Garcia Probes Lewandowski’s Shadow Role at DHS
The top Democrat on House Oversight says Trump’s fixer may be breaking ethics laws while ICE gears up for mass deportations.
WASHINGTON — Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) is calling it out. In a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Garcia demanded the receipts: every workday Lewandowski logged, every FEMA grant he touched, every contractor he whispered with.
The ranking Democrat on Oversight says Lewandowski has become Noem’s “de facto chief of staff,” a shadow boss who hires, fires, and doles out government money while pretending to be nothing more than a temporary adviser.
“Deeply concerning,” Garcia wrote — the kind of congressional understatement that means staffers are terrified to cross him because they think he can ruin their careers.
He’s ducked badge swipes, padded time sheets, and sidestepped ethics rules like they were traffic cones. And all of this while ICE, the department’s most infamous arm, gears up for the biggest deportation drive in modern history.
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ICE Goes Hollywood
The timing isn’t coincidence. Congress just dumped $76.5 billion into ICE — ten times its old budget — to hire an army of deportation officers. Training centers in Georgia are cranking out recruits like a factory line, cutting Spanish classes and handing out gas masks.
And if that sounds like a war, that’s exactly how Trump’s people are selling it. In The Atlantic’s account, ICE rolled slick black trucks around the National Mall with DaBaby blasting, “My heart so cold I think I’m done with ice,” while the Lincoln Memorial and Capitol blurred in the background. They’ve plastered Uncle Sam in ICE gear on recruitment posters and large signing bonuses promised.
Veteran agents — the ones who used to knock quietly, take down fugitives, and keep their heads low — barely recognize the place. “They love this cowboy shit,” one told The Atlantic’s Nick Miroff.
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Oversight vs. the Show
That’s the stage Lewandowski has stepped onto. A government agency drowning in cash, strapping itself into armored trucks, and rolling out social-media trailers like it’s the next Avengers movie. And in the middle of it: a political fixer with no oath, no oversight, and maybe no legal authority to be there at all.
Garcia says the rules were written to stop exactly this kind of overreach. “Allowing an SGE to exceed these limits or to direct the day-to-day operations of DHS erodes transparency, accountability, and public confidence”.
The deadline for Noem to explain herself to Garcia is September 4. Until then, the department will keep recruiting secret police in tactical gear, keep wrapping trucks, and blasting DaBaby as a man with no title pulls strings in a flush law enforcement agency in the middle of throwing itself a wildly expensive campaign launch rally.
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