Todd Lyons, the acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is stepping down after a turbulent year carrying out Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.
Lyons, who has been leading the agency since March 2025, will resign at the end of May and move to the private sector, Markwayne Mullin, the Department of Homeland Security secretary, said in a statement on Thursday.
Mullin’s statement did not include details about who will succeed Lyons, and DHS and the White House did not immediately respond to inquiries.
Lyons’ departure comes as ICE faces escalating backlash over its violent and aggressive tactics across the country, including the recent shooting of a California man during a traffic stop, which Lyons defended.
Lyons, who started with ICE as an agent in Texas in 2007, has been under growing pressure since immigration agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January. When Lyons was testifying before Congress after the shootings, he declined to apologize to Good’s and Pretti’s families or say whether he agreed with the Trump administration’s widely criticized claims that the US citizens shot by officers were “domestic terrorists”.