Acting ICE director to leave as controversies, funding questions continue to swirl around agency
The acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced his pending departure on Thursday, the same day he was grilled by Democrats in Congress over the concerning number of deaths at migrant detention centres across the U.S.
While the two events were not related, it illustrates just one of the issues confronting the agency and its overseeing deparment — Homeland Security — amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s expansive deportation campaign. The actions of Trump’s agencies since last year have been viewed negatively by an increasing number of Americans, according to several polls.
Todd Lyons will depart ICE on May 31 and will move to the private sector, new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement. Mullin said Lyons “jumpstarted an agency that had not been allowed to do its job for four years,” while White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson hailed him as “an American patriot who made our country safer.”
Thirty-two individuals were known to have died under ICE or Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) detention last year, the highest total since 2004, when the agency was in its infancy as a successor — fuelled by fallout from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — to the erstwhile Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). So far this year, there have been 16 deaths in ICE detention or custody.
Lyons, questioned by Democratic House Rep. Lauren Underwood at a committee Thursday, said it’s the highest total in decades “because we do have the highest amount in detention that ICE has ever had since its inception in 2003.”
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The answer did not satisfy Underwood, who represents an Illinois district.
“Just saying simply there’s more detainees, I mean, you have more officers, you have more resources,” she said. “That’s not, in my opinion, a valid rationale why the death rate would be increasing.”
ICE officer charged in Minnesota
There is some support for Underwood’s contention. Even as admissions to migrant detention centres rose to well over 400,000 individuals per year over the first two decades of this century, the death toll in several of those years was in the single digits or low double digits, before a noticeable bump in 2020, the year COVID-19 emerged but vaccines weren’t yet approved.
The 16 deaths this year include inviduals from 10 countries, with four people originally from Mexico. Mexico’s Foreign Ministry has said it would file a legal brief in support of a lawsuit brought by detainees alleging poor conditions at detention centres, including inadequate medical care, unsanitary conditions and the punitive use of isolation.
Mexico’s Foreign Ministry has said it would also raise the issue to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Trump has said the crackdown on unauthorized U.S. residents is necessary to improve domestic security and curb illegal immigration. While it’s true that the U.S. has a population without legal status that amounts to about one-third of Canada’s total population, this week a report by the libertarian Cato Institute, co-founded by longtime Republican Party donor Charles Koch, has indicated the second Trump administration is also throttling legal pathways to immigrate.
The Trump administration announced deportation dragnets in a number of U.S. cities last year, operations frequently opposed by the elected Democratic officials leading those cities and states. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker slammed Lyons in a social media post on Thursday for overseeing “a secret police force for Trump where masked agents attacked our own American streets, violated Constitutional rights, and shot our own citizens.”
Grassroots activists also opposed those deployments, and in Minnesota in January, two of them lost their lives protesting a federal deportation operation targeting Somalian American residents. Renee Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer, and Alex Pretti was hit multiple times as two CBP officers fired their weapons.
Since then, Trump and the administration have stepped back from announcing large deployments, while DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has been jettisoned after facing questions about department spending under her leadership.
Lyons on Thursday declined to apologize for officials, including Noem, who portrayed Good and Pretti, both American citizens, as radicals and terrorists.
“I welcome the opportunity to speak to the family in private. But I’m not going to comment on any active investigation,” he said.
The brothers of Renee Good, the 37-year-old woman shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis last month, testified at a congressional forum on Tuesday. Luke Ganger said what has been happening in the city is ‘completely surreal,’ adding: ‘This is not just a bad day or a rough week or isolated incidents.’
But it’s not clear based on previous comments from Todd Blanche, who is now the acting attorney general, that the Good kiling was being investigated at all. Minnesota officials have expressed frustration with a lack of transparency from federal officials following the fatal shootings, though the Justice Department has said the FBI was conducting a civil rights investigation into Pretti’s killing, while CBP is conducting its own internal investigation of that deadly incident.
Another battle between that state and the Trump administration could be developing after officials in Hennepin County in Minnesota on Thursday announced charges against ICE agent Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr., accusing him of pointing his gun at an occupied vehicle. A local prosecutor said it is the first criminal case against a federal officer involved in the Minnesota immigration crackdown, though it’s not clear if they have jurisdiction to see the prosecution through.
Questionable detentions
Mullin told CNBC on Thursday that deportations were now being carried out “in a more quiet way, because my goal in six months is to not have DHS on the lead [news] story every day.”
Mullin said the agency remains focused on the “worst of the worst” who shouldn’t be on the country, but stories continue to percolate over questionable detentions, including that of a middle-aged Indo-American court translator, an 85-year-old widow originally from France, as well as cases involving Canadian citizens.
Tania Warner said she’s seeking avenues to take legal action against those involved in her detention for their treatment of her seven-year-old daughter, Ayla. Both Warner and Ayla were held in ICE facilities for more than two weeks in Texas, despite Warner’s insistence they are living in the United States legally.
ICE has not had a permanent director since Trump took office a second time. Lyons took over in March 2025 after the brief tenure of Caleb Vitello, and acting heads of agencies are typically only supposed to be in place for 210 days, though Trump has circumvented that standard dating back to his first term.
Whoever succeeds Lyons will helm an agency flush with cash, despite the protestations of many Democrats in Congress.
This year’s annual funding for ICE and CBP has been held up amid a disagreement between the two parties. In a move to get new money approved without Democratic support, Republicans as soon as next week could use a special Senate procedure allowing bills to pass by a simple majority, instead of support from at least 60 senators in the 100-member body.
The annual funding is in addition to well over $100 billion US in multi-year funding Republicans won last July.