As regular readers of this newsletter know, one of the things that worries me most about the current moment is that the detention system has grown massively public accountability has shrunk. ICE has dismantled key accountability mechanisms, narrowed congressional access, and stopped publishing basic information that researchers, journalists, and elected officials used to rely on. In that environment, the small number of members of Congress who keep showing up at facilities are doing work that nobody else can do.
Representative Mike Levin is one representative who is using his unique access to shed light on the black box of ICE detention. A fourth-term Democrat representing California’s 49th district along the San Diego–Orange County coast, Levin sits on the House Appropriations Committee and has made quarterly visits to border-region detention facilities a routine part of his work since he was first elected in 2019. This stood out to me because it’s a clear reminder that our commitment to fairness in the immigration system cannot be limited to those moments of highly visible abuses of power by ICE—it has to be a year-round commitment regardless of who is in the White House.
Earlier this month, he and Representative Sara Jacobs toured the CoreCivic-run Otay Mesa Detention Center after receiving reports of medication shortages, poor food, and problems accessing medical records. I invited him on to talk about what he saw, what Congress is doing about it, and what he thinks comes next. You can watch the full conversation above.
A few things stood out to me from our discussion.
Levin’s inside look at Otay Mesa. Levin described Otay Mesa as a facility with tight security housing between a thousand and twelve hundred ICE detainees. The “overwhelming number” wear blue, the lowest-security color, reserved for people whose only offense is their immigration status. Medical care at Otay is, in his estimation, “at least a reasonable baseline,” and the food is “edible, if nothing that’s going to win any sort of culinary award.”
That’s a useful data point for putting Otay Mesa in context, given how much worse conditions have been reported at other facilities. But he was also clear-eyed that announced visits only tell you so much: “It’s hard to know exactly whether the conditions that you see are as a result of your having announced you were going to visit.”
Stephen Miller’s ICE arrest quota is doing a lot of damage. Levin was direct about what is actually driving detention numbers. When he asked ICE personnel whether, given unlimited budget and staffing, they would detain every undocumented person they could find regardless of criminal history, the answer was yes.
That’s the logic behind Stephen Miller’s 3,000-arrests-per-day quota, and it’s the logic behind the boom in commercial-warehouse-turned-mass-detention-centers popping up around the country. It also tracks with my own analysis of the detention data: roughly nine out of ten of the people fueling the system’s growth have no prior violent criminal conviction.
The appropriations fight is not abstract. As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, Levin laid out the four basic guardrails House Democrats put on the table in exchange for any new ICE funding: masks off; IDs on; no enforcement at sensitive locations like schools, hospitals, churches, and polling places; and the use of judicial warrants instead of administrative ones. He said Republican colleagues agreed before the far right blew it up. The result is a nearly 70-day impasse, which he called “an absolute mess.” Congress holds the power of the purse, and whether it’s used is the single biggest lever on what the enforcement agencies can actually do.
Why he signed on to the Dignity Act. Levin is a co-sponsor of the Dignity Act of 2025 (H.R. 4393), the bipartisan reform bill led by Rep. María Elvira Salazar and Rep. Veronica Escobar that I’ve discussed before. His defense was the one I find most persuasive: the bill doesn’t do everything anyone would want, and in this climate that’s probably what makes it viable. “It is correct and appropriate to place blame on Donald Trump and the Republican Party for being unwilling to compromise with us,” he said, “but it is also correct that we had the opportunity when we had the trifecta… and we couldn’t get it done either.”
For a grandson of Mexican immigrants—his grandfather came to the United States at fifteen—a bill that lets working people “get out of the shadows” is a continuation of the same American story his own family lived.
What changes if the House flips. If Democrats retake the majority in 2026, Levin said the oversight picture changes overnight: subpoena power, hearings, real investigations. Jamie Raskin would be on Judiciary instead of Jim Jordan; Robert Garcia would be on Oversight instead of James Comer. Accountability for Noem, Homan, Lewandowski, and the others who, as he put it, “aren’t going to face any accountability from my Republican colleagues for anything they may have done, including if it’s illegal or unethical.”
I am truly grateful to Congressman Levin for his generosity with his time and for the work he and his team continue to do on behalf of constituents caught in the system. Conversations like this one only happen because elected officials are willing to show up and answer hard questions, and I don’t take that for granted. If you want to follow his work directly, his official Substack is here and his House website is here. Press inquiries can be directed to his District Press Secretary Crosby Williams at Crosby.Williams@mail.house.gov.
One more note while I have your attention: if you are an elected official—from either party, at any level of government—who is working on immigration enforcement, detention oversight, or related issues, I’d love to hear from you. My inbox is open, and I think these conversations matter regardless of where someone sits on the political spectrum. You can reach me directly through my Substack.
Thank you to everyone who tuned in live. The full video is above. Please share it with anyone who still thinks nobody in Congress is trying to do what’s right.
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