Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons faced intense questioning Tuesday from House lawmakers about ICE's enforcement tactics. During testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) challenged Lyons directly, suggesting that if ICE agents don't want to be called "fascist" or "secret police," they should stop acting like one.

Goldman criticized ICE's practice of stopping "nonwhite people and those who look like immigrants to ask for their papers," comparing it to tactics used by fascist regimes in the 20th century. Lyons acknowledged that secret police in both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union employed similar methods but argued that comparing ICE agents to "Gestapo" was wrong. The exchange highlighted growing tensions between immigration enforcement and civil liberties advocates.

Earlier in the hearing, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) confronted Lyons about his previous statement wishing for a deportation machine "like Amazon Prime but with human beings." Swalwell pressed Lyons on recent fatal shootings by ICE and Border Patrol agents, asking how many times Amazon Prime had shot mothers or nurses. Lyons conceded that ICE "deals with human beings" and cannot operate like an e-commerce platform, while defending the agency's need for efficiency.