ICE Director Lyons to Depart in May After Tumultuous Tenure (1)

The acting head of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement will leave the agency at the end of May after a tumultuous year managing President Donald Trump’s mass arrest and deportation campaign.

Todd Lyons has been the agency’s acting head since March 2025. During his tenure, he oversaw the rapid expansion of ICE ranks, while repeatedly defending the use of force in raids across the country. He was also a vocal defender of agents wearing masks, saying they needed to conceal their identities for safety.

In a statement, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Lyons is expected to move to the private sector after leaving the agency on May 31.

Todd Lyons at a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security hearing in Washington, DC, on April 16.

Photographer: Pete Kiehart/Bloomberg

“Director Lyons has been a great leader of ICE and key player in helping the Trump administration remove murderers, rapists, pedophiles, terrorists, and gang members from American communities,” Mullin said.

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and chief architect of Trump’s immigration agenda, also praised Lyons, saying his work at the agency had saved thousands of American lives and made the US safer.

“Todd is a phenomenal patriot and dedicated leader who has been at the center of President Trump’s historic efforts to secure our homeland and reverse the Democrats’ sinister border invasion,” Miller said in a statement.

ICE is the lead Department of Homeland Security agency managing the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign and has become a target of growing criticism from the public and lawmakers.

In January, ICE agents shot and killed Renee Good, a US citizen, during an encounter in Minnesota, the first of two fatal shootings there that set off a wave of protests.

Lyons’ departure was announced the same day an ICE agent was charged with two counts of felony assault in Minnesota after being accused of waving a gun at passing motorists during a surge operation there in February.

Last year, at a border security conference in Phoenix, Arizona, Lyons forecast the agency’s move to overhaul its immigration detention and deportation system, saying the agency needs to “get better at treating this like a business, where this mass deportation operation is something like you would see and say, like Amazon trying to get your Prime delivery within 24 hours.”

ICE has spent more than $850 million to buy warehouses in at least nine locations. Mullin, who took command of DHS last month after former Secretary Kristi Noem was fired, has said he would review those plans.

Lyons is a US Air Force veteran and a career law enforcement officer who joined ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division in 2007. CBS News first reported his departure.

(Updates with Miller statement in sixth paragraph)

--With assistance from Hadriana Lowenkron and Skylar Woodhouse.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Alicia A. Caldwell in Los Angeles at acaldwell54@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sarah McGregor at smcgregor5@bloomberg.net

Laura Davison, Jon Herskovitz

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