Rep. LaMonica McIver plans to introduce a bill on Tuesday that would make it harder for federal immigration authorities to shut members of Congress out of detention centers, even as she fights criminal charges tied to her own visit to one such facility.
McIver, 39, will join Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rob Menendez Jr. in proposing legislation that would strengthen oversight protections for lawmakers scrutinizing the Trump administration’s immigration tactics. The bill would reaffirm language in a 2019 appropriations law that effectively requires immigration detention centers to admit members of Congress conducting oversight, and would go further by requiring the secretary of Homeland Security and any DHS contractor to give lawmakers immediate access for oversight visits. It would also require detention facilities to train employees on those obligations and force DHS to end contracts with any entity that does not certify its personnel received the training.
McIver said the goal is to protect Congress’s ability to watch what is happening inside immigration detention facilities. “The main point of this bill, you know, is to make sure that the Trump administration is adhering to Congress’s ability to have oversight,” she said. Watson Coleman described it as “an attempt to raise the issue, to close some of the loopholes, to hold the contractors accountable and to hold this administration accountable.”
The measure lands in the middle of McIver’s own legal fight. She went to a federal migrant detention facility in her district on May 9, 2025, to examine the conditions for detainees inside, and was later charged with three counts of assaulting, resisting, impeding and interfering with federal officers during a clash outside the New Jersey facility last spring. She denies wrongdoing and says the charges are politically motivated. If convicted, she could face up to 17 years in prison. A district judge overseeing the case has already ruled against her, and a federal appeals court is expected to hear arguments in June on her bid to have the charges dismissed before trial.
The bill is part of a wider fight over congressional access to immigration detention sites. On Friday, a federal appeals court rejected a Trump administration attempt to bar members of Congress from carrying out unannounced oversight visits at immigration detention facilities, upholding an earlier ruling from a U.S. district court that overturned DHS policies attempted last year. DHS called McIver’s bill “completely unnecessary” and said the department already complies with congressional oversight, adding that such requests “must be part of legitimate congressional oversight activities, and far too often they are just for a media act.”
The timing gives the measure added weight, but not an easy path. McIver’s proposal is unlikely to pass in a Republican-controlled House, even as it puts Congress’s access fight back in the spotlight while her own case remains unresolved. For McIver, the bill is both a policy push and a defense of the right she says Congress already has: the right to walk in and see for itself.
