WASHINGTON—Senate Homeland Security Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) joined his House counterpart in asking the heads of key agencies in the Homeland Security Department to testify before Congress in the wake of widespread federal immigration enforcement operations.
Paul’s Jan. 26 letters to the leaders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which he posted on X, follow Jan. 24 requests from House Homeland Security Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) to the same three men helming immigration law enforcement in the second Trump administration.
Paul and Garbarino have called for testimony from ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons, Border Patrol Commissioner Rodney Scott, and USCIS Director Joseph Edlow in the name of oversight.
“I take my oversight duties for the department seriously, and Congress has an important responsibility to ensure the safety of law enforcement and the people they serve and protect,” Garbarino said in a statement on the letters.
The Republican push for oversight comes as Senate Democrats prepare to contest the passage of a final suite of appropriations bills for fiscal year 2026 over its DHS funding.
The lawmakers’ letters also follow the deaths of Renee Good, on Jan. 7, and Alex Pretti, on Jan. 24, during contested interactions with federal agents on the streets of Minneapolis.
Garbarino’s letters laid out various dates in February and March when the DHS leaders might be able to testify.
Paul’s letters called on the three agency heads to testify at a Feb. 12 hearing and requested a response by Jan. 28.
“The Department of Homeland Security has been provided an exceptional amount of funding to secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws. Congress has an obligation to conduct oversight of those tax dollars and ensure the funding is used to accomplish the mission, provide proper support for our law enforcement, and, most importantly, protect the American people,” Paul wrote in his correspondence.
The One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, key 2025 legislation to enact Trump’s second-term agenda, allocated $75 billion in supplemental funding for ICE over a four-year period, effectively tripling the financial resources it can command during that window.
It also provided $65 billion to CBP.
The six-bill package passed the House on Jan. 22. The failure of the bills in the Senate would likely set the stage for a partial government shutdown starting on Jan. 31.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other Senate Democrats have said that they will not advance the package as is.
Senate Appropriations ranking Democrat member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) has called on her colleagues to pass the other five appropriations bills but “separate out the DHS bill & work on common sense steps to rein in ICE & CBP.”
This is what happens when malleable miseducated, misinformed socialist miscreant political sympathizing Nurse Ratchet type nurse Pretti’s, purposely come to the emotionally whipped up demonstrations created by corrupt politicians as coverup of their local illegal self-enriching government agent crimes,,,,Like Pretti,,, armed with the sole intent to apply use of his gun if needed to suppress the law enforcers, not the law breakers. There is Pretty weather, Pretty Children, Pretty women, and more dangerous,,,Pretty Good and Pretti Stupid. A lethal combination where imagined righteous ignorance meets cold stone law enforcement realty, creating situations most likely that will always eventually only end in a life termination, where confused car driving, Good driven intentions just pave more roads to a democrat party created American hell, designed to be ruled by their obvious bad leaders with bad intentions of a newly created American class of rebellious political criminal internationalist minded criminals disguised as loyal Constitutional following Social democrats.
More hot air, more waste of time..