WASHINGTON — Indicted Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) accused the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of having blood on his hands Tuesday, and suggested that he would go to hell during a fiery hearing about the Trump administration’s border crackdown.
McIver, who was charged this past June with assaulting law enforcement during a visit to a Newark immigration facility, began her speaking time by getting Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons to confirm that he’s religious.
“How do you think Judgment Day will work for you with so much blood on your hands?” McIver asked in front of her stunned colleagues on the House Homeland Security Committee.
“I’m not going to entertain that question,” Lyons responded calmly.
“Do you think you’re going to hell, Mr. Lyons?” McIver pressed.
That prompted committee chairman Andrew Garbarino (R-NY) to intervene and remind members of the rules of decorum, which he had to do repeatedly after some of the Democrats’ questioning.
“All you guys are always talking about religion here, and the Bible,” replied McIver, who has pushed to “abolish ICE.”
“I mean, it’s OK for me to ask a question,” McIver said before continuing: “How many government agencies, Mr. Lyons, are you aware of that routinely kill American citizens and still get funding?”
McIver is currently facing up to 17 years in prison for assaulting, impeding, and interfering with law enforcement during her May 9, 2025, visit to the Newark facility alongside two other House Democrats.
Prosecutors say the lawmaker got physical while trying to stop Newark Mayor Ras Baraka from being arrested for trespassing.
McIver has brushed aside the charges as politically motivated and has been allowed to continue serving in Congress in the meantime.
Her rant left some observers less than impressed.
“This woman is under federal indictment for literally ASSAULTING DHS agents. Why the HELL hasn’t she been kicked off her committees??!” conservative influencer Nick Sortor grumbled on X.
“I truly feel one must pass a standard IQ test to serve on a committee,” one X user sniped.
“Why hasn’t she gotten the [George] Santos treatment?” another chided.
Other Democrats took up incendiary lines of attack against Lyons and two other immigration enforcement officials who testified Tuesday.
Manhattan and Brooklyn Rep. Dan Goldman, who is facing a tough Democratic primary, defended comparisons between ICE and the Gestapo in Nazi Germany.
“There’s numerous well-documented instances of people, American citizens, being asked to show and prove their citizenship,” Goldman told Lyons at one point. “Do you know what other regimes in the 20th century required similar proof of citizenship?”
“You said in your opening statement that references to ICE as the Gestapo or the secret police encourage threats against ICE agents,” Goldman went on. “The problem is, you have it backwards, sir. People are simply making valid observations about your tactics, which are un-American and outright fascist.”
Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) recounted how her Guatemalan-American mother taught her ” that I have a responsibility to look evil in the eye and to fight it back.”
She then accused Lyons, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Rodney Scott, and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Joseph Edlow of having “used your power to perpetrate great evil.”
“I have just as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color,” Ramirez went on. “I have no respect for the inheritors of the Klan hood and the slave patrol. Those activities were immoral then, and criminal. And so are yours.”
