The Trump administration is shaking up Immigration and Customs Enforcement leadership amid continued frustrations within the White House about the level of immigration arrests and deportations conducted by the agency, officials announced Thursday.
Kenneth Genalo will no longer lead Enforcement and Removal Operations, the ICE branch tasked with carrying out arrests and deportations. Genalo, a longtime ICE official, is retiring and plans to advise agency leaders as a special government employee, officials said.
ERO has been spearheading the Trump administration’s aggressive and government-wide campaign to ramp up efforts to locate, arrest and deport unauthorized migrants across the country.
Meanwhile, Robert Hammer, the head of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations office, was reassigned to another post within the agency that officials described as a “critical leadership position.”
As the Department of Homeland Security’s investigative arm, HSI is a specialized law enforcement agency that has historically focused on combating transnational crime, like child exploitation and human trafficking, but many of its agents have been diverted by the Trump administration to support immigration arrest and deportation efforts.
Genalo and Hammer will be replaced by Marcos Charles and Derek Gordon, two career ICE officials, the agency said in a statement Thursday.
In that statement, ICE portrayed the changes as a “leadership realignment to support its increasing operational tempo.”
“Organizational realignments will help ICE achieve President Trump and the American people’s mandate of arresting and deporting criminal illegal aliens and making American communities safe,” the agency said.
ICE leadership has faced intense pressure from the White House to increase arrests of migrants who are living in the U.S. illegally or under one of several temporary immigration programs the Trump administration is seeking to dismantle.
Stephen Miller, the White House’s deputy chief of staff, said Wednesday on Fox News that the administration is pushing ICE to carry out “a minimum” of 3,000 arrests per day — a target that would amount to an unprecedented expansion of immigration enforcement.
Representatives for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
This week’s shake-up, first reported by NBC News, is not the first time ICE leadership has changed under the second Trump administration.
Caleb Vitello, who President Trump initially tapped to lead ICE, was reassigned in February just a few weeks after being named acting director of the agency. He was replaced by Todd Lyons, a top ICE official who continues to serve as acting director.
Camilo Montoya-Galvez is the immigration reporter at CBS News. Based in Washington, he covers immigration policy and politics.
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