House Democrats are pushing for Stephen Miller and Tom Homan — two of the top aides shaping President Donald Trump’s deportation policy — to appear before Congress and answer questions about the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement.
Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff, and Homan, the White House’s border czar, received invitations this week to testify next Wednesday before the House Homeland Security Committee. The White House did not respond to a request for comment on whether they would accept the invitation to the public hearing examining the effects of the 63-day shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security.
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Mississippi), the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said the hearing would be a vital opportunity to hold accountable the “chief architects of Trump’s mass deportations which have led to the deaths of U.S. citizens and terrorized our communities.”
“It’s inexcusable that congressional Republicans are still doing whatever they can to protect President Trump — even with his approval rating taking a nosedive,” Thompson said in a statement. “The Committee needs to hear from the two officials responsible for the policies that have hurt so many and continue to undermine the funding and mission of the Department of Homeland Security as it was established after 9/11.”
The hearing would be Homan and Miller’s first public testimony before Congress since Trump retook office. Republicans on the committee, who control the majority but were compelled by Democrats to send the invitations under arcane House rules, emphasized that their participation would be voluntary.
The “Committee does not believe this request to be in good faith and will be used, instead, as an attempt to politicize national security and gaslight the American public,” Rep. Andrew R. Garbarino (R-New York), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, wrote in the invitation letters.
Oversight-oriented hearings generally involve agency leaders or Cabinet secretaries rather than senior White House advisers. Homan testified before Congress during Trump’s first term when he served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement from 2017 to 2018.
Democrats tried to get Miller to testify before the House Oversight Committee when he was a top immigration adviser during Trump’s first term, but the White House blocked him from partaking. White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote to then-committee Chair Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Maryland) that White House staff members have historically declined invitations to testify publicly.
Even if Homan and Miller do not appear, Democrats are likely to use next week’s hearing to lambaste the Trump administration’s deportation agenda. Other witnesses include private citizens who have alleged abuse by federal immigration agents: Marimar Martinez, a Chicago woman who was shot in her car by a Border Patrol agent; George Retes, a California veteran who was pepper sprayed and detained by ICE for three days; and Ryan Ecklund, a Minnesota man who was detained after filming federal agents.
Wednesday’s hearing follows a Republican-led hearing held last month examining the consequences of the DHS shutdown. The committee heard from senior officials from the Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Democrats refused to pass funding legislation for the department unless Republicans agreed to codifying measures to rein in federal immigration enforcement after federal officers killed two U.S. citizens protesting the federal operation in Minneapolis. Funding expired for the department in mid-February. Trump earlier this month directed DHS to find alternative funds to pay all of its employees, but the directive does not cover funding for the rest of the fiscal year that ends after September.
The Senate settled on a compromise plan to fund all of the department except for key immigration agencies on a bipartisan basis and fund the immigration agencies using a party-line vote. Trump endorsed the plan, but it has not moved forward in the House.
The post House Democrats push to grill Stephen Miller, Tom Homan appeared first on Washington Post.
