Democrats who opposed President Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Tren de Aragua gang members are in line to take over the Senate panels that write immigration law, oversee the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Democrats won the Senate in the Nov. 3 midterm elections, and committee assignments for the new Congress will be set in January.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety, which places him in line to chair it. In March 2025, Padilla joined Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) in a joint statement calling Trump’s invocation of the Act “yet another unlawful and brazen power grab.”
The statement said, “Let’s be clear: we are not at war, and immigrants are not invading our country.” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) is expected to chair the full Judiciary Committee, succeeding Durbin as its top Democrat.
Funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection runs through the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) is that subcommittee’s ranking member. In a Sept. 16, 2025, letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Murphy wrote that the administration sent detainees to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) expecting them to be “subjected to cruelty, torture, and possibly death.”
Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) will chair the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which oversees DHS, Mother Jones reported. On Nov. 4, the committee posted Senate job listings for anti-corruption counsel and investigators.
In May 2025, Hassan joined the committee’s Democrats in a letter seeking testimony from Rubio, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and Noem on the administration’s compliance with court orders. The letter states that the administration, “invoking the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), initiated two flights from the United States to El Salvador.”
The State Department negotiates third-country deportation agreements and answers to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) is expected to chair that committee.
In September, committee member Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said Democrats would be “demanding accountability” on the deportation deals if they won the Senate. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) called the arrangements “a stain on our country’s honor.”
At the Foreign Relations Committee’s Jan. 28, 2026, hearing on Venezuela, Duckworth questioned Rubio about the deportations. She told him that “the vast majority of the men that were rounded up and deported for torture under this law had no criminal record whatsoever.” She then asked, “Will you advise the president to rescind his invocation of the wartime Alien Enemies Act?”
“Of course not,” Rubio answered, according to the Daily Signal. “We haven’t tortured anybody. We’ve arrested people who are members of gangs.”
When Duckworth asked whether the United States was at war, Rubio said the cartels and gangs are “waging war against us, and they’re enemy combatants as a result of it.” He added that “these non-state actors, who possess state-like capabilities in terms of their weaponry, pose a grave danger to the United States.”
ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and Venezuelan journalists obtained DHS records on the 238 Venezuelan men flown to CECOT in March 2025. Those records show that 32 had U.S. criminal convictions, including six with convictions for violent crimes. DHS listed 130 as immigration violators with no U.S. convictions or pending charges.
The outlets also found arrest or conviction records in other countries for 20 of the men. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin responded, “These individuals categorized as ‘non-criminals’ are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gang members and more.”
In April 2025, the Supreme Court required that detainees receive notice before removal under the Act. Georgetown Law professor Steve Vladeck has written that no one has been removed under it since March 15, 2025.
Of the 238 men flown to CECOT, 137 were removed under the Alien Enemies Act. On Feb. 12, 2026, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the government to facilitate their return, writing that its responses “essentially told the Court to pound sand.” By then, the men had already been sent to Venezuela in a prisoner exchange.
In August, the full Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the challenge to Trump’s proclamation as moot. The court found that the three named petitioners had been removed under the Immigration and Nationality Act rather than the Alien Enemies Act. It did not rule on whether the invocation was lawful.
After the election, a spokesperson for DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin responded to the incoming Democratic majority: “Deportations will continue.”
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