Lawmakers stress need for immigration site visits without delays

WASHINGTON — When Rep. April McClain Delaney made an oversight visit to an immigration detention site in Baltimore last month, 47 days after her office originally requested, the Maryland Democrat said she found concerning conditions with detainees gesturing for food and water and placed in rooms with 40 others.

But it was clear Immigration and Customs Enforcement had made changes prior to her visit, McClain Delaney told reporters, and migrants housed there told her the facility was cleaned just prior to her arrival.

“While I am relieved to be granted access after requesting this tour nearly two months ago, it’s clear that ICE gave us a highly sanitized portrayal of this facility,” McClain Delaney said in a news release. “What remains unknown is what conditions look like when I’m not there.”

McClain Delaney is among Democratic members of Congress emphasizing the importance of being able to conduct immediate oversight visits to detention centers, as they renew their legal challenge to the latest Department of Homeland Security policy requiring a seven-day waiting period.

Judge Jia M. Cobb of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia this month temporarily halted implementation of the DHS policy and will hold a hearing Thursday over whether to issue a more permanent block while the lawsuit plays out.

The conditions at immigration detention facilities continue to draw concern amid reports of overcrowding, use of solitary confinement and denial of medical care, and House Democrats have estimated more than 50 deaths of people in ICE and Customs and Border Protection custody since the start of the second Trump administration.

Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, is among the lawmakers who submitted sworn declarations in the case on the impact of the delays on oversight work. He said the conditions found at immigration detention facilities have “underscored the importance of having oversight access, when necessary, with little or no prior notice.”

Thompson described facilities preventing assessment of “true” day-to-day realities by making changes to “improve the conditions” before lawmaker visits, such as fresh paint, new flowers or guards, or detainees moved from solitary confinement.

“These kinds of changes—and assuredly many other changes that went unseen — prevent congressional oversight from assessing the true conditions of a facility as experienced by the detainees day to day,” Thompson concludes in his declaration.

Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, a member of the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said in her declaration that her schedule as a lawmaker, including times when she is expected to be on the House floor for votes, makes having a wait for delayed visit to a facility onerous.

Escobar recounted an incident on July 9 when she sought to make an oversight visit to an immigration detention facility in El Paso and was denied entry. ICE later confirmed a visit for July 17, Escobar said.

But when the date came, Escobar said she ended up having to be on the House floor due to votes that went into the early morning, which prevented her from being able to make the visit. Three of her staff members conducted the visit without the lawmaker, Escobar said.

Escobar said she learned from detainees that ICE had used the opportunity of delays “to alter conditions of detention in advance of a visit, also in violation of the oversight rider.”

“During an oversight visit in November 2025, for example, I spoke with a group of women detainees,” Escobar said. “Every woman we interacted with shared that ICE had been cleaning up the facility in the days leading up to the oversight visit.”

DHS response

A Justice Department filing in the case says lawmakers won’t face irreparable loss from the delay because they’re still able to make visits if they give notice and can obtain that information in other ways.

“Plaintiffs’ speculation that the condition of ICE facilities could drastically change in the period between their notice and the scheduled visit is belied by the presumption of regularity afforded to agency operations … and could be mitigated by periodic visits or through interbranch negotiations regarding ICE operations,” the filing states.

Lawmakers had previously been able to gain immediate access to immigration detention facilities because of a provision in the law funding the department. A group of Democrats originally filed a lawsuit to enforce that provision last year when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem first implemented a policy with a waiting period.

Noem implemented a new version Jan. 8, which became public after members of the Minnesota delegation were denied entry to a detention facility in the wake of the fatal shooting of American citizen Renee Good.

Noem has said all funding for the lawmaker visits will not come from annual appropriations, but from separate funds in a budget reconciliation law President Donald Trump signed in July. That reconciliation law does not include a provision requiring unannounced visits and provided $170 billion for immigration enforcement activities.

DHS spokesperson Tricia Mclaughlin has said the Jan. 8 policy was instituted as a safety measure “due to escalating riots and political violence targeting buildings and facilities used by ICE.”

“This is to ensure adequate protection for Members of Congress, congressional staff, detainees, and ICE employees alike,” Mclaughlin said. “Unannounced visits require pulling ICE officers from their normal duties.”

Cobb, in her order this month temporarily blocking the policy, pointed to her earlier findings of irreparable harm to lawmakers from the delays, and she wrote that the ability to conduct timely visits has become more relevant.

“If anything, the strength of that finding has become greater over the intervening weeks, given that ICE’s enforcement and detention practices have become the focus of intense national and congressional interest,” Cobb wrote.

McClain Delaney in her declaration said she had sought a visit to the facility in Baltimore in December. ICE took six days to acknowledge and propose dates, which were more than one month out, then canceled them without explanation, before rescheduling her for Jan. 27 when she was finally able to make the visit.

That turned out to be the same day Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., was denied an attempt to visit a Baltimore facility after a video purportedly showing overcrowding at the facility went viral on social media.

“Trump’s ICE is stonewalling lawful Congressional oversight in an attempt to hide the conditions that detainees are subjected to in their Baltimore field office — just like they’ve been trying to cover up and lie about the countless abuses they have perpetrated across the country,” Van Hollen said.

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