Oversight

Oct. 28 (UPI) — The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday asked the Justice Department to investigate former President Joe Biden‘s use of the autopen to sign executive orders and pardons.

The request came after the committee released a report on its investigation into Biden’s use of the autopen and whether it indicated an administration coverup of an alleged cognitive decline.

In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the committee, accused Biden’s aides of coordinating “a cover-up of the president’s diminishing faculties.”

Over the summer, the oversight committee interviewed more than a dozen former aides and advisers to Biden. Among those who appeared before the committee were former chiefs of staff Ron Klein and Jeff Zients, and Biden’s former physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, who invoked the Fifth Amendment.

In addition to the letter to Bondi, Comer sent a letter to Andrea Anderson, chairwoman of the board of medicine at the District of Columbia Health calling on the board to investigate whether O’Connor was “derelict in his duty as a physician by, including but not limited to, issuing misleading medical reports, misrepresenting treatments, failing to conform to standards of practice, or other acts in violation of District of Columbia law regulating licensed physicians.”

The committee recommended that O’Connor’s medical license be revoked.

President Donald Trump has taken particular issue with Biden’s use of the autopen during his presidency, though he, himself, has used it. In a Presidential Walk of Fame exhibit installed at the White House in September, photos of each president were displayed outside the West Wing, except Biden’s. Instead, a photo of an autopen was put in Biden’s place.

There’s been a long history of presidents using an autopen to sign the many documents that come across their desks each day, beginning with the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. According to the Shapell Manuscript Foundation, which collects historical documents, Presidents Gerald Ford, Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama used the device, some to sign the many requests for autographs and letters, others to sign important documents and orders.

In 2005, then-President George W. Bush asked the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel whether it was constitutional for him to sign official documents using the autopen. The office concluded that “the president need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves and decides to sign in order for the bill to become law.”

Trump said he has used the autopen but not for important documents. In June, he ordered an investigation into Biden’s cognitive state.

Biden has denied Trump’s claims about his mental faculties and autopen use.

“I made the decisions during my presidency,” Biden said in a statement.

“I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations.

“Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false,” he added.

Oct. 2 (UPI) — Rep. Robert Garcia wants the Office of Special Counsel to investigate the Trump administration for alleged Hatch Act violations arising from government shutdown messaging.

Garcia, D-Calif., is the ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and on Thursday in a letter to Acting Special Counsel Jamieson Greer said the Trump administration has illegally used government resources to promote false and partisan political messaging.

He said the Trump administration posted false and partisan political messages on at least one federal agency website on Sept. 30 and in emails to federal employees.

“The Hatch Act imposes clear restrictions on the political activity of federal executive branch employees and does not allow activity ‘directed toward the success or failure of a political party, partisan political group or candidate for partisan political office,'” Garcia wrote.

He asked Greer to immediately open an investigation into what he says is “clear misconduct” and a “blatant misuse of taxpayer dollars for political purposes.”

Garcia cited the Department of Housing and Urban Development website’s homepage blaming the “radical left” for causing “massive pain on the American people” on Sept. 30.

He also accused HUD Secretary Scott Turner of violating the Hatch Act by saying, “It is a shame that far-left Democrats are holding our government hostage” in a social media post.

Other agencies have circulated emails to employees that claim the government shutdown is “Democrat-imposed” and blame “radical liberals in Congress” of causing the shutdown that halts critical services for Americans, Garcia said.

The non-profit organization Public Citizen on Wednesday also filed complaints against HUD and the Small Business Administration regarding political messaging, Politico reported.

The Trump administration’s messaging has raised concerns of possible ethics violations.

Ethics experts, though, told Politico the controversial messaging might not violate the Hatch Act but might violate the Anti-Lobbying Act.

A White House spokeswoman on Thursday denied that the Trump administration has violated any federal laws.

“It’s an objective fact that Democrats are responsible for the government shutdown,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told The Hill.

“The Trump administration is simply sharing the truth with the American people,” she added.

An unnamed White House official also said the Biden administration and Obama administration had targeted Republicans in messaging.

In a message shared with UPI on Thursday, the White House did not directly address Garcia’s Hatch Act violation claim but accused Senate Democrats of wanting to “inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their radical $1.5 trillion demands” approved in an alternative continuing resolution to keep the federal government open.

House Democrats submitted the alternative continuing resolution, which would have funded the federal government through Oct. 31 and would provide “free health insurance for illegal immigrants and others who do not qualify for taxpayer-funded health insurance programs,” according to the White House.

The House Dems’ continuing resolution also would expand premium tax credits and others enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic via Medicaid and Affordable Care Act plans that would pay for transgender surgeries and other gender-related therapies and treatments, the White House message said.

Responding to the Trump administration‘s hampering of federal regulators, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday signed a bill greatly expanding California’s power over workplace disputes and union elections.

The legislation, Assembly Bill 288, gives the state authority to step in and oversee union elections, charges of workplace retaliation and other disputes between private employers and workers in the event the National Labor Relations Board fails to respond.

As Newsom signed the worker rights bill, his office drew a sharp contrast with the gridlock in Washington, D.C., where a government shutdown looms.

“With the federal government not only asleep at the wheel, but driving into incoming traffic, it is more important than ever that states stand up to protect workers,” Newsom said in a statement. “California is a proud labor state — and we will continue standing up for the workers that keep our state running and our economy booming.”

The NLRB, which is tasked with safeguarding the right of private employees to unionize or organize in other ways to improve their working conditions, has been functionally paralyzed since it lost quorum in January, when Trump fired one of its board members.

The Trump administration has also proposed sweeping cuts to the agency’s staff and canceled leases for regional offices in many states, while Amazon, SpaceX and other companies brought lodged challenges to the 90-year-old federal agency’s constitutionality in court.

With this law in place, workers unable to get a timely response at the federal level can petition the California Public Employment Relations Board to enforce their rights.

The law creates a Public Employee Relations Board Enforcement Fund, financed by civil penalties paid by employers cited for labor violations to help pay for the added responsibilities for the state labor board.

“This is the most significant labor law reform in nearly a century,” said Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions. “California workers will no longer be forced to rely on a failing federal agency when they join together to unionize.”

The state’s labor board can choose to take on a case when the NLRB “has expressly or impliedly ceded jurisdiction,” according to language in the law. That includes when charges filed with the agency or an election certification have languished with a regional director for more than six months — or when the federal board doesn’t have a quorum of members or is hampered in other ways.

The law could draw legal challenges over whether the bill infringes on federal law.

It was opposed by the California Chamber of Commerce, which warned that the bill improperly attempts to give California’s labor board authority even as the federal agency’s regional offices continuing to process elections as well as charges filed by workers and employers.

The chamber argued that “courts have repeatedly held that states are prohibited from regulating this space.”

Catherine Fisk, Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong Professor of Law at UC Berkeley Law counters, however, that in the first few decades of the NLRB’s functioning, state labor agencies had much more leeway to enforce federal labor rights.

She said the law “simply proposes going back to the system that existed for three decades.”

The bill’s author, Assemblymember Tina McKinnor (D-Hawthorne) said the bill will ensure California workers can continue to unionize and bargain.

“The current President is attempting to take a wrecking ball to public and private sector employees’ fundamental right to join a union,”McKinnor said in a statement. “This is unacceptable and frankly, un-American. California will not sit idly as its workers are systematically denied the right to organize.”

An oversight body that has documented and exposed substandard jail conditions for decades would cease to exist if the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors moves forward with a cost-cutting plan.

L.A. County could save about $40,000 a year by eliminating the Sybil Brand Commission, according to an August report prepared for the supervisors by the board’s Executive Office.

The Sybil Brand Commission’s 10 members serve a key oversight role, regularly conducting unannounced inspections of county jails and lockups.

Named for a philanthropist and activist who worked to improve jail conditions for women in L.A. starting in the 1940s, the commission’s findings were recently cited in a state lawsuit over what Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta called a “humanitarian crisis” inside the county jails.

“In June 2024, the Sybil Brand Commission reported that multiple dorms at Men’s Central were overcrowded with broken toilets … and ceilings that had been painted over to cover mold,” Bonta’s office wrote in its complaint, which seeks to compel reforms by the county and sheriff’s department.

