The Department of Homeland Security this week issued updated guidance around members of Congress visiting Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities. It follows a series of high-profile and at times physical incidents in recent weeks involving lawmakers, the Trump administration and immigration officers.
An updated memo from ICE on visit and engagement protocol for members of Congress and their staff dated June 2025 adds a section that does not appear to be included in guidance on the same topic dated as recently as February and posted by DHS as recently as last month, titled “Request Process.”
The section in the new guidance outlines the department’s request for members of Congress to inform ICE that they wish to visit a facility at least 72 hours in advance. Staff of lawmakers are required to give 24 hours' notice of their intent to visit, although this was also outlined in the February memo.
The annual appropriations act passed by Congress affords members the ability to enter DHS facilities where immigrants are held, and the 72-hour notice for lawmakers is specifically listed as a request rather than a requirement.
Nonetheless, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., blasted the new request from ICE, calling it an “affront to the Constitution and Federal law.”
“This unlawful policy is a smokescreen to deny Member visits to ICE offices across the country, which are holding migrants — and sometimes even U.S. citizens — for days at a time,” Thompson wrote in a statement. “They are therefore detention facilities and are subject to oversight and inspection at any time. DHS pretending otherwise is simply their latest lie.”
The Consolidated Appropriations Act states that “None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Homeland Security by this Act may be used to prevent any of the following persons from entering, for the purpose of conducting oversight, any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens ... .”
The guidance issued in February specifically states ICE will “comply with the law and accommodate Members seeking to visit/tour an ICE detention facility for the purpose of conducting oversight.”
The new guidance, on the other hand, says ICE will “make every effort to comply with the law,” going on to say that “exigent circumstances may impact the time of entry into the facility.”
The new memo also seeks to establish a difference between ICE detention facilities and field offices, saying the latter are not subject to the law, preventing members of Congress from being blocked from visiting.
It comes after three members of Congress and the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, were involved in a scuffle with federal agents at an ICE facility last month. One, Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., has been indicted over the situation.
Other recent incidents involving elected officials and immigration officers include one with Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., at Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference in Los Angeles last week and another with New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, a mayoral candidate, at immigration court in Lower Manhattan.
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