In 1940, Harry Truman, then a little-known U.S. senator from Missouri, drove 10,000 miles across the United States visiting military bases and contractors to find out, in-person, how billions of recently appropriated tax dollars were being spent to equip America to enter history’s biggest war. Truman went on to chair a special bipartisan committee charged with examining the war effort which uncovered billions in waste and fraud, saved countless lives, and helped make possible the Arsenal of Democracy that still serves to protect our country.
Members of Congress who have been trying to inspect Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities are carrying on this vital tradition of “oversight by showing up,” where members make site visits — sometimes unannounced — to gather facts directly from the people and places where the work of government is being performed.
The Trump administration is trying to block these efforts by harassing and prosecuting members of Congress who come to Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, denying access, or imposing protocols that do not appear to serve any purpose other than impeding efforts to oversee Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s use of authority and funding it receives from Congress.
The White House and Immigration and Customs Enforcement should abandon this stonewalling which runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution and federal law. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly held, Congress has a wide-ranging power and responsibility to conduct oversight that goes beyond accepting information offered up by the executive branch. In spelling out why it is so important for Congress to be able compel information via subpoena, the court wrote, “information which is volunteered is not always accurate or complete.”
Similarly, when members of Congress show up with little or no notice to inspect a government agency or contractor’s facility, they are attempting to get information without the filters that federal agencies often apply to the facts. Members of Congress and their staffs have also repeatedly gone to war zones to hear directly from the troops. In 2004, for example, soldiers told Reps. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), Frank Wolf (R-Va.), and Jim Marshall (D-Ga.) about the threat posed by road mines in Iraq which accelerated the armoring of military vehicles serving in the region.
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) famously drove his car to the Pentagon when officials refused to let him speak with an employee who had written a report critical of wasteful Department of Defense spending. Grassley’s efforts eventually helped uncover out-of-control spending on spare parts such as $750 toilet seats and $695 ashtrays for military airplanes, led to a freeze of the Pentagon budget for a year, and triggered a wave of reforms to prevent such abuses.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s recent refusal to allow members of Congress to visit its facilities conflicts with federal law. Section 527 of Public Law 118-47 bars Immigration and Customs Enforcement from preventing members of Congress from entering an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility for the purpose of conducting oversight. The law also states that “nothing in this section may be construed to require a member of Congress to provide prior notice of the intent to enter a facility."
The administration argues that Section 527 does not apply because the facilities in question are not detention facilities, a position at odds with the law and the facts. Section 527 applies to “any facility operated by or for [the Department of Homeland Security] used to detain or otherwise house aliens….” These are facilities where migrants are being detained and where members of Congress have been illegally prevented from visiting.
Unaccountable power is inconsistent with democratic self-government and the individual rights and liberties for which our nation’s Founders and many other Americans risked their lives. It is also bad for military preparedness that helps to keep us a free country.
Instead of employing unconstitutional and illegal tactics to resist congressional oversight of its immigration policy and execution, the Trump administration and its allies in Congress should embrace the bipartisan tradition of congressional site visits that helped to win World War II and build a society and military that remain the envy of the world.
Jim Townsend is director of the Carl Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy at Wayne State University Law School.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Members of Congress visiting ICE facilities are showing up for democracy )
Also on site :