The former head of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’s removal efforts in Boston has been promoted to lead the agency’s national efforts, according to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.
Noem announced Sunday that Todd Lyons, former field office director of ICE operations in Boston, will serve as the agency’s acting director. Noem made the announcement Sunday during an appearance on CBS news and via social media.
Along with Lyons’ promotion, Noem said that Madison Sheahan, a former staffer in her office, will serve as Acting Deputy Director.
“Todd Lyons and Madison Sheahan are work horses, strong executors, and accountable leaders who will lead the men and women of ICE to achieve the American people’s mandate to target, arrest and deport illegal aliens,” Noem said in a statement shared by DHS.
Lyons ran Boston’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement Removal Operations — Boston ERO for short — under the Biden Administration, but was promoted to lead removal operations for the entire agency in mid-February.
As the director of ICE’s Boston field office, Lyons was previously responsible for all removal and enforcement operations conducted by ICE throughout New England. He began his career with ICE in 2007 as an ERO Agent working out of Dallas.
Sheahan currently serves as Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, and previously served in “various leadership positions” under Noem when the latter was governor of South Dakota.
“For the past four years, our brave men and women of ICE were barred from doing their jobs — ICE needs a culture of accountability that it has been starved of under the Biden Administration. With President Trump’s support, I am appointing new ICE leadership to deliver results that President Trump and the American people rightfully demand,” Noem said in her statement.
The promotions come after the previous Acting ICE Director, Caleb Vitello, was reassigned to a non-administrative role on February 21, amid rumors that the pace of immigrant removals was not up to the Trump Administration’s expectations. Vitello took over the agency tasked with overseeing and executing the president’s plan for mass deportations on Trump’s first day in office, and spent just over a month in the role. Despite his removal, as of Sunday night, Vitello was still listed as the agency’s acting director on the ICE leadership website.
The person serving as ICE Director is meant to be confirmed by U.S. Senate, but that hasn’t been the case at the agency through most of the position’s history. The last non-acting ICE director was Sarah Saldaña, who was confirmed by the senate in December of 2014 after selection by former President Barack Obama. In the 15 years since the job of Assistant Secretary for U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement was retitled as the Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2010, no director nominee except Saldaña has seen confirmation.
Despite at least twice attempting to put a permanent leader into the position, shake-ups at the top of ICE were the norm under Trump during his first four-year term, when there were nine acting ICE directors, some of whom served fewer than two weeks. Trump’s official picks to lead the agency, current Border Czar and former Acting Director Tom Homan and former Acting Director Ronald Vitiello, both were formally nominated but never cleared the confirmation process.
Trump’s final acting director, Tae Johnson, went on to serve for more than two years under President Joe Biden, well past the 300-day window allowed under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998. Biden’s nominee to take over the agency permanently, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, of Texas, withdrew from consideration after his nomination stalled in the Senate for more than a year amid rumors of a past domestic violence incident, which Gonzalez and his wife both denied.
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