House lawmakers on Tuesday will get their first opportunity since President Donald Trump took office to question Department of Homeland Security agency leaders about the White House’s illegal immigrant deportation operation.
The leaders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will testify before the House Homeland Security Committee for its first oversight hearing for the trio of immigration agencies — and the hourslong showdown on Capitol Hill is expected to be a fiery one.
Lawmakers are trying to renegotiate the terms of a $64 billion DHS funding bill before it runs out Friday, while ICE and CBP face widespread criticism from Democrats over the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota last month.
The committee’s ranking member, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), told the Washington Examiner on Monday that he envisioned the hearing as the “start of a reckoning.”
“This hearing is going to be just the start of a reckoning for the Trump administration and its weaponization of government against our country,” Thompson wrote in a statement. “Donald Trump and Kristi Noem must be held accountable for the immigration operations creating chaos in our communities, terrorizing people, and hurting U.S. citizens and immigrants alike.”
House Homeland Security Chairman Andrew Garbarino (R-NY) called for the oversight hearing roughly a week after ICE killed a woman in Minneapolis.
Federal immigration authorities sent to Minneapolis in early December and more than 3,000 were sent in by January following the revelation of a billion-dollar fraud scheme carried out by U.S. citizens and illegal immigrants from Somalia. In that time, the DHS and partner agencies at the Justice Department have arrested more than 4,000 illegal immigrants, but the effort has been met with the harshest blowback to date of half a dozen “sanctuary” cities that the Trump administration has tried to make examples of.
Democrats are likely to focus their questions of acting ICE Director Todd Lyons and CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott on Tuesday on the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti; the instructions that federal agents and officers in Minneapolis were given while making arrests; and what led to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s mischaracterization of the Pretti shooting.
House Democrats have called for a hearing with Noem and senior DHS officials as the Trump administration has attempted to carry out mass deportations. Democrats will finally get to sit down with the agency leaders handling it, but not Noem and Lewandowski — the ones at the helm of the department.
Republicans have historically been quick to defend federal police enforcing immigration laws and are expected to praise CBP and ICE’s accomplishments making arrests on Tuesday.
Two aides for Republican members of the committee who spoke with the Washington Examiner on the condition of anonymity Monday were skeptical that GOP lawmakers would ask Lyons or Scott specific questions about Noem and DHS special government employee Corey Lewandowski following reporting by the Washington Examiner and others that exposed employees’ claims of a hostile environment and significant infighting between Trump’s picks across the department over how to handle deportations.
Noem, Lewandowski, and White House deputy chief of staff Corey Lewandowski are supportive of arresting as many illegal immigrants as possible through more aggressive means, while White House border czar Tom Homan, Scott, Lyons, and other senior federal law enforcement within DHS want to focus on actual criminals and go about it more carefully and tactfully.
Meanwhile, Republicans are expected to tread carefully, praising the Trump administration for its success bringing arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border to 55-year lows in year one, as well as making 700,000 arrests inside the country, as the DHS has claimed.
“I hope my Republican colleagues will remember that our job is to conduct oversight, not cover for Donald Trump and his out-of-control administration, which is running roughshod over Americans’ rights, killing U.S. citizens, and threatening our very democracy,” Thompson said.
The committee’s Republican arm did not provide a comment on what to expect in the hearing.
The showdown between lawmakers on Tuesday comes a day before a separate panel of House lawmakers will debate whether to fund DHS.
Congress is deadlocked right now over DHS funding, given Democrats’ desires to tie reforms to immigration-related policies to the bill. Funding was agreed upon between House Democrats and Republicans in January, but the Senate did not move forward.
A Republican aide for a committee member told the Washington Examiner on Monday that no funding for the DHS would, in turn, mean no funding for lawmakers to carry out oversight of the department.
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CBP and ICE received an enormous amount of funding through last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but more than 15 other DHS agencies are dependent on negotiations in Congress to keep the lights on.
If negotiations fail and funding is delayed, Democrats will “have to answer” why they are not funding cybersecurity, aviation security, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, and other federal agencies, the Republican aide said in a phone call.