Washington, D.C. — Today, Rep. Robert Garcia, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, and Rep. Summer Lee, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement sent letters to four Department of Homeland Security (DHS) oversight entities demanding accountability for the agency’s violent and unlawful immigration enforcement tactics. The letters were sent to the DHS Office of Inspector General, the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Professional Responsibility, and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Office of Professional Responsibility. These internal watchdogs are supposed to ensure that DHS obeys the law, and to hold wrongdoing accountable.
“Oversight Democrats have documented hundreds of incidents of abuse and misconduct by DHS immigration enforcement agents, and every single one of them deserves a full investigation. We are demanding answers from every oversight body within DHS, and we will not stop until there is real accountability for every incident we have documented. All those who hurt innocent people, including American citizens, will be held accountable, and so will those who enabled these crimes. We are just getting started,” said Ranking Member Robert Garcia.
“For too long, DHS agents have brutalized immigrants and even U.S. citizens with the expectation that no one will stop them and no one will make them answer for the harm they cause. That impunity was built by design and it was fed by officials who have excused the violence, hidden the truth, and treated human beings like they are disposable. These letters make clear that we are done accepting cruelty as policy and lawlessness as business as usual. Every person terrorized, beaten, disappeared, or stripped of their rights deserves accountability, and every official who helped create this culture of abuse must be investigated. The era of unchecked abuse must end here,” said Ranking Member Summer Lee.
In the letters to the oversight entities, Ranking Members Garcia and Lee wrote, “This conduct has not occurred in a vacuum. Since January 20, 2025, ICE, CBP, and other DHS officers and agents have taken these egregious actions in pursuit of the Trump Administration’s mass deportation campaign and at the encouragement of White House and DHS leadership. White House and DHS officials have stated that DHS personnel have “absolute immunity;” lied about this misconduct to the public, Congress, and the courts; reflexively defended personnel who have engaged in misconduct while smearing their victims; and allowed officers and agents to operate with masks and without identifying information. This culture of impunity must end.”
In November 2025, Ranking Member Garcia led Oversight Democrats in launching a public Immigration Enforcement Dashboard to track and document incidents of abuse and potential misconduct by DHS immigration enforcement agents across the country.
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