The recommendation to “sunset” the commission comes amid a spike in in-custody deaths with 38 so far this year, which puts the county on track for what Bonta’s office said would mark at least a 20-year high.

The Executive Office for the Board of Supervisors responded to questions from The Times with a statement Friday that said its report’s “purpose was not to eliminate oversight or input,” but to demonstrate “where responsibilities overlap and where efficiencies could strengthen oversight and support.”

The unattributed statement said the report found issues with “commissioner availability” that led to meeting cancellations and put “limits on their ability to conduct inspections.”

The Sybil Brand Commission took up the possibility of elimination at its meeting earlier this month, when commissioners and advocates railed against the proposal as a shortsighted way to cut costs that will leave county inmates more vulnerable to mistreatment and neglect.

In a separate move, the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors is reassigning or eliminating a third of Inspector General Max Huntsman’s staff, slashing funding to the watchdog that investigates misconduct by county employees and the sheriff’s department, according to Huntsman.

“At the back of all this is the fundamental question of whether the board wants oversight at all,” Eric Miller, a Sybil Brand commissioner, said in an interview.

Miller added that the “sunsetting of Sybil Brand seems to be part of a persistent attempt to control and limit oversight of the sheriff’s department.”

The report from the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors said its recommendation to do away with the jail oversight body came after a review of “225 commissions, committees, boards, authorities, and task forces” funded by the county. The proposal would “sunset” six commissions, including Sybil Brand, and “potentially merge” 40 others.

The report noted that “jail and detention inspection duties are also monitored by the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission.”

But that commission, which was established less than a decade ago, takes on a broader range of issues within the sheriff’s department, from deputy misconduct to so-called deputy gangs. Unlike Sybil Brand, its members do not go on frequent tours of jails and publish detailed reports documenting the conditions.

The Executive Office’s statement said “unannounced jail inspections would continue, either through a COC subcommittee or coordinated oversight structure.”

Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said the proposal to get rid of the commission is the latest in a recent succession of blows to law enforcement accountability.

That list includes the ousting of former Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission chair Robert Bonner earlier this year, and the introduction last week of a county policy requiring oversight bodies to submit many of their communications to the county for approval.

Eliasberg said losing the Sybil Brand Commission would be a major setback.

“Sybil Brand has been incredibly effective in shining a really harsh spotlight on some terrible things going on in the jails,” he said. “Sybil Brand, I think, has done some really important work.”

Huntsman, the inspector general, said during a Probation Oversight Commission meeting Monday that his office expects to lose a third of its staff. The “current plan proposes to eliminate 14 positions including vacancies,” according to the Executive Office statement.

Huntsman told the commission that the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors informed him on Sept. 11 that “a number of positions in my office will be taken away from me and moved to the Executive Office and will no longer be available for independent oversight.”

The inspector general added that “there’s a group of staff that have been specifically identified by the Executive Office and taken away, and then there are positions that are curtailed. So the end result is we have a third fewer people, which will impact our operations.”

The Executive Office’s statement said the changes would “save more than $3.95 million” and avoid “deeper cuts” elsewhere.

“We remain confident that the OIG’s remaining staffing levels will allow the OIG to fulfill its essential duties and carry out its mandate,” the statement said.

Late Friday afternoon, Edward Yen, executive officer for the Board of Supervisors, sent out an email “retracting” the new county policy that required many communications by oversight bodies to undergo prior approval.

“While the intent of the policy was to provide long-requested structure and support for commissions and oversight bodies,” Yen wrote, “we recognize that its rollout created confusion and unintended consequences.”

L.A. County’s watchdogs suddenly need to ask permission before barking to the press and public.

County oversight officials and civil rights advocates are raising concerns about a new policy they say improperly limits their rights to communicate — including with other members of local government.

The policy, enacted Sept. 11, requires oversight officials to send many types of communications to the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors for approval.

The policy says “press releases, advisories, public statements, social media content, and any direct outreach to the BOS or their staff” must be “reviewed, approved and coordinated” before being released publicly or sent to other county officials.

The policy says the change “ensures that messaging aligns with County priorities, protects sensitive relationships, and maintains a unified public voice.”

Eric Miller, a member of the Sybil Brand Commission, which conducts inspections and oversight of L.A. County jails, said the policy is the latest example of the county “attempting to limit the oversight of the Sheriff’s Department.” He said he made the remarks as a private citizen because he was concerned the new communications policy barred him from speaking to the media in his role as an oversight official.

Michael Kapp, communications manager for the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors, said in an email that he personally drafted the policy shortly after he started in his position in July and discovered there “was no existing communications guidance whatsoever for commissions and oversight bodies.”

“Without clear guidance,” he said, “commissions and oversight bodies – most of which do not have any communications staff – were developing their own ad hoc practices, which led to inconsistent messaging, risks of misinformation, and deeply uneven engagement with the Board, the media, and the public.”

Although it is increasingly common for government agencies to tightly restrict how employees communicate with the press and public, L.A. County oversight officials had enjoyed broad latitude to speak their minds. The watchdogs have been vocal about a range of issues, including so-called deputy gangs in the Sheriff’s Department and grim jail conditions.

Some questioned the timing of the policy, which comes after a recent run of negative headlines, scandals and hefty legal payouts to victims of violence and discrimination by law enforcement.

Long-time Los Angeles Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission Chair Robert C. Bonner presides over the commission‘s meeting at St. Anne’s Family Services in Los Angeles on June 26, 2025. Bonner says he has since been forced out of his position as chair.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Longtime Los Angeles Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission chair Robert Bonner said he was ousted this summer as he and his commission made a forceful push for more transparency.

In February, former commission Chair Sean Kennedy resigned after a dispute with county lawyers, stating at the time that it was “not appropriate for the County Counsel to control the COC’s independent oversight decisions.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced this month that his office is suing L.A. County and the Sheriff’s Department over a “humanitarian crisis” that has contributed to a surge in jail deaths.

Kapp said the policy came about solely “to ensure stronger, more effective communication between oversight bodies, the public, and the Board of Supervisors.”

Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, called the policy “troubling” and said it appears to allow the county to tell “Sybil Brand you’ve got to tone it down, or telling COC this isn’t the message the board wants to put out.”

“I learn about this policy right around the same time the state attorney general sues the county over horrific conditions in the jails,” Eliasberg said.

“There’s a ton of stuff in that lawsuit about Sybil Brand and Sybil Brand reports,” he added, citing commission findings that exposed poor conditions and treatment inside county jails, including vermin and roach infestations, spoiled food and insufficient mental health treatment for inmates.

Some current and former oversight officials said the new policy leaves a number of unanswered questions — including what happens if they ignore it and continue to speak out.

Kapp, the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors official who drafted the policy, said in his statement that “adherence is mandatory. That said, the goal is not punishment – it’s alignment and support.”

During the Civilian Oversight Commission’s meeting on Thursday, Hans Johnson, the commission’s chair, made fiery comments about the policy, calling it “reckless,” “ridiculous and ludicrous.”

The policy “represents one of the most caustic, corrosive and chilling efforts to squelch the voice of this commission, the office of inspector general and the Sybil Brand Commission,” Johnson said. “We will not be gagged.”

Times staff writer Sandra McDonald contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 (UPI) — As the United States faces shifts stemming from President Donald Trump‘s climate priorities and changes within the Environmental Protection Agency, Republican lawmakers held back-to-back hearings Tuesday to challenge climate intervention strategies and EPA enforcement under former President Joe Biden.

The House Oversight Committee hearings unfolded against the backdrop of major Trump administration moves to roll back environmental oversight.

Since January, the EPA has enacted changes that scrap emissions reporting and dismantle research offices, a signal Democratic lawmakers think the agency is prioritizing industry concerns and cost savings over transparency and scientific independence.

On Tuesday morning, the Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee met to discuss “Playing God with the Weather-A Disastrous Forecast,” which focused heavily on geoengineering and weather modification.

Later in the day, the Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement held a hearing on “From Protection to Persecution: EPA Enforcement Gone Rogue Under the Biden Administration,” which focused on instances of the EPA’s involvement in small businesses.

