“Let me send a message to anyone who thinks they can intimidate us. You will fail,” said Lyons, who blamed elected officials and protesters for escalating rhetoric that he said endangered his officers.
“We are only getting started," he said in opening remarks.
Lyons, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Rodney Scott, who heads U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and Joseph Edlow, who is the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, spoke in front of the House Committee on Homeland Security.
Democrats have attempted to capitalize on the deaths of two of the protesters in Minneapolis who were killed when they confronted ICE officers. In one case, a woman driving an SUV died when she was shot after her vehicle hit an officer. The second protester, who was in possession of a weapon, died when officers shot him during a violent confrontation.
The ranking Democratic member of the committee, Bennie Thompson from Mississippi, called the hearing the “start of a reckoning" and said that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem should be held accountable. Demanding answers in the aftermath of the Minneapolis shootings, Thompson said the department has blocked lawmakers from visiting detention facilities and needs to be more responsive to questions.
Opening the hearing, Rep. Andrew Garbarino, chairman of the committee, called the moment an “inflection point” but warned those in attendance against making any comments offensive to Trump or Vice President JD Vance.
The New York Republican called inflammatory rhetoric and the lack of cohesion between state and local law jurisdictions, along with the deaths of U.S. citizens, “unacceptable and preventable.”
The administration says that activists and protesters opposed to its operations are the ones ratcheting up attacks on their officers, not the other way around, and that their immigration enforcement operations are making the country safer by finding and removing people who’ve committed crimes or pose a threat to the country.
During Scott’s tenure, his agency has taken on a significant role in arresting and removing illegal immigrants from inside the country.
During his opening statement, Scott lashed out at what he called an “unprecedented level of aggressive interference and intimidation” against federal officers in the course of doing their jobs, calling “attacks” on federal officers “coordinated and well funded.”
“This is not peaceful protest,” Scott said. “No law enforcement officers should be put at personal risk simply for doing the job that we have asked them to do.”
Scott and Lyons said thousands of officers deployed were now outfitted with body cameras, with more to come.
