Acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons is vowing to fulfill the promise President Donald Trump made during his 2024 presidential campaign to execute the largest deportation effort in the history of the United States, doing so not just for the sake of political expediency, but for the safety of American citizens and the preservation of limited resources.
During an interview last Sunday on CBS’s 60 Minutes, President Trump was asked about immigration policy, specifically if some of the raids that have been launched during the first year of his term have gone “too far.” Trump responded, “No, I think they haven’t gone far enough, because we’ve been held back by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama. You have to get the people out, you know? You have, look at the people. Many of them are murderers. Many of them are people that were thrown out of their countries because they were, you know, criminals.”
Lyons sat down for a conversation on America Reports where he stated that ICE will be working with state and local partners to identify as many illegal aliens as possible and “take action on them.” He went on to add, “No one’s off the table. We’re going to use all the tools in the toolbox. We have great federal partners. Department of Justice has been outstanding with us, and we are going to team up with everyone that wants to work with us, and we’re to go out there and keep the president’s promise to sure that we have one of the largest deportation efforts ever.”
The acting ICE director went on to discuss the difficulties immigration officers are facing due to threatening rhetoric and being swarmed by protesters before they can slap cuffs on illegals. “For the first time ever, ICE has been allowed to do their law enforcement mission, and the problem is so many on the left and there are so many people opposed to us, that a lot of the tactics that you are seeing are in self-defense,” he said.
Lyons then called for elected officials to take action against the rhetoric that’s placing a bullseye square on the back of agents simply doing their job to enforce the law. “What I say to an elected official that doesn’t like immigration action right now is to work with us,” Lyons said in an interview with Fox News. “Tone down the rhetoric, stop putting targets on ICE agents’ backs, and go ahead and make your community safer. Work with us to take out these public safety threats. That’s what the president has promised.”
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According to his official government profile, before taking the job as acting Director of ICE, Lyons served as the Executive Associate Director of ICE, where he was in charged of Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). The mission of the ERO is to help protect the United States by arresting and deporting noncitizens and enforce current immigration laws.
Featured image: screenshot taken from embedded video