Chairman Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., opened the morning hearing by placing modern climate intervention in a long tradition of weather control, from Native American rain dances to Cold War era military projects, but warned today’s techniques of cloud seeding, carbon removal and blocking sunlight could pose unpredictable risks to human health and agriculture.

Greene argued that efforts to fight what she called a “climate change hoax” could lead to reckless global experiments.

“Some scientists think they can predict and control the impact of geoengineering, but even the best scientific models will never be able to capture all of God’s wonderful creation and nature’s mysteries,” she said.

Some lawmakers warned of unchecked experimentation with climate interventions, and the administration has signaled it will not pursue new regulatory frameworks for geoengineering research, but instead emphasize transparency and voluntary disclosure.

This was solidified when a video of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin was shared at the hearing. Zeldin explained his commitment to total transparency by promising to publicly release all geoengineering research so that “baseless conspiracies” will be met “head on.”

On Friday, the agency proposed ending a rule that required about 8,000 facilities to publicly report their greenhouse gas emissions — a program that provided transparency into the country’s biggest polluters.

In the afternoon, the Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement looked at the EPA in a different light, focusing on what Republican lawmakers cited as an aggressive policy during the Biden administration.

“Instead of pursuing massive industrial polluters who employ highly paid legal defense teams, EPA under the Biden administration chose to focus on mom-and-pop shops, and with the shops that have limited means to argue their case against the legal might of the Department of Justice backed by the EPA,” Chairman Clay Higgins, R-La, said.

He added: “Often, EPA’s enforcement actions involved raids on shops by teams of armed EPA agents who intimidated small businesses with threats of criminal prosecution.”

The committee showcased small businesses as examples of what GOP
members called EPA’s overreach, including one from Higgins’ home state of Louisiana.

Kory Willis, owner and founder of Power Performances Enterprise Inc. of Baton Rouge, who runs a performance tuning shop, described an almost decade-long legal fight that culminated in a consent decree that nearly put him out of business.

According to an EPA press release in 2022, federal prosecutors described Willis’ company as among the country’s leading developers of “delete tunes” — software that disables emissions controls in diesel trucks.

Court records show his company tuned more than 175,000 vehicles, moving over $1 million in products monthly at its peak, with emissions expected to release more than 100 million pounds of excess pollutants over the lifetime of those vehicles.

Another witness, Eric Schaeffer, former executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project and EPA Office of Civil Enforcement director, subtly questioned Willis in his testimony.

“If you’re stuck behind a diesel truck, or a bunch of diesel trucks, in a traffic jam, and being showered with soot, live in an apartment next to a highway or the is city cooked by smog … don’t you have the right to breathe clean air? We used to think so,” Schaeffer said.

In its press release, the EPA said “Diesel emissions include multiple hazardous compounds and harm human health and the environment. Diesel emissions have been found to cause and worsen respiratory ailments such as asthma and lung cancer. One study indicated that 21,000 American deaths annually are attributable to diesel particulate matter.”

In March 2022, Willis and Power Performances Enterprise Inc. pleaded guilty to conspiracy and Clean Air Act violations, agreeing to pay $3.1 million in criminal fines and civil penalties and to stop selling defeat devices.

Schaeffer noted that the crackdown on defeat devices did not begin with the Biden administration.

“The launching of this enforcement initiative to crack down on the sale of these aftermarket devices started under the Trump administration in President Trump’s first term,” he said, pointing to EPA guidance at the time that warned of criminal penalties and urged companies to self-disclose violations.

Since then, federal courts have consistently upheld that the Clean Air Act covers aftermarket tampering devices.

Democratic members pushed back on the GOP positions, framing the hearing as not an examination of enforcement tools, but instead as part of the broader efforts for this administration to roll back environmental protections.

Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., highlighted the dismantling of environmental justice functions, warning that loosened oversight would leave vulnerable communities more exposed to soot, asthma and cancer.

For example, in July, the EPA announced it was dismantling its Office of Research and Development, the branch long responsible for the agency’s core scientific work, laying off many staff.

A new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions will replace it — a change that EPA officials under Trump say will streamline research and save nearly $750 million.

Together, the hearings and EPA’s actions indicated a present and future narrowing of the agency’s enforcement reach, pulling back climate transparency rules and reframing scientific research.

Sept. 8 (UPI) — The Republican-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee received files Monday from Jeffrey Epstein‘s estate that included a decades-old “birthday book” note, which some claim was written by President Donald Trump.

The Oversight Committee said it will release redacted versions of the files — which include Epstein’s last will and testament, bank accounts, contact list and the non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office in South Florida — to the public “in the near future.”

Trump has denied writing a birthday note to Epstein and calls it a “fake.” The president has even filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal for first reporting on the “bawdy” letter. Dow Jones, the parent company of the newspaper, said it has “full confidence in the rigor and accuracy” of its reporting.

Epstein was a wealthy financier who owned a private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He was a convicted sex offender and was awaiting trial on charges of federal sex trafficking of minors, when he committed suicide inside a New York City jail in 2019.

On Monday, Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California — who serves on the Oversight panel — urged the president to “tell us the truth.”

“The Oversight Committee has secured the infamous ‘Birthday Book’ that contains a note from President Trump that he has said does not exist,” Garcia said in a statement. “It’s time for the president to tell us the truth about what he knew and release all the Epstein files. The American people are demanding answers.”

The White House said the signature in the letter does not belong to the president.

“Time for @newscorp to open that checkbook, it’s not his signature. DEFAMATION!” White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich wrote Monday in a post on X.

The Oversight Committee issued a subpoena last month for information from Epstein’s estate, including a copy of the alleged birthday book given to him in 2003 on his 50th birthday.

Last week, the committee released 33,295 pages of files on Epstein and his sex trafficking of minors. Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., subpoenaed the Justice Department on Aug. 5 to obtain the documents.

Committee member Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., estimated that 97% of the files had already been made public.

Merrick Bobb, one of the godfathers of the modern police oversight movement in Los Angeles and beyond, has died. He was 79.

Bobb, whose health had deteriorated in recent years, died Thursday night at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A., his two children, Matthew and Jonathan, confirmed Friday.

A Los Feliz resident for more than 40 years, Bobb had four grandchildren, was fluent in several languages and was respected as one of the earliest champions of civilian oversight of law enforcement.

He had a long career, shining a light on problems within major law enforcement agencies from L.A. to Seattle. And he accomplished his most significant work without the use of his hands or legs, which became effectively paralyzed after he contracted a rare and debilitating autoimmune condition called Guillain-Barré syndrome in 2003.

“He was always a person who was really engaged in the world,” Jonathan said in an interview with him and his brother. “I think that growing up in the 1950s and 1960s with the civil rights movement and other associated movements was very seminal for him in terms of instilling belief in justice [and] understanding the voices of traditionally underrepresented groups.”

For two decades beginning in 1993, Bobb served as special counsel to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors. In that position, he delivered semiannual reports that detailed pervasive issues within the department, from widespread violence in the county’s jails to excessive force, driving a number of reforms in the department.

In 2014, the board created the Office of Inspector General and dismissed Bobb from his role with the county. That decision came in the wake of criticism that he and Michael Gennaco, the then-head of the Office of Independent Review, had not done enough to stop the problems in the jails, which had become a major scandal.

Two years earlier, a federal judge had appointed Bobb to serve as independent monitor of the Seattle Police Department’s consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice. He held that position until 2020, when he resigned in protest of the department’s use of force and “powerful and injurious” crowd control weapons against protesters in the months following George Floyd’s killing by a white Minneapolis police officer.

In 2001, he founded the Police Assessment Resource Center, a nonprofit that provides “independent, evidence-based counsel on effective, respectful, and publicly accountable policing,” the center’s then-vice president Matthew Barge wrote in 2015.

Before that, Bobb served as deputy general counsel for the Christopher Commission, which examined use of force within the Los Angeles Police Department in the wake of the 1991 beating of Rodney King. The commission published a sweeping report that year that called on then-LAPD Chief Daryl Gates to step down and found the department had a persistent and pervasive problem with excessive use of force.

Bobb graduated from Dartmouth College in 1968, then received his law degree three years later from UC Berkeley, according to his curriculum vitae. He worked for private law firms between 1973 and 1996. Bobb was named one of the top 50 lawyers in L.A. by the Los Angeles Business Journal that year, when he left a major law firm to focus on his law enforcement oversight work.

