Democrats Return to Court to Challenge Noem’s New ICE Oversight Restrictions

A group of Democratic lawmakers who sued the Department of Homeland Security last summer for restricting congressional oversight visits to federal immigration detention centers is asking for an emergency hearing to challenge DHS’ new policy, rolled out quietly last week, that requires seven days’ notice for lawmakers seeking to inspect facilities.

The new directive, issued by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, is the second time in less than a year that the department has sought to limit lawmakers’ oversight. A similar directive was previously struck down by a federal judge in December.

“The duplicate notice policy is a transparent attempt by DHS to again subvert Congress’s will – and this Court’s stay of DHS’s oversight visit policy,” the 17-page motion filed Monday reads.

The group of 12 House Democrats, which includes Homeland Security Committee Ranking Member Rep. Bennie Thompson, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Rep. Jamie Raskin and House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Rep. Robert Garcia, is represented by the Democracy Forward foundation.

A federal judge in July ruled that DHS cannot require notice due to a federal statute that grants unregulated congressional oversight visits for all entities funded by congressional appropriations.

The new memo that became public over the weekend as part of the lawmakers’ case, differs from the policy struck down by the courts last year in one big way: It orders that lawmaker visits be handled by funds appropriated through the so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which Noem argued exempts it from Section 527, the statute requiring unrestricted access to immigration facilities.

Monday’s filing argued that Noem’s new memo is invalid because “it is practically and administratively impossible for Defendants to have used exclusively OBBBA funds in creating and implementing the duplicate notice policy.”

“Absent a showing by Defendants that they did not use a single dollar of annually appropriated funding, their reimposed notice policy—a duplicate of the stayed seven-day-notice requirement—violates section 527 for the same reasons,” the filing said.

Even so, “A supplemental appropriation is not an invitation for the relevant agency to evade the policies chosen by Congress and enacted with the President’s signature through the annual appropriations,” the filing argued. “DHS is again attempting to subvert the clear restrictions that Congress placed on the agency.”

DHS did not respond to a request for comment in response to Democrats’ filing, which also requests an emergency hearing on the issue, arguing that lawmakers are seeking to finalize DHS funding plans for fiscal year 2027 by the end of January.

Democracy Forward said in a statement Monday that it was “clear” the Trump administration tries to hide its actions from the public because “what ICE is doing is harmful and indefensible, and this administration does not want checks and balances.”

“A federal court issued an order in December preventing the Trump-Vance administration’s attempts to prevent individual members of Congress from conducting oversight, and yet Secretary Noem and DHS appear to be seeking to circumvent the court’s order,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement. “This threat to the rule of law and our system of checks and balances should concern every single American. We look forward to seeking answers in court about what the government has done here.”

DHS’ new push for advance notice for congressional visits was issued one day after an immigration officer shot and killed a U.S. citizen in Minneapolis. It also appears to explain a heated incident over the weekend in which Minnesota Reps. Ilhan Omar, Angie Craig and Kelly Morrison tried to conduct an oversight visit at an ICE detention center but were denied entry.