Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons was hospitalized at least twice due to “stress-related issues” while executing the president’s migrant crackdown, a new report alleges.
Administration officials tell Politico that the strain put on Lyons—in part by the White House and its top immigration adviser, Stephen Miller—caused the 52-year-old to “struggle to make key decisions for the agency.”
“He would be visibly upset and struggling to make the decisions that were needed to be made by the director,” a former DHS official told Politico.
Lyons’ alleged indecisiveness was corroborated by others in Homeland Security. One current and two former officials also told the site that Lyons “often takes a long time to make decisions, forcing his deputies to do more work.”
Those same officials attributed Lyons’ stress, which saw him “break out into a full sweat, with his face turning deep red,” to pressure from the White House.
Miller, 40, “yelled at Lyons during morning phone calls with administration officials,” according to four people who were on the calls.
Lyons told Politico that his stress was not due to White House pressure, saying, “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.”
The White House also disputed Politico’s report, which spokeswoman Abigail Jackson described as being “absurd,” “inaccurate trash,” and was published despite “multiple on record denials.”
“Shame on Politico and Daniel Lippman for publishing such inaccurate trash,” Jackson told the Daily Beast. “Todd, Stephen, and the entire White House team have a great working relationship and coordinate closely to deliver on the President’s many promises.”
Jackson said that Lyons, an Air Force veteran, is an “American patriot who has worked tirelessly to undo Biden’s disastrous immigration policies.”
Three White House officials, made available to Politico after it reached out for comment, claimed that Miller never yelled at Lyons. One said the deputy chief of staff was merely “passionate” on the calls, and another said Miller asks “very pointed questions in a very assertive tone.”
A third senior administration official told Politico that the calls featuring Lyons and Miller are similar to “a heated business meeting, if you will, where the host isn’t putting up with any BS and asking a lot of questions.”
Two White House officials told Politico that Corey Lewandowski, the since-ousted top aide to former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, sometimes yelled at Lyons during a daily 7 a.m. call.
Friday’s report is not the first to allege that Miller melts down on immigration calls. Last spring, the Wall Street Journal reported that he threatened to terminate DHS officials if arrest numbers did not rise to hit a quota of 3,000 migrants per day.
In that same meeting, Miller ordered ICE to target Home Depot parking lots to arrest day laborers. He went as far as to say that he could make 30 arrests himself at the nearest location.
“Just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,” Miller said, according to the Journal’s sources.
Lyons’ hospital trips were reportedly in September and December. The first incident saw him spend the night at a Washington hospital after his security detail drove him there, according to Politico.
A third incident occurred last summer in Los Angeles, according to Politico’s reporting.
The site writes that 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.”
ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
