ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons announced in April 2026 that he will resign in May, leaving an agency that has been at the center of the administration’s immigration crackdown — and at the center of its budget crisis.
The Department of Homeland Security has been partially shut down since February 14, 2026 — more than 62 days. ICE and Customs and Border Protection are the specific agencies that remain unfunded, after Congress passed funding for most other DHS components in late March. ICE agents have gone without full paychecks for over a month. Hundreds of DHS employees have quit. And yet the enforcement operations have continued.
January 24: CBP agents kill Alex Pretti; Senate Democrats pull support for DHS funding bill
January 31 – February 3: First shutdown; resolved with 2-week DHS continuing resolution
February 14: Second shutdown begins; ICE and CBP unfunded
March 27: Senate passes funding for all DHS except ICE/CBP. Speaker Johnson blocks House vote.
April 17: Day 62+. ICE still unfunded. Lyons announces departure.
Enforcement Without Funding
Under Lyons, ICE has conducted its most aggressive enforcement operations in modern history. Workplace raids. Courtroom arrests. Operations in sanctuary cities. Agents deployed to cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The administration has treated the DHS shutdown as a budget inconvenience rather than an operational constraint — the enforcement machine keeps running even when the people operating it don’t get paid.
This week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced he is withdrawing $110 million in public safety grants from Houston over the city’s ordinance limiting cooperation with ICE. It’s the latest escalation in a standoff between the administration and cities that have resisted the crackdown.
The Vacuum
Lyons’s departure creates a leadership vacuum at the top of ICE during the most consequential period in the agency’s history. The DHS shutdown has no end in sight. Congressional negotiations have stalled. Senate Democrats have blocked seven Republican proposals; Republicans have blocked five Democratic proposals. The House passed a continuing resolution that would fund all of DHS, but Democrats in the Senate lack the votes to pass it.
Trump has said he does not want to negotiate re-opening DHS until the SAVE Act is passed. Speaker Johnson blocked the Senate’s bipartisan partial funding bill. The result is an agency carrying out the administration’s top domestic priority — mass immigration enforcement — with no budget, no paychecks, and soon, no director.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Full DHS shutdown timeline; Alex Pretti killing; Senate/House voting history; 7 Republican and 5 Democratic proposals blocked; March 27 partial funding; Johnson blocking House vote. Updated April 2026.
- Conference Board: Shutdown Day 26 analysis; TSA PreCheck suspension; FEMA scaling back; $5B disaster relief fund; economic impact assessment. March 12, 2026.
- CBS News: Senate 2am vote; TSA staffing crisis; nearly 500 TSA officers quit; Trump executive order on TSA pay; Johnson blocking bipartisan deal. March 26–27, 2026.
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