U.S. immigration enforcement policies will come into sharper focus this upcoming week with the spectacle of two congressional hearings. The killings of two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, galvanized the Senate and House homeland security committees to call for public testimony from the heads of the three main immigration agencies. Next Tuesday and Thursday, Americans will get to see how Congress engages with the leaders of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

 It would be valuable for U.S. officials to be asked some basic questions that can help Americans better understand what’s at stake, and how a principled immigration enforcement policy can be achieved. Indeed, journalists might also see fit to ask senior administration officials these questions when the opportunity arises.

The following list of questions is meant to inform such exchanges. The fact that there is only one right answer to many of these questions is itself informative.

Questions for senior administration officials:

1. Do you agree that non-citizens who overstayed their visa have committed no crime?

2. Do you agree that, just before President Trump’s inauguration on January 19, 2025, nearly half of undocumented immigrants in the United States did not enter the country illegally, but rather overstayed their visas?*

*The question is framed to avoid administration officials’ falsely labelling migrants who entered the United States under Biden administration parole programs as having done so “illegally” on the theory that the programs were unlawful.

3. When someone came into the United States under a Biden era parole program, they were coming in lawfully–with permission from the U.S. government–correct? 

4. Do you agree that non-US citizens who illegally entered the United States, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1325, are guilty of only a misdemeanor?

5. Do you agree for the vast majority of those people (in #4) who are inside the United States, the statute of limitations has run on any such misdemeanor?

6. Can DHS officials use race as a factor when stopping people based on reasonable suspicion? Is it DHS policy to use race in this way? 

Will you commit to ensure employees in your agency do not engage in such racial profiling? 

7. Do you still maintain that if the target of an immigration enforcement operation is an immigrant with a  criminal record of a violent crime, ICE and CBP may well arrest and deport other aliens as “collateral” including Dreamers and people who overstayed their visas and have no criminal history?

8. Do you agree that all arrests have to be based on probable cause, a higher standard than reasonable suspicion? 

[Justice Kavanaugh recently reiterated the settled understanding of the law, “The Fourth Amendment requires that immigration stops must be based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence, stops must be brief, arrests must be based on probable cause.”]

Do you agree that DHS and CBP officials have repeatedly misstated the law by claiming that federal agents can arrest people on the basis of reasonable suspicion?

9. There are multiple studies showing that sanctuary policies do not increase crime and that sanctuary cities and states do not have higher crime rates than other cities and states. 

Why does ICE then target sanctuary cities for more intensive immigration enforcement?

10. Do you accept that empirical studies consistently show immigrants in the United States, including undocumented immigrants, commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. born citizens?

Keep going: Readers may also be interested in Andrew Weissmann and Ryan Goodman’s The Top 10 Questions the Trump Administration Needs to Answer About Minnesota. The first question in that list, for example, is relevant to next week’s hearings:

Administration officials have said that Agent Ross (who repeatedly shot and killed Renee Good) and the unnamed federal agents (who repeatedly shot and killed Alex Pretti) were following protocol and acting consistent with their training. Do you support using the videos of these killings as model examples to train federal agents?

 

FEATURED IMAGE: Todd Lyons, US Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), testifies during a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security oversight hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, May 14, 2025. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)