Dhs Turns On Border Chief Over $2 Million Office Renovation Plan

Infighting in the Department of Homeland Security — as the agency reels from a deadly confrontation with an American citizen — has gotten so bad that its leadership has turned on one of its own commissioners, ostensibly over $137,000 in front office upgrades.

Top brass at the $115 billion department said the request was too expensive and unnecessary since U.S. Customs and Border Protection will move its headquarters in the coming years, according to three administration officials. The officials also harped on what they said were superfluous elements like sprucing up wellness rooms, pricey new furniture and window treatments, they said.

The redecoration row engulfing the relationships between Customs and Border Protection commissioner Rodney Scott and his DHS higher-ups is over much more than just new office chairs. As President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement team has struggled to meet the president’s aggressive goals around restricting immigration, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has pushed a division previously focused on securing the border to take a more active role in the detention and removal of unauthorized immigrants from the United States.

That has focused attention on the DHS division, which is a linchpin not only of Trump’s mass-deportation agenda but efforts to build the border wall and collect tariff revenue. Scott’s renovation budget has become a concern of the department’s top political leadership, who also said that Scott is not delivering results at the speed that they want, according to the three officials.

“Don’t waste our time with silly things like this when we have other priorities we want to focus on,” said one of the officials. “The last thing that should be in mind is making your office fancier.”

A fall memo that Customs and Border Protection facilities and asset management official Yvonne Medina sent to DHS’ acting chief financial officer explained the remodeling project was long overdue because the commissioner’s suite hadn’t been properly updated for 25 years. A spokesperson for the division defended the proposed renovations as part of “a routine and responsible part of managing government contracts.” Scott didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The fixer upper

Top officials working for Scott, a longtime law enforcement official who came up through the ranks of the U.S. Border Patrol, started drafting a $2.1 million request for the renovation project in September. It included a budget for $299,850 on furniture, $86,733 on “services” related to the furniture and $33,000 on “window treatments, millwork, and equipment” for the 1,100 square-foot commissioner suite, according to the memo. POLITICO obtained a copy of the memo that was approved by DHS acting CFO Holly Mehringer on Nov. 17. Much of the rest of the money was slated for renovations related to mold remediation, improvements to security systems and IT infrastructure, according to the memo.

“The space finishes are damaged, peeling, and antiquated,” said the memo, which added that less than two percent of the project was for Scott’s personal office.

That request was met with befuddlement by Noem’s team, who were surprised that such an ask was made because they felt the proposed amount of money to spend was excessive, according to the three officials granted anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak to the media. They noted that the agency’s offices in the Ronald Reagan Building complex will be turned over to the FBI for its long overdue headquarters, although there’s no timeline yet on when the FBI would start to move in.

“We were like, what? This seems totally insane,” said the second official about the proposed renovation.

In line with federal law requiring a notification for political appointee office renovations over $5,000, Mehringer notified the Senate and House homeland security appropriations subcommittees that the agency intended to “make improvements to the commissioner’s suite” and that the total project cost was $2,064,765, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO. The letter was sent on Dec. 11, according to the third official. Spokespeople for the subcommittees didn’t respond to requests for comment.

“This contract began under the Biden administration and was reviewed and updated, a standard procurement practice,” the division spokesperson said in a statement. “During the standard review it was decided to proceed only with necessary, mission-critical updates. These fixes included addressing fire alarm deficiencies, mold concerns, and installing furniture needed to accommodate staff members now that they have returned to work.”

The letter noted that there had been two recent renovations as well of the commissioner’s offices. It said that DHS had notified the relevant congressional committees in June 2023 for an intention to renovate “general finishes” within the suite for a cost of $966,636 and in February 2024 notified Congress of “additional work required to improve fire protection and life safety” for a total project cost of $1,167,665.

Noem’s team and DHS general counsel’s office rejected the $137,000 portion of upgrades to Scott’s suite at the end of December, according to the three officials. The remaining $1.9 million project — renovations much of which were related to mold remediation, improvements to security systems and IT infrastructure, according to the memo — was allowed to proceed.

