The Senate Judiciary Committee has informed ICE director nominee Lance Schroyer that his confirmation will proceed only after he completes a 400-hour continuous ride-along in a marked Oklahoma Highway Patrol cruiser, retracing every mile of his former beat at a strict 55 miles per hour.
Committee staff have installed a bunk bed in the back of the patrol car, a camp stove on the passenger floorboard, and a logbook that troopers must stamp every 50 miles to prove Schroyer is still awake. Senator Chuck Grassley, who proposed the regimen, said the nominee will be accompanied at all times by a rotating panel of three senators riding in a rented recreational vehicle that will follow the cruiser and broadcast the journey live on a dedicated C-SPAN channel.
Schroyer has already driven 62 hours, during which he has re-issued 14 traffic warnings to the same startled motorist, who now refuses to leave his driveway. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol has assigned a second cruiser to carry a portable toilet and a third to haul a generator for the senator's RV, which has so far consumed 900 gallons of diesel and caused a 40-mile traffic jam near Tulsa.
«This is not a punishment,» Grassley told reporters through the RV's window. «It is a refresher course in the kind of patience required to run a federal agency. If he can survive 400 hours of Oklahoma's straight roads, he can survive anything the Senate throws at him.»
The nominee's confirmation hearing, originally scheduled for last Tuesday, has been postponed until the ride-along concludes, which the committee estimates will occur in late April. Schroyer has reportedly requested a transfer to the state's mountain region, but the patrol has informed him that Oklahoma has no mountains.