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Senator Says His Visit to Texas Laid Bare the 'Dystopian World' Trump and ICE Have Created
"What I saw in Texas was utter lawlessness," said Sen. Chris Murphy.
Jan 23, 2026
Sen. Chris Murphy recently took a trip to inspect federal immigration detention facilities in San Antonio, Texas, and also took a detour to a local courtroom where he saw up close how federal agents are working to detain families who have been obeying the law while trying to apply for asylum.
Writing on Substack on Friday, Murphy (D-Conn.) detailed being in court with an immigrant family during a scheduled asylum hearing as US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents waited outside to apprehend them.
At the end of the hearing, Murphy decided to walk with the family outside the courtroom and past the agents, betting that they would not want to risk a confrontation with a US senator.
"Our hunch was right," Murphy wrote. "The ICE officers made a half step toward us but then froze, and the family safely left the building."
The senator then said that this story was symbolic of the lawlessness of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) during President Donald Trump's second term, which he described as a "dystopian world."
Among other things, Murphy found that ICE had taken over the San Antonio courthouse's room designated for pro bono attorneys and was using it for interrogations; an immigration judge had been fired "because she insisted on implementing the law and not ruling against every single" application; and ICE officers who openly admitted their goal wasn't to target criminals who happen to be undocumented, but anyone who isn't a US citizen, including immigrants legally in the country.
Most ominously, said Murphy, most immigrants detained by ICE officers at the courthouse are sent to Pearsall Detention Center, which he noted has only four rooms for legal consultations despite being built to house 1,800 detainees.
Murphy said this essentially guarantees that "most migrants never see a lawyer before the expedited fake legal process inside the jail results in their deportation," with the result being "effectively a campaign of disappearances."
"What I saw in Texas was utter lawlessness: an agency out of control, making up its own law—with no respect for the actual law or the Constitution," he explained. "DHS is terrorizing children and families because it can. They act like they are unaccountable."
Murphy emphasized that it was time for Senate Democrats to draw a line in the sand when it comes to funding ICE—writing a day after seven party members in the House of Representatives voted with the GOP to give the agency billions more dollars.
"Democrats have no obligation to vote for a budget that funds a runaway, immoral agency just because Republicans are so beholden to Trump, they refuse to agree to any reforms," he said. "We shouldn’t pretend we are powerless; we aren’t."
Murphy encouraged Democrats to demand that federal immigration officers obtain judicial warrants before carrying out arrests, mandating consequences for officer misconduct, and suspending funds to DHS until it granted members of Congress the access to immigration facilities.
"These reforms aren’t cure-alls," he acknowledged, "but they would save lives."
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JD Vance Caught in Several 'Pernicious' Lies in Defense of ICE
Vance claimed he never said agents had "absolute immunity," that the government was investigating the shooting of Renee Good, and that ICE agents weren't entering homes without judges' warrants. None of it was true.
Jan 23, 2026
Vice President JD Vance is being called out by legal experts and other critics who say he lied voluminously on Thursday in response to questions about his past claims that immigration agents enjoyed “absolute immunity,” about whether they are now illegally entering residences without warrants, and about the shooting of Renee Good.
Vance was peppered with questions during a press conference after meeting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis, where their conduct has been met with growing backlash in recent weeks, following the shooting of Good on January 7 by agent Jonathan Ross and other violent and unconstitutional actions that have been documented since.
Shortly after the shooting, in a rush to clear Ross of any wrongdoing, Vance made the highly dubious claim that because Ross was "a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action,” he is therefore "protected by absolute immunity."
Legal scholars immediately called out the concept of "absolute immunity" as a fiction that does not refer to any recognized statute.
But despite those remarks having been widely publicized just weeks ago, when asked about them again on Thursday, Vance pretended he never made such a claim.
"No, I didn't say—and I don't think any other official within the Trump administration said that officers who engaged in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity. That's absurd," he said. "What I did say is that when federal law enforcement officers violate the law, that is typically something that federal officials would look into."
"But of course we're going to investigate these things," Vance continued. "We're investigating the Renee Good shooting. But we're investigating them in a way that respects people's rights and ensures that if somebody did something wrong, yes, they're going to face disciplinary action. But we're not going to judge them in the court of public opinion."
In reality, the administration repeatedly said it is not pursuing a criminal investigation into Ross. According to a report from the Washington Post earlier this week, the FBI opened an initial probe into the shooting, and an agent in Minnesota found that "sufficient grounds" existed to open a civil rights probe into Ross, but DOJ officials chose not to pursue it.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed last week that the DOJ was not investigating the case. “We don’t just go out and investigate every time an officer is forced to defend himself against somebody putting his life in danger. We never do,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration's officials have repeatedly "judged" the case in the court of public opinion by routinely making statements justifying the shooting, with Vance himself praising Ross for "doing his job" and others in the administration referring to Good as a "domestic terrorist."
While it is not investigating Ross for shooting Good, the DOJ is reportedly investigating Good's widow, Becca Good, over the couple's involvement in monitoring and protesting ICE's actions in Minneapolis, which prompted six federal prosecutors with the DOJ to resign in outrage last week.
Xochitl Hinojosa, a former head of public affairs at the DOJ, found Vance's claim that the shooting was being investigated to be in total contradiction to everything else the administration has said about the case.
"Todd Blanche says no criminal civil rights investigation into the shooting of Renee Good. Vance says today they are investigating the incident," she said. "So who exactly is investigating the incident? Because this would normally be the DOJ or the FBI."
