Ronald Vitiello spent many hours testifying before Congress as leader of the U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Now the Virginia Republican Senate hopeful is aiming to be the one asking questions of witnesses — and writing laws.
Vitiello is a longtime Virginia resident, living there much of the time since taking a promotion to Border Patrol headquarters in Washington early in the George W. Bush administration and moving his family to the area. Vitiello, now 60, joined the Border Patrol in 1985 in Laredo, Texas, and rose through the ranks to positions responsible not only for U.S.-Mexico border security but also on the northern front. One of Vitiello’s roles was chief patrol agent for the Swanton Sector, along the U.S.-Canada border in upstate New York, Vermont, and parts of New Hampshire.
Vitiello by now has put in more years than necessary to qualify for retirement. But rather than taking it easy, and trying to escape the “Swamp,” he is going all in with the aim of defeating Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) in November.
“The reason I’m in this race is because I can’t stand by and watch it anymore,” Vitiello said in a wide-ranging interview with the Washington Examiner.
Vitiello’s motto is “Making America Safe,” his personal take on a certain former president’s infamous “Make America Great Again” tag line. Vitiello, who goes by “Ron” among friends and family, said he is upset the border crisis has gone unchecked for three years but that he brings more to the position than just a former Fed with a badge or disgruntled Republican.
“Making America Safe is not something that’s just a slogan for my campaign. I spent my entire adult life working on that problem. And so this is a chance for me to serve in a different role but for the same principles of purpose,” he said. “I have a set of skills that will be beneficial to my colleagues in the Senate. Working with like-minded conservatives, we can get right on the energy stuff. We can get right on the economy. And we definitely can do a lot better on the border.”
Vitiello is one of the most prominent Republican candidates in the 2024 election cycle arguing for tighter border security measures. Even President Joe Biden is talking tougher on the border — seizing an opportunity provided by former President Donald Trump, his likely November opponent. Trump helped kill a massive bipartisan border security bill that was being considered by the Democratic majority Senate, arguing immigration is a potent GOP fall campaign platform.
Migrant encounters at the southern border in December totaled 250,000, shattering the previous high of 222,000 in December 2022, according to the Border Patrol’s most recent figures.
1985: The start of a public service career
The Southern California native joined the Border Patrol in February 1985 under President Ronald Reagan and was one of fewer than 3,000 agents nationwide. He was accepted, trained at the academy, and assigned to the remote South Texas town of Laredo, on the north bank of the Rio Grande, across from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico.
“It was a great place to learn the job. It’s a place on the border where it has just about everything the Border Patrol does,” Vitiello said. “ATVs, horses, bikes, foot patrol, the river, there’s a huge train.”
It was a different organization nearly 40 years ago. The organization had a seventh of the 21,000 agents it would grow to by former President Barack Obama’s administration. Border walls and technology were nonexistent. But the biggest change between now and then, Vitiello said, was in the type of threats its agents are responsible for guarding against.
“I never worked on the line where if you touched something, it could knock you out and kill you,” Vitiello said about the drug fentanyl that has been seized coming across the southern border over the past decade.
“The technology lets you spread out a little bit more. It lets you monitor areas of the border that are maybe a little bit more difficult to get to,” said Vitiello. “But at the end of the day, those agents are required to stand face-to-face with whatever threat is coming across that border. And I think a lot of people don’t realize that that is the job.”
New threats trigger innovation
The 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001 changed the Border Patrol, both in the public eye and the halls of Congress. In the aftermath of the attacks, lawmakers created the Department of Homeland Security to bring select law enforcement agencies under one roof.
Vitiello and his wife of 35 years, Nuri, and their two children moved eight times at the Border Patrol’s requests, including to Arizona and Vermont. The new assignments gave him the chance to take on different problems, including standing up permanent highway checkpoints in Arizona and improving the agency’s relationships with state and local law enforcement in New England.
In 2002, Vitiello moved to Virginia for a position at Border Patrol headquarters in Washington through 2005, when he was transferred back to the southern border. Vitiello worked on projects that included remaking the organization’s chain of command and long-term plans for bolstering security at the land, air, and coastal borders.
“I went to headquarters in 2002. I did that because I knew I could make a difference. I knew I could work those problems in a very specific way and make a contribution. And I strived my whole career to do that. And I see this as a very similar campaign,” Vitiello said. “I do want to go in there and make an impact. I do think we can do better.”
