The House Oversight Committee on Thursday demanded access to immigration detention facilities after the Trump administration abruptly canceled planned tours of 11 detention centers — preventing lawmakers from delivering the oversight they are constitutionally bound to provide.
“The department’s last-minute denial of access to CBP facilities and unwarranted restrictions at ICE facilities are unacceptable and impair the committee’s ability to conduct oversight responsibilities in an effective manner,” wrote committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.)
DHS drew criticism on social media for its refusal to grant the lawmakers access, with one observer writing sarcastically, “This is definitely how you act when you have nothing to hide.”
This is definitely how you act when you have nothing to hide. Totally. https://t.co/vl5Tgt1upR
— Jonathan 'Boo and Vote' Cohn (@JonathanCohn) August 30, 2019
Congress has a constitutional duty to oversee federal programs and ensure they are operating properly. But DHS is now blocking congressional staff from oversight visits to detention facilities. https://t.co/Mza9XI9VIB
— MoveOn (@MoveOn) August 29, 2019
Cummings condemned acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan for blocking lawmakers’ access shortly after committee staffers returned from a preliminary visit to the facilities — where they reportedly witnessed serious abuse and neglect of migrants.
In Cummings’s letter to the Department of Homeland Security, he detailed some of what staffers saw during ICE and CBP site visits earlier this month, including:
- a man who shouted through a glass partition at a detention center in Mississippi that he was being abused and humiliated by ICE agents and asking to speak with staffers — only to have an ICE official threaten to end the tour and cancel future visits if committee staff spoke to him
- immigrants who reported that young children where being detained in cold rooms without appropriate clothing
- parents who were not being given sufficient diapers for their babies
- immigrants who told the staffers that they had been pressured into signing English-language documents without translation and denied access to phones
The accounts were not unlike numerous reports of abuse in ICE’s hundreds of detention facilities where thousands of immigrants are being held for crossing the U.S. border without going through a designated point of entry.
In June, a team of legal experts spoke to children and parents at facilities near El Paso, Texas. The children told them they had no access to soap and toothbrushes, while parents reported they were being given dirty bottles to feed their babies. The team of advocates called the centers “torture facilities.”
Human rights organizations and Democrats in Congress have raised alarm about conditions in detention centers, especially as at least seven children have died of preventable causes while in custody.
“It appears that the administration expects Congress to be satisfied with receiving agency tours of facilities — in some cases without the ability to photograph conditions or interview detainees — and not to question the policies or decisions that agency officials make,” Cummings wrote in his letter.
“That is not the way effective oversight works,” he continued. “Congress has an independent responsibility under the Constitution to determine whether federal programs are operating as they should be―not merely to accept the administration’s word for it.”
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.