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judy chu
Outrage Over How ICE Tricked Newlyweds Speaks to 'Broader Pattern' Under Trump Agenda
"The number of people being grabbed at immigration check-ins or green-card hearings is despicable," said one writer. "They’re following the process... Yet they’re being disappeared."
Oct 01, 2025
Congresswoman Judy Chu was among many expressing anger on Tuesday evening over the Trump administration's detention of Barbara Gomes Marques, a film director who was detained by immigration agents last month after attending a "properly scheduled" meeting regarding her green card and is now facing the "very real possibility" of deportation.
Marques' experience, said Chu (D-Calif.), "reflects a broader pattern under [President Donald] Trump’s immigration policies that are unlawful and cruel."
Chu spoke out on the case after Marques' husband, Tucker May, brought attention to their experience on social media.
The couple, who was married just last year, went to the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles in September to meet with immigration officers regarding Marques' green card. She arrived in the US on a tourist visa seven years ago and has worked as a film director. She has no criminal record. As the libertarian CATO Institute reported in June, 65% of people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the first months of Trump's second term have no criminal convictions, despite the administration's repeated claims that its mass deportation and detention operation is aimed at cracking down on violent criminals.
May and Marques were accompanied by their lawyer at the meeting, which they believed was a step toward Marques becoming a US citizen and were told was "successful." But after the meeting, an agent told the couple Marques needed to accompany them down a hallway to make a copy of her passport due to a broken copier in the office.
"Once separated from her legal counsel, she was arrested," wrote May on a GoFundMe page set up to raise money for the couple's legal fees.
"They're trying to remove her as far away as they can from her counsel, from her family, so that kind of cuts on her ability to defend herself."
ICE agents told the couple they were detaining Marques due to a missed court date in 2019; Marques and May have said they did not receive a letter about the court date and were not informed about it until she was detained.
May told reporters that ICE agents "put her in hand shackles and in leg shackles, and around the waist as well, like she's some hardened criminal. She had tears streaming down her face, and she told me one of the ICE agents pulled out his cellphone, laughing, and took a selfie."
May wrote that "the officer used the excuse of a broken copier to trick her into walking away from her lawyer," making it possible for his wife to be taken the Adelanto ICE Processing Center nearly 100 miles away. From there, Marques was sent to a facility in Arizona, and then to a "staging facility" in Alexandria, Louisiana.
Friends of the couple reported on their GoFundMe page Tuesday that a court had "officially acknowledged a motion to reopen Barbara’s case," stopping ICE from deporting her while a judge reviews the case. But the couple's lawyer, Marcelo Gondim, told CBS News he believes Louisiana has been planned as Marques' last stop before being deported.
"They're trying to remove her as far away as they can from her counsel, from her family, so that kind of cuts on her ability to defend herself," said Gondim, who filed a motion for a temporary restraining order to stop the government from deporting Marques. "Knowing that she's married to a US citizen, she has a legal way to become a permanent resident in a matter of months, if they just gave her a chance to find her paperwork."
Chu said she was "demanding that ICE follow the law" and emphasized that "unfortunately, Barbara’s case is not unique."
As Common Dreams reported last week, an Ecuadorian woman, Monica Moreta-Galarza, was thrown to the ground by an immigration agent at a courthouse in New York City as she pleaded with him not to arrest her husband, who had attended a court hearing as part of the family's legal application for asylum. The agent who attacked Moreta-Galarza was briefly suspended, but returned to work days later.
In July, the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) filed a class action lawsuit accusing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Justice (DOJ) of "ongoing collusion" in which the agencies have directed government attorneys to request the dismissal of immigrants' legal cases at court hearings they were ordered to attend. Once their cases have been dismissed, immigrants have been arrested and detained by ICE agents waiting at courthouses.
Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian Columbia University student organizer and green-card holder, was also arrested by masked federal agents earlier this year after arriving at an immigration office in Colchester, Vermont, where he had been directed to go to complete his US citizenship application.
