‘Visibly upset and struggling’: Acting ICE head hospitalized twice over stress, officials say

Acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons has been hospitalized at least twice for stress-related issues as he has carried out President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration agenda — strain that has caused him to struggle to make key decisions for the agency, according to two current and two former administration officials.

The hospitalizations took place over the last seven months. In one incident in December, Lyons’ security detail drove him to a hospital in Washington and he was admitted overnight, according to one former and two current administration officials. During an episode in September, the three people said Lyons was hospitalized for at least one night.

In a separate incident in Los Angeles over the summer, 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, according to one current and one former official.

During these episodes, the current and former officials said they saw Lyons break out into a full sweat, with his face turning deep red. They also attributed the source of the pressure to ramp up deportations to the White House and top adviser Stephen Miller, who yelled at Lyons during morning phone calls with administration officials, according to four people who were on the calls. Other officials disputed that Miller yelled at Lyons, with one saying the deputy chief of staff was merely “passionate.”

Miller didn’t respond to a request for comment. But the attempt to blame Miller is the latest example of continued infighting among administration figures over immigration policy — even after former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and some of her aides have departed the agency.

“He would be visibly upset and struggling to make the decisions that were needed to be made by the director,” said one of the former officials, referring to Lyons. One current official and two former officials also said that Lyons often takes a long time making decisions, forcing his deputies to have to do more work.

All four people witnessed, or were briefed in an official capacity, on at least one of the stress-related episodes. Each was granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Asked about the incidents, Lyons said in a statement the stress he experienced wasn’t due to the White House. He did not address the hospitalizations.

“Since the beginning of this administration, I have worked night and day, all day, every day to undo the harms Joe Biden has caused to the American people,” he said. “Any stress is in no way related to pressure from the White House, and nothing will get in the way of me doing my job.”

Lauren Bis, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement that Lyons “has a great relationship with Stephen Miller and the entire White House team. They have worked together closely to fulfill the president’s mandate from the American people to remove public safety threats from our communities.”

Bis added: “Fixing the crisis caused by the previous administration of letting millions of illegal aliens into our country and jumpstarting an agency that was not allowed to do their job for four years is no easy task.” She also noted that Lyons has helped deport more than 700,000 unauthorized immigrants during his time as director. (The administration has been slow to publish the data to back up those figures, according to The Associated Press.)

Lyons, who first joined ICE as an immigration enforcement agent in 2007, has steadily climbed the ranks of the agency and now oversees tens of billions of dollars and almost 28,000 employees as he carries out Trump’s goal of deporting 3,000 immigrants a day. Despite that target, ICE’s arrest tally has only hit a daily average of 1,100 this year, according to The New York Times.

As the top ICE official, Lyons has come under intense scrutiny by Democratic lawmakers and the judiciary, especially after federal officers fatally shot two Americans — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — earlier this year in Minneapolis.

State and local authorities are investigating both shootings, while the Justice Department has opened a civil rights probe into Pretti’s killing but not Good’s, saying it wasn’t warranted. In January, a federal judge ordered Lyons to appear before him and threatened to hold him in contempt for allegedly repeatedly defying judges’ orders amid Operation Metro Surge, the major immigration enforcement action in Minnesota. The contempt hearing was later canceled.

In February, Democratic lawmakers pressed Lyons on his leadership, with Rep. Eric Swalwell of California telling the ICE head: “Since you’ve been on this job, women have been dragged by their hair through our streets, a 6-year-old child battling stage four cancer has been deported and it turns out, he was a U.S. citizen, people are running through fields where they work.”

Lyons defended federal immigration agents when he testified before Congress, saying that he backed their tactics and accused elected officials and protesters of escalating rhetoric that endangered his officers.

“Let me send a message to anyone who thinks they can intimidate us. You will fail,” he said.

Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff and key architect of the White House’s immigration strategy, regularly and aggressively grills Lyons and other officials during a daily 10 a.m. administration phone call, according to two current and two former administration officials who have been on the calls. They said Miller yelled at Lyons for low deportation numbers or over tactical and strategic disagreements and the ICE head usually responds by apologizing and promising to address the issues.

“That’s gonna create some significant psychological pressure,” one of the current officials said.

After heated calls, Lyons told colleagues that he hated getting shouted at and expressed frustration that the White House was often mad at his agency, according to the current official and former official who heard such comments.

“Todd, Stephen, and the entire White House team have a great working relationship and coordinate closely to deliver on the president’s many promises,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “Todd Lyons is an American patriot who has worked tirelessly to undo Biden’s disastrous immigration policies that wreaked havoc on American communities.”

After POLITICO asked the White House about the reporting, the press office arranged interviews with three additional senior administration officials on the condition of anonymity who are regularly on the calls. They 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.”

“Stephen has quite the affinity for Todd,” one of the administration officials said. “He certainly has always had a really kind of likeness and a genuine appreciation for the hard work and efforts that Todd is being asked to do.”

The third senior administration official likened some of the calls to “a heated business meeting, if you will, where the host isn’t putting up with any BS and asking a lot of questions.”

“It is very much a high level of accountability,” said the third official, who noted that “a lot of pressure” has been exerted on immigration officials to accomplish Trump’s agenda. The person also said that the stress Lyons has been under has been caused “a little bit” by pressure from the White House but that it’s normal to face such stress when having a major government immigration job in Washington. The official added that they thought Lyons handles the stress of his job well.

Two of the officials provided by the White House also said that Lyons complained to them a number of times that Corey Lewandowski, who was the top adviser to Noem, also sometimes yelled at him on a daily 7 a.m. call.

One of the current administration officials who witnessed some of Lyons’ episodes and an additional former administration official who have been on those calls disputed that Lyons would feel excessive stress from the 7 a.m. calls.

Lewandowski declined to comment on the 7 a.m. call.

Since Trump took office for his second term, he has shaken up the personnel at both ICE and DHS. A month into Trump’s term, ICE acting director Caleb Vitello was moved to a different role and ultimately replaced by Lyons. The agency’s leadership in cities including Portland, Denver and Los Angeles were removed in the fall.

More recently, the White House moved former Border Patrol leader Greg Bovino from leading the immigration surge in Minnesota after the killings of Pretti and Good back to California, and Trump replaced Noem with former Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin.

Among many other agencies, Mullin is now overseeing ICE that has seen a gusher of cash from Trump’s megabill last summer that has made it the most well-resourced federal law enforcement agency in the government.

“The day that bill passed, the ICE director job did not look the way that it ever did before,” said one of the former administration officials who witnessed Lyons’ stress incidents. Speaking about Lyons, the person added: “He had resources to do anything he wanted, and he was stuck in the same orbit that he had always been in and was tasked with this new massive mission, and that was very different than what he was used to before.”