Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Todd Lyons will step down on May 31 amid an ongoing battle over funding and reforms for the law enforcement agency.
Lyons will finish nearly 20 years at the agency to pivot to a private-sector job after leading President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts since March 2025, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced Thursday in an X post. The secretary credited Lyons with giving ICE new life after lax immigration enforcement under the Biden-Harris administration.
“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. “He jumpstarted an agency that had not been allowed to do its job for four years. Thanks to his leadership, American communities are safer.”
Lyons also helped expand a pre-existing ICE program that allows local law enforcement to partner on various immigration enforcement functions, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported. Trump’s ICE entered into more than 1,000 such agreements with local entities in 2025 and more than 100 in 2026.
The acting director’s departure will mark the second major one at DHS since Trump removed Kristi Noem as secretary in March. Trump officials accused her of staff mismanagement, feuding with other agency heads, wasteful spending on an ad campaign and botching Minnesota deportation operations that led to two protesters dying in scuffles with federal agents, the Daily Caller previously reported.
The operations in Minnesota have also led to a standoff between Republicans and Democrats over funding for DHS and reforms Democrats are pushing for ICE. A handful of Senators passed a funding bill late at night on March 27, but failed to pass the House before a two-week vacation, while the agency remains unfunded
Federal agents deported more than 675,000 in 2025, while about 2.2 million self-deported under Trump’s program that pays illegal immigrants to leave the country, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
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