Lance Schroyer could be the next face of Trump’s detention and deportation machine.Andrew Lichtenstein
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On Saturday, President Trump nominated Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma State Trooper, to serve as the Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If confirmed, he would become the agency’s first permanent director since 2017. The pick signals a broader push to integrate local and federal law enforcement.
Schroyer has 29 years of state law enforcement experience, but his federal resume is thin. A former member of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s security detail, Schroyer only joined ICE in March as a senior advisor. But according to Mullin, Schroyer is still qualified for the job because, in his role as a State Trooper, he worked “alongside state and federal partners to remove illegal aliens from Oklahoma under the 287(g) program.”
The 287(g) task force program, expanded by executive order at the start of Trump’s second term, essentially allows ICE to deputize local police and jails, transforming traffic stops and local arrests into a pipeline for federal deportation. Over 1,200 local partner agencies have reportedly signed up for ICE bounties. Schroyer’s selection is another step towards merging local law enforcement with ICE, integrating the controversial and violent agency further into America’s day-to-day policing apparatus.
While Schroyer worked on Oklahoma’s 287(g) program, Oklahoma police departments held some of the largest ICE contracts of any state. Second only to Florida, Oklahoma law enforcement agencies held at least $47 million in ICE contracts as of March, according to a payout ledger obtained by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein. At least 30 Oklahoma agencies signed 287(g) agreements under Schroyer’s watch—mostly local police departments, but also further-afield groups like the state narcotics agency. In March, one rural K-12 school district police chief almost entered into a collaboration with ICE by accidentally signing a 287(g) agreement.
A February ACLU report showed that the Oklahoma State Highway Patrol, as part of its ICE partnership, orchestrated “mass arrest events.”
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol used traffic stops and “Oklahoma’s ports of entry” to conduct two major operations in fall 2025 targeting drivers, interrogating more than 1,000 people and making 193 immigration arrests. “We set up a command post at the port, we provide troopers, our emergency response troopers, that come out to process them,” Oklahoma Commissioner of Public Safety Tim Tipton told a local outlet. “It’s really a mass arrest event once you do that, when you have hundreds of people that you’re detaining.
Immigrants’ rights advocates have stated that the 287(g) program takes resources away from local law enforcement—and that it makes immigrants less likely to report crimes such as domestic violence, out of fear that police will use any interaction as a pretext to hand them over to ICE.
At the National Sheriff’s Association Conference earlier this month, Mullin encouraged local police departments to work with Schroyer, the Wall Street Journal reported. Mullin said that Schroyer, then a major in the Oklahoma state highway patrol, had joined DHS to advise agencies newly joining the 287(g) partnership program.
“We have him on staff. You guys want to talk to him? You guys want to utilize him, see how he does it,” Mullin said. “He is fully committed and understands that the 287(g) program can be a tremendous asset to you and to the country.”
Current Acting ICE Director David Venturella, a former private-prison executive who took office earlier this month, will continue in his role until Schroyer is confirmed by the Senate, a DHS official told the Associate Press.
