Ronald Vitiello, the nominee for director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, will testify before the Senate Wednesday that if confirmed to lead the embattled homeland security component, he will make it his mission to highlight why the agency is necessary despite calls for its abolition.
“If confirmed, one of my highest priorities will be to better demonstrate to the public, Congress, and the media the importance of our mission to homeland security and public safety — and why our agency’s existence should not be up for debate,” Vitiello will say, according to a copy of his prepared opening statement obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Vitiello, who until June had spent three decades in the U.S. Border Patrol, another DHS entity, said he will focus on the reason Congress created ICE following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks: to enforce immigration laws after the perpetrators of the 2001 airplane attacks were found to have taken advantage of immigration laws in order to gain entry into the country.
Just in the last six months, some Democratic lawmakers have called for ICE to be abolished because agents within one of its offices, Enforcement and Removal Operation, are largely responsible for finding and deporting people illegally in the country who have also been convicted of additional crimes.
ICE’s other arm, Homeland Security Investigations, is the largest investigating body within DHS and quietly carries out massive probes into international smuggling rings as well as human trafficking operations.
“The work ICE does to uphold public safety, national security and the rule of law both in the United States and around the world is undeniable,” state the prepared remarks, which he will give before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
In fiscal 2018, which concluded Oct. 1, ICE arrested 50 percent more criminal illegal immigrants than the year prior. But Vitiello will focus on the other types of work, including the results of investigations, and how those play i nto the administration’s focus on border security.
“These successes — and the dedicated men and women who achieved them – are too often drowned out or wrongly maligned by misleading rhetoric and misinformation in the public sphere. This kind of rhetoric needlessly escalates the risk in our operational environment — making an already challenging job all the more difficult and dangerous,” Vitiello will testify. “It also harms the morale of our workforce, which is composed of people just like you who go to work each day to make our communities and our country safer.”
Vitiello will finish his remarks by asking Congress to partner with ICE on the things they can both agree on, which he will say includes a “strong border and an immigration system that has integrity.”
Prior to his nomination, Vitiello served as acting deputy commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He replaced Thomas Homan, who had served as acting director of ICE since January 2017.
Vitiello has served in his current role since April 2017, and previously led U.S. Border Patrol as its chief operating officer for a year.
Vitiello in his mid-50s, started his federal career as a Border Patrol officer within the Department of Homeland Security in 1985 at Border Patrol’s Laredo Station in south-central Texas. The Chicago native began working his way through the ranks and in 1997 became deputy assistant regional director of Border Patrol’s Central Region Office in Dallas.
In 2007, Vitiello was transferred to the Rio Grande Valley Sector in South Texas to serve as chief patrol agent of what is now the country’s highest-traffic sector for illegal immigration. He oversaw Border Patrol personnel in that role.
He served as Border Patrol deputy chief from 2010 through July 2016 then was promoted to the executive assistant commissioner of operations support.
If confirmed, Vitiello, who is second-in-command of a 60,000-person agency, will technically be taking a promotion to oversee ICE’s 20,000 personnel.
Homan announced in the spring that he would retire in late June. He originally retired in January 2017, but was asked by then-DHS Secretary John Kelly the day of his retirement party to stay on until a replacement could be found. Homan agreed.
A replacement was never found and Homan told DHS leadership this past January he intended to leave his post in June.
In May, ICE came under fire when Attorney General Jeff Sessions said all illegal immigrants who were apprehended entering the U.S. between ports of entry, including first-time illegal entrants who arrived with children, should be referred from CBP to the Justice Department for prosecution.
Minors were subsequently turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services who would then place them with a parent or family friend in the U.S. until the parent who brought them into the country either had his or her charges dropped or served jail time.
Starting in June and carrying on through the summer, groups advocating for the migrant families began holding protests outside ICE offices over the issue, including outside ICE’s Washington headquarters on Wednesday, and marches in various cities. Organizations have called for families to be reunited and ICE to be abolished.
But Homan told the Examiner in an interview prior to his departure that his agency, which handles deportations and homeland security investigations, was not relevant to this specific issue.
“I think a lot of the public is misinformed,” he said. “For instance, you shouldn’t be protesting ICE about family separation because that happens on the border.”
Homan added he was “not vilifying Border Patrol,” but attempting to explain that public frustration against ICE was being wrongly directed.
