A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has blocked the Trump administration's Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy that placed new limits on members of Congress from inspecting immigration detention facilities.
A dozen lawmakers sued over the new policies, adopted by ICE in June, that they claim violate federal law giving members of Congress the right to visit these facilities. The first policy excludes ICE field offices, on the rationale that immigrants in them are not being "detained" and merely being processed for detention elsewhere; the second policy requires members of Congress give one week's notice before turning up for an inspection.
In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb agreed these policies likely violate both the 2024 authorization of funding for the Department of Homeland Security and the Administrative Procedure Act, and granted a stay until the matter can be permanently resolved.
"Section 527 concerns the ability of Members of Congress to review on-the-ground conditions at a covered facility at the time of their request. Plaintiffs have an interest in facts about whether facilities are overcrowded or unsanitary, whether the staff is engaging in abuse, or the location of constituents or their family members," wrote Cobb. "This kind of information ... can vary widely based on ICE’s pace of arrests and decisions regarding housing of detainees. Nor is it speculative that these conditions could change over the course of seven days."
"This issue is even more pronounced to the extent that Defendants’ policies — such as the field office policy — prohibit Plaintiffs from entering certain facilities at all. Such information about the on-the-ground conditions is 'lost forever to history,' and cannot be retroactively provided to Plaintiffs following resolution of the merits of this litigation," Cobb concluded.
This is the latest in a long string of lower court findings of abuses of power and illegal activity by immigration officials under the Trump administration. One judge in September even went so far as to compare ICE agents to the Ku Klux Klan for their use of masks to conceal their identities during controversial arrests.