Ed Gonzalez, the sheriff of Texas’ most populous county, announced Monday that he had withdrawn his nomination to head the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under President Biden, a decision that will further prolong a 5-year leadership gap in an agency at the center of the nation’s controversial immigration debate.
In a series of Twitter posts, Gonzalez, who is currently sheriff of Harris County, noted that his nomination for director of the ICE, which was announced in April 2021, had stalled in Congress during more than a year. In a letter to Mr. Biden over the weekend, Gonzalez said he had concluded that getting his name out of the nomination process was “in the best interest of the nation we love.”
“I come to this difficult decision understanding that the challenges of preserving both the integrity of the U.S. borders and the global position of our country as a beacon of light for those seeking freedom and opportunity have never been greater,” he said. write González in his June 25 letter. , which was obtained by CBS News.
The ICE, which oversees immigration detentions, deportations, an expanding immigrant detention system, and transnational crime investigations, has not had a Senate-confirmed director for more than five years since the end of the Obama administration. Sarah Saldaña, the last ICE director confirmed by the Senate, left her post in January 2017.
In recent years, under Democratic and Republican administrations, the ICE has become a frequent target of criticism from progressive Democrats and activists, some of whom have called for its abolition.
These calls intensified under the Trump administration, which expanded groups of unauthorized immigrants subject to ICE arrest and commissioned the agency to implement some of its most controversial policies, including mass separations of migrant families along the US-Mexico border in 2017 and 2018.
The Biden administration has reviewed the ICE’s immigration functions, generally limiting detentions to immigrants who are considered a threat to national security or public safety and recent border crossings.
But the agency has continued to face criticism from Mr Biden.
Progressive activists have continued to criticize the ICE for detaining thousands of immigrants, while Republican lawmakers have accused the Biden administration of handcuffing ICE deportees through enforcement guidelines that they say they encourage illegal immigration.
In addition to the delay in confirmation, Gonzalez mentioned in his letter to Mr. Biden the desire to devote his “full and undivided attention” to his charge in Harris County, citing an increase in violent crime and the population in prison. jurisdiction.
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez Harris County Sheriff’s Office
It is unclear if there were other reasons behind Gonzalez’s decision. Representatives of the ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, its parent agency, referred questions to the White House.
In a statement Monday, the White House said Gonzalez “would have been a great ICE leader.”
“We thank Sheriff Gonzalez for his willingness to serve in the face of baseless accusations against his family and we thank National Security President Peters for his diligent and hard work in support of the nomination,” the White House added.
Gonzalez’s nomination was delayed earlier this year following allegations of domestic violence that arose in a previous, unrelated lawsuit at Houston Community College (HCC).
The lawsuit included an affidavit from an HCC officer who said he had been called to a domestic dispute at Gonzalez’s home, although Melissa Gonzalez, Gonzalez’s wife and former HCC vice president, previously testified. who never made any complaints.
“Any suggestion I made or filed a complaint against my husband is false and defamatory,” Melissa Gonzalez wrote in a March letter. “To be clear, the claims referred to in the affidavit, as they relate to me, my husband or my marriage, are completely false.”
Democrats on the Senate National Security and Government Affairs Committee overturned a vote on Gonzalez’s nomination after Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma expressed concern about the demand for years.
The Senate National Security Committee began a bipartisan investigation into the alleged domestic violence report, according to documents obtained by CBS News. According to a committee aide, the investigation did not corroborate or offer any evidence in support of allegations of domestic violence.
A summary of the findings of the investigation prepared by the committee’s Democratic majority called into question the allegations raised by the former HCC police officer, according to documents obtained by CBS News.
The summary said the committee found “discrepancies” between the sworn statement of the officer who initially raised the allegations of domestic abuse and his sworn testimony. The agent told the commission that he did not file any report on the allegations surrounding Gonzalez, although he initially said otherwise, according to the summary.
HCC also told the committee that the body camera images the former officer cited in the original affidavit did not exist.
Under Mr. Biden, ICE has received instructions to avoid, in general, the detention of families with minor children, pregnant or nursing women, victims of serious crimes, and U.S. Army veterans.
The Biden administration has also disrupted large-scale arrests of ICE workplaces and expanded so-called “protected areas” where officers generally should not arrest immigrants to include disaster sites, places where they meet. children and social service establishments.
In September 2021, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas ordered ICE agents to focus on detaining immigrants who threatened public safety or national security, as well as migrants who illegally entered the US after November 2020.
The Mayorkas directive generally protected unauthorized immigrants without criminal convictions from arrest if they had been living in the U.S. for years.
But those rules were suspended over the weekend because a court declared them illegal. The Biden administration is appealing this ruling, which arose from a lawsuit filed by Republican officials in Texas and Louisiana.
More Camilo Montoya-Galvez
Camilo Montoya-Galvez is the immigration journalist for CBS News. Based in Washington, it covers immigration policy and policy.