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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”.

In January, Minnesota’s top federal judge summoned Lyons to appear before his court and warned the acting ICE head could be held in contempt for defying orders. The judge accused the Trump administration of ignoring court orders in Minnesota amid a surge in lawsuits claiming unlawful immigration arrests, though Lyons ultimately did not have to testify.

Lyons oversaw the enormous expansion of ICE, which said in January it had hired roughly 12,000 officers and agents in less than a year. He also defended his officers’ rights to wear masks despite widespread concerns about the public safety risks posed by agents being unidentifiable.

Lyons has further faced questions about conditions in ICE detention centers, including growing concerns around the sprawling Dilley facility in Texas, which holds families and children.

Under Lyons, ICE has touted its record of arresting “the worst of the worst”, but a Guardian analysis in February found that the vast majority of people entering deportation proceedings for the first time in 2025 had no criminal conviction.

Polls have shown growing anti-ICE sentiment in the US. A February poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans said ICE had gone too far, and a March poll reported that half of Americans would like to see ICE abolished. A Fox News poll reported six in 10 voters disapproved of ICE’s performance.

Mullins’ statement praised Lyons, saying he “jumpstarted an agency that had not been allowed to do its job for four years”. The White House also released statements of praise on Thursday from Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, and Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration policies.