1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

ICE and CBP are operating without the basic accountability standards that apply to every other law enforcement agency in this country. In May 2025, ICE leadership secretly authorized agents to enter homes without judicial warrants, using administrative warrants they wrote themselves. Whistleblowers didn’t surface the memo until January 2026. Federal courts have ruled the practice unconstitutional. Agents are still doing it. In January 2026, ICE agents shot and killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Alberto Castañeda Mondragón was left in an ambulance with eight skull fractures, and doctors told the Associated Press that ICE’s explanation for his injuries was medically implausible. No body camera footage exists. No visible badge numbers were worn. 2025 was the deadliest year in ICE detention in more than two decades, with 30 deaths. Six more people died in the first weeks of 2026, including one ruled a homicide by asphyxia. Congress gave ICE $75 billion last July, and the agency responded by cutting payments to detention medical providers for months while the detained population hit a record 68,000 people. At-large arrests of people with no criminal record are up 2,450% since the start of Trump’s second term. Congress has the authority and the obligation to fix this. Require judicial warrants for all ICE home entries, full stop. Mandate body cameras and visible badge numbers for every ICE and CBP agent during enforcement operations, with footage accessible to independent investigators without restriction. Strip qualified immunity from immigration enforcement officers, as proposed in the 10-point reform package put forward by House and Senate Democratic leadership in February 2026. Restore unannounced congressional access to all detention facilities. Secretary Noem banned those visits using reconciliation funds in a move a federal judge found troubling, and oversight has collapsed exactly as detention deaths have spiked. Enforce use-of-force standards and require mandatory incident reporting for any discharge of a weapon or injury to a detainee. No other federal law enforcement agency operates with this level of secrecy and this little accountability. There is no version of border security that requires agents to work masked, unnamed, and uncharged after killing Americans.