# Rodney Scott **Rodney Scott** is the Senate-confirmed **Commissioner of [[CBP]]**, the country's largest law-enforcement agency, with more than 60,000 employees and 300-plus ports of entry. He is a career Border Patrol agent from the first Trump term who spent the Biden years on television and came back to run the whole agency. By 2026 he had become one of the officials who actually decide how the enforcement machine runs day to day. ## Career Scott joined the Border Patrol in 1992 as a trainee and spent most of his career in the San Diego Sector. He became chief of the Border Patrol in February 2020. His tenure included the "Remain in Mexico" program, which made asylum seekers wait outside the country for their hearings. He stayed into the Biden administration, left in 2021, and became a frequent Fox News critic of Biden border policy. Trump nominated him in December 2024. On **June 18, 2025**, the Senate confirmed him 51–46 on a party-line vote; both Arizona Democrats voted no. ## The Hernández Rojas question His confirmation fight centered on 2010. Anastasio Hernández Rojas, a Mexican national, died after being beaten and tased by federal agents in San Diego. The incident involved a Border Patrol station Scott managed. Sen. [[Ron Wyden]] alleged that Scott helped cover up misconduct, including evidence handling in which, Wyden said, the only video copy was taped over. The government settled with the family for $1 million, and the Justice Department declined to bring charges in 2015. DHS Secretary [[Kristi Noem]] wrote that Scott acted "in accordance with his duties, the law and professional standards." ## Commissioner, 2025–26 - **The interior mission.** Under Scott, CBP, a border agency, became a large part of the interior deportation force, supplying agents for [[ICE]] operations in American cities. After two U.S. citizens were killed in [[Operation Metro Surge]] in Minneapolis in January 2026, Scott told the *Washington Examiner* the agency had made "missteps" in how it handled the shooting and described its ICE partnership. CBP kept deploying agents to the interior. - **The Bovino fight.** [[Gregory Bovino]], the Border Patrol commander who became the public face of the Chicago and Minneapolis operations, was the other power center. A February 2026 whistleblower complaint accused Scott of using investigations against subordinates out of "personal or political vendettas," with Bovino as the main target. CBP opened a misconduct inquiry into Bovino on March 2, and he retired March 18. Bovino has since said Scott went after him as a political rival (per CBS News, Sept. 2026). Neither account has been independently confirmed. - **The Mullin era.** After [[Markwayne Mullin]] replaced Noem in March 2026, reporting described a DHS in which the new secretary listened to [[Tom Homan]] and Scott before [[Stephen Miller]] (see [[Stephen Miller]]). - **Big Bend.** On Aug. 16–17, 2026, Scott paused border-wall construction inside Big Bend National Park pending his own site visit, after local sheriffs and his former colleague [[Thaddeus Cleveland]] objected. See [[Big Bend National Park Border Wall]]. ## See also - [[CBP]] · [[Department of Homeland Security]] · [[DHS Component Tree]] - [[Immigration Removal Pipeline]] · [[US Immigration Timeline]] · [[Operation Metro Surge]] · [[Operation Midway Blitz]] - [[Big Bend National Park Border Wall]] · [[Thaddeus Cleveland]] · [[Gregory Bovino]]