Trump transition launches DHS landing team full of first-term alums

President-elect Donald Trump’s Homeland Security landing team is starting work today with meetings at the Transportation Security Administration’s headquarters in Springfield, Virginia.

The sprawling Department of Homeland Security, which oversees TSA as well as Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and a bevy of other agencies, will play a core role in Trump’s second-term agenda, particularly in the attempts to deliver on his promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Trump has tasked a number of high-ranking alumni of his first term to lay the groundwork for those plans in his second.

According to three people familiar with the team’s composition, the DHS landing team is being led by Robert Law, a top official in the Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) during Trump’s first term. He is also the Senate sherpa for Gov. Kristi Noem, Trump’s pick to helm the Department of Homeland Security.

Other landing team members include John Feere, a senior official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Trump’s first term; John Zadrozny, also an alum of USCIS, as well as the Trump State Department; and Joe Edlow, acting head of USCIS during the Trump administration.

Karen Evans, a top cybersecurity official at the Department of Energy and DHS during Trump’s first term, is also on the landing team. She is expected to focus on the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA).

Other landing team members include Troup Hemenway, a White House official during the first Trump administration; Robert Perez, former deputy commissioner at Customs and Border Protection; and Clark Barrow, who held roles in multiple agencies during Trump’s first term.

Also on the landing team are Sohan Dasgupta, a deputy general counsel at DHS in the first Trump administration; Joe Guy, former chief of staff to Rep. Brandon Williams (R-N.Y.) and a USAID official under Trump; and Scott Erickson, who served as deputy chief of staff and acting chief of staff at DHS under Trump.

Transition spokesperson Brian Hughes said in a statement that the team has begun sending the White House the names of some landing team participants, and that some of those landing teams “have begun connecting with their counterparts at agencies.”

The team members will work with the agency’s career staff to review the Biden administration’s homeland security policies, as well as the status of a host of challenges related to cybersecurity, immigration, border security and other issues the department handles. The information they glean will help shape the Trump transition team’s preparation for his first days in office.

In past presidential transitions, those landing teams have arrived soon after the election. But Trump’s transition waited months to sign an agreement with the Biden administration to authorize those teams, finally reaching a deal just before Thanksgiving. That gives them just over a month to prepare at agency headquarters for the handover of power on Inauguration Day.

Immigration policy has been at the core of Trump’s presidential campaigns, and it was one of his top focuses in office. He has long promised to dramatically increase border security and to deport countless undocumented immigrants. At the Republican National Convention this summer, delegates hoisted pre-printed signs reading “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!”

Trump and his advisers say his November victory gives him a clear mandate to deliver on that promise.