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.
Mullin invited Schroyer in for dinner, and the two struck up a friendship, according to people familiar with their relationship.
"Just like anybody who does executive protection, you're around" the person being protected a lot, said Oklahoma Department of Public Safety Commissioner Tim Tipton, who oversees the state Highway Patrol.
That personal tie has catapulted Schroyer, a relative unknown in national law-enforcement circles, to one of the biggest jobs in the country: heading ICE. Under President Trump, it has swelled to the most well-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government.
When Trump announced Schroyer's nomination late last month, Mullin lauded his friend as a veteran of the 287(g) program, which deputizes state and local police to make immigration arrests. ICE's ranks of state and local partners have grown this year. Mullin and other immigration officials have said that they like the program because arrests carried out by local police attract less public ire.
Still, his relatively low profile -- Schroyer recently retired from the state Department of Public Safety as a major -- and lack of exposure to Washington have raised eyebrows across the administration. Officials at ICE and the White House have privately complained that, in choosing Schroyer, Mullin is putting his trust in a personal friend rather than someone with proven political acumen, according to people familiar with the matter.
The job has been held for the past decade by acting officials, rather than presidential nominees confirmed by the Senate, primarily because both Trump and President Joe Biden struggled to find nominees who wanted the job and could garner enough Senate support.
"The most important thing here is leadership, and who knows if he has it in him," said Sarah Saldaña, the last person to be confirmed by the Senate as ICE director, during the Obama administration. "But the experience doesn't look right."
Tom Homan, the White House border czar, who led ICE as its acting director during the first Trump administration, had opposed the selection, the people familiar with the matter said. He had advocated instead to keep the agency's acting director, Dave Venturella, an agency veteran who he argued was better equipped to run ICE efficiently. Homan learned of Trump's final decision to nominate Schroyer when the president posted the news on Truth Social, according to people familiar with the situation.
A White House official said that the president's advisers were involved in the selection process and supported his decision, and that ultimately everyone is working to enact his agenda.
The White House is expected to send the nomination to the Senate once the chamber is back in session. Some Senate aides said Schroyer might not be confirmed until later in the year, given the chamber's schedule.
Should he be confirmed, Schroyer's remit would be much broader than the 287(g) program, which has been increasingly adopted in Oklahoma. He will need to decide how to marshal the 12,000 new recruits ICE recently signed up and spend the $75 billion Congress allotted to the agency, which must be used by the end of Trump's term.
Under Venturella, the agency is seen by the Trump administration as being on the upswing. This past week, ICE arrested an average of 2,000 immigrants a day, nearly double its totals for much of the spring, according to Department of Homeland Security officials and unpublished government data. It has done so without attracting the negative public attention that has often accompanied a surge of arrests.
A native of Oklahoma, Schroyer has deep law enforcement ties in the state.
After serving in the Marine Corps from 1992 to 1996, Schroyer, according to local media coverage, served as a police officer in Muskogee, a city of 36,000 in the eastern part of the state, and in 2000 joined the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. Schroyer worked across several departments and held different leadership roles, including running emergency services, which includes the SWAT team, Tipton said.
"He's very easygoing and easy to talk to," Tipton said. "He has quite the command presence. He's highly respected throughout the agency."
A substantial amount of his time at the Highway Patrol was spent on the road, occasionally resulting in local media coverage. In October 2015, the Tulsa World published a profile on him after he saved a woman who was in a near-fatal car crash.
"It was just kind of fate that I was there," he told the publication.
Before Schroyer was tapped for the ICE job, Mullin hired him earlier this year as a senior adviser at DHS. Until his last days with Oklahoma public safety before coming to Washington, he was combining work in the field with his managerial role.
On April 19, a Leflore County, Okla., deputy was shot and killed by a gunman firing a high-powered rifle from the second story of his residence, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol said. Schroyer was part of a team of troopers who drove in an armored vehicle to recover the fallen deputy's body.
Mullin said at a National Sheriffs' Association conference last month that Schroyer could help local law-enforcement agencies set up 287(g) efforts.
"We have him on staff," Mullin said at the conference, calling Schroyer up to the stage. "You guys want to talk to him? You guys want to utilize him, see how he does it? We'll bring people to you to help you set up the program."
Schroyer was instrumental in the implementation in Oklahoma, Tipton said, and helped coordinate a new push by ICE to do the training virtually. Tipton said that he understands Schroyer's nomination might seem unusual to some people but that he thinks it makes sense to increase coordination with local officials.
"I can't think of anybody better suited to be able to accomplish that mission than somebody who's lived that life," he said.
Write to Michelle Hackman at michelle.hackman@wsj.com, Joe Barrett at Joseph.Barrett@wsj.com and Brenna T. Smith at brenna.smith@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 03, 2026 19:00 ET (23:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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