At a time when immigration has become one of the most divisive issues in American politics, a cascade of new revelations and legal battles is shedding light on the Trump administration’s aggressive—and, critics say, increasingly opaque—approach to enforcement. The past few weeks have seen congressional visits to detention centers, lawsuits over oversight access, and a bombshell report detailing how local jails have become the backbone of mass deportation, even in so-called sanctuary jurisdictions.
U.S. Representative Maxine Dexter, who serves Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District, has emerged as a prominent voice challenging these policies. On April 22, 2025, Dexter returned from El Salvador, where she and three other Democratic lawmakers attempted to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia—a Maryland resident wrongfully deported and now held at CECOT, a notorious maximum-security prison. “It was the number one thing, overwhelmingly, that we were hearing about,” Dexter told the Oregon Capital Chronicle. “People wanted me to go to El Salvador. They wanted me to take a stand. They wanted me to take action.”
Dexter’s advocacy didn’t end there. Since April, she’s made at least three additional visits to federal immigration detention facilities, determined to hold the Trump administration accountable for what she calls the “cruelty” of federal enforcement. “This wasn’t about one person,” she explained. “It was about the rights that were being completely ignored by this administration. If it could happen to them, it could happen to anyone.”
Yet, not everyone in Oregon has welcomed Dexter’s approach. Some Republicans have dismissed her trips as performative, arguing she should focus on crime at home. Dexter counters that her oversight is essential: “Trump’s immigration machine thrives in the shadows,” she said. “He will continue to deny people access to due process and counsel if we turn a blind eye… (These visits) are to follow through on my promise to my constituents, that I will stop at nothing to protect our communities and perform my oversight duties.”
Federal law empowers members of Congress to make unannounced visits to ICE detention centers. Dexter sees this as a crucial check on the executive branch. “It’s our job to perform oversight and to make sure that these detention facilities are humanitarian and that they’re meeting the requirements that the federal government has stipulated,” she said. “And frankly, I’m concerned because these are for-profit institutions that benefit from detaining people.”
But oversight isn’t always straightforward. In some regions, immigration agents have denied access to lawmakers, Dexter said. On July 30, a dozen Democratic Congress members (excluding Dexter) filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging it blocked their oversight visits. “What’s more alarming are the glaring discrepancies between what ICE tells us and what we hear directly from those detained,” Dexter told the Capital Chronicle. “At best, this is negligence. At worst, it’s an obstruction of constitutional oversight.”
Concerns about due process and legal compliance are echoed by those working on the front lines. Caroline Keating Medeiros, an Oregon immigration attorney, described how her client was transferred from Tacoma to Bakersfield without any notification to the court or family, violating federal regulations. “I was never given notice that she was being transferred, and neither was her U.S. citizen husband,” Keating Medeiros said. The oversight failure disrupted court proceedings and has delayed the client’s ability to resolve her case. “This speaks more to due process concerns,” she added, noting that most of her clients have no criminal background.
Dexter’s constituents have voiced their support for her actions. Jill Eckenrode, a resident of Welches, Oregon, told the Capital Chronicle, “We were told by the Trump admin that they’d be deporting hardened criminals. Maybe they are, but they are also deporting U.S. citizens, already naturalized citizens and immigrants trying to go to their scheduled hearings… It’s unethical, and frankly just plain gross Gestapo behavior.”
The congresswoman’s recent visit to a customs and border patrol station in Ferndale, Washington, further illustrated the stakes. There, Dexter located Kenia Jackeline Merlos and her four children—U.S. citizens—who had been held in a windowless cell for two weeks without contact with family or legal counsel. “It is someone who is in the U.S. undergoing deferred action, has four citizen children and is a community pillar active in the church and in their school,” Dexter said.
These stories are set against a broader legal and political context. On July 28, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held a hearing in the case of Vasquez Perdomo v. Noem, scrutinizing allegations that ICE had been directed to make 3,000 arrests per day. The Department of Justice, in a formal letter submitted July 30, flatly denied the existence of any numerical arrest quotas. “Neither ICE leadership nor its field offices have been directed to meet any numerical quota or target for arrests, detentions, removals, field encounters, or any other operational activities,” wrote Yaakov M. Roth, principal deputy assistant attorney general. While acknowledging that a White House adviser had publicly cited a “goal” of 3,000 arrests, the DOJ insisted, “No such goal has been set as a matter of policy, and no such directive has been issued to or by DHS or ICE.”
The government argued that enforcement is “firmly anchored in binding legal constraints—constitutional, statutory, and regulatory requirements that apply at every stage.” The DOJ is urging the Ninth Circuit to lift a district court injunction that temporarily blocked certain ICE operations, calling the court order “sweeping” and unsupported by evidence. As of August 8, the appeals court had not yet ruled on whether to stay the injunction.
Meanwhile, a report released August 7 by the Prison Policy Initiative has exposed a hidden dimension of the administration’s strategy. Titled Hiding in Plain Sight: How Local Jails Obscure and Facilitate Mass Deportation Under Trump, the report details how local jails—even in sanctuary cities and counties—have become critical infrastructure for mass deportation. Through contracts with the U.S. Marshals Service, these facilities enable federal authorities to detain immigrants by converting civil immigration matters into criminal cases, effectively bypassing local sanctuary laws.
The report’s findings are startling: while ICE’s official average daily detention population was 57,200 in June 2025, the actual number—including those held on detainers and in state or local facilities—reaches about 83,400, a 45% increase over official figures. Since Trump’s return to office in January, 45% of all ICE arrests have occurred in jails. Jacob Kang-Brown, the report’s author, warned, “The Trump administration is leveraging jails at a new scale, using local contracts with the U.S. Marshals Service and existing policing practices in order to expand detention.”
The report also notes that many immigrants are arrested for minor offenses that wouldn’t land U.S. citizens in jail—such as driving without a license—creating the misleading impression that ICE is targeting serious criminals. In reality, most detainees have little or no criminal history. The Prison Policy Initiative urges counties to end all collaboration with federal immigration enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Marshals Service, which holds contracts with nearly 1,000 local jails nationwide.
As the legal battles intensify and more details come to light, the debate over immigration enforcement in the United States is only growing more urgent. For lawmakers like Dexter, attorneys, and advocates, the fight is about more than policy—it’s about the very fabric of due process and democracy.
