Shapiro Hires Ex-Trump Admin Official to Help Counter President’s ‘Attacks’

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HARRISBURG — Earlier this spring, with no public notice, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro made an unconventional hire: a senior advisor to help him deal with the Trump administration.

Jennifer Higgins, a longtime federal immigration official based in Washington, D.C., was brought on to help Shapiro and state agencies under his jurisdiction map out responses to some of the president’s targeted attacks on Democrat-led states — notably, funding cuts and demands for sensitive or proprietary information.

Higgins is being paid by the hour — an unusual arrangement for a gubernatorial staffer, and one that Shapiro’s office could not immediately explain. State payroll records show she is paid $89 per hour, and Shapiro officials said she works full-time, putting her annual salary at roughly $185,000.

The administration defended hiring Higgins, even though Pennsylvania already spends tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars every year for a federal government liaison.

The governor’s office employs a full-time lobbyist in Washington, D.C., who is paid $177,507 annually. And in theory, Pennsylvania’s two senators act as the state’s de facto protectors in the nation’s capital and run interference with the White House when problems arise.

But Shapiro spokesperson Rosie Lapowsky explained in an emailed statement that an additional person was needed because “the Trump administration’s relentless attacks on the rights and freedoms of Pennsylvanians are reaching into every corner of our Commonwealth.”

Higgins, Lapowsky said, brings “deep expertise and invaluable perspective helping protect Pennsylvanians during this critical moment.” (Higgins did not respond to Spotlight PA’s request to speak with her directly.)

Still, Higgins’ expertise is in the immigration sphere, where she has spent nearly the entirety of her career. The governor’s office acknowledged that Higgins is not directly advising Shapiro on immigration issues, but is part of a larger group of policy officials, lawyers, and others who provide the governor with information on that and other issues facing the state.

Asked for an example of Higgins’ work, Lapowsky said she helped coordinate Shapiro’s response to a Trump administration demand that states turn over commercial driver’s license records containing personal information. Trump officials have pointed, among other things, to crashes involving noncitizen drivers as one reason for the crackdown and have threatened to withhold federal funding if states do not comply.

In August, Shapiro joined a coalition of state attorneys general suing the federal government over the subpoena.

It’s true that, since reclaiming the White House in 2024, President Donald Trump has used the levers of the federal government to punish blue states.

The administration admitted in a federal court filing this summer that it recommended scrapping billions in grants for clean-energy projects based solely on those states’ “political identity,” and whether Trump won the vote in those places in the 2024 election.

Earlier this year, Trump attempted to freeze billions in childcare and social assistance for five Democratic-led states — he had initiated the move following the federal fraud probe involving Minnesota’s social services network — which he later abandoned.

And Politico reported last month that Trump overruled his own emergency management agency to deny federal relief funds to four Democratic-led states.

For his part, Shapiro often talks about how his administration has sued Trump dozens of times to challenge the loss of federal funding. Those suits involve a range of initiatives, from education to natural disasters. The governor’s office also noted that unlike in other states, where attorneys general are handling litigation against Trump, Shapiro’s lawyers are taking on that work in Pennsylvania. Attorney General Dave Sunday, a Republican, has not entered the commonwealth into any lawsuit against the president or his administration.

Many of those suits predate Higgins’ arrival, and were handled by attorneys already on Shapiro’s staff. But the volume of attacks coming from Washington, Lapowsky said, combined with the range and breadth of policies and issues being targeted, necessitated another person to help coordinate plans to respond.

Immigration leadership

Higgins’ role in the Shapiro administration differs significantly from the work that has defined her career.

She started as an immigration officer in the early 2000s, but quickly moved into leadership roles within the federal office that handles asylum applications and screenings and adjudicates refugee applications, according to an online biography.

Shortly after Trump was elected to a first term in 2016, Higgins became the office’s associate director. Some rights groups have highlighted that part of her bio, since she held a leadership position during the implementation of one of the federal government’s most controversial immigration programs.

Officially called the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), but better known as Remain in Mexico, the program went into effect in early 2019. It required asylum seekers along the southern border to return to cities in Mexico, many of which are dangerous, while waiting for their immigration cases to be heard in the courts. Previously, those people were allowed to stay in the United States during that waiting period.

The Trump administration sold MPP as a way to thwart people with fraudulent claims from easily entering the U.S. But human rights and immigration groups, as well as multiple news organizations, extensively documented how migrants sent to Mexican border towns faced extreme danger, including kidnapping, assault, and rape. Tent camps were set up to house some of the asylum seekers, but living conditions were squalid, with no running water or electricity.

Human rights groups also noted that access to legal representation was fraught with obstacles, and resulted in higher numbers of cases being denied, sometimes just because migrants did not receive timely notices of their hearings or could not safely reach ports of entry into the country to be present for such hearings.

The office where Higgins held a senior leadership role at the time — the Refugee, Asylum and International Operations Directorate (RAIO) inside the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — was part of the larger apparatus tasked with the MPP’s rollout. Higgins’ level of involvement in the program’s operations is not clear, as the office’s work is subject to high levels of confidentiality. But the office she helped oversee is responsible for, among other duties, conducting asylum screenings and applications, according to its website. Its employees would have been at the front lines of the program’s implementation.

President Joe Biden ended the Remain in Mexico program after defeating Trump in 2020. Since retaking the White House, Trump officials have attempted to revive it but have been blocked by the courts.

During Biden’s presidency, Higgins continued to rise. She became acting chief of staff to then-U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and within a year was appointed acting director of the department’s vast agency that oversees the legal U.S. immigration system.

Shortly after Trump started his second term, she was replaced.

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