Democrats Rebuff GOP Calls for Public Hearings on Border Crisis

Minors lie inside a pod at the Donna Department of Homeland Security holding facility, the main detention center for unaccompanied children in the Rio Grande Valley run by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Donna, Texas, on March 30, 2021. Dario Lopez-Mills/Pool/AP Photo

Top Senate Democrats have rebuffed a request by Republicans to hold an ad hoc public hearing to question Department of Homeland Security (DHS) leadership about the U.S.–Mexico border crisis, saying that the annual DHS oversight hearing, to be held “in due course,” would provide an opportunity to question administration officials.

In a sharply worded April 9 letter, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Senate Immigration Subcommittee Chairman Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote that when Republicans chaired the committee and subcommittee during the Trump administration, Democrats’ requests for hearings and oversight action on border policies faced pushback.