Jacalynne Becker Klopp: The mystery woman raking in the White House’s highest salary

Klopp’s $225,700 federal salary topped the list of White House pay stubs in the executive branch’s 2025 report to Congress revealing West Wing employee wages. The annual report offers insight into the more than 400 staffers on Trump’s payroll. Klopp’s salary tops that of dozens of the president’s innermost circle—including White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and “border czar” Tom Homan—by more than $30,000. Klopp’s salary rivals that of current Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who is reportedly earning around $230,000 from her government work. Fortune can confirm that Klopp is in fact earning the maximum amount of money possible, according to the Office of Personnel Management. 

“Jacki is a senior executive that has served in the federal government for over 17 years,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Fortune. “She is a dedicated public servant and plays a critical role in the Trump Administration’s success as a top advisor to Border Czar Tom Homan and other officials.”

It’s unclear what, exactly, makes Klopp the most valuable staffer to Trump. In the White House’s report, she is listed simply as an “advisor” with the special designation of detailee, meaning an employee on loan from a federal agency to the White House. Her high salary may be attributed to her status as detailee: Politico notes that staffers on detail may have higher salaries at their home agencies than those allocated for traditional executive staffers. The agency that detailed Klopp to the West Wing is unspecified.

Regardless of her detailee status, several former federal government employees told Fortune that Klopp’s salary appeared unusually high to them. In fact, her salary is more than double the average annual pay at Homeland Security, according to ZipRecruiter’s estimates. And she is earning more than former Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas made during President Joe Biden’s administration. 

While few details are available about Klopp’s background and duties, she has a long history working for the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

Courtesy of Jordan Engel

Klopp, a Florida native, graduated from Tulane University in 2005 with a major in political science, the university’s alumni office confirmed to Fortune. State records indicate she has been registered as a Republican in the Sunshine State since 2000. 

The 42-year-old is married to lobbyist Stephen Klopp, a senior advisor at Ballard Partners, a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm, and the former assistant deputy sergeant at arms in the U.S. Senate. His clients, per federal lobbying filings, include the Business Roundtable, Accenture, and ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company). The Klopps appear to live in a multimillion-dollar home in McLean, Va., one of the wealthiest towns in the nation. 

Klopp’s government career, according to LinkedIn, began in 2004 when she spent six months working in the office of the majority whip in the House of Representatives. She then moved on to an unspecified position in the White House Office of Political Affairs in the Bush administration. In August 2005, she moved to the Department of Homeland Security, working first as a confidential assistant in the office of the secretary and then as a special assistant to the secretary until 2009. 

Klopp appears to have left the government from 2009 to 2012, during which time she worked as a consultant at the Sentinel HS Group, a homeland security consultancy with past federal contracts with DHS and the U.S. Border Patrol. 

By 2014, it appears, Klopp rejoined the federal government, working at ICE in enforcement and removal operations (ERO), according to a lawsuit in which she is named as a supervisor. While her exact job title is not clear, Open Payrolls confirms she worked at ICE making just under $139,000 annually in the ERO division until 2016. 

Declassified archived transition team documents from 2016 name Klopp as ERO Operations Support Assistant Director. In this role, she worked under Trump’s current border czar, Tom Homan. Legal filings have her holding the same title in 2019, when she was named in a lawsuit alleging migrant detainee mistreatment at an ICE facility. The suit initially resulted in a preliminary injunction requiring ICE to implement measures like identifying and tracking detainees with COVID-19 risk factors, but was ultimately overturned. As of 2022, Klopp was still listed as an assistant director at ERO. 

While the exact duties Klopp carried out at ICE are unknown, her division, ERO, manages the immigration enforcement process, namely identifying, arresting, detaining, and deporting unauthorized immigrants. ERO operations support, the subsection where Klopp worked, provides the resources and support to execute ERO’s duties by managing the budget, overseeing its finances, managing oversight and compliance, constructing detention facilities, and training staff, among other tasks. During her stint working under Homan at ERO, during President Barack Obama’s second term, the U.S. carried out a record number of deportations. 

Given Klopp’s extensive history at ICE, her duties in the White House are likely part of the Trump administration’s vast immigration crackdown that aims to significantly expand the role and operations of ICE. Trump has repeatedly expressed his support of mass deportations with a goal of at least 3,000 ICE arrests per day. The president previously told Time magazine he wanted to target 15 million people for removal. 

To support these initiatives, President Trump and his administration have sought to increase funding for immigration detention centers and expand ICE resources and personnel. The recently passed “Big, Beautiful Bill” allocates $100 billion to ICE and border enforcement through September 2029. The existing annual budget for ICE was approximately $8 billion. The legislation also allocates nearly $29.9 billion for ICE’s deportation and enforcement operations and $45 billion for detention centers.