As head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd Lyons has a particular preference for members of his security detail: agents without children.
Working in Washington while his family lives in Massachusetts, Lyons knows what it’s like to miss Thanksgiving together or a kid’s football game.
“He didn’t want to take guys away from their children,” said his uncle, Jack Lyons.
Yet the agency he oversees often breaks up families in its controversial campaign to fulfill President Trump’s mandate for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. Since his appointment last March, hundreds of thousands of people have been detained and deported from the United States, many leaving families behind.
This is but one seeming contradiction at play with the 52-year-old Lyons, a native of Southie, career law enforcement official, and Air Force veteran who has worked at ICE nearly since the agency’s infancy two decades ago. Affable and even-keeled, a self-described “football and baseball dad,” Lyons supervises an army of armed agents and officers who have shattered car windows, dragged immigrants from vehicles, and killed a US citizen, leaving terror in their wake.
Those who know Lyons say he is not the fire-breathing partisan one might expect to be leading the nation’s most controversial federal agency. Rather, in more than two dozen interviews, people from across the political spectrum portrayed him as respectful, cordial, and occasionally funny — the consummate professional. During his time leading ICE’s field office in Boston, for example, they say he regularly met with police chiefs and immigration attorneys alike, willingly took flak from activists at protests, and always returned a phone call.
Those qualities could position Lyons as a more restrained voice in the nation’s immigration leadership, which has shifted after the firing of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and confirmation of Markwayne Mullin as her replacement.
Lyons told the Globe that under new leadership, the department will be focused on “the worst of the worst,” a claim officials have made before.
“Not like Minneapolis,” Lyons said. “Not like before.”
Even still, some who’ve worked with Lyons over the years find it difficult to square the deliberate, measured man they know with the hardline deportation policies of the Trump administration that have touched everyone from a child with cancer to a soft-spoken graduate student. They wonder if he had shape-shifted, or if they did not really know him as well as they thought.
Yet others said he believes deeply in the mission of the agency and speculate that he feels he can moderate the brasher tendencies of his superiors by staying at the helm.
Lyons himself breaks down all those questions to a simple explanation: Those targeted for deportation, he said in an interview, “are here in the country illegally.”
Lyons, who has two sons and a wife who works as a public school teacher, said he has sympathy for the families divided by deportations.
“As a father and a husband, of course I think about that,” he said in an interview. But, he said, “I never put my family in a situation where they’re committing a crime.”
That is to say, the law is the law.
Not so long ago, however, those same immigration laws were enforced differently by ICE officers, including Lyons himself. Even during Trump’s first term, officers exercised far more discretion about who was worth their time to detain for deportation. A student who overstayed her visa, an immigrant brought across the border as a child now married to a US citizen, a parent whose temporary status had suddenly lapsed — all might have received more leniency.
Living in the United States without lawful status is a civil violation, not a criminal offense. But compared to their counterparts in the Biden administration, Trump officials have taken a more rigid approach, frequently detaining immigrants who lack authorization even if they have not been charged with a crime. About 40 percent of those arrested during the first year of Trump’s second term did not have a criminal record.
The story of Lyons’s rise demonstrates how dramatically American immigration enforcement has changed in just a few short years. And his adaptation to those changes shows what, and who, it takes to deliver the mass deportations the president promised.
“He’s a really nice guy,” said Simona Flores-Lund, Lyons’s former boss in ICE’s Dallas office. “Don’t judge him because of the job he does.”
Lyons is what fellow Bostonians might call “a regular guy”: unpretentious and easy to get along with, someone who likes to play golf, watch the Patriots, and have a beer. He has salt and pepper hair, which he wears slicked back over a broad face, and he speaks firmly and directly. He comes off more relaxed during interviews with conservative podcast hosts than with mainstream journalists. He is personable, if guarded, and known to crack a joke.
“If the three of us are in a circle, he’d have you in stitches, laughing, telling stories,” Jack Lyons said. “If there was 30 people, he’d be quiet as a church mouse.”
Lyons was born just as school busing convulsed the city, coming of age as a drug epidemic swept his neighborhood of South Boston. He played team sports, liking baseball especially. Service was a constant theme in his household, but never politics, said his father, Tommy Lyons, a decorated Marine known as a leader among fellow veterans. Like a lot of kids in Southie, Todd Lyons grew up wanting to be a cop or a firefighter.
