Overview:
In keeping with ProPublica, Congress is being ignored after elevating considerations about ICE detaining U.S. residents.
By Nicole Foy | April 14, 2025, 6 a.m. EDT
Only a week into President Donald Trump’s second time period, Rep. Adriano Espaillat started to see studies of Puerto Ricans and others being questioned and arrested by immigration brokers.
So Espaillat, a New York Democrat, did what members of Congress usually do: He wrote to the administration and demanded solutions. That was greater than 10 weeks in the past. Espaillat has not acquired a response.
His expertise seems to be frequent.
A minimum of a dozen members of Congress, all Democrats, have written to the Trump administration with pointed questions on constituents and different residents whom immigration brokers have questioned, detained and even held at gunpoint. In a single letter, Democrats on the Home Judiciary Committee demanded a list of each citizen detained throughout the brand new administration.
None has acquired a solution.
“What we’re clearly seeing is that with this administration, they don’t seem to be responding to congressional inquiries,” mentioned Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, a New Mexico Democrat.
Leger Fernández and others wrote to Trump and the Division of Homeland Safety on Jan. 28 after receiving complaints from constituents and tribal nations that federal brokers have been urgent tribal residents in New Mexico for his or her immigration standing, elevating considerations about racial profiling.
The congresswoman and others say the dearth of response is a part of a broader sample through which the administration has been transferring to sideline Congress and its constitutional energy to investigate the executive branch.
“That may be a large concern on a degree past what ICE is doing,” Leger Fernández mentioned, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a department of DHS. “This administration doesn’t appear to acknowledge the ability and authority and accountability” of Congress.
Norman Ornstein, a longtime congressional observer on the American Enterprise Institute, mentioned prior administrations’ lack of responsiveness has annoyed lawmakers too. However he’s by no means seen one so totally brush off Congress.
“What’s clear now’s that the message from Donald Trump and his minions is: ‘You don’t have to reply to these folks, whether or not they’re ours or not,’” Ornstein mentioned, referring to Republicans and Democrats. “That’s not ordinary. Nothing about that is ordinary.”
A White Home spokesperson denied that the administration has been circumventing Congress or its oversight. “Passage of the persevering with decision that saved our authorities open and commonsense laws just like the Laken Riley Act are indicative of how carefully the Trump administration is working with Congress,” mentioned Kush Desai in an announcement.
The White Home didn’t reply questions concerning the letters. DHS additionally didn’t reply to ProPublica’s questions.
Final month, ProPublica detailed how Americans have been caught within the administration’s dragnet. Such errors have been made by many administrations over many years. The federal government usually has not taken steps to cut back errors, comparable to updating its information when brokers verify any individual’s citizenship. However consultants and advocates have warned that Trump’s aggressive immigration targets — together with arrest quotas for enforcement brokers — make it extra probably that residents will get caught up.
ICE and its sister company, Customs and Border Safety, mentioned in earlier statements to ProPublica that brokers are allowed to ask for residents’ identification. The companies didn’t present explanations for his or her actions in a lot of the instances ProPublica requested about.
Solutions have been additionally onerous to return by throughout Trump’s first time period, even when Democrats managed the Home and had extra energy over hearings.
At a Home listening to in 2019 about family separation, lawmakers pressed then-Border Patrol Chief Brian Hastings about one other difficulty: the three-week detention of a Dallas-born highschool pupil and citizen, who was solely launched after The Dallas Morning Information reported what happened.
Hastings mentioned the coed by no means claimed to be a citizen throughout his detention — although the newspaper reported that the company’s personal paperwork famous the other. Hastings additionally declined to provide any broader accounting of how usually the company had held People. “I don’t have details about particular instances,” he mentioned. (Hastings didn’t reply to requests for remark.)
Espaillat, the New York consultant, has been in workplace for eight years. He mentioned he steadily raised immigration questions and considerations throughout the Biden administration too, and bought responses.
Republicans complained concerning the reverse expertise throughout the Biden administration. They said the administration was unresponsive to Congress’ questions on immigration, forcing lawmakers to subpoena officials for solutions. (The administration dismissed the strikes as “political posturing.”)
Espaillat mentioned he’s not stunned the Trump administration has been silent. “They in all probability don’t have a very good reply.”
This text was initially printed by ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning unbiased newsroom, on April 15, 2025.
Written by Nicole Foy.
Read the original article on ProPublica