ICE Unveils Bold New Leadership Model: Nobody, Indefinitely
The agency will formalize its vacancy as a standing institution, complete with a rotating staff whose only job is to withdraw themselves from consideration.
Officials confirmed that the agency has stopped treating the absence of a confirmed director as a temporary condition and started treating it as a design choice. A newly chartered Office of the Acting Director will exist solely to identify a nominee, submit the paperwork, and then withdraw that same paperwork before a hearing can be scheduled, on a continuous loop.
The office's founding charter reportedly instructs staff to measure success not by whether a director is eventually confirmed, but by how quickly each nomination can be un-nominated. Internal planning documents allegedly include a flowchart with a single box that reads "begin again."
"We came together as one leadership vacuum, divided," said a spokesperson for the new office, before excusing themselves to withdraw their own appointment to the spokesperson role.
Supporters of the arrangement note that a position which is never filled can also never be vacated, which they describe as a form of stability. Critics counter that an agency at the center of a major domestic priority might benefit from having someone, anyone, answer the phone.
As of this writing, the Office of the Acting Director has already nominated and withdrawn three acting directors, none of whom were informed they had been nominated.