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pramila jayapal
Jayapal Demands Kristi Noem 'Be Fired, Resign, or Be Impeached'—and DHS 'Dismantled'
“I gave her an opportunity to answer for her agents’ lawlessness,” Jayapal said of the secretary of homeland security. “Instead, what we heard from her was excuses, deflections, and flat-out lies.”
Mar 05, 2026
Surrounded by people who have accused the Department of Homeland Security of violating their civil rights, Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Wednesday demanded that Secretary Kristi Noem be removed from her role as head of the agency.
"Today in the House Judiciary Committee, I questioned Secretary Noem. I gave her an opportunity to answer for her agents' lawlessness and the trauma that her personnel have inflicted on immigrants and citizens alike," Jayapal (D-Wash.) said at a news conference outside the Capitol building. "Instead, what we heard from her was excuses, deflections, and flat-out lies."
Jayapal grilled Noem on Wednesday during her second day of testimony before Congress, accusing her agency of “unlawfully detaining US citizens in violation of the Fourth Amendment."
An investigation published by ProPublica in October found that at least 170 citizens had been arrested or detained by immigration agents, and many more have been reported since.
The congresswoman said that after months of denying, despite the mountain of evidence, that any US citizens had been detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Noem finally acknowledged the detention of 18 US citizens by ICE in a letter sent Tuesday.
Jayapal then revealed that four other citizens, "who were not even included" in Noem's letter, were in the hearing room.
She read the story of Patricia O'Keefe, who she said "was monitoring ICE agents when they deployed pepper spray into her car vent without provocation."
"They smashed her car windows, pulled her and her friend out, arrested them for 'obstruction,' and detained them," Jayapal explained. "Patricia saw an entire area dedicated to detaining US citizens."
"An ICE agent also said, 'You guys have to stop obstructing us. That's why that lesbian bitch is dead,' referring to Renee Good," who was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis in January. "ICE detained Patricia for over eight hours," Jayapal said.
She relayed the stories of the other citizens in the room, who she said had been detained for several hours for monitoring agents or peacefully protesting.
One was kept in leg irons for six hours after attempting to monitor agents from his car. Another was hit with a pepper ball while protesting and denied medical treatment or the ability to change out of clothes that were coated with dangerous chemicals. Another observer was chased down by agents and had firearms pointed at him before the situation was defused by local police, though he was detained for six hours.
Noting Noem's previous statements that ICE can arrest citizens if they are obstructing law enforcement or if there is "probable cause," Jayapal then asked the people she'd invited about the circumstances of their detention.
All of them responded that they were not charged with any crime after their encounters, that they were not questioned about their citizenship, and that they were all exercising their First Amendment rights.
Asked if she had anything to say to the four individuals or "the millions of American citizens across the country that are watching this and horrified at what your department is doing," Noem responded that “context is critical in each of these situations, to know the full range of what happened in each of these situations before and after the incident and their arrest.”
Jayapal reiterated: "Secretary, not a single one was charged with a crime, and they were detained."
Elsewhere during the hearing, Noem doubled down on her agency's most controversial tactics.
After Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) showed the secretary videos of citizens being violently dragged out of their homes and cars in arrests by agents without judicial warrants, Noem defended the agency’s practice, which experts have said violates the constitutional protection against unlawful search and seizure.
Other questions she evaded. When Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) asked her point-blank if she believed Good and Alex Pretti, whom ICE agents "shot in the face and killed," were "domestic terrorists" as Noem and others in the Trump administration claimed without evidence, the secretary repeatedly refused to correct the record, as ICE's acting director Todd Lyons did during a hearing last month.
Following Wednesday's hearing, Jayapal said Noem's responses "only further cemented my belief that she needs to resign, be fired, or be impeached."
"She refused to accept responsibility for the actions of ICE and [Customs and Border Protection], for the arrests of US citizens, for the deaths of 40 immigrants in ICE custody, for the kidnapping and the disappearances of children like Liam Ramos, and for the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in the streets of Minnesota," Jayapal said. "It is a terrible shame that she could not do any of that."
