Removal of caucus members from meeting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement led to shock: ‘Never before in 20-plus years has this happened’

Two members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus said they were removed from a meeting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) on Thursday, just two days after the agency’s acting director abruptly cancelled a meeting with the CHC.

On Thursday, Democratic Representatives Luis Gutiérrez of Illinois and Norma Torres of California said Republicans asked them to leave a meeting with the agency’s acting director, Thomas Homan, about the rash of raids on immigrant communities.

“In 20-plus years, I have never heard of the Republicans controlling what meetings Democrats can have with officials of the executive branch and never had a staffer ask me to leave a meeting to which I am entitled to attend,” Gutiérrez said in a statement after the meeting.

Luis V. Gutierrez (@RepGutierrez) I was asked to leave the meeting with #ICE by @SpeakerRyan staff. Never before in 20 plus years has this happened. pic.twitter.com/Vbe0BnsZNK

The House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, said during a press conference after the meeting that Ice determined the guest list. She said the list initially excluded all members of the Congressional Hispanic caucus but that the Democrats were able to convince them to invite the caucus chairwoman, Michelle Lujan Grisham.

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Caucus members said the decision to exclude them was striking as they had initiated the Tuesday meeting with Homan to discuss the raids happening in cities across the country. Agents have arrested more than 680 undocumented immigrants in what Donald Trump touted on Twitter as a “crackdown on illegal criminals”.

But the meeting was canceled at the last minute. The agency said Homan’s decision not to meet with the Hispanic Caucus was because they had invited too many people and holding a meeting of that size without making it bipartisan would have broken congressional rules.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Representative Grace Napolitano of California called the explanation “bullshit” and said administration officials routinely met with nonpartisan groups of lawmakers.

A bipartisan meeting with the acting director was arranged for Thursday, but members of the Hispanic Caucus were not invited.

Gutiérrez and Torres tried to enter anyway while other members of the caucus waited outside. Gutiérrez was asked to leave first, followed by Torres.

After leaving the meeting, the Democrats waited outside with other members of the caucus and held a prayer vigil for the families caught up in the immigrant raids.

AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for the House speaker, Paul Ryan, said his office had organized the briefing and “at the request of DHS, limited to members with jurisdictional interests in immigration enforcement”.

“Members of the CHC expressed interest in attending, and to accommodate the request, we welcomed the chair of the CHC to join on behalf of the other members,” she said. “We are confident that the CHC chair is capable of representing the views of her caucus, and this arrangement was made very clear to the CHC ahead of time.”

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Pelosi said in a press conference afterward: “I’ve never seen anything like it and hopefully never [will] again.”

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris of California took to the floor of the Senate for the first time since she was sworn in last month to denounce the president’s action on immigration.

“I rise because the president’s actions have created deep uncertainty and pain for our refugee and immigrant communities,” Harris said. “I rise on behalf of California’s 250,000 ‘dreamers’ who were told by the federal government, ‘if you sign up, we won’t use your personal information against you’. I rise to say the United States of America cannot go back on our promise to these kids and their families.”

Across the country on Thursday, immigrants – naturalized citizens, legal residents and undocumented – refused to go to work in protest against Trump’s immigration actions. The boycott, known as a “day without immigrants”, was intended to highlight immigrants’ contributions to the American workforce.

Raids and mass detentions were tools that Obama frequently reached for from 2009 to 2017, and he deported at least 2.4 million people, more than any previous president. But the first operations of Trump’s presidency fanned fears around the country that his promised plan to deport millions of undocumented people had begun.



Ice has said the raids were “routine” and no different than the arrests, detentions and deportations carried out under the Obama administration, which targeted undocumented immigrants with criminal backgrounds or repeated immigration violations.

An Ice official on Thursday said Homan told attendees that the immigration officers target pre-identified individuals for arrest at specific locations. He said that in the course of these raids, agents frequently encounter other immigrants who are living in the US unlawfully and they too are arrested.



