After court ruling, Democratic lawmakers carry out congressional oversight at ICE facility in Los Angeles

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U.S.Reps.

Norma Torres and Jimmy Gomez conducted a congressional oversight inspection of the ICE facility in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday amid reports of an undisclosed holding area for immigrant families.The visits comes three days after a federal court judge granted the lawmakers and others a temporary restraining order, blocking the Trump administration and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from enforcing a policy requiring members of Congress to provide a week’s notice before visiting immigration detention facilities.Torres (D-Pomona) and Gomez (D-Los Angeles) and other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit last year challenging the Homeland Security policy.They won the lawsuit in December but are challenging it once more after several Congress members allege Noem “secretly reimposed” the seven-day-notice requirement.Congress has stipulated in yearly appropriations packages since 2020 that federal funds may not be used to prevent a member of Congress “from entering, for the purpose of conducting oversight, any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens.”The 14-day restraining order allowed Gomez to gain access for the first time since Noem reimposed the advanced notice policy last month.

Since June, when immigration enforcement escalated in Los Angeles, he has attempted to conduct several oversight visits there but was denied access.Gomez, whose district covers downtown, said he was also visiting the facility to look into reports that immigrant families and children and U.S.citizens were being held in an previously unknown area dubbed “B-17.” Many of the immigrants who have been taken into custody by federal immigration agents are typically held and booked at the downtown L.A.

facility’s basement known as B-18.That holding area had become the center of litigation last year over reports of inhuman...