Todd Lyons is planning to leave the federal government in June, ending a run as the acting head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that began in March 2025, according to two U.S. officials familiar with his plans. Markwayne Mullin said Thursday that May 31 is set to be Lyons’ last official day.
Lyons has told colleagues he wants to spend more time with his family in Massachusetts after more than a year leading an agency at the center of President Trump’s deportation campaign. He is expected to join the private sector after leaving ICE.
Lyons has spent two decades at ICE and joined the agency in 2007 as an agent in Dallas. He later became the field office director for ICE’s Boston region and then took on leadership roles at headquarters, including assistant director for field operations at Enforcement and Removal Operations. He is also an Air Force veteran who was deployed overseas.
Mullin praised Lyons as a strong leader and credited him with helping the Trump administration remove murderers, rapists, pedophiles, terrorists and gang members from American communities. In another statement, he said Lyons jumpstarted an agency that had not been allowed to do its job for four years and made American communities safer.
The departure would leave ICE without a Senate-confirmed chief again in a department that has cycled through a dozen acting directors over nearly a decade. The agency has been central to Trump’s nationwide effort to deport millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, and Lyons’ exit comes while that campaign remains one of the administration’s most visible priorities.
Stephen Miller called Lyons a phenomenal patriot and dedicated leader who has been at the center of Trump’s efforts to secure the homeland and reverse what he described as the Democrats’ sinister border invasion. The question now is who will be asked to take over an agency that has become one of the most politically charged posts in Washington.