BURSTHouse Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem would be a top oversight target if Democrats retake the House in the midterms.
“It’s my expectation that Kristi Noem will be one of the first people hauled up to Congress shortly after the gavels change hands to get a real understanding for the American people as to this conduct that has taken place: the lack of respect for due process, for the rule of law, the unleashing of masked agents on law-abiding immigrant communities, and the disappearing of people in some instances, to other countries without any real evidence that criminal behavior took place,” Jeffries said in an interview with Tim Miller on The Bulwark’s podcast.
“All of this is going to require aggressive oversight activity.”
Jeffries nodded to a number of controversial actions taken by the Trump administration, from sending Venezuelan migrants to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador to side-stepping due process with actions such as moving to dismiss immigration court cases as a way to initiate expedited removal proceedings and bypassing review by a judge.
Masked agents have also been conducting arrests at courthouses and in immigration enforcement actions across the country.
Jeffries added that he supported the deportation of immigrants who have been convicted of violent crimes, “but not law-abiding immigrant families, including in some instances, U.S. citizen children who’ve been sent overseas to a place that they’ve never known.”
Jeffries said Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who would lead the House Homeland and Judiciary committees if Democrats flipped the House, would likely play a key role in such efforts.
“We'll figure out what the formulation looks like,” he added.
While President Biden was in office, House Republicans impeached then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, saying he violated the law, the Secure Fence Act of 2006, by failing to detain every migrant that crossed the border.
The Senate swiftly rejected the impeachment.