The heads of three of the nation’s most powerful immigration agencies sat before lawmakers on Tuesday to defend the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign — a campaign that has swept up hundreds of thousands of people and left two Americans dead at the hands of federal agents in Minnesota.
ICE Congressional Hearing Included Leaders of ICE, CBP, and USCIS
The hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee marked the first time the leaders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) have testified on Capitol Hill since a dramatic and violent immigration crackdown in Minneapolis sparked nationwide protests and bipartisan calls for answers.
“The president tasked us with mass deportations, and we are fulfilling that mandate,” ICE acting director Todd Lyons declared in his opening statement. It was a blunt admission that set the tone for a hearing that would quickly become one of the most combative congressional sessions in recent memory.
Lyons told lawmakers that ICE had carried out more than 475,000 deportations and nearly 379,000 arrests over the past year. Among those arrested, he said, were more than 7,000 suspected gang members and 1,400 known or suspected terrorists.
However, what Lyons did not volunteer — but internal Department of Homeland Security documents reveal — is that fewer than 14% of those arrested had charges or convictions for violent crimes. That means the vast majority of the people swept up in this historic enforcement surge are not the dangerous criminals the administration so often invokes to justify its actions.
The most emotionally charged moments of the hearing centered on the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two Americans killed by federal immigration agents during operations in Minneapolis. Democrats repeatedly pressed Lyons and CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott to answer for what happened, while the officials largely declined to comment, citing ongoing investigations.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem came under especially sharp criticism, even though she was not present at the hearing. After Pretti’s death, Noem publicly claimed he had been brandishing a firearm — a claim that was later contradicted by video evidence.
Rep. Al Green of Texas accused Noem of rushing to cover for the agents involved and called for her prosecution. “The secretary should be investigated, right along with those officers,” Green said. Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s top Democrat, called Noem a “liar” and said she should no longer hold her position.
The hearing also exposed the deeply personal toll of the administration’s immigration dragnet. Rep. James Walkinshaw read aloud from letters written by children being held at an immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas — letters obtained and published by ProPublica. “No child should be used as pawns,” Walkinshaw said.
When asked how long minors would be held, Lyons replied that ICE “wouldn’t like to hold any children” and wants to remove families “safely and humanely.” That answer will ring hollow for the parents and children who remain locked in detention facilities, separated from their communities and uncertain about their futures.
Rep. Eric Swalwell confronted Lyons with a photo of Liam Ramos, a 5-year-old child caught up in one of the Minneapolis operations, and asked the ICE chief to resign. Lyons refused.
“That child you’re showing right there, the men and women of ICE took care of him when his father abandoned him and ran from law enforcement,” Lyons said — a characterization that immigration advocates have fiercely disputed.
The question of accountability ran throughout the hearing. Democrats demanded to know why ICE agents wear masks during raids, which they argued prevents identification and shields officers from consequences when they use excessive force. Rep. Dan Goldman told Lyons bluntly: “If you don’t want to be called a fascist regime or secret police, then stop acting like one.” Lyons refused a request to unmask agents, drawing sharp condemnation.
On the Republican side, members rallied behind the immigration agencies. They pointed to threats against ICE officers — Lyons said the agency has seen an 8,000% increase in death threats — and blamed Democratic-led sanctuary cities for creating dangerous conditions. CBP’s Scott described protesters as “coordinated and well-funded” and compared them to insurgencies.
Lyons did offer one concession to transparency: he committed to releasing body camera footage from the Minneapolis operations and said he supports the broader use of body-worn cameras. Currently, about 3,000 of ICE’s 13,000 field officers wear them, with another 6,000 cameras being deployed. Scott said roughly half of Border Patrol’s 20,000 agents have body cameras.
The hearing arrives at a critical moment. Congress has until Saturday to fund the Department of Homeland Security, and Democrats have drawn a hard line on ICE reforms as a condition for their support. Negotiations over body camera mandates and limits on roving patrols have found some common ground, but a deal remains out of reach. Democratic leaders rejected the White House’s latest counterproposal on Monday, calling it “incomplete and insufficient.”
What Tuesday’s hearing made clear is that the human cost of mass deportation is no longer an abstraction. Children are writing letters from detention. Americans are being killed by their own government’s agents. Communities are living in fear.
And the people running this operation are telling Congress, plainly and without apology, that they intend to keep going. The question now is whether anyone with the power to stop it will.
