Congress Has Demanded Answers to ICE Detaining Americans. The Administration Has Responded With Silence.
by Nicole Foy
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Just a week into President Donald Trump's second term, Rep. Adriano Espaillat began to see reports of Puerto Ricans and others being questioned and arrested by immigration agents.
So Espaillat, a New York Democrat, did what members of Congress often do: He wrote to the administration and demanded answers. That was more than 10 weeks ago. Espaillat has not received a response.
His experience appears to be common.
At least a dozen members of Congress, all Democrats, have written to the Trump administration with pointed questions about constituents and other citizens whom immigration agents have questioned, detained and even held at gunpoint. In one letter, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee demanded a list of every citizen detained during the new administration.
None has received an answer.
What we are clearly seeing is that with this administration, they are not responding to congressional inquiries," said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, a New Mexico Democrat.
Leger Fernandez and others wrote to Trump and the Department of Homeland Security on Jan. 28 after receiving complaints from constituents and tribal nations that federal agents were pressing tribal citizens in New Mexico for their immigration status, raising concerns about racial profiling.
The congresswoman and others say the lack of response is part of a broader pattern in which the administration has been moving to sideline Congress and its constitutional power to investigate the executive branch.
That is a big concern on a level beyond what ICE is doing," Leger Fernandez said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a branch of DHS. This administration does not seem to recognize the power and authority and responsibility" of Congress.
Norman Ornstein, a longtime congressional observer at the American Enterprise Institute, said prior administrations' lack of responsiveness has frustrated lawmakers too. But he's never seen one so thoroughly brush off Congress.
What's clear now is that the message from Donald Trump and his minions is: You don't have to respond to these people, whether they are ours or not,'" Ornstein said, referring to Republicans and Democrats. That's not usual. Nothing about this is usual."
A White House spokesperson denied that the administration has been circumventing Congress or its oversight. Passage of the continuing resolution that kept our government open and commonsense legislation like the Laken Riley Act are indicative of how closely the Trump administration is working with Congress," said Kush Desai in a statement.
The White House did not answer questions about the letters. DHS also did not respond to ProPublica's questions.
Last month, ProPublica detailed how Americans have been caught in the administration's dragnet. Such mistakes have been made by many administrations over decades. The government often has not taken steps to reduce errors, such as updating its files when agents confirm somebody's citizenship. But experts and advocates have warned that Trump's aggressive immigration goals - including arrest quotas for enforcement agents - make it more likely that citizens will get caught up.
ICE and its sister agency, Customs and Border Protection, said in earlier statements to ProPublica that agents are allowed to ask for citizens' identification. The agencies did not provide explanations for their actions in most of the cases ProPublica asked about.
Answers were also hard to come by during Trump's first term, even when Democrats controlled the House and had more power over hearings.
At a House hearing in 2019 about family separation, lawmakers pressed then-Border Patrol Chief Brian Hastings about another issue: the three-week detention of a Dallas-born high school student and citizen, who was only released after The Dallas Morning News reported what happened.
Hastings said the student never claimed to be a citizen during his detention - though the newspaper reported that the agency's own paperwork noted the opposite. Hastings also declined to give any broader accounting of how often the agency had held Americans. I don't have information about specific cases," he said. (Hastings did not respond to requests for comment.)
Espaillat, the New York representative, has been in office for eight years. He said he frequently raised immigration questions and concerns during the Biden administration too, and got responses.
Republicans complained about the opposite experience during the Biden administration. They said the administration was unresponsive to Congress' questions on immigration, forcing lawmakers to subpoena officials for answers. (The administration dismissed the moves as political posturing.")
Espaillat said he's not surprised the Trump administration has been silent. They probably don't have a good answer."