GOP Stays Silent On Deporting Americans In Unusual Immigration Markup

House Judiciary Committee Republicans weathered a blizzard of Democratic amendments to pass sweeping immigration measures as part of a reconciliation bill. The legislation features provisions to increase the detention and deportation of immigrants. Republicans remained silent during the markup and voted against Democratic amendments requiring immigrants to receive due process and prohibiting Immigration and Customs Enforcement from detaining and deporting U.S. citizens. Economist Mark Regets, a senior fellow at the National Foundation for American Policy, estimates the $45 billion in new detention funding in the bill is enough to detain 5 million people or at least 1 million a year over five years.

An Extraordinary Immigration Markup Begins Normally

On April 30, 2025, Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) began the markup of the House Judiciary Committee’s part of the Republican reconciliation bill with an expected opening statement. He accused the Biden administration of deliberately allowing in millions of undocumented immigrants and said voters gave Donald Trump and Republicans a mandate to secure the border and communities. Republicans are using reconciliation to avoid a filibuster in the Senate.

Jordan continued his statement by highlighting the bill’s $45 billion in detention funding, $8 billion to hire 10,000 additional ICE agents and support staff, $14 billion in transportation spending to deport 1 million immigrants annually and unprecedented fees of at least $1,000 levied on applicants for asylum and parole and $500 for Temporary Protected Status. The fees, designed to raise money and deter applications, include a minimum of $550 for 6-month work permits for TPS, asylum and parole applicants.

Republicans Vote Against Requiring Due Process At The Immigration Markup

For a time, the markup continued in the expected fashion. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, delivered an opening statement followed by other Democratic members of the committee. Raskin set the tone by criticizing the Trump administration for high-profile arrests and deportations that appeared to go beyond the law and denied due process to individuals.

“Every day, the administration uses immigration enforcement as a template to violate and erode our rights and liberties,” said Raskin. “They round up people in the street and disappear them to the torture prison of a foreign dictator without one iota of due process, sweeping up completely innocent people who have no criminal record and no criminal charges.

“They strip college and graduate students at American universities of their student visas for writing op-eds the administration disagrees with. They invoke emergency wartime powers like the Alien Enemies Act to fight an invasion at the southern border while telling us that the border is already safer than it has ever been.”

Raskin argued, “The Trump administration has abandoned the rule of law. If Donald Trump can sweep noncitizens off the street and fly them to a torturer’s prison in El Salvador with no due process, he can do it to citizens too, because if there is no due process, no fair hearing, you have no opportunity to object. And indeed, several American citizen children, including one with cancer, were flown to Honduras with no due process, as a Trump-appointed judge in Louisiana found.”

The markup changed when Raskin offered the first amendment to the bill. The amendment read: “None of the funds made available by this subtitle may be used to detain or remove an alien in violation of their rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.”

Raskin said many Americans would wonder why the amendment was necessary since the right to due process is in the Bill of Rights, and the Supreme Court confirmed it in a recent opinion. He quoted the Supreme Court: “It is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in the context of removal proceedings.” Raskin said the amendment was necessary because members of the Trump administration “believe people can be swept up . . . and sent to a torturer’s prison in El Salvador without any due process at all, and there they can remain for the rest of their lives.”

Raskin pointed to federal judges who said that if that could be done to noncitizens, it could also be done to citizens. “Because if you assert as your defense that you’re a citizen, but you don’t have the opportunity to get before a court . . . they still get away with taking you out of the country.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) offered examples of students and others swept up by ICE actions. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) spoke in front of a poster of a Rolling Stone article with the headline: “Trump Has Now Deported Multiple U.S. Citizen Children With Cancer.”

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) paraphrased the famous poem by German Pastor Martin Niemöller, which begins with, “First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out.”

Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) showed a harrowing video of a news report that began, “A family is traumatized after armed federal agents busted into their home as they were sleeping and took almost everything they owned.” The U.S. citizen family, a woman and her young daughters, moved to Oklahoma only two weeks earlier. The reporter said, “They told federal immigration agents they had the wrong people, but those agents kept treating them like criminals, even though they are all U.S. citizens.” The news report featured the crying mother, who said, “I did feel at times that I was going to die. . . . I kept praying to God, please let me live through this moment.”

No Republican debated the amendment, nor did any Republicans vote for the amendment. That was the pattern throughout the entire markup. Democrats offered more than a dozen amendments, and each time, Republicans stayed silent and voted no. Every Democratic amendment failed on a party-line vote.

Halfway through the markup, Democrats attempted to bait their Republican colleagues into responding, yet each GOP member remained silent. Democrats tried asking for a show of hands on some issues, but the Republican committee members still did not reply. Rep. Swalwell asked Chairman Jordan if he could do a “wellness check” on Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) because he was not in the committee room but was “tweeting.”

Republicans Vote Against Ensuring ICE Does Not Deport U.S. Citizens

Rep. Jayapal, the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, offered the markup’s second amendment. The amendment read: “None of the funds made available by this subtitle may be used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain or deport a United States citizen.”

“Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, I hope we can all agree that U.S. citizens should never be detained by ICE or any agency conducting civil immigration enforcement,” said Jayapal. “They certainly should not be deported.” She pointed to an ICE policy memo that stated the agency did not have the authority to detain U.S. citizens. “And yet since the second Trump administration began, a troubling pattern has emerged with U.S. citizens being detained by immigration authorities.”

Jayapal provided examples of U.S. citizens detained by ICE, including a toddler, mother and grandmother shopping in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sent to an ICE detention center because immigration agents questioned their status after hearing them speaking Spanish. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA), Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) and other Democratic members spoke in favor of the amendment.

As with the Raskin amendment, not one Republican voted for the amendment prohibiting ICE from detaining or deporting U.S. citizens, nor did any Republican members speak before the vote.

Republican House Judiciary Committee members may have arguments against the amendments on requiring due process for aliens before deportation and ensuring ICE does not detain or deport U.S. citizens. During this unusual markup, they never explained why they voted against the amendments, making it impossible to know.