U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar was denied entry into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement El Paso Service Processing Center on Montana Avenue on Wednesday, in violation of federal law.
“This (processing center) has been plagued with accusations of mistreatment and inhumane conditions falling well within the scope of my congressional oversight authority,” Escobar, a Democrat who has represented El Paso’s 16th Congressional District since 2019, said in a news release. “For years, I have conducted oversight visits of these facilities in accordance with guidelines in the law, including last month when I toured the ICE soft-sided site in Northeast.”
Escobar said she gave ICE 24 hours notice of her intent to visit the processing center but was turned away from the facility where she planned to conduct her “constitutionally authorized oversight duties.”
Citing the Department of Homeland Security’s 2024 Appropriations Act, Escobar said members of Congress do not need to provide prior notice of their intent to enter an ICE facility.
The Department of Homeland Security last month issued new controversial guidance asking that ICE be given notice of at least 72 hours for a visit and stated that the agency had the right to deny, cancel, reschedule or terminate a visit if it deemed necessary. However, the DHS web pages where the new guidance had been posted appeared to be no longer active Wednesday.
The Department of Homeland Security’s policy currently posted online states that if a member of Congress requests to tour an ICE facility, “ICE will comply with the law and accommodate members seeking to visit/tour an ICE detention facility for the purpose of conducting oversight.”
El Paso ICE officials didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
“Let me be clear: it is the law that no member of Congress can be denied entry to facilities operated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to conduct oversight,” Escobar said in the news release.
“The Trump administration’s continued efforts to hide federally funded facilities from oversight by breaking the law contradicts their lofty, empty promises of law, order, and transparency.”
Several members of Congress, including in New York City and Los Angeles, have been turned away from ICE facilities since the agency expanded large-scale immigration enforcement and raids in Los Angeles and throughout the nation.
More than 57,860 people were in ICE detention nationwide as of June 29, according to the nonpartisan research center TRAC, or Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
TRAC reported an average daily population of 787 at the ICE El Paso Service Processing Center as of June 23. The facility has a capacity of about 1,000 people.
The nongovernmental human rights organization Amnesty International in May released a report that found “widespread human rights violations” at the site, including that detainees faced systematic mistreatment, arbitrary detention and a lack of due process and access to lawyers and legal resources. The findings stemmed from an April visit.
Escobar toured the 153,000-square-foot soft-sided facility off U.S. Highway 54 South on June 20 after providing 24-hour notice. That facility, previously a processing site for Border Patrol, is now under the control of ICE and used primarily as a decompression site to relieve overcrowding at other migrant detention centers, as well as a staging site to prepare migrants for deportation. Escobar at the time said some 900 people were being detained there.
The post ICE blocks Rep. Veronica Escobar from visiting detention center amid oversight rights dispute appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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