Washington, DC — This week, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin is set to appear before both the House Committee on Homeland Security and the Senate Appropriations Committee to discuss the FY2027 DHS budget request. But these hearings are about far more than line items. They come as Congress weighs whether to deliver more than $70 billion in new taxpayer dollars to expand mass deportation operations — on top of the more than $170 billion in enforcement funding already allocated last year — with no meaningful accountability or reform measures for ICE or CBP. Secretary Mullin must answer for an agency that is flouting the law, brutalizing detainees, and dismantling the legal immigration system while asking Congress for even more money to do it.
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“When Mullin replaced Noem, we said it plainly: this is not accountability, just a reshuffling of the enablers of President Trump’s mass deportation agenda. Three months in, nothing has proven us wrong. The actors may change, but the problem remains the same: an obsession with purging America of immigrants no matter the cost to our humanity, our economy, or our values. Tomorrow, Congress must demand receipts, not a performance.”
Below are three questions Congress must ask:
1.Your agents are openly defying court orders and state law. When does the lawlessness stop?
The culture of impunity at ICE and CBP is not incidental — it is the point. In May, ICE agents violated a federal judge’s order prohibiting arrests at courthouses. In New Jersey, Governor Sherrill signed legislation requiring ICE agents to identify themselves and prohibiting masked enforcement actions during arrests. DHS immediately announced agents would continue operating in defiance of the state law, and then sued the state to make the defiance permanent. Secretary Mullin has also threatened to halt the processing of international travelers at Newark Airport amid the ongoing dispute with New Jersey over conditions at Delaney Hall. This is an agency that has grown accustomed to operating above the law — defying judges, ignoring state legislatures, and using its authority as a cudgel against anyone who pushes back. As stated in an op-ed in MSNow by the former ICE chief of staff Jason Houser, “Airports are not political bargaining chips. They are among the country’s most vital security and economic assets, connecting businesses to global markets and supporting national security.” Congress has both an authority and the obligation to demand accountability.
2. Detainees are on hunger strikes, children are in trailer prisons, and people are dying in ICE custody. Why should Congress give DHS another dime before these conditions are addressed?
Conditions inside immigration detention facilities have drawn growing condemnation from lawmakers, medical professionals, and law enforcement leaders across the country. At Desert View Annex in Adelanto, CA, detainees are on a hunger strike and walked off their jobs over unsafe drinking water and mold. At Delaney Hall in Newark, NJ, detainees are on a hunger and labor strike citing infestations, inadequate medical care, and no air conditioning — with protests outside met by pepper spray and tasers. At Dilley, TX, more than 6,300 children have been held since the start of Trump’s second term in what those inside describe as a trailer prison — lights on 24 hours a day, children as young as two months old among those detained. Deaths in detention continue to rise. Secretary Mullin must answer for what is happening inside the facilities that already exist.
3. USCIS upended the legal immigration system for 600,000 people and then walked it back with undefined exceptions. Who authorized this, and what does it actually mean for the people affected?
USCIS recently issued a policy memo requiring that most of the approximately 600,000 annual applicants for permanent residency — including those on student, work and family visas — leave the United States to complete consular processing abroad, upending a longstanding system that allowed people lawfully present in the country to adjust their status in the United States. Following significant backlash, USCIS claimed to walk it back. The walkback changes nothing — the underlying intent to upend legal immigration pathways remains fully intact. Congress is owed a straight answer on who authorized this guidance, what the legal basis for it was, and what these undefined exceptions actually mean for the hundreds of thousands of people whose lives hang in the balance.
