Nasty clash between Trump's deportation chiefs forced handlers to 'clear the room': report
Nasty infighting broke out last year as the leaders of two federal immigration law enforcement agencies disagreed over how to carry out Trump's mass deportation campaign promise, according to a new report.
According to an NBC News report, two officials with the Department of Homeland Security detailed the fight that broke out during a February 2025 meeting. Caleb Vitello, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, at one point became so heated with Rodney Scott, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol parent agency, that handlers had to "clear the room," officials told NBC News.
DHS had been behind in its plan to deport 1 million immigrants during Trump's first year, despite efforts to coordinate between ICE, CBP, and the Department of Defense.
Leading up to the February clash, Vitello argued against a suggested plan to target immigrants who already had orders to leave the country by going to their last known address without judicial warrants and fast-tracking their deportation, according to NBC News, which reported that Vitello said the last known address of 700,000 people hadn't been verified.
"He worried that U.S. citizens could get wrongfully swept up in the surges," NBC News reported. Scott "grew tired of pushback from Vitello," and at the February meeting, he finally snapped, DHS officials told NBC News.
"Scott slammed his hands on a table, visibly angry," NBC News detailed. "Vitello refused to back down. With the two at an impasse, handlers for the senior leaders cleared the room and abruptly ended the meeting."
A few days after then-DHS head Kristi Noem heard about the meeting, Vitello was reassigned to train new ICE agents, officials told NBC News. Acting ICE director Todd Lyons replaced him in March 2025, but in April this year, he announced he'd step down by the end of May. Noem was notably ousted this March. Neither ICE nor CBP provided comment to NBC News.
NBC News noted that 570,000 people have been deported since Trump returned to office, based on numbers from Lyons.