"People scheduled for hearings at immigration courts across the country continue to feel as though as they are walking into a trap set by the Trump administration," said the NIJC last week. "We must fight to save due process and keep telling these stories."
Marques' friends and family called on the public to send "an absolute storm of calls and emails" to lawmakers in Louisiana, demanding that her deportation be halted.
"The number of people being grabbed at immigration check-ins or green-card hearings is despicable," said one writer this week. "They’re following the process. They’re doing everything the right way. Yet they’re being disappeared. Barbara Marques: Say her name. Demand accountability. Help bring her home."
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Dem Congresswomen Demand ICE Agents Clearly Identify Themselves Amid Wave of Imposter Assaults
"Your current practices leave women vulnerable to life-altering violence," the lawmakers said. "It's past time to act."
Aug 11, 2025
Citing "horrifying" incidents in which masked men impersonating U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents kidnap and assault women, more than 30 Democratic congresswoman on Monday demanded that ICE officers clearly identify themselves while conducting enforcement activities.
"All our lives, we are taught to fear masked men in unmarked vehicles. We learn we should run from such men to avoid being kidnapped, sexually assaulted, or killed," 33 members of the Democratic Women's Caucus (DWC) wrote in a letter led by Reps. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas), and Nydia Velásquez (D-N.Y.) to Trump administration officials including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, and "border czar" Tom Homan.
"Yet, ICE is increasingly conducting raids and arrests in masks [and] plain clothes, without visible identification or badges, using unmarked vehicles—tactics that cause confusion, terror, and mistrust among the public," the letter continues. "These tactics invited perpetrators of violence against women to take advantage of the chaos by impersonating masked ICE agents in order to target and sexually assault women."
DWC Members sent a letter calling out recent cases of people impersonating ICE to abuse women. We demand DHS and ICE wear visible identification to stop enabling impersonators.Women deserve to be safe. We’ll keep fighting.
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— Democratic Women’s Caucus (@demwomencaucus.bsky.social) August 11, 2025 at 1:04 PM
Reports of masked men—and in one case, a woman—impersonating federal officers began emerging shortly after President Donald Trump returned to the White House and ordered a mass deportation campaign that senior adviser Stephen Miller said aims to arrest at least 3,000 people per day. Since then, there have been reports of impostors abducting and subsequently sexually assaulting, robbing, or extorting women in states including Maryland, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
"This cannot continue and must be addressed immediately," the DWC letter insists. "The Democratic Women's Caucus is committed to defending the rights of all women and girls to live in safety. We call on the department to recognize this pervasive issue and to take immediate action."
"We demand that ICE agents visibly and clearly identify themselves when conducting immigration enforcement activities to stop enabling impersonators who leverage women's uncertainty and fear of immigration consequences to rape, harass, and abuse them," the congresswoman wrote.
"Your current practices leave women vulnerable to life-altering violence," the letter adds. "It's past time to act. Just like local police officers, ICE agents must be required to wear visible and clear identification to ensure their safety, better protect women, and deter impersonators. Finally, impersonators must be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law and this violence must be denounced by this administration."
In a bid to unmask federal agents, Velázquez in June introduced the No Masks for ICE Act, which would ban agents from wearing facial coverings during enforcement actions and require them to wear clothing displaying their name and agency affiliation.
House lawmakers led by Reps. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) in June also introduced the No Secret Police Act, which would require all Department of Homeland Security and other federal law enforcement officers to show their faces and clearly display their badges and identification when detaining or arresting people.
Similar legislation—the Visible Identification Standards for Immigration-Based Law Enforcement (VISIBLE) Act of 2025—was introduced last month in the U.S. Senate by Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.).
Also in July, upper chamber lawmakers led by Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Tim Kain (D-Va.) proposed the similar Immigration Enforcement Identification Act.
States including California, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee have also introduced or plan to propose legislation banning masked agents and requiring clear identification.
