Confronting the Arrogant Lawlessness

Senators Chris Murphy and Patty Murray incisively criticized the illegality and inhumanity of Kristi Noem's Department of Homeland Security. It's a start, but not enough to overcome this cruel regime.

“What you are doing…is immoral…and illegal,” Sen. Chris Murphy said at a hearing last week. (Photo by Jemal Countess via Getty Images)

Once again last week, Kristi Noem showcased that she will not be deterred by inconvenient things like justice and laws and human dignity. Homeland Security Secretary Noem—who wrote that she killed her own dog to prove she’s ready to do what’s “difficult, messy and ugly”—was on Capitol Hill Thursday to appear before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security.

Noem is one of the central figures of Donald Trump’s hateful regime that’s seeking to demolish our constitutional democracy. Under her leadership (that includes her near-daily photo-ops), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is busy robbing citizens and non-citizens of their basic rights and illegally abusing the resources appropriated by Congress to keep them safe and secure. With Trump’s support, she and others are ignoring due process and violating the Constitution.

I look forward to the day when a real Justice Department is holding them accountable for their criminality. For now, the fierce articulation and questioning of DHS’s failures and illegalities by Senators Chris Murphy and Patty Murray on Thursday—helping to keep us tethered to reality—are a reason to hope that we’ll get there.

But even though we can be encouraged by these Democratic senators’ pointed outrage, I’m also reminded that we have an obligation to confront a fascist regime that is determined to dismantle our democratic system, ignore a climate crisis that endangers us all, and disappear refugees without providing them their constitutional rights. It will take more than outraged elected officials; it will take about 12 million Americans (that’s 3.5 percent of the population, per Harvard researcher Erica Chenoweth’s study of effective protest) standing together and demanding a stop to the lawlessness and abuse.

That necessity is proven by the continued incarceration of Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador’s gulag and Noem’s evidence-free insistence that he is a terrorist and will never be released, even though the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Trump administration should “facilitate” his return. It’s also proven by Noem’s plan to end the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) endangering the lives of millions of Americans who struggle to cope before and after the devastating impact of extreme weather events; the shutting down of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in March, which included firing most of the 150-person staff and freezing some 600 civil rights abuse investigations; and the daily instances of masked ICE agents grabbing people off the streets or from their homes and pursuing their removal without due process.

Allow me to share an extended and vivid statement by Sen. Murphy, ranking member of the Senate’s Homeland Security subcommittee, as he confronted Noem and her department’s flagrant violations and reckless spending. “Your department is out of control,” he began. “You are spending like you don’t have a budget. You are on the verge of running out of money for the fiscal year. You are illegally refusing to spend funds that have been authorized by this Congress and appropriated by this committee.”

Connecticut’s Murphy was just warming up:

You are ignoring the immigration laws of this nation, implementing a brand-new immigration system that you have invented that has little relation to the statutes that you are required—that you are commanded—to follow as spelled out in your oath of office. You are routinely violating the rights of immigrants who may not be citizens, but whether you like it or not, have constitutional and statutory rights when they reside in the United States.

Your agency acts as if laws don’t matter, as if the election gave you some mandate to violate the Constitution and the laws passed by this Congress. It did not give you that mandate. You act as if your disagreement with the law—or even the public's disagreement with the law—is relevant and gives you the ability to create your own law. It does not give you that ability.

And what are the consequences of this spending spree focused on the border?

To fund the border, you have illegally gutted spending for cybersecurity. As we speak, Russian and Chinese hackers are having a field day attacking our nation. You have withdrawn funds for disaster prevention. Storms are going to kill more people in this country because of your illegal withholding of these funds. Your myopia about the border, fueled by President Trump's prejudice against people who speak a different language, has shattered many of this country's most important defenses.

And the senator had this to say about the illegal disappearing of humans:

In an autocratic society, people who the regime does not like, or people who are protesting the regime, they are just often picked up off the street, spirited away, sometimes to open-ended detention, sometimes they are never seen again. What you are doing, both to individuals who have legal rights to stay here, like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, or students, who are just protesting Trump’s policies, is immoral. And to follow the theme, it is illegal. You have no right to deport a student visa holder with no due process simply because they have spoken in a way that offends the President. You cannot remove migrants who a court has given humanitarian protection from removal.

These are strong and necessary words. But note Noem’s arrogant and hostile response when Murphy directly asked what steps she’s taken to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release. “Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador and should never have been in this country and will not be coming back to this country,” she told the senator. “There is no scenario where Abrego Garcia will be in the United States again. If he were to come back we would immediately deport him again because he is a terrorist, he’s a human smuggler, and he is a wife beater.”

Reflect for a moment on what that portends. The leader of one of the nation’s largest and most powerful departments, who was confirmed for the position by 59 senators including some Democrats, believes it’s in her power to defy the Supreme Court, ignore the Constitution and determine without legal evidence that she knows better what should be done with someone that she and her boss claim is a danger. Today we are talking about undocumented refugees, but how soon will we be talking about a growing number of American citizens who this fascist regime chooses to disappear?

We can expect to see more and more of these detentions and removals every day because this regime believes it’s their privilege to pursue this lawless path. The heinous threat by Trump advisor Stephen Miller Friday that they’ll suspend habeas corpus—the right enshrined in the Constitution to legally challenge detention by the government—is all you need to know about their depraved intent. The false reason they’d employ? “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller told reporters.

But let me leave you with Sen. Murray’s confrontation with Noem over their freezing or cancelling over $100 billion in FEMA disaster relief and grants approved by Congress—an unconscionable campaign that will increase human suffering and death. Tragically, the predictable impacts will be felt in the coming months as Americans face hurricane season, rising waters and devastating results from climate-induced disasters.

Here’s how Washington’s Murray, vice chair of this appropriations subcommittee, addressed it:

We are talking about everything from disaster relief to grants that keep people safe. But when my staff has requested information on the status of this unacceptable hold-up, the Department failed to provide any acceptable justification. This illegal freeze—and it is illegal—is taking a real toll on communities who are waiting on the investments that Congress has delivered. Will you commit to immediately unpausing these funds?

Ignoring the question, Noem changed the subject. “Under the Biden administration, illegal aliens were prioritized over American citizens,” she responded. “Now the scales of justice have been leveled, citizens are treated the same.”

Pressed by Murray, Noem eventually said, “The grants that you are referencing have been paused and reevaluated to make sure that they are truly being spent in the way to which they were appropriated. Many of these grants were being diverted.”

Get it? Let’s cancel FEMA support because all the money is being handed over illegally to support migrants.

“Madam Secretary, these funds were passed on a bipartisan basis by members in this Congress,” the senator politely reminded her, adding, “It is not credible that all the recipients—it is not credible that $100 billion is used to break the law—that just cannot be true.”

Homeland Security is on track to go broke by July, Sen. Murphy told Noem. That’s two months before the end of the fiscal year. “You may not think that Congress has provided enough money to ICE, but the Constitution and the federal law doesn’t allow you to spend more money than you've been given, or to invent money,” he said.

As Congress sorts out the 2026 budget, there is an opportunity for elected officials to push back on the extremes of this department and its reckless leadership. But don’t count on it with a GOP-led legislature kowtowing to a lawless, immunized president. In contrast to major cuts proposed throughout the federal budget, Trump is calling for a ridiculous 65 percent increase for Homeland Security to support mass removals, complete his border wall, and expand the border patrol and customs workforce.

We need Democratic leaders like Murphy and Murray to continue speaking out with clarity and outrage. But that won’t be enough to turn the tide, as Murphy himself has said. It will take all of us saying we’ve had enough and proving it with solidarity and mass protest.

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