ICE Chief Hospitalized as Stephen Miller Keeps Yelling at Him

Todd Lyons, the acting chief of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has been hospitalized twice in the last seven months due to stress, Politico reported Friday.

Politico’s reporting is based on two current and two former sources within the Trump administration. The sources described one incident in which “Lyons became so distressed when ICE agents couldn’t locate a migrant on their target list after a ride along with top administration officials that one of his bodyguards took a portable defibrillator from a nearby government office to Lyons in case he needed medical intervention.” Lyons’s face became scarlet, and he began aggressively sweating, the sources said.

It’s hard to feel bad for Lyons when he continues to lead a department that terrorizes minorities on a daily basis, but the report does make it seem as if the White House heaps inordinate pressure onto him. Multiple sources told Politico that Stephen Miller frequently yells at Lyons during a daily 10 a.m. phone call for failing to meet the administration’s insanely high immigration quotas.

Other sources provided to Politico by the White House “disputed that Miller yells at Lyons directly, with one saying the deputy chief of staff is ‘passionate’ and another saying he asks ‘very pointed questions in a very assertive tone.’”

Lyons also responded to Politico in a statement declaring that his stress does not have to do with other Trump officials, while not addressing the two alleged hospitalizations. A NewsNation reporter later said Lyons had told her he had been hospitalized for “military deployment VA issues.”

White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson flipped out after the story was published. “Shame on Politico for publishing such inaccurate trash,” she wrote on X. “Todd Lyons is an American patriot who has worked tirelessly to undo Biden’s disastrous immigration policies.… Despite multiple on record denials and sources refuting their pathetic ‘reporting’ and [sic] *still* ran with this absurd article.”

But Jackson didn’t say which, if any, on-record denials failed to make it into the finished article. It’s possible Lyons is working too tirelessly, Abigail.