5. Department of Homeland Security · Minor

Place nominees in DHS 'acting' posts while confirmations proceed

Not started

Printed page 136 5. Department of Homeland Security

“For example, the next Administration arguably should place its nominees for key positions into similar positions as "actings" (for example, putting in a person to serve as the Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Commissioner of CBP while that person is going through the confirmation process to direct ICE or become the Secretary).”

What has happened

Sep 1, 2026 Not started
Moved the other way: where a DHS nomination was pending, the acting official was somebody other than the nominee. The Department's own leadership roster, last updated 2026-09-01, was read against the 16 Senate nominations to DHS posts in the 119th Congress. Two posts had a pending or lapsed nomination on that date and both were being run by an incumbent deputy rather than by the nominee — the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency by its Deputy Director, Nicholas Andersen, as acting Director, after Sean Plankey's nomination was returned to the President on 2026-01-03 and withdrawn on 2026-04-27; and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement by David J. Venturella as Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Director, with Richard Schroyer's nomination for the post received in the Senate on 2026-07-20 and Schroyer not on the roster at all. That nomination has since been withdrawn: the President sent a message of withdrawal on 2026-09-17 (PN1187, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, vice Sarah R. Saldana — the confirmed post ICE's Director holds). So both of the two posts examined here have now had a nomination withdrawn while a sitting deputy ran the agency, which is the pattern this Quote asks be reversed. The nearest thing to the pattern the Quote describes runs backwards: Cameron Hamilton performed the duties of the FEMA Administrator early in 2025, left, and was nominated for the confirmed post only on 2026-05-11, being confirmed 2026-08-07. DHS does use acting and "Senior Official Performing the Duties of" arrangements heavily — thirteen of them on this roster, including the Chief Financial Officer, Chief Information Officer, CBP Deputy Commissioner and Civil Rights and Civil Liberties — but they are filled by sitting deputies and dual-hatted incumbents, not by nominees awaiting confirmation.
- DHS senior leadership roster (last updated 2026-09-01) — CISA under an acting Director who is its own Deputy Director, ICE under a Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Director, and neither post held by its nominee
  Primary Executive branch Sep 1, 2026

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

This ask is about appointments, so we checked the roster of Mandate contributors in office first; no current office on it is described as an acting post held by a pending nominee.

Searched, in records current to 2026-08-28: presidential documents, final rules, proposed rules and notices in the Federal Register from DHS and its components; bills and public laws in Congress, from congress.gov; White House presidential actions; and federal court dockets (CourtListener), including the bulk snapshot of 1.2 million dockets. Senate nominations, from congress.gov, were searched for DHS nominees; congress.gov’s nomination pages could not be read and are leads, not Evidence.

DHS’s own pages use “Senior Official Performing the Duties of” titles, and the 2026-09-05 read tied each of them to a person: none is a pending nominee.
Reviewed 2026-09-05. The congress.gov nomination pages could not be opened, but the question they would answer — who was nominated to what, when it was received and when it was acted on — is answered by congress.gov’s data service, which gives each nomination’s receipt date and latest action. Sixteen DHS nominations were pulled that way and from the Senate nominations records, and the receipt dates for PN858, PN901, PN961, PN962, PN730 and PN1187 were confirmed against the live record. The only part that needed a page was the DHS roster, and dhs.gov/leadership opens.
The roster carries its own Last Updated date, so it is dated 2026-09-01 rather than at the observation: a page’s own date is preferred to the day it was read. It evidences a state on that day and not an event; the nomination dates that bracket it come from congress.gov.
Reviewed 2026-09-24: the Schroyer nomination was withdrawn on 2026-09-17, and the 2026-09-01 note now says so. The congress.gov record is PN1187 in the 119th Congress, latest action “Received message of withdrawal of nomination from the President”, 2026-09-17. Five nominations were withdrawn on 2026-09-17 in all (PN962-2, Inspector General of the Department of Education; PN730-4, Representative on the Council of the ICAO; PN1098-4, Farm Credit Administration Board; PN1187, this one; PN1255-19, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Development Finance Corporation). The other four were checked against this site’s appointment asks and against the roster of Mandate contributors in office, and none of them is the subject of one.
The Status stays not started and no event is added. Nothing on this item was ever achieved, so a withdrawal cannot be a reversal; it is one more instance of the arrangement the Quote objects to, recorded in the note that already describes it.

Action: appoint
Object: acting DHS leadership positions
ID: 282