan that the Agents do not love it as much as the other population.”
Despite his apparent lack of leadership experience, Schroyer would inherit a vast agency with a gigantic budget. The reaction inside ICE has been brutal. Three separate insiders told PunchUp that the rank and file are in open revolt.
“Troops not happy at all. Senior leaders not happy,” one senior ICE source told the outlet. “No experience. He was a trooper. But that’s it. Never a boss. Never a leader. Never had to manage a budget. Now he has $78 billion. Now he has 32,000 employees.”
The administration official went further, telling PunchUp the response had been “very bad” and that many agents were ready to walk. “Many say they will retire,” the source said. They called Schroyer “nice” but with “no experience really with 287g ops”—the program that deputizes local cops to enforce immigration law.
PunchUp revealed that Schroyer has spent weeks quietly serving as a senior adviser to Mullin, who pushed his old trooper buddy toward the job. Schroyer once worked the senator’s residential security detail back when Mullin represented Oklahoma. The pair were so close, a source said, that Mullin would sometimes invite him in for dinner.
It hasn’t always gone Mullin’s way. As PunchUp revealed in May, the former plumbing company boss first wanted his hometown sheriff, Vic Regalado, for the ICE job—only to be overruled. Miller and Homan then muscled through their own acting director, Homan-linked private-prison veteran David Venturella, in a humiliating defeat for the secretary. Schroyer slipping through now suggests the balance of power has tilted—and not in Miller and Homan’s favor.
To one agency veteran, it fits a familiar pattern. “This guy will be his ‘fish cop,’” the senior ICE official told PunchUp—a dig at former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s handpicked, often-ridiculed former ICE deputy director, Madison Sheahan, 29. “Putting his person in with no experience just to have his guy on the inside. He’s going to be the new Noem.”
Noem, 54, was fired by Trump on March 5 after a run of disasters at the agency and corruption allegations against her chief adviser and rumored lover, Corey Lewandowski, 52, which he denies.
The same source warned Schroyer’s arrival could gut the senior ranks just as the agency tries to stabilize. “You’re gonna see a lot of senior leaders” who “retire, leave,” they told PunchUp. “Because it’ll be a power struggle. A new person in there, no one will know what is going on, and we’re gonna look like idiots.”
A White House official told PunchUp and the Beast that Trump had “full faith and confidence in both Tom Homan and Stephen Miller,” and that Miller had been “aware” of the decision to hire Schroyer, was involved in the process, and “very supportive.”
The Daily Beast has also contacted the Department of Homeland Security and ICE for comment. They did not respond by the time of publication.
