Coast Guard Commandant Relieved Of Duty
Adm. Linda Lee Fagan, the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, became the first military leader to be fired by President Donald Trump’s administration. Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Benjamin Huffman sent an “all hands” bulletin to Coast Guard personnel at 7:25 a.m. on January 21. The bulletin read, “Under my statutory authority as the acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), I have relieved Adm. Linda L. Fagan of her duties as commandant of the United States Coast Guard. She served a long and illustrious career, and I thank her for her service to our nation. Adm. Kevin E. Lunday, by operation of law, is now the acting commandant of the United States Coast Guard and assumes all the authority and responsibilities of the office.”
On the same day, Huffman ordered an end to remote work for all DHS employees.
Citing an unnamed DHS official, Fox News reported that Fagan’s dismissal came about because of concerns in the Trump administration about her alleged leadership failures on maritime border control and drug enforcement, recruitment, acquisition and an “erosion of trust.”
At least one of the issues contributing to the “erosion of trust” was Operation Fouled Anchor, Fox News reported. Operation Fouled Anchor was the name the Coast Guard gave to an internal, years-long investigation into sexual harassment, sexual assault and hazing incidents at the Coast Guard Academy going back to 2014, whose results were kept secret until leaks forced Coast Guard leaders to testify about it before Congress.
Other concerns with Fagan’s leadership cited by the unnamed DHS source included failures in recruiting personnel and an alleged lack of retention strategies; delays and cost overruns in acquiring essential platforms, including icebreakers and helicopters; and an alleged lack of accountability for acquisition failures highlighted during Trump’s first administration.
Fagan became the first woman to lead a branch of a U.S. armed service in 2022. The Coast Guard’s first female four-star admiral, Fagan previously served as deputy commandant for operations, policy and capabilities, where she was responsible for establishing and providing operational strategy, policy, capability and resources to meet national priorities for Coast Guard missions, programs and services. She was nominated as vice commandant in 2021. She was confirmed to that role on June 17, 2021, and assumed that role the following day. She was promoted to commandant less than a year later, assuming command on June 1, 2022.
Lunday previously served as commander, Atlantic Area, where he directed operations from the navigable inland waterways east of the Rocky Mountains to the Great Lakes, Gulf Coast and East Coast of the United States throughout the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent parts of the Arctic Ocean to the Arabian Gulf. He served under presidential appointment as director, Department of Homeland Security Joint Task Force East, responsible for unifying operations to secure the U.S. Southeast border and maritime approaches, including leading efforts to deter and prevent maritime mass migration from Haiti and Cuba. Before that, Lunday served as commander of the Fourteenth Coast Guard District, directing operations throughout Oceania, including Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam and the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, as well as activities in Japan and Singapore. He led efforts to strengthen partnerships through maritime security with other Pacific Island nations in the face of growing strategic competition.
The Department of Homeland Security released a report in October 2024 on the Coast Guard’s maritime activities, including migrant interdiction, from 2020 through 2023. Graphs show a spike in illegal migrant maritime encounters beginning in 2021, focused especially on migrants from Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Mexico.
