LaMonica McIver

A House Homeland Security Committee oversight hearing turned contentious Tuesday when Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Todd Lyons of having “so much blood” on his hands.

“Mr. Lyons, do you consider yourself a religious man?” McIver asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” he responded.

“OK, well how do you think Judgement Day will work for you with so much blood on your hands?” McIver continued.

After Lyons declined to answer that question, McIver asked whether he thought he was “going to hell.”

McIver’s line of questioning led committee chairman Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) to remind members they must adhere to the “established standards of decorum.”

The White House’s rapid-response social media team addressed the interaction later Tuesday, saying McIver stepped “completely out of line.”

“This is seriously messed up,” the White House response team wrote.

The hearing marked the first congressional testimony by Trump administration immigration officials since U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti were fatally shot by federal agents during Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota last month.

Lyons was joined Tuesday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow. All three faced pointed and at times combative questions from Democratic committee members.

Democrats likened the enforcement operations to those of Nazi Germany and questioned how history would judge administration officials, prompting Garbarino to repeatedly gavel lawmakers back to order.

The hearing turned especially fierce as McIver addressed Lyons.

The first-term congresswoman from Newark has been a vigorous critic of the tactics deployed by federal immigration officers amid nationwide raids aimed at meeting Trump’s controversial deportation quotas.

McIver currently faces three felony counts stemming from a May 2025 confrontation at Delaney Hall, a federal immigration detention facility in Newark. She has said the Trump administration’s case is “dangerous, baseless, and designed to stop me from doing my job.”

“Mr. Lyons, as the senior official lead in ICE enforcement, much of today’s scrutiny falls on you, and it should,” McIver said Tuesday. “You are only here because public outrage has become so unavoidable. You are here, Mr. Lyons, because white people are being shot in the face and chest when the cameras are rolling.”

Lyons declined to apologize for the deaths of Good and Pretti and said he would not comment on any ongoing investigations.

He repeatedly defended the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown, arguing that ICE was forced to act in response to what he described as an unprecedented border crisis under the previous administration.

“We are just getting started,” Lyons said.