While those claims were self-evidently false, legal scholars noted a more "pernicious" lie by Vance in response to a question about a report earlier this week that ICE had issued a memo allowing agents to forcibly enter homes without a judge's warrant, which has been described as a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution.
Asked if the memo, which was first reported on by the Associated Press, violated the Constitution, Vance responded that the story was "missing a whole lot of context" and that what ICE and other agencies proposed was that "we can get administrative warrants to enforce administrative immigration law."
"Nobody is talking about doing immigration enforcement without a warrant. We're talking about different types of warrants that exist in our system," Vance went on. "Typically, in the immigration system, those are handled by administrative law judges. So we're talking about getting warrants from those administrative law judges... That's very consistent with the practice of American law."
Rob Doar, a Minnesota-based criminal defense and civil rights attorney, said that Vance had gotten "just about everything wrong" in his explanation.
"Immigration judges are not [administrative law judges]. They don’t issue warrants," Doar said. "ICE 'administrative warrants' are signed by ICE officers, not judges. They do not authorize home entry. Only a judicial warrant does."
Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University and the co-editor-in-chief of Just Security said it was a case of "pernicious wordplay by Vance."
The Department of Homeland Security "is doing immigration enforcement in people's homes without a judicial warrant," he said. "Our system—the Fourth Amendment—requires a judicial warrant."
Joe Mastrosimone, a law professor at Washburn University in Kansas, was amazed that a lawyer of Vance's pedigree could be so inaccurate.
"Good Lord," he wrote on social media. "Did JD Vance actually attend and graduate from Yale Law School? He seems to be a really bad lawyer... This is really basic stuff."
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'Endless Monster Behavior From ICE': Family Arrested While Rushing Child to Oregon ER
Parents who are legally applying for US asylum were prevented from getting emergency medical care for their 7-year-old daughter.
Jan 23, 2026
Advocates sounded the alarm Friday over federal agents' arrest last week of a family of legal asylum-seekers apprehended just outside a Portland, Oregon hospital where they had rushed their 7-year-old daughter for emergency medical treatment.
Yohendry De Jesus Crespo and his wife Darianny Liseth González de Crespo—Venezuelans with pending asylum claims living in Gresham, Oregon—were rushing their daughter Diana to Adventist Hospital in Portland on January 16 as the child suffered an unstoppable nosebleed.
According to the Oregonian, Diana never got to see a doctor, as three unmarked vehicles and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents surrounded their family car in the emergency room parking lot.
"The parents pleaded to let their 7-year-old daughter... be released so she could receive urgently needed medical care, but that request was denied," Oregon state Rep. Ricki Ruiz (D-50) said on Facebook.
Absolutely endless monster behavior from ICE & CBP. Detaining parents seeking urgent healthcare for their kids and who, in this case, had petitioned for asylum. All at the same hospital where they shot two people earlier this month.www.oregonlive.com/portland/202...
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— Aubrey Gordon (@yrfatfriend.bsky.social) January 23, 2026 at 9:18 AM
Friend Ana Linares said the family was arrested, driven to a facility in Tacoma, Washington, and then sent to Texas, where they are being held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center near San Antonio.
The facility, which is run by ICE and private prison profiteer CoreCivic, is accused of providing inadequate medical care for children, as well as poor sanitary and health conditions. Detainees also report being served moldy or worm-infested food.
Ruiz said the child "remains ill, reportedly suffering from a fever, and has not received basic medical care."
The family's arrest—which took place less than 1,000 feet from where a US Border Patrol agent shot a Venezuelan couple earlier this month—appears to be the first time in Oregon that immigration enforcers have detained an entire family unit.
Heather Pease, a spokesperson for Adventist Hospital, told the Oregonian that “no law enforcement agency contacted us" about arresting the family, "and we did not coordinate with any agency."
“Adventist Health Portland is here for our community, open, available, and ready to provide care when it’s needed most," Pease added. "Patient care remains our priority, regardless of circumstances.”
It is unclear why the family was arrested. Neither parent has any known criminal record. Linares said the couple—who met in the Panamanian jungle while making their way to the United States—waited to enter the US legally and applied for an appointment. They were assigned a 2028 immigration court date to plead their asylum cases.
“They are good people, not criminals,” Linares told the Oregonian. “They were looking for stability. They wanted to help their families in Venezuela.”
The Trump administration's deadly mass deportation blitz has targeted children—among them US citizens, including a 3-year-old cancer patient—for detention and deportation.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, federal agents seized at least four children from Minnesota public schools over the past two weeks, including a 5-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl, who were sent to the Dilley lockup.
According to the US Department of Homeland Security, a record 73,000 people facing deportation are currently being jailed by ICE, including 6,000 family units.
Some of the nearly 5,000 children who were separated from their parents or other relatives during Trump's first term have also yet to be reunited with their families.
Child welfare advocates worry that Trump administration pressure to increase arrests and the commodification of migrants by for-profit prisons and other private profiteers is incentivizing the arrest and detention of immigrants, including children.
Asserting that "the immediate health and well-being" of Diana Crespo "must be the top priority," Ruiz said on Facebook, "We urgently call for the child to receive appropriate medical care without delay and for the family to be afforded due process and access to legal counsel."
"Situations involving children require heightened care, compassion, and coordination," he added, "and we expect all responsible agencies to act swiftly and humanely to ensure this child's health and safety are protected."
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