US immigration agency interim head Todd Lyons to step down

The acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Todd Lyons, will leave his post at the agency charged with enforcing US President Donald Trump's anti-immigrant crackdown in May, the Homeland Security Secretary announced yesterday (16 April). 

Todd Lyons "has been a great leader of ICE," said Markwayne Mullin in a statement, adding that his last day would be May 31 and wishing him luck in his "next opportunity in the private sector."

Lyons was appointed acting director of ICE by Trump in March 2025. He was a "key player" in the US president's anti-immigration drive, Mullin said.

Mullin, who was appointed just a few weeks ago following the dismissal of his predecessor, Kristi Noem, did not give a reason for Lyon's departure or announce a replacement.

The federal police has come under fire for carrying out brutal anti-immigrant raids, with two US citizen protesters shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis this year.

Lyons's departure comes a month after Gregory Bovino, the face of Trump's immigration raids, resigned from the US Border Patrol after outcry over violent raids in Minneapolis.

At a Department of Homeland Security oversight hearing in February, Lyons defended the law enforcement agency's work.

"The president tasked us with mass deportation, and we are fulfilling that mandate," he told Congress.

Campaigning against illegal immigration helped Trump get elected in 2024, but the killings of the two Americans, videos of masked agents snatching people off the streets, and reports of people being targeted on flimsy evidence, have contributed to a steep drop in his approval ratings.