He attended Boston College High at a time when the Jesuit school was focused on racial integration. “Achieving diversity would benefit the whole community,” reads a blurb in his yearbook next to a photo of Lyons and his lunch table, a crew of city and suburban kids that included future chief executive of MassPort, Rich Davey. Lyons wore the gelled-up hair of rapper Vanilla Ice. At one point during high school, he sampled marijuana — just “one puff,” he would later write in a job application.
“He was not the valedictorian, he was not the captain of the football team,” but instead chose “service-based activities,” said Brendan Hickey, a high school friend. Lyons joined peer ministry, the World Affairs Club, Model United Nations, and the freshman orientation committee. He also worked in the school kitchen.
After high school, Lyons spent two semesters at Suffolk University, then enlisted in the Air Force in 1993, stationed in South Korea, Italy, and ultimately Tampa. He was given increasing levels of responsibility and took the work seriously, said Erich Schulz, a friend who worked with him in Italy.
“He was ‘squared away,’ to use a military term,” Schulz said. “I’ve never seen Todd do anything that was not correct.”
Lyons left active duty in 1999 but was recalled after Sept. 11, 2001. His father still remembers the night he called to say he was being deployed, first to Qatar and Pakistan.
While not stationed overseas, Lyons was living in Florida, where he moved into civilian law enforcement, working as a mounted bike officer for the University of South Florida Police Department and then in Temple Terrace, a small city outside Tampa. Police records show fellow officers praised his work ethic and collegiality; a supervisor wrote in a 2001 evaluation that Lyons had received just one reprimand: “for backing into a pole.” He earned several commendations over the years, including for his role in catching a suspect who had stolen a car with a 5-year-old girl inside.
“I love the difference I can make in others’ lives,” he wrote in a job application in 2003.
In 2003, the USF Police Department investigated Lyons for excessive force and racially insensitive statements. The investigation labeled those claims “unfounded,” though a police captain expressed “concern with some of the language used.”
Lyons and a fellow Temple Terrace police officer were later sued for excessive force over an alleged incident at a Buccaneers game in September 2004. Rickie Maness, an off-duty ICE agent, claimed Lyons and another officer assaulted him after Maness approached officers who were ejecting other fans from the stadium. Maness said Lyons slammed him into a wall and another officer tased him, leaving him with neck injuries that required surgery. In court documents, Lyons denied the allegations of excessive force. The case against him was settled in 2009, and a judge dismissed the lawsuit.
In his early 30s, as he approached the age cutoff for many federal law enforcement postings, Lyons applied to several agencies and was accepted by ICE, then still in its early days.
He started at the ICE office in Dallas in 2007, and soon stood out for his ambition. He picked up credits over the years at the Community College of the Air Force and local schools in Florida, and completed his undergraduate degree online in 2008 through the University of Phoenix. He also earned a master’s degree in criminal justice leadership online from New England College.
When she started as field office director in Dallas in 2012, Lyons’s new boss asked him about his career aspirations.
“His first comment to me was, ‘Ma’am, I would like to be the director someday,’” Flores-Lund recalled. At the time, most directors of ICE had been lawyers or judges; Lyons was neither, making his goal particularly ambitious. “I go, ‘Do you mean a field office director?’ And he said, ‘No, with all due respect, I want to be the director someday.’”
Their families met up for barbecues, to swim, and watch football games. Lyons could never sit still when the Patriots were on, she recalled.
Paul Hunker, former chief counsel for ICE in Dallas, remembered Lyons as hard-working and impressive, someone who was friendly and not “too much of a hard ass.”
In those years, ICE officers had much more discretion over deportation priorities, Hunker said. But “ICE is not willing to do that anymore,” he said. “Certainly the Trump administration is giving the marching orders.”
Lyons, who went on to lead the Boston field office and then hold top roles at ICE headquarters, said he chafed under the Biden administration’s approach to immigration enforcement, and he now trumpets the hard-edged policy of the second Trump administration. “We are being allowed to do our job,” he told the Globe.
“People just can’t believe, ‘Oh my god, I’ve been here eight to 10 years, now you’re arresting me,’” Lyons said on a podcast last year. “Well, yeah, you’re here illegally, right?”
