What Happened: Citing ProPublica’s recent investigation, House Democrats are again asking the Trump administration to explain why hundreds of U.S. citizens have been held by immigration agents and how the government verifies citizenship during immigration operations.
In an October letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, California Rep. Lou Correa and 39 other legislators demanded the administration share the number of citizens that immigration agents have detained and how the government is tracking such encounters. They also asked for more information about how agents are trained to verify citizenship and legal status.
Why It Matters: ProPublica counted more than 500 Americans detained by immigration agents — almost certainly an undercount since the government is not transparently tracking the cases.
Experts told us the cases collectively show federal agents running roughshod over the constitutional rights of citizens. We found more than 100 Americans who were questioned about their citizenship, 63 Americans detained while recording, 36 Americans held for at least a day without being able to contact a lawyer or their family and roughly a dozen citizens deported, mostly children.
What They Said: “We remain concerned that the Department’s actions are violating American citizens’ constitutional rights to due process, equal protection, and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, and request transparency regarding the Department’s actions,” the representatives wrote in their letter to DHS.
DHS has long insisted it is not arresting U.S. citizens, and it defended its immigration operations as “highly targeted.”
“These members of Congress have shown more concern for criminal illegal aliens who’ve broken our laws and destroyed any possibility of ever remaining in our country than they ever have for Rachel Morin, Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, and the true victims of illegal alien crimes in America,” a spokesperson wrote to ProPublica.
Background: Democrats have been pushing the second Trump administration for more details about how immigration agents are interacting with U.S. citizens since early 2025. Last year, congressional Democrats announced a wide-ranging investigation into immigration agents’ detention of U.S. citizens in response to our earlier reporting that found that more than 170 citizens were detained by immigration agents.
Last month, Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, a New Mexico Democrat, introduced a bill, Justice for Citizens Wrongfully Detained by ICE Act, that would make it easier for citizens to sue immigration agents for wrongful arrests.
