Dems Preparing to Go to War on Immigrant Detention Centers
Trump turned an immigration matter into a legislative oversight and constitutional issue. Democrats are ready to fight back.
EARLIER THIS WEEK the Trump administration announced charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.), whom they accused of assaulting ICE agents while visiting a New Jersey detention center.
This may have been a tactical mistake. Because now Democratic lawmakers are planning to make a series of public visits to private detention centers in their states starting as early as next week, according to House Democrats and aides who spoke to The Bulwark. The idea is to put a spotlight on the Trump administration’s manipulation of the justice system, attacks on institutions, and targeting of political dissent. But Trump himself created the opening. Because by targeting McIver, he turned the detention visits into a question of congressional oversight.
“Every member of Congress should go visit within the next ten days a private detention center,” Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Illinois) told me, emphasizing the fact that lawmakers have the legal right to conduct oversight of detention centers. “We are not going to stand for this intimidation of members of Congress, and coming after members of Congress to intimidate them so they don’t do oversight.”1
Three House Democrats and a congressional aide confirmed that the plan is to increase Democratic visibility at detention centers. This plan has wide support and comes at the direction of various leaders of the sub-caucuses, including the “tri-caucus”—the Congressional Black Caucus, Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus—as well as the Congressional Progressive Caucus and others.
“Congresswoman LaMonica McIver has my support and the charges brought against her by Donald Trump’s personal lawyers are bogus,” Hispanic Caucus chair Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) told The Bulwark.2 “By statute, any member of Congress is lawfully allowed and permitted to show up at ICE facilities—without appointment—to conduct oversight. The charges against Congresswoman McIver are politically motivated and baseless, and we, as a Democratic caucus, will not be intimidated.”
“Let me be overwhelmingly clear: Congresswoman McIver has the full and unwavering support of the Congressional Black Caucus, period,” CBC chair Rep. Yvette Clark (D-N.Y.) said at a press conference attended by senators and the leadership of several House Democratic groups.
Two border-state Democrats told The Bulwark they are planning detention center visits, as well.
Axios reported Democrats were looking to ramp up their detention-center visits, quoting moderate Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), who said the party should “double down” on oversight, and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Tex.), who said the idea came up during the meeting of the Progressive Caucus, which he chairs, and that he and his colleagues intend to show they aren’t scared of how the administration might react.
And react they might. The Trump administration seems to consider Democrats an easy target, frequently accusing those who raise objections to DHS’s policies and conduct of siding with “criminal illegal aliens.” They were quick to use friendly media like Fox News to castigate McIver and New Jersey Democrats Reps. Rob Menendez and Bonnie Watson Coleman for showing up to the Delaney Hall detention center.
But the MAGA Ministry of Deportations faces a twofold problem. First, as recent years have shown, it’s not common for Democrats to read from the same playbook on national issues. The coming together of the Black Caucus and the Hispanic Caucus is a powerful—and rare—occurrence.3 Trump’s aggressiveness has brought the two groups together, with dozens of Democrats representing different groups attending the Tuesday press conference defending McIver.
“Let’s look at the reality of who they’re going after: a black woman, attempting to make her the boogeyman, a woman who has been a leader of saying, ‘We’re not going to pit black and brown people against each other,’ and that she does not need to be Latina to care about constituents—and a mayor who has said the same thing,” Ramirez said. “Trump is successful at pitting people against each other, he needs that to carry on his fascist agenda, and the idea black and brown people could unite for human rights is why he wants to make an example of LaMonica.”
The second gift Trump has given Democrats is the ability to talk about the charges against McIver not as an “immigration” issue, but as a fight over the executive branch trying to avoid oversight.
Democrats are still finding their way as they figure out how to effectively fight Trump on immigration. And every day brings news from around the country, some of it very disturbing.
Keeping track of it all—and of what the fights over immigration mean for our democracy and our economy—can be confusing.
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At the same press conference on Tuesday, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said if Democrats don’t stand up when the Trump administration comes after a judge, a law firm, universities, or someone’s due process rights, eventually, they will come after us all.
He also highlighted a problem with the administration’s bogus charges against McIver: None of the authorities on scene at the time acted as though an assault had taken place. The government chose to portray McIver’s actions as “assault” only after the fact. Booker echoed a key argument from Democrats after the charges emerged. If what she did was so bad, then why were McIver, Menendez, and Coleman given an hour-long tour of the facility afterwards?
THE RESPONSE TO MCIVER’S detention-center visit reveals a hidden truth: Trump has very real reason to fear Democrats poking around private detention centers.
Why?
Because many of these facilities cut corners. They have been rife with human rights abuses. Bringing them to national attention just as Republicans are trying to gain support for a roided-out ICE budget that would give Homeland Security $160 billion in new border and immigration enforcement resources over the next few years could prove to be problematic.4
“Let’s be frank, I’ve said this to my colleagues, we’ve done a terrible job talking about immigration, and standing up for immigrants in a concrete way, and Trump knows that—that’s why he uses it as a wedge against Democrats,” Ramirez said.
But she warned that regardless of where they are on the political spectrum, Democrats need to ask themselves whether or not they will stand up for the Constitution. “If we can’t do oversight, then let’s call it what it is: We are not a democracy and not a coequal branch of government. This should be pissing people off and should have a chilling effect on every member of Congress.”
One Last Thing
ICE is nationally debuting a strategy it has employed locally at times during Trump’s term: picking up immigrants at court. The Associated Press characterizes it as a “coordinated dragnet.” The courthouse apprehensions happened from New York to Miami, Phoenix, Seattle, and Los Angeles.
The AP tells the story of Juan Serrano, a 28-year-old Colombian migrant with no criminal record in Miami, who expected a five-minute hearing and to be told to return in two years time. Instead, he was cuffed against the wall by five federal agents who then took him away in a van along with a dozen other migrants detained the same day.
A journalist with Seattle’s KUOW, Gustavo Sagrero, posted footage of a detention in that city yesterday. It shows flannel-clad, mask-wearing, middle-aged white men lurking just outside a courtroom ready to walk off with an immigrant as soon as he leaves the courtroom.
Expect to see more videos like this in the weeks ahead.
In our Morning Shots newsletter this morning, my Bulwark colleagues succinctly summed up one of the perverse consequences of this courtroom tactic: “Increasingly—and contrary to the White House’s rhetoric—it’s the most law-abiding migrants, who follow the rules and show up to their regularly scheduled hearings and are therefore the easiest to nab.”
The mood is different across the aisle, unsurprisingly: Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) has filed a resolution calling for Rep. McIver to be expelled from the House, while Rep. William Timmons (R-S.C.) has filed one calling for McIver to be censured. When asked about the expulsion possibility, Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters an expulsion effort was “not likely” to succeed because it couldn’t meet the required two-thirds vote threshold.
Rep. Espaillat’s reference to “Donald Trump’s personal lawyers” alludes to the fact that the acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey who is prosecuting Rep. McIver is Alina Habba, who until recently was one of Trump’s defense attorneys. Habba is one of several personal lawyers Trump has brought into government.
Not because there is animosity between them, but because they serve different constituents whose immediate interests are not always the same.
To put in perspective the gargantuan scale of that border-enforcement budget of $160 billion over the next four and a half years, compare it to the amount spent on border security in the four and a half years after 9/11: $38.7 billion (about $70 billion in current dollars). And that was following the worst terrorist attack in American history.
Of course the Dems should go after the regime for due process violations and the other Nazi tactics. But really, as important as those are they’d better freaking go after cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security first and immediately!
This is such welcome news! And it makes so much sense. I hope the Dems show up everywhere. It's about time! Fight, damn it, fight!