Propublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates power abuse. Sign up and receive the biggest story as soon as it’s published.
In just a week of President Donald Trump’s second term, Senator Adriano Espirat began seeing reports that Puerto Ricans and others had been questioned and arrested by immigration agents.
Espirat, a New York Democrat, did what Congressional members often do. He wrote to the administration and demanded an answer. That was over 10 weeks ago. Espaillat has not received a response.
His experiences seem common.
At least 12 Congresses, all Democrats, wrote to the Trump administration with pointless questions about immigration agents questioned at gunpoint, detained, and even detained members and other citizens. In one letter, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee requested a list of all citizens detained during the new administration.
I haven’t received the answer.
“What we see clearly is that this administration has not responded to congressional inquiries,” said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, a New Mexico Democrat.
Legger Fernandez and others wrote to Trump and the Department of Homeland Security on January 28 after receiving complaints from constituents and tribal states that federal agents were pushing immigrant status on tribal citizens in New Mexico and raising concerns about racial profiling.
Lawmakers and others say the lack of response is part of a broader pattern in which the administration is moving Congress to Sideline Congress and into constitutional forces examining administrative divisions.
“This is a major concern at a level beyond what ICE is doing,” Leger Fernández said, referring to the DHS branch of immigration and customs enforcement. “This administration does not seem to recognize the power, authority and responsibility of Congress.”
Norman Ornstein, a longtime Congressional observer at the American Enterprise Institute, said the previous administration’s lack of responsiveness has also irritated lawmakers. But he has never seen anything that can brush off Congress so thoroughly.
“The clearest thing now is that the message from Donald Trump and his minions is, ‘You don’t need to respond to these people, whether it’s ours or not,'” Ornstein said, referring to Republicans and Democrats. “That’s not normal. It’s not normal about this.”
A White House spokesman denied that the administration is circumventing Congress or its surveillance. “The passing of the ongoing resolution that opened our government is showing just like the Rayken Riley Act, how closely the Trump administration works with Congress,” Kush Desai said in a statement.
The White House did not answer questions about the letter. DHS also did not respond to Propublica questions.
Last month, Propublica detailed how Americans were caught up in the administration’s dragnet. These mistakes have been made by many governments over the decades. The government often does not take steps to reduce errors, such as updating files when agents confirm someone’s citizenship. However, experts and supporters have warned that Trump’s aggressive immigration goals, including the arrest assignment of enforcement agents, are more likely to attract citizens.
ICE and its sister bodies, Customs and Border Protection, said in a previous statement that agents are permitted to seek citizen identification, in a ProPublica statement. The agency did not provide an explanation of their behavior in most cases Propublica asked.
Even when Democrats controlled the House and had more power over hearings, the answer was also difficult to come during Trump’s first term.
At a House hearing on family separation in 2019, lawmakers pushed then-patrol chief Brian Hastings on another issue. Three weeks of detention between a Dallas-born high school student and a citizen.
Hastings said the student never claimed to be a citizen during his custody, but the newspaper reported that the agency’s own documents pointed to opposition. Hastings also refused to give the institution a wider accounting frequency with which it has Americans. “We don’t have any information about any particular cases,” he said. (Hastings did not respond to requests for comment.)
NOAA scientists are cleaning the bathroom after the end of the basic service contract and reconsidering the lab experiment
New York president Espaillat has been in office for eight years. He said he also frequently raised immigration questions and concerns during the Biden administration and received responses.
Republicans complained about their experiences of opposition during the Biden administration. They said the administration responded to questions about immigration in Congress and forced lawmakers to summon them for answers. (The administration has dismissed this move as a “political stance.”
Espirat said he was not surprised that the Trump administration was silent. “They probably don’t have a good answer.”