But in Boston — where Lyons returned in 2017 — he himself sometimes opted for leniency. During the first Trump administration, Lyons called Representative Seth Moulton’s office to help an immigrant avoid detention and possible deportation. The man had been in the country for decades and wasn’t considered a threat, recalled Rick Jakious, Moulton’s former district director. Make yourself scarce that day, was the message from Lyons, Jakious said; go to the emergency room and you won’t get detained.
“How do you square the humanity he showed in this one instance with just the cruelty and the spectacle that we see that ICE is now?” asked Jakious, who is now running for Congress in a district north of Boston.
In the first Trump administration, Jakious said, he viewed Lyons as one of the career officials restraining the president’s more extreme tendencies. Now, he said, some of those public servants are gone, and others have “decided to shape-shift.”
“Authoritarian regimes are built on the backs, on the shoulders of people like Todd Lyons,” he said. Lyons “clearly knew better at some point.”
A former ICE director under the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, John Torres, said Lyons is in a difficult position: Agency directors have many bosses, and administrations’ priorities can shift. Career officials can feel stuck in their roles, especially when they are still years from full vesting in their pensions. Trump has already made major staff changes to the Department of Homeland Security, making clear he’s willing to fire people who don’t conform, Torres said.
“The writing is on the wall saying, ‘We want you to do it our way, and we want to deport a lot of people,’” Torres said.
The work of ICE also became more personal for Lyons, family members said, after a cousin he was close to died in 2019 of a fentanyl overdose. The tragedy, which came after another cousin in the close-knit “Lyons Den” died in a car accident, “rocked the family,” said Jack Lyons, Todd’s uncle.
“I think he always felt a sense of ... he wished he could have done more,” Jack Lyons said. “So his way now is, he goes after that: fentanyl dealers, drug dealers. … That probably fed a little bit into some of the border stuff too, keeping drugs from coming over.”
In a podcast interview last year, Lyons suggested the drugs that killed his cousin came from a dealer in Lawrence, an undocumented immigrant who Lyons claimed was free because local police did not honor a custody request from ICE. Such ICE requests that are ignored by so-called sanctuary cities are a major bone of partisan contention — and an enormous point of frustration for Lyons.
In November on the “Ruthless Podcast,” Lyons said the dealer in Lawrence “is still my white whale.”
In response to Globe questions, ICE did not identify a suspect or say whether an arrest warrant was ever issued, citing only an “ongoing investigation.” Lawrence police said they had no records of such a suspect.
In the interview with the Globe, Lyons spoke more generally, saying the drugs that killed his cousin may have come from someone here illegally.
“It’s heartbreaking, the fact that maybe I could have made a difference,” he said.
In March 2025, Lyons got an unexpected call from Noem, then the new DHS secretary. I’m going on “Face the Nation” this Sunday morning, Noem told him, and I’m going to announce you as acting ICE director.
Lyons was in a senior role at ICE and had worked closely with border czar Tom Homan, but the promotion nevertheless came as a surprise. While a reliable Republican voter, Lyons was not particularly political, people who know him say. His seemingly unreachable aspiration as a rookie agent had come true.
Since then, ICE has expanded its scope and presence, lowering the bar for deportation while increasing its detention capacity. It’s now common for ICE to arrest people who are trying to obtain legal status — in immigration court or at interviews for green cards. Across the country, immigrant families are staying home from work, school, and church, each day weighing the risk of arrest.
ICE tactics, too, have escalated, growing more violent as street arrests become more frequent. Many ICE agents now wear masks, a practice Lyons defends as necessary for their safety. Some local law enforcement leaders say ICE’s methods have made their communities less safe.
Lyons signed an internal memo in May 2025 saying agents may forcibly enter homes without a judge’s warrant. Lyons insists the policy is legal, but many legal experts have called it an unconstitutional escalation of ICE tactics. It has become one of the key points of contention in the congressional stalemate over funding for ICE.
Lyons “either doesn’t grasp the legal side of it, or he allowed his personal concerns to be overcome by the needs of the agency,” said Ryan Schwank, an attorney who worked at ICE’s training academy in Georgia before coming forward as a whistleblower in February.
In an interview with the Globe, Lyons said ICE tactics have changed because “the environment’s changed,” citing large protests near street arrests. If officers are “in a situation that could be deadly,” they are “definitely allowed” to break windows, he said. Deportation priorities are for policymakers to decide, he said.