But for many people he met, according to his sons, it was Bobb’s kindness that made the strongest impression.

“No matter who it was in his life he was engaging with at that point, he focused in on them and developed a personal connection,” Matthew said. “You never knew if he was going to be having lunch with the former chief of police or his former handyman who came by once a week, and everyone in between.”

Bobb is survived by his children and grandchildren, his ex-wife Aviva Koenigsberg Bobb — a former judge with whom he remained close — his sister Gloria Kern and his longtime assistant and caretaker, Jeffrey Yanson.

Bobb’s funeral will take place at 10 a.m. Sept. 5 at Mount Sinai Hollywood Hills, 5950 Forest Lawn Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90068.

As the Trump administration continues to ramp up immigration enforcement actions, a group of lawmakers is suing Immigration and Customs Enforcement for placing restrictions on detention center visits — obstructing Congress’ role in overseeing government functions.

Twelve House Democrats filed a lawsuit challenging new guidelines that require advance notice for oversight visits and render certain facilities off-limits. “No child should be sleeping on concrete, and no sick person should be denied care,” said Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles). “Yet that’s exactly what we keep hearing is happening inside Trump’s detention centers.”

These lawmakers are right to seek access to detention facilities. Detention centers have long been plagued by poor conditions, so the need for oversight is urgent. With record numbers of migrants being detained, the public has a right to know how people in the government’s custody are being treated.

The U.S. operates the world’s largest immigration detention system, at a cost of $3 billion a year. This money is appropriated by Congress — and comes with conditions.

Under existing law, none of the funds given to Homeland Security may be used to prevent members of Congress from conducting oversight visits of “any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens.” In addition, the law states that members of Congress are not required to “provide prior notice of the intent to enter a facility.” So ICE’s attempt to place limits on oversight appears to be illegal.

The restrictions are also problematic because they claim to exempt the agency’s field offices from oversight. However, migrants are being locked up in such offices, including at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles, and 26 Federal Plaza in New York City. In the former, one detainee reported being fed only once a day, at 3 a.m. In the latter, as many as 80 detainees have been crammed into a single room amid sweltering summer temperatures. These offices were never set up to house people overnight or for days or weeks. If they are functioning as de facto detention centers, then they must be subject to inspections.

Congressional oversight of immigration detention is vital right now. The current capacity for U.S. detention facilities is 41,000. Yet the government was holding nearly 57,000 people as of July 27. That means facilities are far over capacity, in a system that the Vera Institute of Justice describes as “plagued by abuse and neglect.”

No matter who is president, conditions in immigrant detention are generally abysmal. Migrant detention centers have been cited for their lack of medical care, poor treatment of detainees, and physical and sexual violence. In 2019, the federal government itself reported that conditions in detention were inhumane. At least 11 people have died in detention since January. This reality cries out for more transparency and accountability — especially because Homeland Security laid off most of its internal watchdogs earlier this year.

The ranks of detainees include asylum-seekers, teenagers, DACA recipients, pregnant women, journalists and even U.S. citizens. Most of the detainees arrested lately have no criminal convictions. These folks are often arrested and moved thousands of miles away from home, complicating their access to legal representation and family visits. A visit by a congressional delegation may be the only way to ensure that they are being treated properly.

In response to the lawsuit by House Democrats, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for Homeland Security, said: “These members of Congress could have just scheduled a tour. Instead, they’re running to court to drive clicks and fundraising emails.” She added that ICE was imposing the new limits, in part, because of “obstructions to enforcement, including by politicians themselves.”

McLaughlin might have been referring to a May scuffle outside a Newark, N.J., detention center that led to charges being filed against Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) and the arrest of the city’s mayor. But this incident would not have occurred if immigration officials had followed the law and allowed lawmakers inside to survey the facility’s conditions.

Indeed, the acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, told a congressional hearing in May that he recognized the right of members to visit detention facilities, even with no notice. And the notion that any government agency can unilaterally regulate Congress runs afoul of the Constitution. The legislative branch has the right and obligation to supervise the executive branch. Simply put, ICE cannot tell members of Congress what they can or cannot do.

The need for oversight in detention facilities will only become greater in the future, as Congress just approved $45 billion for the expansion of immigrant detention centers. This could result in the daily detention of at least 116,000 people. Meanwhile, 55% of Americans, according to the Pew Center, disapprove of building more facilities to hold immigrants.

ICE’s new policies violate federal law. No agency is above oversight — and members of Congress must be allowed full access to detention facilities.

Raul A. Reyes is an immigration attorney and contributor to NBC Latino and CNN Opinion. X: @RaulAReyes; Instagram: @raulareyes1

WASHINGTON — A dozen Democratic House members — including four from California — sued the Trump administration Wednesday after lawmakers were repeatedly denied access to immigrant detention facilities where they sought to conduct oversight visits.

The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Washington, says each plaintiff has attempted to visit a detention facility, either by showing up in person or by giving Homeland Security Department officials advanced notice, and been unlawfully blocked from entering.

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for Homeland Security, said in a statement that visit requests should be made with enough time to prevent interference with the president’s authority to oversee executive department functions, and must be approved by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. McLaughlin said a week’s notice suffices.

“These Members of Congress could have just scheduled a tour; instead, they’re running to court to drive clicks and fundraising emails,” she wrote.

Among the plaintiffs are California Reps. Norma Torres of Pomona, Robert Garcia of Long Beach, who is the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Jimmy Gomez of Los Angeles, and Lou Correa of Santa Ana, the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement.

Also included are Reps. Adriano Espaillat of New York, who is the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus; Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who is the ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee; and Jamie Raskin, of Maryland, who is the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.

In an interview with The Times, Gomez said there was always an understanding between the executive and legislative branches about the importance of oversight. Under the Trump administration, that has changed, he said.

“We believe this administration, unless they’re faced with a lawsuit, they don’t comply with the law,” he said. “This administration believes it has no obligation to Congress, even if it’s printed in black and white. That’s what makes this administration dangerous.”

In a statement, Correa said that, as a longtime member of the House Homeland Security Committee, his job has always been to oversee Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Until this summer, he said, he fulfilled that role with no issues.

Reports from immigrant detention facilities in recent months have included issues such as overcrowding, food shortages and a lack of medical care. U.S. citizens have in some cases been unlawfully detained by immigration agents.

The lawsuit demands that the Trump administration comply with federal law, which guarantees members of Congress the right to conduct oversight visits anywhere that immigrants are detained pending deportation proceedings. The lawmakers are represented by the Democracy Forward Foundation and American Oversight.

ICE published new guidelines last month for members of Congress and their staff, requesting at least 72 hours notice from lawmakers and requiring at least 24 hours notice from staff before an oversight visit. The guidelines, which have since been taken down from ICE’s website, also claimed that field offices, such as the facility at the Roybal Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles, “are not detention facilities” and fall outside the scope of the oversight law.

The agency says it has discretion to deny or reschedule a visit if an emergency arises or the safety of the facility is jeopardized, though such contingencies are not mentioned in federal law.

The lawsuit calls ICE’s new policy unlawful.

A federal statute, detailed in yearly appropriations packages since 2020, states that funds may not be used to prevent a member of Congress “from entering, for the purpose of conducting oversight, any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens.”

Under the statute, federal officials may require at least 24 hours’ notice for a visit by congressional staff — but not members themselves.

The lawmakers say congressional oversight is needed now more than ever, with ICE holding more than 56,800 people in detention as of July 13, according to TRAC, a nonpartisan data research organization.

Ten people have died in ICE custody since Trump took office. Earlier this year, the administration moved to close three internal oversight bodies at Homeland Security, but revived them with minimal staff after civil rights groups sued.

Gomez said members of Congress have a duty to determine whether the administration is fulfilling its obligations to taxpayers under the law. The administration’s position that holding facilities inside ICE offices are not subject to oversight is a slippery slope, he said.

“What happens if they set up a camp and they say ‘This is not a detention facility but a holding center?’ For us it’s that, if they are willing to violate the law for these facilities, the potential for the future becomes more problematic,” he said.

When a top official responsible for oversight of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced recently that he is being forced out of his position, it brought to a fever pitch tensions that had been building for months.

