Homeland Security chairmanship puts Rep. Andrew Garbarino at center of ICE debate

WASHINGTON — Long Island Rep. Andrew Garbarino finds himself in a hot seat as chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security, while amped-up Trump administration immigration enforcement actions deliver daily upheavals in Minnesota and elsewhere.

Garbarino's committee is the main House panel with jurisdictional oversight of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities, and more broadly, the Department of Homeland Security and its secretary, Kristi Noem.

But to the exasperation of the panel’s Democrats and others, Garbarino (R-Bayport) has yet to hold a hearing — or even schedule one — into the ICE enforcement actions that have brought angry standoffs with protesters and violence in Minneapolis that has included the shooting death of Renee Good by an immigration agent and Saturday's shooting death of a man by a U.S. Border Patrol officer, federal officials say. Border Patrol is another component of the Homeland Security Department.

"I mean, people want us to hold hearings. We’re going to hold hearings," Garbarino said in an interview with Newsday, before Saturday's shooting death. He said, "We're working on it."

In a statement Saturday, he said his committee "will closely monitor" the investigation into the latest fatal shooting. He also reiterated that ICE and Customs and Border Protection officials will be appearing before his committee "in the coming weeks." But as previously, he did not provide dates.

More quietly, Garbarino on Saturday sent a letter to Todd Lyons, the acting head of ICE. Obtained by Newsday, the letter offers Lyons a list of six potential dates — options — on which he apparently can choose to appear before Garbarino’s committee. Most of those offered dates are in March, going from Feb. 10 to as far away as March 18.

When the shooting news broke on Saturday, Garbarino was out of the country, traveling overseas as part of a congressional delegation trip focused on other security issues.

“The Committee requests your presence at your earliest opportunity,” Garbarino’s letter to Lyons states. “Please confirm your availability for any of the following dates.”

Garbarino, in the interview Thursday, conceded it probably won’t be until March that the public will see top officials of ICE, CBP and others from the department testify about the immigration enforcement actions.

Garbarino also said Noem will appear before the committee sometime in April or May because she has to make an obligatory trek to the Capitol to talk about budget matters and requests required of most federal agency heads.

"There’s a lot of questions about what’s going on," Garbarino said of the ICE activities and immigration and deportation pushes. "And we will be doing our proper oversight of the agency."

But the extended and fuzzy timeline is angering Democrats on the Homeland Security Committee and others, incensed at what they see as perfunctory or detached nonspecific promises of some future hearing.

What is happening in Minnesota and elsewhere, they say, is a national emergency with immediate issues for Congress to scrutinize, including the shooting deaths by federal officers in Minneapolis.

"Do-nothing Republicans in Congress must force ICE and CBP leaders to testify publicly," the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), said after the shooting death Saturday.

"There is an urgent, urgent need to conduct oversight, from this committee, of the Department of Homeland Security," Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-Brooklyn/Manhattan) said. "The urgency in this country right now is what’s going on with ICE."

Tense hearing

Samples of this outrage spilled out Wednesday during a hearing with several Department of Homeland Security officials who were not involved with ICE or immigration enforcement — but instead cybersecurity, science and transportation security.

Garbarino, it turned out, had not initially asked that Lyons be there to testify. He later invited Lyons, but only after Democrats complained about not seeing him listed as a witness. Lyons skipped the hearing anyhow.

Goldman and other Democrats during the hearing took turns expressing bewildered anger about how such a hearing — at this moment in time — could even have been arranged without also demanding top ICE officials or even the DHS secretary be there.

Turning to the chairman, Goldman said, "I know that you and your colleagues cannot possibly be OK watching secret masked ICE agents barging into homes without a warrant, pulling American citizens out in their underwear, stopping American citizens on the streets and demanding their citizenship.

"And that, of course, is not even to mention the violence in Renee Good's murder and whatever else we are seeing," Goldman said.

Thompson called it a "disgrace" that Lyons wasn’t there. And on Thursday, he continued his criticism as all but seven House Democrats voted against a bill to fund the Homeland Security Department, saying it does not go far enough in reining in ICE tactics and alleged misconduct.

"Republicans in control of Congress, however, are conducting zero oversight and do nothing but send blank check after blank check to DHS," Thompson said, as the bill passed.

On Monday, Thompson and other committee members are holding a forum at City Hall in New Orleans to hear accounts of what Dem ocrats are calling the "ICE Invasion of Louisiana" terrorizing communities there.

Campaign issue

Such criticisms are also starting to play a political role closer to home.

One of the Democrats seeking Garbarino’s 2nd Congressional District seat this fall — former Suffolk County Executive Patrick Halpin — had already released a YouTube video in the days after Good’s shooting death.

He asks, "Will Andrew Garbarino, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, hold an emergency hearing now to get to the bottom of this madness. What’s it going to take to wake him up?" 

Halpin, in an interview Tuesday, reiterated his video’s message by saying safe borders and streets are needed, but that sending armies of masked ICE agents into cities with minimal training and zero accountability has gone terribly wrong, and "our congressman is complicit."

"Americans are shocked by what they witnessed in Minneapolis and the chairman has a responsibility to demand accountability and answers," Halpin said. "Silence is complicity, especially in the case of ICE." He said he would be a representative "that will ask tough questions and insist on the truth."

Nonpartisan political handicappers have so far not rated the race for Garbarino's seat as very competitive. But the district does have more active Democratic voters, 177,878, than Republicans, 168,592. 

'Do whatever you need'

When pressed in the interview, Garbarino emphatically said that, "Nope," he has not been told by the Trump administration or House Republican leaders to stand down or delay his committee’s scrutiny.

"The speaker told me — do your oversight work. Do whatever you need," Garbarino said.

Garbarino dismisses comments from critics like Thompson and others as political performance art. "They’re doing what we would do" if the roles were reversed, he acknowledged of the Democratic attacks.

But he said Thompson and other Democrats know that to get the relevant top officials in front of a hearing takes time and requires arrangements based on everyone’s schedules. And while the committee has investigative subpoena power, he said, there are steps to take before leaping to that — a process that in itself can take weeks.

While his committee is doing its background work, Garbarino added that, as much as anything, he does not believe ICE and other department officials are ready at this point to even provide real responses to many questions.

For instance, he said ICE officials aren't going to talk about the Good shooting on the record, given potential law enforcement investigations. “How many times are you going to ask that question?” without getting an answer, he asked about that possible futility.

Garbarino said that when he gets someone in front of his committee, "I want something to be worthwhile."