In December 2025, a federal judge ruled that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem could not require members of Congress to give seven days’ notice before visiting ICE detention facilities.
Contrary to Defendants’ suggestion, then, (appropriations law) does entitle Members of Congress to access ICE facilities without being subject to a notice requirement.
The court found that facility conditions change too fast for a seven-day delay to mean anything and that denying access causes “tangible harm” to constitutional oversight. DHS responded by defying and defiling the court, publicly displaying flagrant and open disregard for the law.
The law is clear: congressional oversight of facilities funded by congressional appropriations cannot be obstructed by the executive branch.
On January 8, Noem ignored the law again and reissued the same policy in violation of the court. The theory for ignoring the court order is brazenly circular, and appears to be criminal.
DHS falsely claims they have a loophole, because their ICE facilities are now funded through “One Big Beautiful Bill” as a reconciliation package. They believe this didn’t follow the appropriations process for funding, so the court’s ruling doesn’t apply to the funding. Stupid, I know. The judge said you can’t block oversight of congressionally-funded facilities, so Noem declared (in her own mind) these are not congressionally-funded facilities, even when they still are.
I can’t believe I have to say this but reconciliation bills are congressional funding. Congress allocated the money either way. The oversight authority derives from Congress’s power of the purse, the act of funding, and not from whatever vehicle delivers the funds.
DHS is not making a good-faith interpretation of law. It’s bad faith disregard for law, a demonstration that law is now what a dictator says it is. Notably, Trump has been using Pineapple Face (foreign intelligence and drug money) logic to establish parallel oil-money bank accounts to bypass all congressional appropriations. Unaccountable executive action is rushing to be funded outside legislative control.
The timing is instructive.
Noem issued the new directive one day after the Minneapolis ICE execution of an innocent citizen, citing “escalating riots and political violence” as justification. A pretext from ICE violence and abuse was created, and she used it. The pattern is familiar: manufacture or exploit a crisis, then claim emergency powers that happen to accomplish what you wanted to do anyway.
Huge mass of agents in a standoff, weapons drawn as Reps. Ilhan Omar, Angie Craig, and Kelly Morrison attempt to conduct congressional oversight at the Whipple Building, which has been HQ for thousands of ICE agents.
The one-day-after timing removes any pretense DHS acted on safety. A genuine security response to the Minneapolis shooting would address the shooting, particularly the part about premeditated killing by an ICE agent of an innocent American citizen. Reimposing a blocked policy about congressional visits addresses only congressional oversight.
The “only Noem can waive” provision is the architecture of a Pineapple Face dictatorship. It’s not a policy, it’s a loyalty test. Access becomes a favor dispensed by the sovereign Pineapple Face rather than a constitutional right exercised by a coordinate branch.
Noem is clearly disobeying laws and in direct violation of the Constitution, to consolidate power for Pineapple Face shock troops to commit violent crimes without oversight.
The homeland security secretary seemed to hint that ICE agents would continue to make arrests based on the same grounds that were recently prohibited by the judge
What requires hiding?
Over 170 U.S. citizens have been detained by immigration agents in the past nine months. Many were held for days without access to attorneys or phones.
Congressional investigators have documented reports of squalid conditions, overcrowding, and inhumane treatment.
Senator Durbin has been denied access to the Broadview ICE facility four times—unprecedented in his decades of congressional service spanning multiple administrations of both parties.
When an agency systematically blocks oversight while reports of abuse accumulate, the logical inference is not complicated.
The hundreds of citizen detentions, the denied phone calls, the days-long holds—those are the cases that leaked. The denominator of cruelty to Americans is much larger.
ICE hides what oversight would reveal.
The mechanism matters. Noem isn’t claiming the authority to block congressional visits outright—she’s requiring the seven-day notice requirement be her sole discretion.
This transforms oversight from a congressional right into an executive privilege to be dispensed at her whim, based on her dictatorship loyalty. The architecture of accountability gets inverted into abuse: those being investigated control whether investigators can investigate.
Courts have ruled against this.
Congress has legislated against this.
It continues anyway. Are we now in Iran?
The parallel is the blackout. Iran is hiding crackdowns, Noem is hiding crackdowns. Show me a difference.
The word for an executive that defies judicial rulings and obstructs legislative oversight while operating detention facilities under conditions it refuses to let anyone see is not “administration.”
There’s a more precise term, and Americans are going to have to start using it.