While his boss at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Kristi Noem, came hot off the heels of cosplaying again and demonstrating how not to hold a gun, the acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was modeling their human rights violations after online shopping.
Republican President Donald Trump's unconfirmed—nor congressionally vetted—acting Director of ICE, Todd Lyons, shared his dreams for the agency during the 2025 Border Security Expo, where private companies explored opportunities to profit from Trump’s mass deportations and rub elbows with Noem and Lyons.
In Lyons' perfect set up, ICE vans would crisscross neighborhoods carrying ICE agents doing swift abductions and deportations—just like Amazon's delivery services.
As reported by conference media attendee the Arizona Mirror, Lyons told the audience full of defense and security contractors:
"We need to get better at treating this like a business."
"Like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings."
Lyons added he hoped ICE could utilize AI—or A1 as Trump's Education Secretary Linda McMahon refers to it—to "free up bed space" and "fill up airplanes."
Lyons' remarks quickly drew backlash.
The Executive Director of immigrant rights organization America’s Voice, Vanessa Cárdenas, issued an official statement after Lyons' remarks were reported and verified.
Cárdenas wrote:
"Human beings aren’t products to be wrapped, packaged, and shipped to fulfill an order. Yet the acting leader of ICE believes that is the ‘dream’ way for ICE to fulfill Trump’s order of mass deportation."
"Todd Lyons is the one who needs to be sent packing—and his comments encapsulate so much about this administration and their cruel and costly mass deportation agenda and worldview. Human beings, regardless of immigration status, aren’t Amazon packages."
"We’ve experienced the violence that accompanies the dehumanization of immigrants, and we know the danger within this sentiment and line of thinking. As the administration turbocharges its mass deportation agenda, they are viewing any immigrant without status as a target to toss aside and ship out of the country."
"Immigrants are hardworking taxpayers, dedicated parents, and dependable co-workers; they are community members, Dreamers, TPS holders and caregivers; they have dreams and due process rights and basic dignities that this administration refuses to acknowledge."
Others echoed Cárdenas' condemnation.
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Lyons wasn't alone in wanting deportations to become big business, lining the pockets of the "friends of Donald" who contributed money to his campaign and bought memberships in Trump's golf resorts or Mar-a-Lago.
Donald Trump's "border czar," Tom Homan, told the crowd:
"We need to buy more beds, we need more airplane flights and I know a lot of you are here for that reason."
Touting the benefits of contracting out to private companies, Homan added:
"Let the badge and guns do the badge-and-gun stuff. Everything else, let’s contract out."
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