“Secretary Noem personally reviews and approves any contract above $100,000 to ensure every penny is spent to advance DHS’s mission of protecting the American people and safeguarding our nation,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. “Through this thorough review and prudent financial stewardship, she has saved the American people over $13 billion in less than a year.”

Notwithstanding those numbers, Noem has received criticism from Democrats for DHS’ purchase of two Gulfstream private planes for her and other top DHS officials, which the department defended by saying they were needed for safety and to replace a jet more than 20 years old. She also got flack for staying rent-free in a military house reserved for the Coast Guard’s top admiral, which the department also defended by saying she had been doxed and had to live in a secure location.

Earlier renovations to the agency in the Biden administration led to replacing carpets in the office and getting rid of mold in wallpaper and window frames, according to a Biden official granted anonymity to avoid angering the agency’s current leadership. The division also added in new flooring and kitchen appliances including a refrigerator and dishwasher as part of the project, according to the former official. The former official also noted that there’s been a series of renovations of different floors of the division’s space in recent years.

What it’s really about

As the Trump administration faces internal fallout from the deadly Minneapolis shooting, top DHS political leadership, including Noem and top aide Corey Lewandowski, have told people they’re frustrated that Scott is not delivering results at the speed that they want, according to the three officials. His critics say he appears to have trouble focusing on Trump’s priorities and, even though he has a couple dozen hours of meetings a week, is slow to make decisions. That leads other DHS agencies to have to deal with problems because of Scott, according to the officials.

Scott is being blamed for slow progress on construction of a wall along the border with Mexico. Builders have to contend with the Biden administration’s decision to mostly stop the work, forcing the division to restart anew with funds from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Finalizing contracts for the border wall “should be the focus each and every day, and it’s clearly not,” said the third official. “That’s the president’s priority, that was the president’s campaign promise and so to not prioritize that as top of the billet is pretty unacceptable.”

Scott has also rejected DHS requests on several occasions to appear on cable news defending the administration’s immigration policies, the third official said, angering colleagues in a TV-focused administration.

Scott served as the Border Patrol’s chief at the end of the first Trump administration and beginning of the Biden administration before he was forced out. His nomination, backed by groups which favor restrictions on immigration, cleared the Senate last June despite reports he was part of a private Border Patrol Facebook group where racist and misogynistic memes were shared and members joked about the deaths of migrants. He has said at the time he joined the group to monitor his workforce.

Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, a conservative non-profit organization that works on immigration, said Scott “has done a legendary job in securing the border.”

“This is why all the conservative border organizations pushed hard for his nomination and confirmation,” he said in an interview. “His support remains absolutely strong with those who are tracking the issue closely and behind the president’s agenda.”

The renovation plan was one of the reasons Noem moved one of her own into his agency at around the same time that Scott lost one of his top allies that diminished his influence in the administration.

Scott’s chief of staff, James Kernochan, in recent weeks moved to be deputy director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, in what was seen as a loss to Scott’s juice in Trump world, according to one of the officials and another person familiar with the matter. The imbroglio over the office renovation was also among the factors that led DHS in late December to install DHS’ acting general counsel Joseph Mazzara as deputy director of Customs and Border Protection, according to two of the officials.

The two officials said DHS leadership hopes Mazzara can help Customs and Border Protection to better assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement to increase the number of deportations and develop the border wall. One of the officials said it was intentional to put the department’s top attorney in a powerful role usually occupied by a career agency official.

Kernochan and Mazzara didn’t respond to requests for comment.

In an interview, Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that pushes for less immigration, said Scott has done a “pretty good job” and pointed to how border crossings have virtually stopped under his tenure.

“He’s almost kind of like the Maytag repairman in those commercials,” said Krikorian, who supported Scott’s nomination. “The Maytag repairman was the loneliest guy in town because Maytag was so reliable that he had nothing to do. It’s sort of a similar thing here. They’ve done such a bang up job at the border that it’s almost not an issue anymore for the public.”

Eric Bazail-Eimil contributed to this report.