Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons answered Rep. Eric Swalwell's dramatic call for his resignation with three words on Tuesday: "No, sir, I won't." The exchange came during a House Homeland Security Committee oversight hearing that was supposed to be about border security.

Instead, Swalwell — the California Democrat who also happens to be running for governor — turned his questioning time into an audition reel, complete with props.

According to the NY Post, Swalwell held up a photo of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who was taken into ICE custody in January after his father fled from federal agents during an arrest operation in Columbia Heights, Minnesota. He referenced the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis. Then he delivered what he clearly considered his closing argument:

"Will you stand with the kids who you're supposed to protect or will you side with the killers bringing terror to our streets? Mr. Lyons, will you resign from ICE?"

The framing tells you everything about where Swalwell's head is. Not in oversight. Not in fact-finding. In narrative construction.

Lyons fires back

Lyons didn't flinch. He refused the resignation demand and went straight at the premise:

"Because, sir, that child that you're showing right there, the men and women of ICE took care of him when his father abandoned him and ran from law enforcement."

That's the detail Swalwell's theatrical display was designed to obscure. ICE officials have stated that when agents moved to arrest the boy's father — an Ecuadorian national in the country illegally — the father left the child in a car and ran. An ICE officer stayed with the boy to ensure his safety. Agents then attempted to reunite Liam with family members at his home, but no one would open the door.

Swalwell didn't mention any of that. The photo was doing different work.

The Amazon Prime gambit

Swalwell also pressed Lyons over comments the ICE director reportedly made at a Border Security Expo, where he suggested deportation operations should aim for the efficiency of Amazon Prime delivery. Swalwell seized on the comparison:

"Mr. Lyons how many times has Amazon Prime shot a mom three times in the face?"

Lyons responded by noting Swalwell had selectively quoted him:

"I did say at the end of it, but we deal with human beings, so we can't be like them. That's the key part that you're leaving out."

Leaving out key parts of messages is, of course, a feature of these hearings — not a bug. The five-minute questioning format rewards clips, not context. Swalwell knows this better than most.

The real agenda

Swalwell wasn't actually trying to get Lyons to resign. He was building a reel for a gubernatorial campaign in California, where bashing ICE is less a policy position than a cultural sacrament.

He even told Lyons directly:

"You are what I would call 'otherwise employable'. I think most people would agree this is not the only job that you can get."

Generous of him. The line was crafted to sound reasonable while carrying the implication that anyone who stays in the Trump administration's immigration apparatus is making a moral choice worthy of condemnation. It's the same logic the left has applied to every federal employee who didn't resign in protest — a purity test dressed up as career advice.

Swalwell and fellow committee member Rep. Daniel Goldman, D-N.Y., have co-authored the "ICE OUT Act," which would strip qualified immunity from federal immigration agents. Think about that for a moment. The same congressman demanding Lyons resign over the treatment of illegal immigrants is simultaneously trying to make every rank-and-file ICE agent personally liable in civil court for doing their job.

That's not oversight. That's a campaign to dismantle immigration enforcement through legal intimidation.

What Lyons actually said

Lost in the theater was what Lyons came to the hearing to discuss. In his opening testimony, he was direct:

"The president tasked us with mass deportations, and we are fulfilling that mandate."

The numbers back him up. From January 2025 through January 2026, ICE conducted nearly 379,000 arrests, including more than 7,000 suspected gang members and at least 1,400 known or suspected terrorists. In the past year, the agency carried out more than 475,000 removals.

Those are the figures Swalwell didn't hold up a poster of.

The Minneapolis cases

Swalwell referred to the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis in January, and pressed Lyons to apologize to their families. Lyons refused to issue an apology during the public hearing but said he was open to meeting with Good’s family in private.

Addressing the Trump administration’s description of Good and Pretti as domestic terrorists, Lyons responded cautiously, saying that President Trump and Secretary Noem are elected leaders and are entitled to express their views.

He also declined to comment on what he described as active investigations — the kind of restraint that used to be considered responsible. In Swalwell's framing, it became evidence of complicity.

The pattern

This hearing was a microcosm of how Democrats have chosen to engage on immigration: ignore the policy question entirely, find the most emotionally charged individual case, strip it of all context, and demand a moral reckoning from whichever federal official drew the short straw that day.

The Conejo Ramos case is a legitimate news story. A five-year-old child was separated from his father during an arrest. A judge later released the father and son pending their asylum cases, and the government is now fighting to deport the family and end their asylum proceedings. A federal judge in Texas has ordered the government not to deport them. At a hearing on February 6, the family was granted a continuance.

But Swalwell didn't come to discuss the legal complexities of asylum adjudication or the operational protocols for arrests involving minors. He came to hold up a photograph and demand a resignation. The boy deserved better than being reduced to a campaign prop. So did the hearing.

Chairman Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., moved things along after Swalwell's time expired, ceding the floor to Rep. Michael Guest, R-Miss., who managed to conduct something closer to actual oversight.

Lyons stayed in his chair. He's not going anywhere. And Swalwell's next campaign ad just got its footage.