Todd M. Lyons resigned as Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director to spend more time with family. Photo / Getty Images
Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Todd M. Lyons submitted his resignation today, capping his leadership of one of the agency’s most tumultuous eras, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family.
Lyons, a career ICE official, presided over the agency’s rapid expansion to implement President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign. ICE more than doubled its workforce and detention beds, deported people to countries where they are not citizens, and deployed officers to Democratic-led cities to arrest immigrants, which triggered often violent clashes with protesters. In January, an ICE officer fatally shot a US citizen, Renee Good, a Minneapolis mother of three.
ICU nurse Alex Pretti also was shot dead that month by Customs and Border Protection, which often teamed with ICE on the raids.
“This was not an easy decision, but I believe it is the right one for me and my family at this time,” Lyons wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. “I am confident that ICE will continue to fulfil its vital responsibilities with integrity and professionalism.”
In a statement, Mullin called Lyons “a great leader of ICE and key player in helping the Trump administration remove murderers, rapists, pedophiles, terrorists, and gang members from American communities”. He said Lyons was moving on to a job in the private sector, though he did not provide details. Lyons’ last day will be May 31.
“He jumpstarted an agency that had not been allowed to do its job for four years,” Mullin said. “Thanks to his leadership, American communities are safer.”
Appearing frequently in the media, Lyons emphasised that officers and agents were also the targets of a rising number of attacks and abuse. During his tenure, many officers began wearing masks and refusing to identify themselves to the public, drawing protests from lawmakers.
Lyons said they needed to shield their faces for protection and that protesters were posting their photos and identities online and sending them death threats.
“I’m sorry if people are offended by them wearing masks, but I’m not going to let my officers and agents go out there and put their lives on the line, their family on the line, because people don’t like what immigration enforcement is,” he said at a news conference in June in Boston.
Lyons frequently defended the immigration raids and highlighted immigrants who committed crimes, including killing Americans, and said arresting and deporting them was the agency’s top priority. But federal data shows ICE officers continue to target large numbers of immigrants with no criminal record.
“We do it for these individuals, these families who are no longer with their loved ones because they didn’t get the justice they deserved,” Lyons said at a recent news conference.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called Lyons “a phenomenal patriot and dedicated leader who has been at the centre of President Trump’s historic efforts to secure our homeland”.
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan, a former acting ICE director, said Lyons “has served selflessly” and deported a record number of immigrants in the first year of Trump’s second term, though far fewer than the administration’s goal of 1 million.
Lyons, a US Air Force veteran, began leading ICE in March 2025, under then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was ousted last month. He has previously held management roles running field operations for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, which detains and deports immigrants, and served as the field office director for the Boston office. He joined the agency in 2007 as an immigration officer in Dallas.
At a congressional hearing in February, Democrats criticised Lyons for ICE’s increasingly violent tactics.
“I have a simple suggestion: If you don’t want to be called a fascist regime or secret police, then stop acting like one,” Representative Dan Goldman (D-New York) told Lyons at the hearing.
Lyons remained defiant and said anti-ICE rhetoric had led to threats of violence against officers – and that his own family had been targeted.
“Let me send a message to anyone who thinks you can intimidate us: You will fail,” Lyons said. “We will continue carrying out our mission.”
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