Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons complained in his opening statement before the House Committee on Homeland Security Tuesday morning about people referring to ICE agents as “the Gestapo” and “the secret police,” saying the rhetoric unfairly encourages threats against those agents.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) offered Lyons some revolutionary advice.
“People are simply making valid observations about your tactics, which are un-American and outright fascist,” he said.
“I have a simple suggestion,” he continued: “If you don’t want to be called a fascist regime or a secret police, then stop acting like one.”
Goldman pointed out in earlier dialogue with Lyons that ICE is regularly stopping “nonwhite people and those who look like immigrants to ask for their papers” — a hallmark of fascist regimes in the 20th century.
Lyons conceded that secret police in both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union did the same thing, but argued unconvincingly that “to say the men and women of ICE are Gestapos … [is] wrong.”
Earlier in the hearing, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) confronted Lyons about how he wished last year for a deportation machine that “was like Amazon Prime but with human beings.”
“Mr. Lyons, how many times has Amazon Prime shot a mom three times in the face?” he asked, referring to ICE’s fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis last month.
“None, sir.” Lyons conceded, adding that he meant ICE “needs to be more efficient” and that ”ICE deals with human beings so we can’t be like them.”
“Speaking of humans,” Swalwell interjected, highlighting the killing of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents, also in Minneapolis: “How many times has Amazon Prime shot a nurse 10 times in the back?”
“None,” said Lyons.