Todd Lyons, the acting head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is planning to leave the federal government later this spring—possibly June—after more than a year overseeing the agency’s central role in President Trump’s deportation push.
Lyons, a two-decade ICE veteran, reportedly told colleagues he plans to depart the agency in June to spend more time with family, including his sons, in Massachusetts, according to Misryoum newsroom reporting. He is expected to move into the private sector after leaving ICE. The timing also lands just as the agency remains a political lightning rod, both inside Washington and beyond it.
The leadership question is already hanging in the air. It’s not immediately clear who would replace Lyons at the helm. For nearly a decade, ICE has cycled through a dozen acting directors, with no Senate-confirmed head since early 2017, at the end of the Obama administration. Lyons was named acting ICE director in March 2025.
A leadership void inside a flashpoint agency
The incoming vacancy would become one of the first major decisions for Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. He was confirmed by the Senate last month after Mr. Trump ousted Kristi Noem amid concerns about her leadership style and growing backlash to aggressive immigration enforcement operations in cities like Minneapolis.
In a statement to CBS News Thursday, Mullin confirmed Lyons’ departure, saying May 31 is set to be his last official day, according to Misryoum newsroom reporting. He wished Lyons “luck on his next opportunity in the private sector.” Mullin also praised Lyons as a “great leader” and a “key player” helping remove “murderers, rapists, pedophiles, terrorists, and gang members from American communities,” adding that Lyons “jumpstarted an agency” that had not been allowed to do its job for four years. The language is very on-message for the administration, the kind that’s meant to frame enforcement as public safety.
Meanwhile, White House border czar Tom Homan said Lyons has “served selflessly,” commending “a distinguished law enforcement career” and “countless contributions” to protect the country, according to Misryoum newsroom reporting. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, described Lyons as “a phenomenal patriot and dedicated leader” who has been at the center of President Trump’s efforts to secure the homeland and reverse what Miller called a “Democrats’ sinister border invasion.”
Even among supporters, the question becomes: what happens next at ICE? That matters because ICE’s operations—especially its visible enforcement actions—have turned into a constant political fight. Democrats in Congress have refused to fully fund the agency unless the Trump administration agrees to make certain reforms, which has fueled an ongoing partial government shutdown. Scrutiny has intensified, including criticism of officers wearing masks and complaints that some operations are inhumane and excessively harsh.
A person familiar with the atmosphere described the scene this week in plain terms: the quiet before another briefing, the muffled thump of a printer somewhere in the hallway, and then someone saying, basically, “Well, we’ll see who steps in.” It’s the kind of detail you only notice when a job is suddenly about to change hands.
From field operations to a crackdown, with internal tensions
Lyons’ career path helps explain why the agency is feeling this move so sharply. An Air Force veteran who was deployed overseas, Lyons joined ICE in 2007 as an agent in Dallas. He rose to the No. 2 spot in ICE’s Dallas field office, then became field office director of the agency’s Boston region covering all of New England. Later, he took leadership roles at ICE headquarters, including as assistant director for field operations at ICE’s deportation branch, Enforcement and Removal Operations.
Misryoum newsroom reporting also indicates Lyons was well-liked among career ICE officials, even if he wasn’t always perfectly aligned with internal administration moves. He publicly embraced Mr. Trump’s crackdown, but internally he reportedly disagreed at times with decisions such as Kristi Noem’s effort to elevate Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino and task him with leading sweeping and controversial roundups in major U.S. cities.
After fatal shootings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis—and the bipartisan backlash that followed—Bovino was relieved of his command there. Border czar Tom Homan was sent to Minneapolis to wind down the operation, and Bovino has since retired from government service. At the same time, Lyons reportedly pushed internally for operations to target people with criminal histories, a population the agency has historically prioritized for arrest and deportation.
Lyons’ tenure also included major enforcement buildout. Under his leadership, ICE mounted a massive push to recruit and hire thousands of additional deportation agents, thanks to $75 billion in funds provided by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. He also signed a May 2025 memo, disclosed earlier this year by a whistleblower, that authorized ICE agents to forcibly enter homes without judicial warrants during certain operations—a marked shift from longstanding agency practice and policy.
So his departure isn’t just personnel. It’s a test of whether the agency’s direction—its priorities, its tolerance for controversy, and its methods—stays locked in, or starts to pivot a little under a new leader. And for Mullin, with an early political mandate and a very public agency under his watch, picking the next acting head won’t be a low-stakes problem. It will probably be a fight all its own—over competence, over messaging, and, inevitably, over what reforms Congress will demand next, if any.
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