You may have heard that Todd Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), was ordered to fly into Minneapolis and explain to the chief judge of the Federal District, Judge Schiltz, why he shouldn’t be held in contempt:
Minnesota’s chief federal judge has ordered the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd Lyons, to appear in his courtroom Friday and threatened to hold him in contempt for what he says has been repeated defiance of judges’ orders in the state. …
Schiltz’s frustration has been boiling for weeks amid Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s massive immigration enforcement action in the Twin Cities. The operation has flooded the courts with emergency lawsuits brought by immigrants who say they have been illegally arrested or detained. The judges in the district have agreed nearly every time, ordering their immediate release from custody and warning, in increasingly alarming terms, about rampant violations of the law.
Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee, said the administration has been slow-walking or outright defying the directives of many Minnesota judges, including at least one of his own: The order for Lyons to appear came in the case of a man Schiltz ordered released on Jan. 15 but who remained detained as of Monday night. [Politico]
Schiltz said the trip could be skipped if a particular detainee, unnamed but known as Juan T.R., who was being illegally held by ICE was released; the release reportedly occurred. Erick Erickson, who has criticized his own side to an amazing extent, kicks the Administration again:
Todd Lyons is the head of ICE. As you will recall, Kristi Noem sidelined Lyons because, among other reasons, Lyons did not want to engage in mass roundups but preferred a more targeted approach. Noem elevated Gregory Bovino above even Bovino’s boss in the Border Patrol to do the very public mass roundups. That is not Border Patrol’s job, and that is not Bovino’s job. But he did it.
Bovino and Noem favored going to Home Depot, Target, and other major shopping centers, rounding up pretty much anyone who was Hispanic, and sorting through to find illegal aliens.
Even among the illegal aliens found, some did not have deportation orders. Many were not processed. They were all put in detention facilities, then never processed. Some were able to get lawyers who filed Habeas Corpus petitions. Herein lies the problem.
Who is actually responsible? That would be Todd Lyons, the man Kristi Noem not only sidelined, but just this past week had her Department of Homeland Security General Counsel send a directive to Lyons’ employees telling them to ignore a memo from Lyons that reminded the employees they reported to him. Noem did this after the President re-empowered Lyons.
Power-mad buffoons, the pack of them. There’s more in his post.
Erickson might have me believe Lyons is an exception to the rule that Trump’s minions are not on the straight and narrow, but – and Erickson doesn’t mention this – Lyons signed an ICE memo of a shameful nature:
Whistleblowers have shared an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memo with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D–Conn.). The document claims that ICE officers may enter homes without consent while conducting certain immigration arrests without a judicial warrant. This sweeping power would be an alarming violation of Americans’ well-founded constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.
Signed by acting ICE Director Todd Lyons in May of last year, the memo states that agents may rely on a certain administrative warrant issued alongside a final order of removal to use “a necessary and reasonable” amount of force to the named individual’s residence if officers are denied entry. [reason.com]
Does that second paragraph sound exculpatory? Then why this?
The whistleblowers say that physical copies of the guidance weren’t circulated widely. But its contents, they report, were used to train recruits amid ICE’s push to hire 10,000 agents last year. Although written 2025 training materials clearly state “a warrant of removal/deportation does NOT alone authorize a 4th amendment search of any kind,” the whistleblowers say that instructors at the DHS Federal Law Enforcement Training Center “are directed to verbally train all new ICE agents to follow this policy while disregarding written course material instructing the opposite.”
The effect is shattered. Lyons should not have signed that memo, and, knowing it was both illegal and shameful, arranged to conceal it by failing to leave a normal paper trail.
So when you read Erickson’s post and see Lyons is by the book, like Tom Homan, well, that is one helluva stretch by Erickson. In fact, he oughta be playing first base.
And Homan? Did he really take that bribe? Unfortunately, we’ll never know, as we don’t know if Director Wray’s FBI was adequately honest, but we know Patel’s won’t be; however, any employee or nominee of Trump can be legitimately regarded with suspicion. It’s the kind of mafia don Trump aspires to be.
Sordid. It’s all so sordid. The worship of dollars and of social standing is a terrible thing. It shapes us, it shapes outour society. And sometimes that shape is repulsive.
