WASHINGTON — Ed Gonzalez, President Biden’s nominee to steer U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, mentioned on Monday that he was withdrawing from consideration after a long-troubled nomination.
In a letter to the president, Mr. Gonzalez, the sheriff of Harris County, Texas, which incorporates Houston, and a fierce critic of hard-line insurance policies on the company he was tapped to steer, mentioned he had withdrawn “in one of the best curiosity of the nation.” He famous that he was nominated 14 months in the past, and mentioned he wanted to focus his “full, undivided consideration” on his duties as sheriff.
With the bitter political divide over immigration swirling round his nomination, Sheriff Gonzalez had confronted a troublesome path from the beginning. However his affirmation course of was additional weighed down and delayed for months after Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, launched a police affidavit that accused Sheriff Gonzalez of home abuse of his spouse, Melissa.
Each Sheriff Gonzalez and his spouse had denied the allegations. The police officer who wrote the affidavit later instructed a Senate committee in a deposition that corroborating proof he talked about within the affidavit didn’t exist, in line with a abstract of the committee’s findings. An aide for the committee added that its investigators couldn’t discover any proof to corroborate the allegations.
The withdrawal was one more blow each to ICE, which has not had a everlasting director for the reason that Obama administration, and to the Biden administration, which has seen immigration turn into a political legal responsibility because it has struggled to include surges of migrants on the border and change most of the hard-line insurance policies it inherited. It got here on a day that the our bodies of greater than 40 folks believed to be migrants have been discovered useless in and round a tractor-trailer on the outskirts of San Antonio.
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Sheriff Gonzalez “would have been an excellent chief of ICE,” the White Home mentioned in an announcement. “We thank Sheriff Gonzalez for his willingness to serve within the face of baseless allegations towards his household.”
The nomination of Sheriff Gonzalez, who had sharply criticized the Trump administration’s deportation insurance policies, represented a significant departure from the hard-line immigration chiefs who had served underneath President Donald J. Trump. As sheriff, he had ended a partnership with ICE as a result of, he mentioned, this system inspired “unlawful racial profiling.”
That repudiation of Mr. Trump, in addition to ICE, drew criticism from Senate Republicans. However for Mr. Biden, the nomination had been a step towards fulfilling his promise of extra humane immigration insurance policies underneath his administration.
“America has proven the world that it’s not solely potential to outlive, however thrive, as a nation that welcomes these searching for a brand new dwelling and a greater life by laborious, sincere work,” Sheriff Gonzalez mentioned throughout his affirmation listening to final 12 months.
Sheriff Gonzalez’s withdrawal was the newest in a collection of setbacks for that pledge, for efforts to fill vacant management positions on the Homeland Safety Division and for Mr. Biden’s immigration agenda as an entire. An extended-planned try to elevate a significant pandemic-era immigration restriction was blocked by a federal decide final month. One other federal decide on Saturday suspended a Biden administration coverage that prioritized the arrest of undocumented immigrants who’re thought of a menace, rendering hundreds of thousands of individuals susceptible to deportation.
Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland safety secretary, has additionally confronted withering criticism by Republican lawmakers as a momentous surge in migration throughout the southwestern border has overwhelmed immigration companies. And deportations of Haitian emigrants have spiked even because the Biden administration faces criticism from progressive teams and lawmakers over the way it treats Black migrants.
Sheriff Gonzalez mentioned he would now commit his vitality to main his division and addressing the rising crime and overcrowded jails in his county.
“I’m grateful to President Biden for the glory of nominating me,” he mentioned on Twitter on Monday. “And I want this administration nicely because it strives to beat the paralyzing political gridlock that threatens excess of our nation’s border. Frankly, the dysfunction threatens America’s coronary heart and soul.”
