The RecordExhibit 143
Requiring a week's notice before members of Congress can inspect ICE detention centers
Ruled unlawful means: A court ruled against it. Some rulings are on appeal.
In June 2025 Homeland Security began requiring members of Congress to give seven days' notice before visiting ICE detention facilities, a requirement only the secretary could waive, and declared that ICE field offices are not detention centers open to unannounced oversight. Federal law lets lawmakers inspect the facilities without advance notice, and a judge has blocked three versions of the policy.
What happened
ICE had historically let lawmakers visit without notice, and a provision Congress wrote into the department's appropriations bars it from using funds to require prior notice of an oversight visit. A dozen Democratic House members, including Reps. Dan Goldman, Joe Neguse and Jason Crow, sued with Democracy Forward and American Oversight after being turned away.
After the first version was blocked, Secretary Kristi Noem reissued the policy on Jan. 8, 2026, the day after an ICE officer killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, saying it was paid for with funds from the 2025 reconciliation law rather than the appropriations act the rider is attached to; three Minnesota representatives were turned away from the Minneapolis ICE office three days after the shooting.
When a judge blocked that version on Feb. 2, Noem reissued an identical policy the same day, saying the appropriations funding had lapsed in the government shutdown. Rep. LaMonica McIver was charged with assault after a confrontation during a May 2025 oversight visit in Newark; that prosecution is covered in Exhibit 25. ICE held about 66,000 people at the end of November 2025, an all-time high, CBS News reported.
Where it stands
On Dec. 17, 2025, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb in Washington temporarily blocked the June policy, finding that it likely violated the appropriations law and that the law entitles members of Congress to enter ICE facilities without notice.
On Jan. 19, 2026 she declined to hold that the Jan. 8 version violated her order, saying the plaintiffs had used the wrong procedure and stressing that she was not finding the new policy lawful. On Feb. 2 she temporarily blocked that version, and on March 2 she blocked the reissued policy under the Administrative Procedure Act until the lawsuit ends, writing that the timing of the new policy was perhaps not a coincidence.
The government appealed to the D.C. Circuit, and on May 8, 2026 a three-judge panel refused to put her order on hold during the appeal. Judge Neomi Rao concurred, writing that the government is very likely to win because individual members probably lack standing to sue over an institutional power of Congress, but that it had not shown irreparable harm. The appeal is pending, and no court has issued a final ruling on the policy.
The administration's side
The administration argues that congressional visits must not interfere with the president's constitutional powers, that many requests are made for a media act rather than for oversight, that unannounced visits without proper support endanger safety, and that the department supported more facility visits in fiscal 2025 than under the Biden administration. It also argued that the appropriations rider did not apply because the later versions were funded by the reconciliation law, and on appeal that individual lawmakers have no standing to sue.
Sources
Permanent link: https://unredactedrecord.com/e/oversightvisits/