A federal appeals court on Friday required the Trump administration to continue allowing lawmakers to inspect immigration detention facilities without advance notice, ruling unanimously that the impromptu visits posed minimal problems for the government.
The decision by a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit preserved, for now, the ability of Democrats in Congress to make unannounced visits to detention centers and check on the conditions inside.
It came as the Trump administration is working to dramatically expand the Department of Homeland Security’s detention capacity with converted warehouses and as detention facilities have repeatedly drawn allegations of human rights violations.
One of the three judges, Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, wrote in a 10-page concurring opinion that the government had not shown that it would be substantially harmed by allowing periodic oversight visits from members of Congress, beyond the “administrative inconvenience.”
Judge Rao was joined by Judges Cornelia Pillard and Robert L. Wilkins, both Obama appointees, in ruling that the lawmakers should retain access to the facilities for now.
The decision on Friday came in a lengthy struggle between a group of Democrats in Congress and the Homeland Security Department over access to the facilities. Beginning last year, the agency twice enacted policies requiring lawmakers to provide at least seven days’ notice before trying to visit immigration detention facilities.
The lawmakers sued in July, arguing that under the federal law that funds Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency must allow members of Congress and their employees access to perform oversight.
The Trump administration had countered that it was relying on a different measure to fund the facilities, the tens of billions of dollars set aside for immigration detention in the tax and spending bill that President Trump signed last year. For that reason, the government said it was not bound by the language in the law that would ordinarily require access.
But a federal judge, Jia M. Cobb, a Biden appointee, twice ruled the administration was illegally blocking access. Among other things, Judge Cobb found that the government was continuing to use the traditional appropriation measure to fund some elements of its immigration enforcement, including top officials’ salaries.
Democracy Forward, the legal nonprofit representing the lawmakers, celebrated Friday’s ruling.
“This administration keeps trying to keep members of Congress and people in America from seeing what is happening inside detention facilities, even as reports of overcrowding, abuse, denial of medical care, and deaths in custody continue to grow,” said Skye Perryman, the organization’s president. “Today’s unanimous ruling is another major victory for transparency, for the rule of law, and for the constitutional system of checks and balances that prevents abuses of power.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Litigation over the issue will continue. Judge Rao, in her concurring opinion, wrote that she believed the lawmakers had overstepped the bounds of traditional congressional oversight and that the Trump administration would ultimately prevail in the case.
“As a practical matter, the members visit detention facilities as individual lawmakers,” she wrote. But, she continued, “conducting such investigations for oversight purposes is not a personal prerogative or right; rather, it is an exercise of the institutional power of Congress.”
Democrats have said that a series of deaths inside immigration detention facilities this year have raised urgent questions about the conditions inside.
A federal judge in Maryland blocked the construction of a new detention center in April and assessments of a facility in the Florida Everglades have highlighted the severe impact on the local water and public health systems.
Zach Montague is a Times reporter covering the federal courts, including the legal disputes over the Trump administration’s agenda.
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