FULL INTERVIEW➡️ Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons on CBS' Face the Nation

Is the policy still to prioritize the arrests and deportation of people who are here illegally, but also our violent offenders? Yes, I is going to focus on the worst of the worst. And that's what we do need to focus our limited resources on.

That's one thing I've always said from the start. Um, what's again frustrating for me is the fact that we would love to focus on these criminal aliens that are inside a jail facility, right? a local law enforcement agency, state agency already deemed that person a public safety threat and arrested them and they're in detention.

I'd much rather focus all of our limited resources on that to take them into custody. But we we do have to go out into the community and make those arrests. And that's where you are seeing those increase of if we encounter someone say that that is a hair in the country legally, we will take them into custody.

Um, in regards to the work site, like you mentioned, one thing that I really like to highlight, especially what kicked off June 6th in LA, is the fact that when you see ICE doing these work raids like the marijuana grow farm, you we are going there with criminal search warrants or criminal arrest warrants. Not only are we focused on those individuals that are, you know, working here illegally, we're focused on these American companies that are actually exploiting these laborers, these people that came here for a better life, you know, either, you know, forced labor, child trafficking, you know, a lot of these work site cases just isn't a victimless crime of someone here working illegally. And that's why we're going there with these criminal warrants to focus on these American businesses that are trying to make an extra dollar on the backs of these people that came here for a better life.

So you are planning on holding accountables the employers, the companies that are hiring people who are here illegally, not just the workers 100%. Because that has been a concern. It is.

Our colleague Margaret Brennan recently obtained ICE data showing that only a small percentage of the convicted criminals that ICE has deported over the past 6 months had convictions for violent offenses. For example, fewer than 1% had homicide convictions. What do you make of that data?

We can't look at it just based on the violence or the potency of violence in that crime. What I looked at is someone has committed a crime in the United States. Um, now if you look at someone that has just been arrested, say for DUI, well, some people might say that's only a misdemeanor, we may have prevented vehicular homicide down the road for someone that's a habitual traffic offender.

I can't look at the larger scale of what specific the crimes are are. You know, whether it's a rape, a homicide, of course, you want to get those worst of the worst. But if someone's committed a crime here in the United States and been let back into the community and they're here illegally, we need to focus on that.