"When agents of the federal government are operating like masked militias, we've crossed a dangerous line by turning immigration enforcement into a paramilitary secret police force that should shock the nation's collective conscience," New York state Sen. Patricia Fahy (D-46), who last month introduced the Mandating End of Lawless Tactics (MELT) Act, said at the time.
"This goes beyond immigration enforcement; it's intimidation and it echoes authoritarian regimes, not the United States of America," Fahy added.
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Dems Denounce Trump Official for Hiding Social Security Service Metrics
"The agency's removal of comprehensive customer service data calls into question whether this administration seeks to hide from the public the negative customer service impacts of its staffing cuts," said reads a letter led by Rep. Judy Chu.
Jul 14, 2025
As the Trump administration pushes to cut 7,000 jobs held by federal employees at the Social Security Administration, the agency that oversees the crucial anti-poverty program for senior citizens and people with disabilities has made numerous efforts to disguise the customer service crisis that the cuts have caused—and Democrats on Monday demanded answers about what one progressive lawmaker recently denounced as a "cover up" to hide long wait times.
U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) led 18 Democratic members of the House Ways and Means Committee in writing to Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano, urging the former Wall Street executive to explain why several customer service metrics were deleted from the SSA's website just as Americans were facing longer wait times and a reduced ability to speak with customer service representatives rather than having their claims and questions handled through automation.
Chu spearheaded the letter weeks after the SSA stopped publishing more than 30 metrics related to the performance of its 1-800 number, retirement claims processing times, and disability decision reconsideration wait times.
"Early last month SSA abruptly removed that comprehensive menu of data from its website and replaced it with a new webpage that provides much more limited and sometimes misleading information on the agency's customer service performance," wrote the Democrats. "We are concerned that this new menu is far less helpful for our constituents in knowing what to expect when interacting with SSA."
In addition to omitting crucial information about how long retirees and people with disabilities can expect to wait to receive their benefits or to talk to a representative, Chu noted that the metrics that are currently shown "seem designed to pressure beneficiaries to use online tools instead of talking to live people, an option that simply doesn't work for all beneficiaries, especially the very old and people in rural areas with poor Internet access."
"The agency's removal of comprehensive customer service data calls into question whether this administration seeks to hide from the public the negative customer service impacts of its staffing cuts," reads the letter.
"Early last month SSA abruptly removed that comprehensive menu of data from its website and replaced it with a new webpage that provides much more limited and sometimes misleading information on the agency's customer service performance."
The letter was sent days after The Washington Post reported that the SSA is pulling staff from its field offices to act as customer service representatives for its 1-800 number following a surge in complaints about dropped calls and website crashes.
That change is likely to slow down responses to complicated claims cases that are often handled by field office staff, Jessica LaPointe, president of Council 220 of the American Federation of Government Employees, told the Post.
"So it's just going to create a vicious cycle of work not getting cleared, people calling for status on work that's sitting because the claims specialists now are going to have to pick up the slack of the customer service representatives that are redeployed to the teleservice centers," LaPointe said last week.
Alex Lawson, executive director of the advocacy group Social Security Works, told the Post last month as the metrics were deleted from the SSA website that the Trump administration's attempts to conceal the effects of its mass layoffs would not succeed.
"People notice when they can't get an appointment because their local field office has lost half its staff. When checks and decisions are delayed. When they get the runaround from an AI chatbot on the phone, instead of getting to talk to a real person," said Lawson.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) criticized the agency for "playing musical chairs to try and fill in the gaps" and suggested Bisignano "stop gutting the critical workforce that helps Americans every single day."
Chu and the other Ways and Means Committee Democrats emphasized that the agency recently restored one metric to its new website: a chart showing the six-year trend of disability determination processing times.
"That the agency chose to cherry pick and restore only this metric," they wrote, "and not any of the others that had been removed, only deepens our concern about why your agency continues to keep hidden certain metrics that had previously been publicly available."
The Democrats demanded that the SSA restore "all the robust public data that the agency had previously reported prior to June 2025, including historical data, and to regularly update that data."
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