About

Leadership

Special Advisor on Enforcement and Private Sector Issues
John P. Torres

John Torres is the Special Advisor on Enforcement and Private Sector Issues to Assistant Secretary Morton.  He will help ensure that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) effectively collaborates with our colleagues in the private sector.

Previously, he served as the Director of the Office of Detention and Removal (DRO) for ICE within the Department of Homeland Security. DRO manages the daily detention of approximately 27,500 foreign nationals charged with violations of immigration law, and removes nearly 190,000 people from the United States annually. As director, Mr. Torres oversees an authorized workforce of 6,700 employees, including nearly 6,000 sworn law enforcement officers assigned to 24 field offices and manages an operating budget of nearly $2 billion.

Prior to his appointment as director, Mr. Torres served as the acting DRO director for 15 months, and during this period he oversaw the unprecedented expansion of the program as authorized staffing increased from 4,000 to 6,700; removals of foreign nationals surged from 168,000 to 190,000; fugitive case closures increased from 15,000 to 25,000; detention capacity expanded from 19,500 to 27,500; and the oversight for the Criminal Alien Program transitioned from the Office of Investigations to DRO.

Mr. Torres previously served as Deputy Assistant Director for Smuggling and Public Safety in the ICE Office of Investigations, and as the Special Agent-in-Charge (SAC) of the Newark ICE office, where he oversaw ICE’s participation in several major multiagency investigations, including an international child pornography investigation resulting in the arrests of over 2,000 people internationally; and an undercover investigation involving the purchase of surface-to-air missiles from international arms brokers for the purpose of downing American airliners.

Mr. Torres began his law enforcement career with the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in 1986. Mr. Torres led INS special agents in Denver, Chicago, and at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Highlights of his career include development of the Law Enforcement Support Center in Burlington, Vt. In 1998, Mr. Torres was appointed as the first INS special agent assigned to the FBI Headquarters International Terrorism Operations Section in the Usama Bin Laden Unit, where he was managed investigations of the East Africa embassy bombings, the millennium attack plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport and two other sites outside the U.S., the Khobar Towers attack, and the plot to bomb American airliners over the Pacific Ocean. Mr. Torres returned to Washington immediately following the 9\11 attacks and was assigned to the investigation at FBI headquarters. Early in his career, Mr. Torres was a decorated member of a highly successful undercover investigative unit in Los Angeles. In 1992 during the Los Angeles Riots, he was assigned to duty at the Newton and Rampart Divisions of the Los Angeles Police Department. In 1999, Mr. Torres was designated the INS investigative lead for the railway serial killer investigation of Rafael Resendez-Ramirez in Texas.