And, while he was quick to defend his agents, he insisted “we also don’t support breaking the rules.” After the January shooting of a Venezuelan man in Minneapolis, Lyons said two ICE officers involved had been dishonest under oath — “a serious federal offense.”
Lyons’s job has not been without personal cost. Twice last year, in September and December, Lyons, who has an underlying health condition, sought medical attention for chest pain. Lyons told the Globe he was hospitalized twice, including overnight during the December visit.
A recent Politico story attributed the hospitalizations to stress, particularly pressure from White House adviser Stephen Miller, who allegedly berated Lyons over the phone. But, in an interview with the Globe, Lyons disputed that account and said he has a “great relationship” with Miller that includes “spirited discussions at times.” He did say job stress likely played a role in his health episodes.
This winter, immigration enforcement tensions reached a breaking point. During a crackdown in Greater Minneapolis, agents from ICE and Customs and Border Protection shot and killed two civilians, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, deaths that brought grief, outrage, and demands for answers.
In February, Lyons was called before Congress.
He was nervous before the hearing, family members said. Rightfully so: Officials have to walk a tightrope, sticking to carefully scripted remarks often pre-approved by the White House. Immigration, long a winning issue for the president, had become a losing one, as public opinion turned against ICE after the violence in Minnesota.
Lyons had to defend his officers and answer for Trump’s increasingly unpopular approach, all without saying something that would anger the president.
“People are dying. And you don’t seem to care,” said Representative LaMonica McIver, a New Jersey Democrat. She asked if Lyons thought he was going to hell.
“I’m not going to entertain that,” said Lyons, who attended Gate of Heaven Catholic Church in Southie as a kid.
The three-hour hearing was a whiplash of Republicans praising Lyons’s officers for their bravery and Democrats chastising them for their lack of humanity. When questioned about Good’s shooting and other ICE controversies, Lyons neither apologized nor promised changes.
Representative Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat, questioned Lyons while sitting in front of a poster of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, whose blue bunny hat became a protest symbol after ICE agents detained the boy outside Minneapolis.
“Considering your honorable service in the past, and the dishonorable acts that those who have worked for you have conducted, and the disgraceful statements that the leadership above you have said, you now have a decision,” Swalwell continued. “Mr. Lyons, will you resign from ICE?”
“No, sir, I won’t,” Lyons responded, his voice tight. “Because, sir, that child that you’re showing right there, the men and women of ICE took care of him.”
Watching at home in Massachusetts, Tommy Lyons had to restrain himself from throwing something at his television. His son hadn’t anticipated that level of “ferocity and anger,” he said.
After the hearing, Lyons went back to his apartment to decompress, his father said. He also fired off a text to his uncle: “Did I look fat?” Jack Lyons recounted, laughing.
Todd told his father it had been tough, but he felt he had done well and answered the questions directly.
“He said, ‘I’m moving on now,’” Tommy Lyons recalled.
In recent weeks, the ground under Lyons’s feet has shifted. In January, Trump sidelined Greg Bovino, the controversial Border Patrol leader in charge in Minneapolis; in February, he called for a “softer touch” on immigration; and in March, he ousted Noem. ICE arrests in February were reportedly at their lowest in months.
In late March, Mullin, a senator from Oklahoma, was confirmed as DHS head after striking a more moderate tone at his confirmation hearing. Mullin “told us that he’s going to let us run the agency the way we think it needs to be run,” Lyons told the Globe. ICE can detain anyone without legal status, he said, but its focus will be those with criminal histories.
Pointing to the example of Bovino, Lyons said, “we won’t see anything like that again.”
It remains to be seen if new leadership will meaningfully change the department’s direction. For those judging Lyons not for the guy he is, but for the job he’s doing, it may not matter. Anthony Drago Jr., an immigration lawyer and former liaison to ICE who knew Lyons in Boston, said he has been disappointed to see Lyons enacting an agenda he considers “terrible.”
“I don’t know whether he’s doing it willingly or not,” Drago said. “I don’t care.”
Jeremiah Manion of the Globe staff contributed research.
Emma Platoff can be reached at emma.platoff@globe.com. Follow her @emmaplatoff. Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio can be reached at giulia.mcdnr@globe.com. Follow her @giuliamcdnr.