A border official publicly humiliated by Donald Trump in 2019 has reportedly been named to replace Kristi Noem’s henchman as Customs and Border Protection’s new acting deputy commissioner.
Ron Vitiello, 62, a CBP senior adviser during Trump’s second term, was internally announced for the role on Monday, per two sources cited by The Washington Examiner’s Anna Giaritelli.
As the Daily Beast exclusively reported on March 12, Vitiello’s predecessor, Joseph Mazzara—a former Marine and experienced litigator, with no law enforcement background to speak of—was ”walked out" of CBP headquarters within days of Noem’s own firing, sparking chaos internally.
Mazzara had been parachuted into the deputy commissioner role by Noem’s chief adviser and rumored lover Corey Lewandowski last December as part of an apparent push to neutralize Trump’s hand-picked CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott, with whom the couple had reportedly been at war.
Vitiello is an intriguing choice of replacement for Mazzara. In April 2019, during Trump’s first administration, the president abruptly pulled his nomination as ICE’s permanent director, telling reporters on the White House lawn that “Ron’s a good man, but we’re going in a tougher direction.”
Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the driving force behind his hardline immigration policies, directly lobbied Trump to pull Vitiello’s nomination, multiple media outlets reported at the time.
Miller was reported to have told the president Vitiello was not fully in favor of closing the southern border.
The move left Vitiello—who had been Border Patrol chief since February 2017 and acting ICE director since June 2018—without a Senate confirmation.
His nomination had also been dogged by a 2015 social media post in which he appeared to liken the Democratic Party to the “NeoKlanist party,” a remark that drew sharp questions during a Senate confirmation hearing. Concerns were also reportedly raised at the time over a purported 2016 social media post in which Vitiello compared Trump to the cartoon character Dennis the Menace.
After departing government that spring, Vitiello worked in the private sector before joining security technology firm Axon to lead its Department of Homeland Security-focused strategy operation. He left Axon on inauguration day 2025 to return to CBP as a senior adviser.
Mazzara, meanwhile, has followed his old boss out of DHS entirely. As the Beast reported, he is among the entourage Noem brought with her to Shield of the Americas, the role she claimed for herself after Trump showed her the door.
Noem will be replaced as Homeland Security secretary by Markwayne Mullin, 48, who was confirmed Monday.
Mullin and Vitiello will oversee a department in crisis. DHS has been without funding since Feb. 14, with around 100,000 of its employees working without pay amid a partial government shutdown.
Inside CBP itself, Vitiello walks into an agency still reeling from the Noem-Lewandowski purge that saw at least 15 senior employees pushed out, per the Washington Examiner, gutting institutional knowledge at a critical moment.
Scott, the commissioner Vitiello will serve under, is himself facing a whistleblower complaint accusing him of abusing his authority to investigate subordinates he regarded as political adversaries, according to the Examiner.
And looming over all of it is the political standoff over DHS funding, with Democrats demanding judicial warrants for agents entering private homes and a range of other enforcement reforms as the price of any funding deal, while Trump insists that no agreement is possible unless Democrats also back the SAVE Act voter-ID legislation.
The Daily Beast has contacted DHS and the White House for comment.
