Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Thursday expressed fury at the Trump administration after she was prohibited from conducting oversight at a immigration detention center in Tacoma, Washington despite giving the facility the required eight days notice prior to her visit.
In a statement posted on social media, Jayapal (D-Wash.) said that officials at the the Northwest Detention Center blocked her from meeting with people being held at the facility, even in cases where she had obtained privacy release forms.
Jayapal said that she refused to leave the facility until she could meet with "one of the individuals for whom I had a privacy waver... and whose attorney was there waiting for me to meet with them."
The Washington Democrat was told that she could meet with this person, but only in a public visitation area instead of a private attorney room.
After agreeing to the detention center's terms, Jayapal got to meet with the detainee, whom she described as "the sole caregiver for his 8-year-old US citizen daughter" who also has "serious medical issues himself."
"He has been hospitalized in the emergency room three times since being detained on January 11," Jayapal continued, "and is still experiencing serious pain and medical issues for his condition which are not yet resolved."
Jayapal said that she spoke with several immigration attorneys who were at the facility, who told her that they were often made to wait up to five hours to see their clients, as there are just seven attorney rooms available for a detention center that holds roughly 1,300 people.
Jayapal said she also heard complaints from people at the facility about "inadequate medical treatment, overcrowding, and inedible food," and then lashed out at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for impeding members of Congress from conducting proper oversight of its detention centers.
"I am simply outraged that [Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem's DHS continues to try and block me and other members of Congress from speaking with detained people and conducting meaningful oversight," she said. "This only makes me more certain that DHS and these private for-profit contractors have a lot to hide as they incarcerate around 70,000 people every night."
DHS has consistently denied congressional Democrats access to immigration detention centers since Trump returned to the White House last year, even though federal laws such as Section 527 of the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act state that members of the legislative branch are allowed to conduct "robust and effective oversight" of such facilities.
