Reitz, a partisan firebrand who has vowed to “destroy the left,” previously served as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s top deputy.
Aaron Reitz has been appointed the next U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas. Reitz previously worked as a top deputy to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and worked in the Trump Justice Department before running for attorney general earlier this year.
Reitz finished fourth, despite Paxton’s endorsement, in a crowded and expensive primary. The Marine Corps veteran ran on a militant platform of destroying the left, going after DEI and waging “counter-jihad” on radical Muslims.
As U.S. attorney, Reitz will be responsible for federal prosecutions and civil litigation involving the federal government in a vast region that includes Houston and large swaths of the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Our office will relentlessly combat violent crime, illegal immigration, drug and human trafficking, corruption, and fraud,” Reitz said in a statement. “Things are about to get very bad for criminals in the Southern District of Texas.”
Reitz enters the position at a perilous moment. The U.S. attorney’s office is likely to be involved in deciding whether to prosecute anyone in relation to this week’s fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Houston. The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General is leading the investigation, and the Harris County district attorney has vowed his own investigation, as well.
He is replacing acting U.S. Attorney John Marck, who was recently confirmed as a judge in the Southern District. This office has been a springboard to the federal bench under Trump: former Southern District U.S. Attorney Nicholas Ganjei and Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney Arthur “Rob” Jones were also both nominated to federal judgeships, with Trump noting their aggressive immigration enforcement.
Reitz is likely to follow suit on immigration. Under Paxton, he led much of the agency’s most aggressive litigation against the Biden administration, especially on immigration. He has said that he wants to see 20 million people deported, and 50 million visa renewals denied from “Third Worlders.”
Bloomberg Law reported Tuesday that Reitz will skip the usual Senate confirmation process after judges in the Southern District voted to appoint him to the position. This will allow him to remain in the position until the Senate confirms a new appointee, which ostensibly the Trump administration will not put forward.
The Department of Justice has been using similar procedural machinations to appoint many of its federal prosecutors without Senate scrutiny, after Democrats stymied some of the Trump administration’s more controversial picks. While the Senate confirmation process is intended to vet candidates for these high profile jobs, many of Trump’s picks have sidestepped that process.
Reitz was previously nominated and approved by the Senate for a post in the Trump White House, as director of the Office of Legal Policy, in March 2025. He was approved on a 52-46 vote with no support from Democrats. After the vote, Rep. Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, called Reitz a “danger to the rule of law,” a tagline Reitz touted proudly during his attorney general campaign.
Republicans still hold a narrow majority in the Senate, but the numbers grow ever tighter, especially with some exiting members of the party flexing their frustrations with the president, and others out with health crises.
Source: Eleanor Klibanoff, The Texas Tribune
Photo Credit: Former Paxton aide and DOJ official Aaron Reitz speaks with media following a debate hosted by the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) at the Grenada Theater in Dallas on Feb. 17, 2026. Shelby Tauber for The Texas Tribune
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