Congress mum as Trump purges ICE chiefs in major leadership shake-up

WASHINGTON (CN) — Lawmakers on Capitol Hill had little to say Tuesday about reports that the Department of Homeland Security purged immigration enforcement chiefs in several U.S. cities as the Trump administration looks to supercharge its mass deportation campaign.

Both Republicans and Democrats were hesitant to weigh in on the staffing shake-up, which would see officials from U.S. Border Patrol replace the heads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement field offices in Denver, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, among other cities.

But at least one lawmaker speculated that the Homeland Security Department made the staffing changes to support what he called the White House’s “unrealistic” deportation quotas.

According to a report from the Washington Examiner, the agency last week removed five ICE field office chiefs and moved them to positions elsewhere in the country. In addition to reassigning the heads of immigration enforcement in Denver, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, the Homeland Security Department also removed ICE chiefs in Phoenix and San Diego.

The administration reportedly plans to replace most of the ousted immigration heads with senior staff from Border Patrol, though in Philadelphia, the vacant ICE role will be filled by an official from Homeland Security Investigations.

While the move to replace top ICE officials with Border Patrol — which has taken an aggressive approach to immigration enforcement under its chief, Gregory Bovino — is unprecedented, lawmakers largely claimed Tuesday that they didn’t have enough information to take a firm stance on the issue.

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, a senior Republican member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, declined to comment to Courthouse News. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, another GOP lawmaker on the homeland security panel, said that he had seen reporting about the purges but that he didn’t “know enough” about the situation.

House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed ignorance of the ICE leadership purge during a news conference Tuesday morning, telling Courthouse News that he had only just learned about the reports. He added that “some of these things get mis-portrayed.”

Democrats were similarly reticent to offer their thoughts. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told Courthouse News that he had not yet been briefed and declined to offer any additional input.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, a fellow Connecticut Democrat who also sits on the Homeland Security committee, posited that the staffing shake-up at ICE’s field offices was thanks to the immigration agency’s failure to meet the Trump administration’s “completely unrealistic” deportation quotas.

White House adviser Stephen Miller has long demanded that ICE arrest as many as 3,000 immigrants a day, or 1 million per year.

“This kind of executive action simply shows the moral bankruptcy of their policies,” said Blumenthal.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, meanwhile, did not directly respond to reports of the purge at ICE, saying instead that Americans were “understandably horrified” at the Trump administration’s deportation agenda.

“It’s our hope that, if there’s going to be a change in personnel, it’s actually to enact a more humane approach, rather than what we’ve seen in community after community in the country,” said Jeffries.

The Homeland Security Department has so far refused to confirm or deny reports that it had reassigned ICE field office chiefs. The agency’s assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, told Courthouse News in a statement Tuesday that it had “no personnel changes to announce right now.”

“This is one team, one fight,” McLaughlin wrote. “President Trump has a brilliant, tenacious team led by Secretary [Kristi] Noem to deliver on the American people’s mandate to remove criminal illegal aliens from this country.”

A spokesperson for the Border Patrol union did not return a request for comment.

News that Border Patrol officials may be taking over for ICE in several major cities comes as Bovino on Tuesday was dressed down by a federal judge over his failure to comply with a court order blocking federal agents from deploying tear gas and other riot control weapons against protesters, journalists and other bystanders in Chicago.

The judge demanded that Bovino, who has personally participated in the federal crackdown on the Windy City and has himself deployed tear gas on demonstrators, appear before her daily to report new incidents. Bovino admitted to the court that he did not use a body-worn camera and agreed to begin wearing one.

The Trump administration has in recent weeks sent federal agents and National Guard troops into several U.S. cities, including Chicago, Portland, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. The White House has framed the move as an effort to crack down on crime and illegal immigration. Some federal courts have ruled that the president’s deployment of National Guard troops violates federal law.

According to recent statistics, more than 70% of people held by ICE have no prior criminal convictions.

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