On one side are watchdogs who say efforts to bring reforms and transparency to the Sheriff’s Department are being stymied. On the other are county officials who claim fresh perspectives are needed on the Civilian Oversight Commission.

The showdown is playing out as the commission continues fighting the county for access to internal sheriff’s department records on deputy misconduct, including investigations into gang-like cliques said to rule over certain stations and promote a culture of violence.

Robert Bonner, the oversight commission chair, wrote in a letter last month that he was “involuntarily leaving” the body he has been a member of since its founding in 2016. Bonner, 83, said in an interview that he was chairing the commission’s May meeting at the L.A. County Hall of Records when he unexpectedly received a letter from County Supervisor Kathryn Barger stating that she would be appointing someone to replace him.

On Thursday, Bonner gave his first address to the commission since revealing his time as chair will end this month.

Bonner said he was “still surprised” that he had been “dismissed without so much as a phone call from Supervisor Barger.”

And he had choice words for other county operators that he described as thorns in the commission’s side.

“It can be treacherous. The county bureaucrats — and this includes, by the way, the county counsel’s office — they guard their turf and see an independent commission as a threat to that turf,” Bonner said.

“There are forces within the county,” he added later, “that do not want to see real, effective and meaningful oversight over the sheriff’s department.”

Helen Chavez, a spokesperson for Barger, said in an email that Bonner’s claims that the supervisor summarily dismissed him were made “for dramatic effect” and “are not only inaccurate but also mischaracterize the circumstances of his departure” from the commission.

“His assertion that his presence alone was essential to achieving reforms is both self-serving and dismissive of the dedicated Commissioners and staff who are collectively advancing the Civilian Oversight Commission’s mission,” the statement said. “These reforms are bigger than any one individual, and they will continue without interruption.”

Barger, who chairs the county‘s Board of Supervisors, told The Times in a statement last month that she is “committed to broadening the diversity of voices and expertise represented on the Commission.”

Fifth District Supervisor Kathryn Barger attends a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meeting in 2023.

(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)

She said her decision to replace Bonner “reflects my desire to continue cultivating public trust in the oversight process by introducing new perspectives that support the Commission’s vital work.”

On Thursday, Patti Giggans, an ally of Bonner’s on the commission, stood up for the departing chairman during what he said would likely be the last of the body’s monthly meetings he’d attend as a commissioner.

“I have a feeling all of us here, all the commissioners, appreciate your leadership, your tenacity, your brilliance and courage to go up against forces that are not necessarily yet in agreement with what effective oversight means,” she said.

The County Counsel’s office said in an email that it “has fully supported the COC, as an advisory body to the Board, in its efforts to seek the information it needs to play a powerful oversight role on behalf of LA County citizens.”

But some observers note that the county counsel is in an awkward position, since the office represents multiple parties involved. That includes the Civilian Oversight Commission, which has been trying to enforce subpoenas, as well as Barger’s office and the sheriff’s department.

Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said it seems to him that nearly every time such a dispute comes up, the county’s lawyers side with the sheriff’s department.

“It’s either intentional or it’s incredibly short-sighted for Commissioner Bonner to be pushed out at this point, at a time when he’s been spearheading incredibly important reforms,” Eliasberg said. “It feels to me like this is an effort once again to hamstring this commission.”

Bonner, who previously served as a federal judge and was head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, isn’t the only commissioner to acrimoniously leave the oversight body this year.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna, right, talks with former oversight official Sean Kennedy during the annual Baker to Vegas law enforcement relay on April 5 in Baker, Calif.

(William Liang / For The Times)

In February, Loyola Law School professor Sean Kennedy resigned after county lawyers sought to stop him from filing a brief in court in support of Diana Teran, an advisor to former L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón who faced felony charges from the state. Teran was accused of improperly accessing records about sheriff’s deputies, but a state appellate court recently moved to dismiss the case.

Kennedy said in February that he quit because he believed it was “not appropriate for the County Counsel to control the COC’s independent oversight decisions.”

Last month, Kennedy received notification that a law firm had “been engaged by the Office of the County Counsel” to investigate him for allegedly retaliating against a sergeant in the sheriff’s department who had faced oversight scrutiny. Kennedy has denied any wrongdoing, claiming the probe against him is politically motivated.

In an email this week, Kennedy described Bonner’s removal as “the death-knell for meaningful civilian oversight of the LASD.” He claimed that the Board of Supervisors “supports the sheriff in preventing the commissioners from accessing confidential documents to do their job.”

Barger’s office pushed back against the criticism, pointing to correspondence from Bonner earlier this year that the supervisor’s office said suggested he was willing to step down.

In an April 18 email to Barger, Bonner wrote that “if you decide not to reappoint me, please be assured that I am fine with that.”

Chavez, Barger’s spokesperson, questioned the “stark contrast” between “his posture and tone” then compared with Bonner’s recent public remarks.

Bonner told The Times he followed up his April 18 email to express that he “wanted to be extended” to achieve his goals as chair.

“I never wanted to her to think I lusted for the job,” Bonner said in a text message.

The abrupt departures of Bonner and Kennedy have raised concerns about who will fill the void they leave behind.

The Civilian Oversight Commission voted on Thursday for the body’s co-vice chair, Hans Johnson, to fill Bonner’s shoes when his time in the role concludes on July 17.

“The loss of Rob and Sean, who were deeply committed to getting to the bottom of problems in the sheriff’s department, is a blow to the county,” said Bert Deixler, former special counsel to the oversight commission. “These were two special guys who knew what they were talking about. Long, long history.”

Deixler attributed the turmoil to “political machinations” within the county and decried the move to replace Bonner.

“I just can’t understand it,” he said. “There couldn’t be a merits-based reason for making that decision.”

At the commission’s meeting Thursday, Bonner listed several goals he had hoped to accomplish before his time as chair ends. His priorities included bolstering the board’s ability to conduct effective oversight and compelling a commitment by Sheriff Robert Luna to enact a ban on deputy gangs and cliques.

It’s not yet clear how Bonner’s dismissal will affect those plans.

“I’m leaving,” he said. “You guys have got to pick up the ball here after July 17.”

WASHINGTON — Just hours after she pleaded not guilty to federal charges brought by the Trump administration, Rep. LaMonica McIver of New Jersey was surrounded by dozens of supportive Democratic colleagues in the halls of the Capitol. The case, they argued, strikes at the heart of congressional power.

“If they can break LaMonica, they can break the House of Representatives,” said New York Rep. Yvette D. Clarke, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Federal prosecutors allege that McIver interfered with law enforcement during a visit with two other House Democrats to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark. She calls the charges “baseless.”

It’s far from the only clash between congressional Democrats and the Republican administration as officials ramp up deportations of immigrants around the country.

Sen. Alex Padilla of California was forcibly removed by federal agents, wrestled to the ground and held while attempting to ask a question at a news conference of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. At least six groups of House Democrats have recently been denied entry to ICE detention centers. In early June, federal agents entered the district office of Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and briefly detained a staffer.

Congressional Republicans have largely criticized Democrats’ behavior as inflammatory and inappropriate, and some have publicly supported the prosecution of McIver.

Often in the dark about the Trump administration’s moves, congressional Democrats are wrestling with how to perform their oversight duties at a time of roiling tensions with the White House and new restrictions on lawmakers visiting federal facilities.

“We have the authority to conduct oversight business, and clearly, House Republicans are not doing that oversight here,” said New Jersey Rep. Rob Menendez, one of the House Democrats who went with McIver to the Newark ICE facility.

“It’s our obligation to continue to do it on-site at these detention facilities. And even if they don’t want us to, we are going to continue to exert our right.”

A stark new reality

The prospect of facing charges for once routine oversight activity has alarmed many congressional Democrats who never expected to face criminal prosecution as elected officials. Lawmakers in both parties were also unnerved by the recent targeted shootings of two Minnesota lawmakers — one of them fatal — and the nation’s tense political atmosphere.

“It’s a moment that calls for personal courage of members of Congress,” said Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.). “I wish that we had more physical protection. I think that’s one of those harsh realities that members of Congress who are not in leadership recognize: that oftentimes, we do this job at our own peril, and we do it anyway.”