In 2010, he was called back to Washington, where he remained until leaving the organization in 2018. During the Obama administration, Vitiello helped rebuild the agency’s use of force policy following a string of incidents that garnered negative national attention. He worked with Congress and then-House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office to pass a pay reform bill.
First taste of the lawmaking process
Vitiello gained experience in the lawmaking process while he was working at Border Patrol headquarters, where he was a frequent visitor to Capitol Hill for oversight hearings, meetings, and closed-door briefings — experiences that left him intrigued by the legislative process. He was on the other side of the table then, making the pitch to lawmakers for billions of dollars in annual budgets with the promise of services rendered protecting the public.
“I have experience in dealing with billions, justifying it to Congress, and then understanding how and what their incentives are,” he said. “I understand that world in a way that maybe other first-time candidates wouldn’t. … I want to be able to use the skills that I have in that setting to make things better.”
From 2010 through 2016, Vitiello helped rework the Border Patrol’s budgets in search of what he believed was wasted money, including cutting inflated contracts. He made the case to the House and Senate to overhaul Border Patrol pay after coming up with a way to save taxpayers $1 billion over the course of a decade. Lawmakers agreed to back it for the cost savings, and the Border Patrol union endorsed it for how it would benefit agents.
In early 2017, he was tapped to oversee the Border Patrol, a nonpolitical job that was selected by the DHS secretary, not the president.
Vitiello left Border Patrol in 2018 when Trump nominated him to oversee ICE. Vitiello was temporary director while he awaited Senate confirmation, but his nomination was pulled in April 2019. He then retired and launched his own company and began to do work for Axon, a device manufacturer for the Taser and body-worn cameras.
What Virginians want
Vitiello chose to stay in Virginia after retirement and lives in northern Virginia, where the national parental rights movement to have a say in what children learn in school emerged after 2021 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe said parents should not have a say in what public schools teach students. The remark is widely attributed to McAuliffe’s loss in his gubernatorial comeback bid, having held the office from 2014-18.
“It started a number of movements. So that’s very important for the people here,” Vitiello said.
Northern Virginia has also become a major leader in cloud storage for corporations looking to build massive windowless buildings that hold data. But that economic upside means changes in the landscape with high power lines and buildings sometimes in historic battlefields.
Vitiello is focused on the big issues for Virginians, which he said include the economy, energy, and the border.
“It’s very frustrating to watch what’s happening on the border. The agents are in the worst place possible,” said Vitiello, who went on to be deputy commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a 60,000-person agency that oversees the Border Patrol, before being transferred to ICE. “They’re stuck in this system of terrible politics, terrible policies, and really a blatant disregard for controlling the border by the administration from the top all the way down into the headquarters of CBP.”
The U.S. has lost its energy surplus that it worked for during the Trump administration due to continuing foreign aid to countries with authoritarian regimes that “hate us,” he said. Aid to countries such as Venezuela, Iran, and Saudi Arabia must be cut, Vitiello said.
“I know, like most Americans know, that a $270 billion budget at the Department of Education is not all being deployed to help people,” he said. “It’s just not because I understand the nature of these bureaucracies. And I understand the incentives to have a funding level that high. And so I want to participate in those discussions.”
Kaine, he said, is only known now as “the guy that ran with Hillary” and has little to show for from his time in office. That’s a reference to Kaine’s role as the 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee, as the understudy for Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump.
“When I’m effective at this, we’re pinning [Kaine] to the mat on things like our relationship with China, pinning him to the mat on the border,” Vitiello said. “He didn’t run on a federal debt that is twice as large as it was when he swore in. And I think you can agree the federal government isn’t twice as good as it was 13 years ago, when he became the senator.”
Still, Vitiello faces several hurdles in making it to the Senate. He’s running for the Republican Senate nomination against, among others, Hung Cao, a retired Navy combat veteran with residual name recognition from his losing 2022 bid against Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) in Virginia’s Washington, D.C., suburbs and exurbs 10th Congressional District.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
And should Vitiello make it to the general election, he’ll be facing a seasoned officeholder in a blue-leaning state. Kaine has been a Richmond city councilman and mayor, lieutenant governor, and governor from 2006-10. He was elected to the Senate in 2012 after being Democratic National Committee chairman for over two years.
Moreover, Virginia hasn’t elected a Republican to the Senate since the late Sen. John Warner’s (R-VA) final reelection bid, in 2002, after which he concluded 30 years in office. However, all three statewide offices in Virginia, governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general, are held by Republicans, giving the commonwealth some political balance.
