In a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee, Democrats repeatedly failed to use the power of the purse to bar Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from carrying out deportations without due process.
Representatives of the minority party proposed multiple amendments to a budget bill currently undergoing the thorny process of reconciliation. The first would have disallowed ICE from carrying out deportations without due process. The second, made in the wake of deportations of US-born children, would have kept ICE from using funds to deport US citizens for any reason.
The move comes after President Donald Trump floated the idea of sending U.S. citizens to a maximum security prison in El Salvador while speaking to that country’s president, Nayib Bukele. The Trump administration has already carried out several deportations of Venezuelan immigrants to the notorious prison, without offering them a day in court.
“The fact that Democrats and my colleague Representative Pramila Jayapal feel the need to even introduce an amendment that says ICE cannot deport U.S. citizens is bats**t crazy,” Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif. said. “It is not even a question. U.S. citizens cannot be deported by ICE. It’s the law, it’s the Constitution.”
Other Democrats laid into their Republican colleagues’ tacit support of circumventing the Fifth Amendment. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., wondered if his GOP counterparts would be able to sleep at night if they voted down Jayapal’s amendment.
“I don’t understand how you’ll be able to look yourself in the face,” Moskowitz said.
Both amendments were ultimately unsuccessful.
Read more
about this topic
