Reps. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark) and Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon) were both given the chance to confront top Department of Homeland Security officials at a House committee hearing today, and both used the opportunity to question those officials on remarkably personal grounds: McIver on their personal religious beliefs, and Pou on her own status as a Latina congresswoman who might become a victim of racial profiling.
The Homeland Security Committee hearing was convened in the wake of the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, two American citizens killed by immigration enforcement agents last month in Minneapolis. Throughout the hearing, Democrats repeatedly confronted acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons and two other DHS officials over the Trump administration’s actions, including asking Lyons whether he would apologize for the two deaths. (He did not.)
McIver, an avowed progressive Democrat who is currently under prosecution for allegedly assaulting a DHS officer last year, cited both Good and Pretti in her remarks, saying that ICE is a “rogue, out-of-control agency.” But she also highlighted the far less publicized deaths of Keith Porter Jr., a Black man killed by an off-duty ICE officer in Los Angeles, and Jean Wilson Brutus, a Haitian migrant who died in DHS custody in New Jersey.
“You are only here because public outrage has become so unavoidable,” McIver told Lyons. “You are here, Mr. Lyons, because white people are getting shot in the face and chest when the cameras are rolling.”
And while many of her fellow Democrats asked questions on ICE’s procedures and policies, McIver decided instead to probe Lyons’s own moral convictions.
“Mr. Lyons, do you consider yourself a religious man?”, she asked at one point in her five minutes of questioning.
“Yes ma’am,” Lyons responded.
“How do you think Judgement Day will work for you, with so much blood on your hands?”
“I’m not going to entertain that question.”
“Do you think you’re going to hell, Mr. Lyons?”
“I’m not going to answer that.”
At that point, Homeland Security Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-New York) halted McIver’s line of questioning, saying that attacking Lyons personally is “inappropriate.” McIver then asked Lyons how many other government agencies “routinely kill American citizens and still get funding”; Lyons once again declined to answer.
Pou, who represents a much more politically competitive district than McIver, was similarly critical of DHS and ICE, saying that “congressional oversight is ignored, detention visits are blocked, due process is ignored, and laws are broken without thought” under the current administration.
And ICE, she noted, was given the green light by the U.S. Supreme Court last year to use factors like race, ethnicity, or language as a factor in deciding who to question and detain. Pou, like a plurality of her district’s residents, is Hispanic; would that be enough, she asked, for her to become a target?
“Mr. Lyons, I speak Spanish,” she said. “If I wasn’t wearing my member pin, would me being a Latina, or speaking Spanish, be enough for ICE agents to harass me or shove me into your unmarked cars?” Lyons said it would not.
Pou went on to highlight the plight of one of her constituents, Leeqa Kordia, whom she said is being detained in Texas against a judge’s orders; Lyons said he would look into her case. The congresswoman also asked for assurances that DHS activity would not interfere with international visitors who come to New Jersey for the 2028 World Cup.
Pou and McIver, along with all of their fellow New Jersey House Democrats, have called for the impeachment or removal of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. And several state Democrats, including McIver, have said that ICE needs to be abolished entirely – a message that proved to be a winning one for Analilia Mejia, the brand-new Democratic nominee in the 11th congressional district whose campaign channeled Democratic voters’ anti-ICE sentiment into an upset victory.
RELATED ARTICLES
-
August 3, 2020 -
February 1, 2018 -
January 11, 2026