The arrests and detentions of lawmakers have led some Democrats to take precautionary measures. Several have consulted with the House general counsel about their right to conduct oversight. Multiple lawmakers also sought personal legal counsel, while others have called for a review of congressional rules to provide greater protections.

“The Capitol Police are the security force for members of Congress. We need them to travel with us, to go to facilities and events that the president may have us arrested for,” said Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.).

‘Not a lot of transparency’

As the minority party in the House, Democrats lack the subpoena power to force the White House to provide information. That’s a problem, they say, because the Trump administration is unusually secretive about its actions.

“There’s not a lot of transparency. From day to day, oftentimes, we’re learning about what’s happening at the same time as the rest of the nation,” said Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.), who led a prayer for McIver at the Capitol rally.

To amplify their concerns, Democrats have turned to public letters, confronted officials at congressional hearings and used digital and media outreach to try to create public pressure.

“We’ve been very successful when they come in before committees,” said Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.), who added that she believed the public inquiries have “100%” resonated with voters.

Tapping into the information pipeline

Congressional Democrats say they often rely on local lawmakers, business leaders and advocates to be their eyes and ears on the ground.

A few Democrats say their best sources of information are across the political aisle, since Republicans typically have clearer lines of communication with the White House.

“I know who to call in Houston with the chamber. I think all of us do that,” Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) said of how business leaders are keeping her updated.

Garcia said Democrats “need to put more pressure” on leading figures in the agriculture, restaurant and hospitality sectors to take their concerns about the immigrant crackdown to President Trump’s White House.

“They’re the ones he’ll listen to. They’re the ones who can add the pressure. He’s not going to listen to me, a Democrat who was an impeachment manager, who is on the bottom of his list, if I’m on it at all,” Garcia said.

Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) had a working relationship with a for-profit ICE facility in his district until the Department of Homeland Security in February ended reports as part of an agency-wide policy change. A member of Crow’s staff now regularly goes to the facility and waits, at times for hours, until staff at the Aurora facility respond to detailed questions posed by the office.

‘Real oversight’ requires winning elections

Still, many House Democrats concede that they can conduct little of their desired oversight until they are back in the majority.

Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas) said that “real oversight power and muscle” only comes “when you have a gavel.”

“Nothing else matters. No rousing oratory, no tours, no speeches, no social media or entertainment, none of that stuff,” Veasey said. “Because the thing that keeps Trump up at night more than anything else is the idea he’s going to lose this House and there’ll be real oversight pressure applied to him.”

Brown writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The day after immigration raids began in Los Angeles, Rep. Norma Torres (D-Pomona) and three other members of Congress were denied entry to the immigrant detention facility inside the Roybal Federal Building.

The lawmakers were attempting an unannounced inspection, a common and long-standing practice under congressional oversight powers.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said too many protesters were present on June 7 and officers deployed chemical agents multiple times. In a letter later to acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, Torres said she ended up in the emergency room for respiratory treatment. She also said the protest had been small and peaceful.

Torres is one of many Democratic members of Congress, from states including California, New York and Illinois, who have been denied entry to immigrant detention facilities in recent weeks.

Jim Townsend, director of the Carl Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy at Wayne State University in Michigan, said the denials mark a profound — and illegal — shift from past practice.

“Denying members of Congress access to facilities is a direct assault on our system of checks and balances,” he said. “What members of Congress are trying to do now is to be part of a proud bipartisan tradition of what we like to call oversight by showing up.”

Subsequent attempts by lawmakers to inspect the facility inside the Roybal Building have also been unsuccessful.

Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles), who was with Torres the day she was hospitalized, went back twice more — on June 9 and on Tuesday — and was rebuffed. Torres and Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) tried at separate times Wednesday and were both denied.

Gomez and other Democrats have pointed to a federal statute, detailed in yearly appropriations packages since 2020, which states that funds may not be used to prevent a member of Congress “from entering, for the purpose of conducting oversight, any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens …”

The statute also states that nothing in that section “may be construed to require a Member of Congress to provide prior notice of the intent to enter a facility” for the purpose of conducting oversight. Under the statute, federal officials may require at least 24 hours notice for a visit by congressional staff — but not members themselves.

Under ICE guidelines published this month for members of Congress and their staff, the agency requests at least 72 hours notice from lawmakers and requires at least 24 hours notice from staff.

The agency says it has discretion to deny or reschedule a visit if an emergency arises or the safety of the facility is jeopardized, though such contingencies are not mentioned in the law.

Gomez said an ICE official called him Tuesday to say that oversight law doesn’t apply to the downtown L.A. facility because it is a field office, not a detention facility.

“Well it does say Metropolitan Detention Center right here in big, bold letters,” he says in a video posted afterward on social media, gesturing toward a sign outside the building. “But they say this is a processing center. So I smell bull—.”

Department of Homeland Security police patrol the street after detaining a protester at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in downtown L.A. on June 12.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

If no one is technically being detained, Gomez said he rhetorically asked the official during their call, are they free to leave?

Torres visited the facility in February by setting up an appointment, her staff said. She got another appointment for last Saturday, but ICE canceled it because of the protests. When members emailed ICE to set up a new appointment, they got no response.

Gomez said he believes ICE doesn’t want lawmakers to see field offices because of poor conditions and lack of attorney access because of ramped-up arrests that have reportedly left some detainees there overnight without beds and limited food.

In some cases, lawmakers have had success showing up unannounced. On Friday, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands) toured the Adelanto ICE Processing Facility, north of San Bernardino. After being denied entry to the Adelanto Facility on June 8, Chu and four other California Democrats were allowed in on Tuesday.

“Just because ICE has opened their doors to a few members of Congress does not excuse their inflammatory tactics to meet deportation quotas,” said Rep. Mark Takano (D-Riverside), who visited Adelanto with Chu. “Accountability means showing a consistent pattern of accessibility, not just a one-off event.”

The representatives learned the facility is now at full capacity with 1,100 detainees, up from 300 a month ago. Chu said they spoke to detainees from the L.A. raids, who she said were not criminals and who are now living in inhumane conditions — without enough food, unable to change their underwear for 10 days or to call their families and lawyers.

Chu said the group arrived early and stood in the lobby to avoid a repeat of their previous attempt, when facility guards kept them off the property by locking a fence.

Tom Homan, President Trump’s border policy advisor, departs a meeting with Republican senators who are working to cancel $9.4 billion in spending already approved by Congress at the Capitol in Washington on June 11.

(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

In an interview with The Times this month, Trump’s chief border policy advisor Tom Homan said members of Congress are welcome to conduct oversight, but that they must contact the facility first to make arrangements. The agency has to look after the safety and security of the facility, officers and detainees, he said.

“Please go in and look at them,” he said. “They’re the best facilities that money can buy, the highest detention standards in the industry. But there’s a right way and wrong way to do it.”

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for Homeland Security, said in a statement to The Times that requests for visits are needed because “ICE law enforcement have seen a surge in assaults, disruptions and obstructions to enforcement, including by politicians themselves.”

She added that requests for visits should be made with enough time — “a week is sufficient” — to not interfere with the president’s authority under Article II of the Constitution to oversee executive branch functions.

DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin, flanked by Deputy Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Madison Sheahan, left, and acting Director of ICE Todd Lyons, speaks during a news conference in Washington on May 21.

(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, slammed the guidance Wednesday on X.

“This unlawful policy is a smokescreen to deny Member visits to ICE offices across the country, which are holding migrants — and sometimes even U.S. citizens — for days at a time,” he wrote. “They are therefore facilities and are subject to oversight and inspection at any time. DHS pretending otherwise is simply their latest lie.”

Townsend, the congressional oversight expert, said the practice goes back to when President Truman was a senator and established a committee to investigate problems among contractors who were supplying the World War II effort.

“That committee conducted hundreds of field visits, and they would show up unannounced in many instances,” Townsend said.

More recently, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) drove to the Pentagon in 1983 and demanded access to ask questions about overspending after being stonewalled, he said, by Department of Defense officials.

The Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution to mean that Congress has wide authority to conduct oversight to show up unannounced in order to secure accurate information, Townsend said.

