The Trump administration has found a new way to block Democrats from highlighting the reportedly appalling conditions at ICE facilities: flout the law.
The Department of Homeland Security is imposing new restrictions on visits that members of Congress and their staff can make to ICE facilities, in violation of federal law. Under the yearly appropriations act, sitting members of Congress are allowed to enter any DHS facility being used to “detain or otherwise house aliens” without providing prior notice in order to conduct an oversight visit.
But under new rules released earlier this month, lawmakers must provide ICE with at least 72 hours’ notice before visiting a facility. Previously, congressional staffers only needed to give 24 hours’ notice. The new guidance also gives ICE the right to “deny a request or otherwise cancel, reschedule or terminate a tour or visit” for a number of reasons, including “operational concerns” or if ICE officials or facility managers “deem it appropriate.”
Representative Bennie Thompson, the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, called the policy “an affront to the Constitution and Federal law.”
“There is no valid or legal reason for denying Member access to ICE facilities and DHS’s ever-changing justifications prove this,” Thompson said in a statement. “To be clear, there is no agency or department that is ‘too busy’ for oversight. If ICE has nothing to hide, DHS must make its facilities available.”
The policy change comes amid disturbing trends both inside and outside ICE facilities. Since Donald Trump took office, immigrant detentions have ramped up rapidly, with White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller demanding ICE make upward of 3,000 arrests per day. The arrested people—very few of whom are the “violent criminals” Trump promised to deport and some of whom are American citizens—are reportedly being held in appalling conditions.
Meanwhile, Democratic members of Congress who have attempted to enter ICE facilities on oversight visits have been denied entry. Representatives Maxine Waters and Judy Chu were denied entry on separate visits to California facilities, while Representatives Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman were blocked from entering an ICE office in New York. Representatives Delia Ramirez, Chuy Garcia, Danny Davis, and Jonathan Jackson were also kept out of an ICE center in Chicago for two days in a row.
The most dramatic visit was in New Jersey, when Representatives LaMonica McIver, Bonnie Watson Coleman, and Rob Menendez attempted to enter an ICE facility in Newark. Law enforcement agents arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who was with the legislators and was ultimately charged with trespassing.
New Jersey acting attorney general and former Trump lawyer Alina Habba later dropped the charges against Baraka, only to charge McIver with “assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement.”
McIver has slammed the charges as “purely political,” warning they were intended to “criminalize and deter legislative oversight.”
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