BY REBECCA SANTANA - ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Trump said late Thursday he was tapping Rodney Scott, a former Border Patrol chief who’s been a vocal supporter of tougher enforcement measures, for CBP commissioner.
As acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Trump said he had chosen Caleb Vitello, a career ICE official with more
than 23 years in the agency.
[He] will work with an immigration leadership team that includes South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as head of the Department of Homeland Security; former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement head Tom Homan as border czar; and immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff.
Customs and Border Protection, with its roughly 60,000 employees, falls under the Department of Homeland Security. It includes the Border Patrol, which Scott led during Trump’s first term, and is essentially responsible for protecting the country’s borders while facilitating trade and travel.
Scott comes to the job firmly from the Border Patrol side of the house. He became an agent in 1992 and spent much of his career in San Diego. When he joined the agency, San Diego was by far the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. Traffic plummeted after the government dramatically increased enforcement there, but critics note the effort pushed people to remote parts of California and Arizona.
San Diego was also where wall construction began in the 1990s, which shaped Scott’s belief that barriers work. He was named San Diego sector chief in 2017.
When he was appointed head of the border agency in January 2020, he enthusiastically embraced Trump’s policies.
“He’s well known. He does know these issues and obviously is trusted by the administration,” said Gil Kerlikowske, the CBP commissioner under the Obama administration.
Kerlikowske took issue with some of Scott’s past actions, including his refusal to fall in line with a Biden administration directive to stop using terms like “illegal alien” in favor of descriptions like “migrant,” and his decision as San Diego sector chief to fire tear gas into Mexico to disperse protesters.
“You don’t launch projectiles into a foreign country,” Kerlikowske said.
After being forced out under the Biden administration, Scott has been a vocal supporter of Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda.
In a 2023 interview with The Associated Press, he advocated for a return to Trump-era immigration policies and more pressure on Mexico to enforce immigration on its side of the border. Vitello will take over as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency responsible for arresting and deporting migrants in the U.S. illegally. A career ICE official, he most recently was the assistant director for firearms and tactical programs.
