A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked a Trump administration rule that requires members of Congress to provide seven days’ notice before visiting immigration detention facilities, a decision aimed at preserving oversight while a lawsuit proceeds. U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb said the Democratic members of Congress challenging the requirement are likely to show the policy is illegal and goes beyond what the government is allowed to do under the statutes governing detention oversight.
Cobb’s ruling came in response to a request from 13 House members seeking to overturn a notice requirement issued Jan. 8 by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, according to the lawsuit described in court. Cobb previously blocked an earlier version of the policy in December, and Monday’s order suspended the newest iteration while the case advances.
In the opinion, Cobb said the government had not provided specific evidence that safety problems would arise if Congress members visited without advance notice. The judge wrote that the administration had not cited “concrete examples of safety issues posed by congressional visits without advanced notice.”
The judge also addressed the posture of repeated attempts to impose notice rules, writing, “Plaintiffs are undoubtedly frustrated with Defendants’ repeated attempts to impose a notice requirement,” adding that any further action by the administration must follow the court’s order and the legal principles announced in the opinion. The suit, filed by Democratic lawmakers, frames the notice requirement as a restriction on Congressional oversight of immigration detention.
The case also references an incident that plaintiffs say followed the policy’s reinstatement. According to plaintiffs’ attorneys, the day after an ICE officer shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis, the Department of Homeland Security “secretly reinstated” another notice requirement that was nearly identical to the version Cobb had blocked in December.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys said that three days after the deadly shooting, three Democratic lawmakers from Minnesota—U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar, Kelly Morrison and Angie Craig—were stopped from visiting an ICE facility near Minneapolis. They said the Department of Homeland Security did not disclose the new version of the policy until after the lawmakers were turned away.
In addition to the notice requirement challenge, Cobb found in the case that a law bars the government from using appropriated general funds to prevent members of Congress from entering Department of Homeland Security facilities for oversight purposes. Cobb concluded it was “highly likely” that the Trump administration used restricted funds to promulgate and enforce the new notice policy.
Cobb, a judge in Washington, was nominated to the bench by President Joe Biden, a Democrat.