Draft:Joseph N. Mazzara

• Comment: Fix the named references

Joseph N. Mazzara is an American attorney and a former Republican political appointee. He served as Acting General Counsel of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from January to December 2025 and as Deputy Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from December 2025 to March 2026, during the second presidency of Donald Trump. A United States Marine Corps combat veteran, he graduated from Christendom College and the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University and clerked for three federal judges, and served as the Director of Election Litigation for the Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign. He later served as an appellate attorney in the Office of the Attorney General of Texas under Attorney General Ken Paxton. In Texas, his work included defending Paxton during his 2023 impeachment trial, representing Texas in litigation to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and defending a university president's ban on campus drag shows.

As Acting General Counsel of DHS, Mazzara was involved in several controversies such as the deportation of Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador's CECOT prison under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798; the attempts to keep Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador; the modification of legal policies to allow for the use of administrative warrants to enter private residences to arrest illegal aliens; the loosening of use of force restrictions on federal officers off federal property; deporting illegal aliens not from Sudan to Sudan; the shuttering of various DHS civil rights offices that supervised prison conditions and aided wronged employees; the referral of Catholic nuns to federal disbarment processes to prevent them from receiving future federal grants; the reallocating of USAID funds from being used to shelter and serve refugees to being used to detain illegal aliens at ICE detention centers; the termination of temporary protected status for numerous groups of illegal aliens; the termination of numerous senior career officials including those with careers stretching back to President Reagan's administration; and he was among the officials from whom U.S. District Judge James Boasberg sought sworn testimony in a criminal contempt investigation into the government's defiance of a court order halting deportation flights. He also wrote an internal email, later obtained by a watchdog group through a public-records request, stating that federal agents responding to 2025 protests in Los Angeles should have beat the demonstrators with sticks. After DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was removed from her position in March 2026, Mazzara left CBP and joined Noem's staff at the United States Department of State. He has since departed government, and is now a partner at the Binnall Law Group.

Mazzara graduated from Christendom College, a Catholic liberal arts college in Front Royal, Virginia, with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy.^[1] He received a Juris Doctor with honors from the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where he was awarded the Henry G. Manne Award for Excellence in Law and Economics.^[1] He has been published in the Marine Corps Gazette, Leatherneck Magazine, and The Green Bag.^[1]

Mazzara served on active duty in the United States Marine Corps as an artillery officer. He deployed to Kajaki, Afghanistan as a provisional rifle platoon commander during the War in Afghanistan, and later served as a judge advocate.^[1]

After the Marine Corps, Mazzara clerked for Judge Stephen Vaden of the United States Court of International Trade, Judge Brantley Starr of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, and Judge Edith H. Jones of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.^{[1] [2]}

In 2020, Mazzara worked in-house for Donald Trump's re-election campaign as the Director of Election Litigation.

Mazzara joined the Texas Office of the Attorney General in September 2022 as an Assistant Solicitor General, representing the state before federal and State appellate courts.

After the Texas House of Representatives voted to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton in May 2023, Mazzara was one of six senior staff — including Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone — who took a leave of absence from the Texas Attorney General's office to defend Paxton in his trial before the Texas Senate.^[3] The Texas Senate acquitted Paxton on all articles of impeachment on September 16, 2023. After the trial Mazzara returned to the Texas Attorney General's Office.^[4]

Mazzara also represented West Texas A&M University president Walter Wendler in a First Amendment lawsuit brought by the student group Spectrum WT after Wendler cancelled a campus drag show fundraiser in 2023, comparing the performance to blackface. Arguing before the Fifth Circuit in April 2024, Mazzara said the students had suffered no injury because no further show was planned, that the ban carried no criminal penalty, and that it was comparable to a content-neutral restriction on conduct rather than a restriction on speech. Notably, Mazzara said during argument that "if a Christian legal group wanted to have a 'Drag for Jesus' event that would also be banned." ^[5] A three-judge panel ruled against Wendler in August 2025 — after Mazzara had already left the Attorney General's office for DHS — but the full Fifth Circuit vacated that ruling and reheard the case en banc and the opinion is pending; the district court subsequently ruled in Wendler's favor after a bench trial.^[6]

In August 2024, Attorney General Paxton promoted Mazzara to Special Counsel to the Attorney General.^[7] That October, Mazzara argued before a Fifth Circuit panel on behalf of Texas in Texas v. United States, the state's long-running lawsuit seeking to end the DACA program.

