Sarah Saldaña

Sarah Ruth Saldaña is an American attorney who served as the fourth director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from December 23, 2014, until January 20, 2017, under President Barack Obama. She was the first Latina ) to hold the position of ICE director. Previously she had served as Assistant U.S. Attorney, then U.S. Attorney, for the Northern District of Texas.

Birth, education and early career Saldaña was born in 1951 in Corpus Christi, Texas, as the youngest of seven children. Her father Luis was a plumber and her mother, Inez Garcia Saldaña, was a nurse.

In 2011, the Hispanic National Bar Association named Saldaña as the Latina Attorney of the Year.

Saldaña in 2011 became U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas. She was confirmed 55–39 on December 16, 2014, and sworn in on December 23, 2014. As of 2025, Saldaña is the last person to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as Director.

During Saldaña's tenure, ICE had a budget of approximately $6 billion and had nearly 20,000 employees in 400 offices in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and 48 countries outside the United States.

Saldaña was criticized from the political left for treating noncriminal refugees too harshly and from the political right for allowing immigrant criminals back on the street. Her answer to critics was that she was required to follow the laws and the decisions of courts, and she defended the removal prioritization of public safety and national security threats, multiple offenders, and recent border crossers.

In her first Congressional testimony as director of ICE on April 14, 2015, Saldaña defended ICE's enforcement priorities, promised to convince states and cities to cooperate with ICE, and was questioned regarding ICE's detention of Central American families fleeing violence there.

Her tenure ended with the change of Presidential administrations on January 20, 2017. She was succeeded on an acting basis by her deputy, Daniel Ragsdale, a career member of the Senior Executive Service.

Post-DHS Commentary on Immigration and Justice Issues In June 2018, Saldaña, then retired and living in Dallas, Texas, spoke out publicly against Trump administration “zero-tolerance” immigration policies. “Every dollar we spend in criminally pursuing an immigrant mother, or father or infant,” Saldaña said, “is money taken away from [pursuing] drug cartels, financial crime or cyber hacking. Stuff that impacts the American public much more than an immigrant working on your front lawn.” She wrote an OpEd in Time magazine to the same effect.

On February 28, 2020, Saldaña and Matthew D. Orwig, who like Saldaña also served as a U.S. Attorney in Texas, in his case appointed by President George W. Bush, wrote an OpEd in the Dallas Morning News on the importance of protecting the independence of the Department of Justice.

On April 27, 2021, Saldaña gave an interview to the CBS News Dallas-Fort Worth affiliate calling for Congress to pass immigration reform, saying “the system is overwhelmed” and “legislation is the best fix, not a temporary Band Aid here and there”. To critics at both ends of the immigration debate she said “the wish was to keep us a nation onto our own, an island onto our own. As I say, that is just not realistic. On the other side, we have individuals advocate for the immigrant population who say, just let everybody in, that is not going to happen. It would be illegal to allow that happen.”

Saldaña is married to Marine veteran Don Templin, a retired attorney. She had two sons and a daughter.