Confrontations are playing out nationwide as lawmakers conduct checks of facilities where thousands are being held
The Arizona representative Yassamin Ansari toured a detention facility in May where immigrants rounded up as part of the Trump administration’s campaign of mass deportation were being housed. She described what she saw inside as “sickening” and “worse than prison” – immigrant detainees were held in overcrowded, moldy cells and many reported that they did not have reliable access to food, water or medical care.
Two months later, Ansari returned to the remote desert complex to conduct another congressional oversight visit. This time, she was denied entry.
It wasn’t an isolated incident. From New York to California, Democratic members of Congress have been repeatedly blocked from entering Ice detention facilities where thousands of noncitizens – many with no criminal convictions – are being held.
Democratic officials’ legislative checks – a legal right for members of Congress – have consistently confirmed reports that immigrant detainees are being kept in “filthy” and “inhumane” conditions with little regard for due process. Now, the facilities have become a battleground in the intensifying standoff between the Trump administration and Democratic lawmakers over the president’s supercharged immigration agenda.