Mazzara was appointed Acting General Counsel of DHS in January 2025, taking office under Secretary Kristi Noem.^{[8] [9]}

In March 2025, the Trump administration removed over 200 alleged members of Tren de Aragua to CECOT, invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. While the planes were in the air, Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia orally ordered that the flights turn around and return to the United States. The government did not comply and in April 2025 Boasberg found probable cause for criminal contempt.^[10] Following subsequent appellate proceedings that stayed the contempt investigation, Boasberg resumed the investigation in late 2025 and, on November 18, ordered declarations from all officials involved in the decision to not turn the planes around.^[11] On December 5, 2025, the government filed declarations from Secretary Noem, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, and Mazzara. Noem said she made the final decision to proceed after receiving legal advice from Mazzara, who said he both relayed advice from DoJ leadership while providing his own indepenent legal advice; the substance of that advice was not disclosed.^{[12] [13]} The Justice Department argued Boasberg lacked authority to compel Mazzara, Noem, or Blanche to testify in person, and Boasberg instead scheduled testimony from other witnesses, including Erez Reuveni, for mid-December 2025.^{[12] [13]} That testimony was blocked when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit intervened, and on April 14, 2026, a panel of that court — in a 2–1 decision, with both judges in the majority appointed by Trump — ordered Boasberg to terminate the contempt investigation altogether, calling it "a clear abuse of discretion"; Judge J. Michelle Childs dissented in an 80-page opinion.^{[14] [15]} The plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU, petitioned for rehearing before the full D.C. Circuit, which granted the petition and vacated the panel's ruling. As of July 2026, en banc oral argument is scheduled for September 29, 2026, and the question of whether Noem, Mazzara, and other officials willfully violated Boasberg's order remains unresolved.^[16]

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an illegal alien residing in Maryland, was among those deported to El Salvador on March 15, 2025, and he was held at CECOT despite a 2019 immigration court order barring his removal to El Salvador.^[17] Mazzara filed declarations with the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in April 2025, stating that DHS lacked authority to forcibly remove someone from a foreign government's custody, and separately saying that if Abrego Garcia returned DHS would immediately detain him and then either deport him to a third country or remove him again to El Salvador.^{[18] [17]} U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered Mazzara, along with ICE field office director Robert Cerna, to sit for depositions.^[18] Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States on June 6, 2025, to face separate federal human-smuggling charges in Tennessee.^[17]

During the Abrego Garcia case, Erez Reuveni, an attorney in the Justice Department's Office of Immigration Litigation, was fired in April 2025 for telling a judge that Abrego Garcia was removed based on an "administrative error." Reuveni subsequently filed a whistleblower disclosure with congressional oversight committees, first reported by The New York Times, alleging that DoJ leadership had planned in advance to resist court orders blocking Alien Enemies Act deportations. Among other claims, the disclosure alleged that Emil Bove, then the department's principal associate deputy attorney general, told a meeting of DOJ lawyers on March 14, 2025, that deportation flights "need to take off no matter what" and that the department might have to disregard a contrary court order. Bove, who was subsequently confirmed to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, denied making the statement.^{[19] [20]} Reuveni's disclosure also involved a direct exchange with Mazzara. Reuveni stated that on March 31, 2025, Reuveni emailed Mazzara asking how DHS could maintain it had no involvement in the transfer of detainees to Guantanamo Bay, when the individuals had been in DHS-ICE custody in Texas before the transfer and remained in DHS-ICE custody while held there. According to the disclosure, Mazzara did not respond, which was inconsistent with Mazzara's earlier representation to Reuveni that he had no knowledge of the removal operation.^[21] Reuveni's account became central to Chief Judge Boasberg's renewed contempt investigation later in 2025. Boasberg scheduled Reuveni to testify in December 2025, but that testimony was ultimately blocked on appeal.^{[13] [14]}

In December 2025, Mazzara was named Deputy Commissioner of CBP.^[22] Press reports said the appointment was engineered by Noem's senior adviser Corey Lewandowski as part of an effort to install loyalists at CBP amid friction with Commissioner Rodney Scott; at least fifteen senior CBP employees were reported to have been pushed out of the agency around the same time.^[23]

Trump removed Noem as DHS Secretary in early March 2026, naming her special envoy for a newly created multinational counter-cartel initiative called "Shield of the Americas."^[24] Mazzara was reported to have been "walked out" of CBP headquarters within days of Noem's removal.^[25] He was then named among roughly ten former DHS staff who followed Noem to the State Department to work on the new initiative.^{[24] [26]} He was succeeded on an acting basis at CBP by Ronald D. Vitiello.^[25]

Mazzara is married and has six children.^[2]

• United States Department of Homeland Security
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection
• Deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia
• Alien Enemies Act of 1798
• Ken Paxton

Category:Living people Category:Antonin Scalia Law School alumni Category:Trump administration personnel Category:United States Department of Homeland Security officials Category:Year of birth missing (living people)

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