National Guard members stand at post at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles on June 10.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said the Trump administration is trying to hide the truth from the public. Last week, Padilla was shoved out of a news conference, forced to the ground and handcuffed after attempting to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“The Trump administration has done everything in their power but to provide transparency to the American people about their mission in Los Angeles,” he said during an impassioned floor speech Wednesday in which he cried recounting the ordeal.

In an interview Wednesday with Newsmax, McLaughlin accused Democratic lawmakers of using oversight as an excuse to stage publicity stunts.

“The Democrats are reeling,” she said. “They have no actual message and so they’re doing this to get more attention and to manufacture viral moments.”

On Tuesday, Gomez wore a suit jacket with his congressional lapel pin and carried his congressional ID card and business card in his hand — “so there would be no mistake” as to who he was. He said he was concerned that what happened to Padilla could also happen to him. He was denied access anyway.

Gomez said federal officials should be fined each time they deny oversight access to members of Congress. He said he and other members are also discussing whether to file a lawsuit to compel access.

“When you have an administration that is operating outside the bounds of the law, they’re basically saying, ‘What recourse do you have? Can you force us? You don’t have an army. We don’t need to listen to you,’” Gomez said. “Then you have to put some real teeth into it.”

Times staff writer Nathan Solis in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

The top official on the watchdog commission that oversees the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is being terminated from his position, according to correspondence reviewed by The Times.

Robert Bonner, chair of the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission, wrote in a Wednesday letter to L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger that he received a letter from her on May 13 that said he was being replaced.

Bonner wrote in the Wednesday letter that he had contacted Barger’s office to request “an opportunity to meet with you and to express ‘my personal wish to be able to finish out the year.’” Barger’s office said on May 15 that a scheduler would reach out to set up a meeting, but that never happened, according to Bonner’s Wednesday letter. He added that he is “involuntarily leaving the Commission” and that he would prefer to stay on to finish work that is underway.

“Given the length of time that I have been on the Commission, and that I am the current Chair of the Commission with another possible year as Chair, I expected as a matter of courtesy that you would want to speak with me and hear me out,” Bonner, 83, wrote.

Bonner and Barger, who chairs the County Board of Supervisors, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday morning. Bonner’s Wednesday letter did not say when he will serve his final day as a member of the commission.

A former federal judge, Bonner began his second stint as chair of the commission in July. He previously served as its first chair for two years between 2016 and 2018. Chairs and officers of the oversight commission are elected to one-year terms each July and can only serve two consecutive years in those roles.

Bonner’s letter stated that he has been working on several important issues that he was hoping to see through.

The initiatives included revisions to the Los Angeles County Code to help ensure the commission can serve as an independent oversight body; legal action to ensure the commission can review confidential documents in closed session; the shepherding of AB 847, a bill passed by the state Assembly on June 2 that would ensure civilian oversight commissions can review confidential documents in closed session; and efforts to eliminate deputy gangs and cliques.

“Hopefully,” Bonner wrote in his Wednesday letter, his colleagues on the commission “will be able to implement these goals while I am attempting to improve my tennis game.”

The former chairman of the Los Angeles County Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission is under investigation for alleged retaliation against a Sheriff’s Department sergeant who faced scrutiny for his role in a unit accused of pursuing politically motivated cases.

Sean Kennedy, a Loyola Law School professor who resigned from the commission this year, received notification from a law firm that said it had “been engaged by the Office of the County Counsel to conduct a neutral investigation into an allegation that you retaliated against Sergeant Max Fernandez,” according to an email reviewed by The Times.

Kennedy and other members of the commission questioned Fernandez last year about his connections to the Sheriff’s Department’s now-disbanded Civil Rights and Public Integrity Detail, a controversial unit that operated under then-Sheriff Alex Villanueva.

Kennedy said the commission’s inquiry into Fernandez appears to be what landed him in the crosshairs of the investigation he now faces. Kennedy denied any wrongdoing in a text message Thursday.

“I was just doing my job as an oversight official tasked by the commission to conduct the questioning at an official public hearing,” he wrote.

Last week, Kennedy received an email from Matthias H. Wagener, co-partner of Wagener Law, stating that the county had launched an investigation.

“The main allegation is that you attempted to discredit Sergeant Fernandez in various ways because of his role in investigating Commissioner Patti Giggans during his tenure on the former Civil Rights & Public Corruption Detail Unit,” Wagener wrote. “It has been alleged that you retaliated for personal reasons relating to your relationship with Commissioner Giggans, as her friend and her attorney.”

The Office of the County Counsel confirmed in an emailed statement that “a confidential workplace investigation into recent allegations of retaliation” is underway, but declined to identify whom it is investigating or who alleged retaliation, citing a need to “ensure the integrity of the investigation and to protect the privacy of” the parties.

“In accordance with its anti-retaliation policies and procedures, LA County investigates complaints made by employees who allege they have been subjected to retaliation for engaging in protected activities in the workplace,” the statement said.

The Sheriff’s Department said in an email that it “has no investigation into Mr. Kennedy.”

Reached by phone Thursday, Fernandez said that he doesn’t “know anything about” the investigation and that he has not “talked to anybody at county counsel.”

“This is the first I’m hearing about it,” he said. “Who started this investigation? They haven’t contacted me. I don’t know how that got into their hands.”

In a phone interview, Kennedy described the inquiry as “extraordinary.”

“I think that this is just the latest in a long line of Sheriff’s Department employees doing really anything they can to thwart meaningful oversight,” Kennedy said. “So now we’re at the point where they’re filing bogus retaliation complaints against commissioners for doing their jobs.”

Kennedy resigned from the Civilian Oversight Commission in February after county lawyers attempted to thwart the body from filing an amicus brief in the criminal case against Diana Teran, who served as an advisor to then-L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón.

The public corruption unit led several high-profile investigations during Villanueva’s term as sheriff, including inquiries into Giggans, the Civilian Oversight Commission, then-L.A. County Supervisor Shelia Kuehl and former Times reporter Maya Lau.

One of the unit’s investigations involved a whistleblower who alleged that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority unfairly awarded more than $800,000 worth of contracts to a nonprofit run by Giggans, a friend of Kuehl’s and vocal critic of Villanueva. The investigation made headlines when sheriff’s deputies with guns and battering rams raided Kuehl’s Santa Monica home one early morning in 2022.

The investigation ended without any criminal charges last summer, when the California Department of Justice concluded that there was a “lack of evidence of wrongdoing.”

Asked Thursday about the claim that Kennedy — who served as a lawyer for her while she was being investigated by the public corruption unit — interrogated Fernandez as a form of retaliation, Giggans called it “bogus” and said Fernandez “was subpoenaed because of his actions as a rogue sheriff’s deputy.”

Lau filed a lawsuit last month alleging the criminal investigation into her activities as a journalist violated her 1st Amendment rights. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta ultimately declined to prosecute the case against Lau.

Critics have repeatedly alleged that Villanueva used the unit to target his political enemies, a charge the former sheriff has disputed.

In October, Kennedy and other members of the Civilian Oversight Commission spent five hours interrogating Fernandez and former homicide Det. Mark Lillienfeld about the public corruption unit, of which they were members.

Kennedy questioned Fernandez’s credibility during the exchange, asking about People vs. Aquino, a ruling by an appellate court in the mid-2000s that found he had provided false testimony during a criminal trial that was “deliberate and no slip of the tongue.”

Fernandez argued that he had “never lied on the stand,” adding that “that’s ridiculous, I’m an anti-corruption cop.”

Fernandez also fielded questions about whether he was a member of a deputy gang. Critics have accused deputy cliques of engaging in brawls and other misconduct.

Fernandez said he was not in a deputy gang or problematic subgroup. But he acknowledged that he drew a picture of a warrior in the early 2000s that he got tattooed on his body.

A lieutenant tattooed with that image previously testified that it is associated with the Gladiators deputy subgroup, of which Fernandez has denied being a member.

Kennedy also asked Fernandez about a 2003 incident in which he shot and killed a 27-year-old man in Compton. Fernandez alleged the man pointed a gun at him, but sheriff’s investigators later found he was unarmed.

In a 2021 memo to oversight officials, Kennedy called for a state or federal investigation into the Civil Rights and Public Integrity Detail and its “pattern of targeting” critics of the Sheriff’s Department.