Noem's appearance on Capitol Hill comes as DHS has been partially shut down for nearly three weeks, with Democrats demanding reforms to the agency's conduct in exchange for full funding.
Republicans have thus far refused to budge on demands that agents obtain judicial warrants before entering homes and private spaces, stop wearing masks to conceal their identities, and rein in the practice of “roving patrols” that have often taken the form of indiscriminate arrests rife with racial profiling.
She said Noem's testimony also affirmed her belief that "DHS, ICE, and CBP need to be dismantled."
"There is no reason for them to operate in this way with zero accountability and no way to ensure that they actually protect our residents rather than terrorize them," Jayapal said. "That is why I have refused to give another cent to these agencies without significant reforms."
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'Ridiculous': Pentagon Doesn't Even Know What to Do With Extra $500 Billion Trump Wants to Spend
"Not another cent for private defense contractors and forever wars," wrote Rep. Pramila Jayapal.
Feb 23, 2026
Pentagon officials are reportedly struggling to devise a plan to spend the extra $500 billion that US President Donald Trump wants to give the bloated, fraud-ridden agency in the next fiscal year, vindicating criticism of the funding proposal as immensely wasteful.
The Washington Post reported over the weekend that "White House aides and defense officials have run into logistical challenges surrounding where to put the money, because the amount is so large." The extra $500 billion, endorsed by the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, would push annual US military spending to a staggering $1.5 trillion after the Trump administration and congressional Republicans enacted unprecedented cuts to federal nutrition assistance and Medicaid last summer.
The Post noted that "the increase in military spending alone would amount to one of the biggest federal programs. One Democratic plan to expand Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing benefits would cost $350 billion over the next decade, by comparison."
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has estimated that a $1.5 trillion annual military budget would add $5.8 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.
"This is ridiculous," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) wrote in response to the Post's reporting. "Or we could build 3 million new homes, lower the Medicare age, or add dental, vision, and hearing coverage. Not another cent for private defense contractors and forever wars."
According to the Post:
The Pentagon has been grappling with how to rapidly replenish expensive munitions that it has relied on heavily, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, Patriot missile-defense interceptors and ship-launched munitions known as Standard Missile-6s, or SM-6s.
It also is wrestling with how to upgrade its Cold War-era nuclear weapons program with expensive next-generation systems like the B-21 bomber and the Columbia-class submarine. The aircraft, with an estimated cost of about $700 million each, is expected to replace the Air Force’s fleet of B-1 and B-2 bombers. The Columbia-class submarines are expected to cost at least $9 billion each.
Trump is pushing for another $500 billion for the Pentagon as he moves the US to the brink of war with Iran, potentially another expensive and deadly conflict in the Middle East. The New York Times reported Sunday that "Trump has told advisers that if diplomacy or any initial targeted US attack does not lead Iran to give in to his demands that it give up its nuclear program, he will consider a much bigger attack in coming months intended to drive that country’s leaders from power."
The Pentagon has failed eight consecutive audits of its books and is the only major federal agency that has not passed an independent audit. Roughly half of the Pentagon's annual spending goes to private military contractors.
"Trump’s call for a $500 billion increase in Pentagon spending is a terrible idea that would starve the American people of resources needed to address critical issues across the U.S. American voters are fed up with inflation, health care costs, housing prices, and unemployment," Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said earlier this month in response to the proposal.
“The Pentagon has repeatedly failed audits and has wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on fraudulent defense contractors who abuse the system and steal from taxpayers," said Weissman. "Trump has added to this wasteful legacy by spending vast sums of money on national guard deployments across the US, military intervention in Venezuela, and by pushing a ‘Golden Dome’ boondoggle. Congress must stop pouring more money into a trillion-dollar Pentagon budget beset with fraud and waste, at the expense of priority human needs."
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'I Am Simply Outraged': Despite 8-Day Notice, Jayapal Blocked From Oversight Visit at ICE Detention Center
"This only makes me more certain that DHS and these private for-profit contractors have a lot to hide."
Feb 20, 2026
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.
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