The Trump administration is planning to replace some regional leaders at Immigration and Customs Enforcement with Border Patrol officials in an attempt to intensify its mass deportations effort amid growing frustration with the pace of daily arrests, according to two Homeland Security Department officials, one former DHS official and one federal law enforcement official.
President Donald Trump’s top aides have welcomed Border Patrol’s more aggressive tactics to secure arrests, such as rappeling into apartment buildings from Black Hawk helicopters and jumping out of rental trucks in Home Depot parking lots, as they’ve become disappointed with ICE, the officials said.
“The mentality is CBP does what they’re told, and the administration thinks ICE isn’t getting the job done,” one of the DHS officials said. “So CBP will do it.”
The White House has signed off on a list of at least a dozen directors of ICE field officers who are set to be reassigned in coming days, the two DHS officials, the former DHS official and the federal law enforcement official said. They said that at least half of them would be replaced with Border Patrol officials. ICE has 25 field offices around the country, so the move could replace nearly half of the agency’s leaders.
The list was compiled by Corey Lewandowski, a special government employee at DHS who advises Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol sector chief overseeing the agency’s operations in Chicago and previously in Los Angeles, the law enforcement official said.
The administration’s shift to leaning more heavily on Border Patrol marks a potential new phase in Trump’s deportation efforts. While ICE has come under criticism for its raids, the agency’s broad approach has been to make targeted arrests of immigrants known to be in the country illegally. Border Patrol’s approach to recent arrests in major U.S. cities has been more aggressive, making large sweeps that have sparked some of the sharpest backlash from protesters and prompted lawsuits.
The New York Times was first to report that the Trump administration was planning a shake-up of ICE leadership amid frustration over arrest numbers, citing three people familiar with the plans.
As of late September, the latest period for which data is available due to the government shutdown, ICE was arresting 1,178 on average per day — well short of the 3,000 per day that the chief architect of Trump’s deportation policy, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, has demanded.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.
Asked about any plans to reassign ICE leaders, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement, “The president’s entire team is working in lockstep to implement the President’s policy agenda, and the tremendous results from securing the border to deporting criminal illegal aliens speak for themselves.”
Border Patrol has deployed over 1,500 agents to arrest immigrants in cities around the country to assist with deportations, Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks told NBC News. By comparison, there are 8,500 officers working for ICE’s enforcement and removal operations.
Border Patrol has been behind some of the most searing images of immigration arrests since Trump took office. Earlier this month in Chicago, Border Patrol agents rappeled from a Black Hawk helicopter into an apartment building as families slept. Last week, videos emerged from Chicago of Bovino throwing a gas canister into a crowd.
The incident is now part of a lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of using overly aggressive tactics.
Bovino has been ordered before a federal judge in Illinois on Tuesday to face questions on whether recent arrest tactics in the Chicago area, including using tear gas, violated a temporary restraining order against CBP’s use of excessive force. Plaintiffs’ attorneys have pointed to Bovino’s personal use of tear gas as a potential violation of the judge’s order.
DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said Monday in a statement to NBC News that Bovino had been hit in the head by a rock. “We look forward to the American people viewing the footage,” she said.
Some ICE leaders have quietly expressed dismay over Border Patrol’s tactics in cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, the law enforcement official and two DHS officials said.
Two former ICE officials said ICE does not own some of the resources Border Patrol has, such as Black Hawks.
The White House’s frustration with ICE has been building for months.
In mid-May, Miller told ICE’s leaders that if he they did not start arresting 3,000 immigrants per day, he would see that the leaders of the lowest performing regions were taken out of their positions, according to two people who spoke with meeting attendees.
At the time, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons resisted the idea of firing ICE field office directors, the two people who spoke with meeting attendees.
The Trump administration has increasingly turned to Bovino to oversee Border Patrol operations targeting immigrants in major U.S. cities, most recently in Chicago, where Bovino arrived in mid-October and became the public face of the Trump administration’s enforcement efforts there.
The DHS officials said Bovino does not report to the chief of Border Patrol or CBP’s commissioner, as other Border Patrol sector chiefs do. The law enforcement official said Bovino reports directly to Noem, who called him the Border Patrol Commander at Large in a recent op-ed.
While the list of ICE field office directors that may soon be removed was compiled by Lewandowski and Bovino, it also is being tightly held inside the White House by Miller, the DHS officials said.
The officials did not know the names of the individuals on the list but said they’re expected to be directors whose regions are underperforming in arrest numbers or those who have pushed back on some of the more aggressive tactics that Miller supports and Border Patrol has conducted.