Then-Undersheriff Tim Murakami responded in a letter, writing that the memo contained “wild accusations.”

On May 30, Wagener questioned Kennedy about “why I examined Max Fernandez about his fatal shooting of a community member, his Gladiators tattoo, his perjury in People v. Aquino, and why he put references to people’s sexual orientation in a search warrant application,” Kennedy wrote in a text message Thursday. “I told him I was just asking questions that relate to oversight.”

Robert Bonner, chair of the Civilian Oversight Commission, provided an emailed statement that called the investigation into Kennedy “extremely troubling and terribly ironic.”

“The allegation itself is rich,” Bonner wrote. “But that [it is being] given any credence by County Counsel can only serve to intimidate other Commissioners from asking hard questions.”

After one of her first visits to L.A. County’s juvenile hall in Sylmar, Efty Sharony filed a report that said she witnessed conditions worse than anything she’d seen in “over 20 years of experience visiting every level of carceral facility in California.”

Teens housed in the county’s Secure Youth Treatment Facility could be heard screaming throughout the building, slamming their bodies against doors, crying and howling, she wrote in a 2023 report to the state’s Health and Human Services secretary at the time, Dr. Mark Ghaly.

Urine flowed from beneath cell doors housing youths who had been held in isolation for more than 18 hours during a lockdown, according to Sharony’s report. The unit, at the time, held dozens of youths who had been convicted of serious and violent crimes.

The conditions at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall were exactly the kind of problems Sharony hoped to help solve as part of a broader effort led by Gov. Gavin Newsom to ensure humane treatment amid a remaking of the state’s youth prison system. In her role as the ombudswoman for the state’s Office of Youth and Community Restoration, Sharony said supervisors told her she was supposed to be “the only teeth” the agency had.

Weeks after Sharony sounded the alarm bells about Nidorf, an 18-year-old housed there died of a drug overdose. The California Board of State and Community Corrections ordered the hall closed the same day.

But instead of encouraging her to keep digging, Sharony alleges her bosses soon told her to stop investigating juvenile halls.

Three months later, she was fired and replaced by an attorney who had previously worked for the Newsom administration but had no prior experience with juvenile justice, according to a whistleblower complaint Sharony filed last year.

“It became clear that Efrat’s superiors were more interested in creating the illusion of addressing the many crises in the state’s juvenile facilities rather than doing anything about it,” the complaint read.

A spokeswoman for the state department of Health and Human Services declined to comment on confidential personnel matters, but said the agency remains committed to promoting “trauma responsive, culturally informed, gender honoring, and developmentally appropriate services for youth involved in the juvenile justice system.”

That approach, the statement said, includes giving the ombudsperson “full authority” and “sole direction” to investigate complaints from detained youths.

“Ensuring every complaint is thoroughly investigated is critical to protecting youth across the state and a primary goal of OYCR,” the spokeswoman said.

Sharony’s attorney, Matthew Umhofer, said he has not received any response to the whistleblower complaint, which is a precursor to a lawsuit.

“Efty was fired in retaliation for doing her job. She was fired because her findings about the deplorable conditions in juvenile facilities didn’t align with the state’s political narrative. That’s illegal,” he said. “We’ve given the state every opportunity to right the wrong here, but if they don’t, we’re prepared to fight for Efty in court.”

Sharony’s allegations that state officials have little appetite to fix chronic issues in L.A.’s juvenile halls echo other recent concerns about flagging efforts to improve the county’s crumbling youth facilities.

Faced with questions about his office’s failure to enforce a four-year-old court settlement mandating reforms in the halls, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said earlier this month that he is considering placing them in “receivership,” essentially wresting local control of the facilities away from the L.A. County Probation Department.

The California Board of State and Community Corrections also ordered another L.A. facility, Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, shut down last year, but the Probation Department ignored the order for months without consequence. A judge finally intervened last month, and roughly 100 youths will be relocated from Los Padrinos to other facilities under a plan made public by the Probation Department earlier this month.

Sharony’s firing infuriated local officials who have watched the situation at the halls deteriorate for years.

Sen. Caroline Menjivar (D-Panorama City), who authored a bill to revoke probation departments from overseeing how juveniles are housed, said Sharony’s firing was a colossal mistake.

“I was livid that they fired someone that was passionate, who had experience in this space, and they brought in somebody from the inside,” Menjivar said. “How are you going to have accountability when you hire somebody who is already on the team?”

Efty Sharony, the former ombudswoman for the state Office of Youth and Community Restoration, a role in which she investigated conditions at L.A. juvenile halls.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Sharony — who previously worked as an adjunct professor at Loyola Law School’s Juvenile Innocence & Fair Sentencing Clinic and oversaw prisoner reentry programs under former L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti — said she believed the ombudswoman’s post would allow her to be part of the state’s reimagining of the juvenile justice system.

Newsom announced his intentions in 2019 to shut down the state’s youth prison system, which formerly housed juveniles convicted of serious crimes such as murder until they turned 25. The Office of Youth and Community Restoration was created by the Legislature in 2021 in part to oversee conditions at the local juvenile halls that would receive the state’s youngest prisoners.

Sharony said her oversight role allowed her to drop in on juvenile facilities with just 48 hours notice to conduct spot checks and review conditions identified in a complaint. It didn’t take long, she claims, for those visits to ruffle feathers.

When she left business cards with youths at a Contra Costa facility while investigating concerns about access to mental health services, Sharony said the department chief called her supervisors within the Office of Youth and Community Restoration to complain.

After she documented the squalid conditions at Nidorf, local officials again allegedly tried to go over her head and voice frustrations, said Sharony. In the whistleblower complaint, Sharony said “her colleagues vocally prioritized political relationships over the timeliness of their investigations.”

The HHS spokeswoman declined to comment on Sharony’s specific allegations.

A spokesperson for the Contra Costa County Probation Department said they had “never filed a complaint with OYCR and would not characterize any of our conversations with OYCR as a complaint.”

“Our relationship and interactions with OYCR are consistent with how we engage with any state agency or oversight body,” the department said in a statement. “We work within the processes and policies established to maintain a constructive and professional relationship.”

Sharony said in her whistleblower complaint that her reports out of Los Angeles went ignored by state officials.

“She was left in the dark, confused about why she was suddenly removed from conversations regarding the serious findings of her initial investigation,” the complaint read.

An HHS spokeswoman said the Office of Youth and Community Restoration did not have the authority to investigate whether a Secure Youth Treatment Facility complex was in compliance with state regulations. Sharony said in an interview that didn’t preclude them from acknowledging concerns about conditions there.

In an email attached to the whistleblower complaint, Sharony’s bosses said they were pausing her in-person visits “as we make final adjustments to our Policies & Procedures and continue to hire and onboard new staff. It’s expected that field visits will resume in the next few weeks.”

But then, in June 2023, Sharony was fired. She said she was never given a reason for her termination.

She was replaced by Alisa Hart, a former deputy legal secretary in Newsom’s office who helped work on the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and had previously worked with the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. She also previously worked as a staff attorney with the pro bono civil rights firm Public Counsel. Sharony contends Hart’s lack of experience working in the juvenile justice system made her less qualified for the ombudswoman’s post.

A spokeswoman for the Office of Youth and Community Restoration said the agency “hires the most qualified candidate when filling a vacant position,” but declined to answer specific questions about Hart other than to point to her biography on a state website. A spokeswoman for Newsom said the governor had no hand in her hiring.

Kate Lamb, the HHS spokeswoman, said the ombudswoman’s office received 49 complaints from Nidorf and Los Padrinos juvenile halls last year. Investigations into 22 of those complaints have not been completed, Lamb said.

An aerial view of Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

In 2023, when Sharony worked in the ombudswoman role for half of the year, the office received twice as many complaints and all have since been closed out, according to Lamb. Some of those complaints were handled after Sharony had exited the agency.

Those who frequent L.A.’s juvenile halls said Sharony’s removal is just one indication that state officials are not taking the county’s youth justice crisis seriously.

“The first ombudsperson was someone who was widely known and respected as a veteran stakeholder in the juvenile system here in L.A.,” said Jerod Gunsberg, a veteran criminal defense attorney who represents juveniles. “Then after that, the ombudsperson is removed from her position, and we’ve never heard anything again here in L.A.”