US says shutdown ended lawmaker ICE facility visit requirement [View all]
Source: Roll Call
Posted October 22, 2025 at 4:50pm
The Trump administration has claimed the partial government shutdown also means the end of a requirement that Immigration and Customs Enforcement give congressional access to detention facilities for oversight visits. The government made the argument in a legal clash with Democratic lawmakers, who had filed a lawsuit against ICE over access to real-time inspections of the facilities and new department guidance that requires at least seven days’ advance notice of a visit.
The lawmakers based that lawsuit on Section 527, a provision included in the fiscal 2024 spending law and applied to funding in the continuing resolution for fiscal 2025, which states that no funds can be used to prevent members or their staffs from entering immigration detention facilities for oversight. But now the Trump administration says the provision expired on Oct. 1 along with the spending law, and ongoing spending is “not subject to the expired general provision known as Section 527,” according to a notice and declaration from ICE official Ralph Ferguson.
“With the expiration of the FY2025 Continuing Resolution, ICE is no longer using for detention operations (including the adoption and implementation of the Congressional visitation protocols at issue in this action) any funds that were appropriated subject to Section 527,” Ferguson states in the declaration.
The government’s stance that the section has expired, if applied more broadly, could extend to some of the dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of provisions in spending bills that define how the federal government can use funds, commonly known as “riders.”
Read more: https://rollcall.com/2025/10/22/us-says-shutdown-ended-lawmaker-ice-facility-visit-requirement/
REFERENCE - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143504443
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