(Reuters) -The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has put new restrictions on visits by members of Congress to immigration enforcement field offices after several episodes where Democratic lawmakers have been refused access or even arrested.
The new guidelines, dated this month, also say Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a DHS agency, has sole discretion over whether to deny or cancel a tour of an ICE detention center by a member of Congress.
Senators and representatives in Congress have oversight of agencies in the executive branch of government and control their funding. Under federal law, DHS is forbidden from preventing members of Congress from entering any facility “used to detain or otherwise house aliens,” and lawmakers do not have to give DHS prior notice of a visit. DHS may require lawmakers’ staff to give 24 hours’ notice before those staffers can enter.
The new guidelines say that law does not apply to ICE field offices, although immigrants are often detained at ICE field offices before a transfer to an ICE jail. ICE is now asking members of Congress to give at least 72 hours’ notice before a visit.
U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican, returned to the White House in January partly on a pledge to voters to deport millions of immigrants, including those in the U.S. without authorization and those seeking asylum. He also has sought to deport international students legally studying in the U.S. who have pro-Palestinian views.
The guidelines note that members of Congress do not have to give notice before a visit to an ICE detention center, but now assert that ICE has “the sole and unreviewable discretion to deny a request or otherwise cancel, reschedule or terminate a tour or visit,” for any reason. ICE will make “every effort to comply with the law and accommodate” lawmakers from Congress, the guidelines say.
Some Democratic politicians, who oppose Trump’s crackdown on immigrants, have found themselves in heated standoffs with ICE agents outside immigrant detention centers in several states.
This month, the Trump administration said it is prosecuting U.S. Representative LaMonica McIver, a Democrat from New Jersey, over a scuffle at the gate of an immigration detention center on May 9 as lawmakers sought to conduct an oversight visit.
ICE agents have also arrested local Democratic politicians, including Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, New Jersey, and New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, at ICE facilities in recent weeks.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; editing by Diane Craft)
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