ICE imposes new rules on congressional visits
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The new protocol, updated since February, comes as Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly been denied access to ICE facilities this month as they try to conduct congressional oversight, and amid high-profile clashes between federal immigration officials and members of Congress.
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Democratic lawmakers in California, Illinois and New York have been turned away from ICE facilities recently, sometimes after trying in vain for hours to gain access to buildings that they say they are authorized to visit.
Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., was
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Law enforcement officers from a variety of agencies deployed at Delaney Hall, a privately run immigration detention center in Newark, amid protests outside the facility on June 13.
DAKOTA SANTIAGO/NYT
Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, criticized the new ICE policy as an attempt to skirt congressional oversight. In a statement, he said the new guidance was 'an affront to the Constitution and Federal law.'
Thompson singled out the guidance on field offices, which he called a 'smoke screen' to prevent members from visiting offices that 'are holding migrants — and sometimes even U.S. citizens — for days at a time.'
Representatives for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The new guidance spilled into public view more clearly Wednesday. In suburban Chicago, four Democratic representatives were denied access to an immigration processing facility in suburban Chicago where they believed immigrants were being held for days without access to lawyers.
Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Dan Goldman, both D-N.Y., were both denied access to an ICE office in Manhattan, even as an official acknowledged that detainees were held there overnight. Both men said they requested a visit in advance.
'We were told not to,' William Joyce, the deputy director of the New York ICE field office, told them during an exchange in the building's lobby.
In an email to a congressional office this week, an ICE official said that federal immigration officials were 'not facilitating any visits to ICE Field Offices or suboffices' currently because of their 'high operations tempo,' according to a congressional aide who was not authorized to discuss the message publicly.
New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler (right) and Rep. Dan Goldman spoke at a news conference in Lower Manhattan after being barred Wednesday from entering and inspecting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding cells.
Spencer Platt/Getty
Democratic lawmakers have said that the Trump administration's escalation is precisely the reason they want to visit facilities, and that the federal government's large-scale immigration crackdown and accelerated deportation efforts demand more thorough oversight.
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For months, Democrats have framed their efforts to access immigration detention and enforcement facilities as part of their constitutional duties to provide a check on the expansion of presidential power.
Under the new guidance, ICE also asks for at least 72 hours' notice for a visit to its facilities. Existing guidance already required congressional staff to provide at least 24 hours' notice before visiting a detention facility.
The agency also explicitly says that visitors cannot 'have any physical or verbal contact with any person in ICE detention facilities' without prior approval, and that violating that policy could lead to tours being cut short.
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