A federal judge has delivered a significant victory to ICE, refusing to halt the agency’s new policy limiting the ability of members of Congress to conduct oversight of migrant processing and detention facilities.
Under the new policy, members of Congress can no longer perform surprise inspections. They must give at least seven days’ advance notice.
Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee who had shot down an earlier version, said the new policy survives legal scrutiny because it was promulgated using special funds from last summer’s budget bill, not the regular annual spending process.
She also said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem gave a new rationale for the policy, citing the need to provide “adequate protection” for the visiting lawmakers as well as migrants and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees.
Judge Cobb said the Democratic lawmakers could still challenge the policy, but they can’t argue ICE is violating the judge’s previous ruling.
“The court emphasizes that it denies plaintiffs’ motion only because it is not the proper avenue to challenge Defendants’ January 8, 2026 memorandum and the policy stated therein, rather than based on any kind of finding that the policy is lawful,” she wrote.
The battle over congressional access at ICE has raged for years.
Lawmakers, frustrated by Trump administration rules, inserted language into the annual spending bill saying that any facilities ICE operates using that money must be open to members of Congress at a moment’s notice — and to staffers with just 24 hours’ advance notice.
The Trump administration last year tried to impose a seven-day wait, and argued the visit policy only applied to longer-term detention facilities, not to short-tern processing facilities where migrants are fingerprinted and run through record checks.
Judge Cobb disagreed with DHS at that time, saying the spending law was clear.
But last July Congress created an independent stream of money for ICE through the One Big Beautiful Bill budget law. That funding did not have the guaranteed-access language attached.
Ms. Noem earlier this month revived the policy limiting congressional access and said it was being carried out using the budget money, so it circumvented the annual spending law.
