DHS Stands on Its Record Border Results as Incoming Democrats Plan Probes of Its Detention Buildout

The Department of Homeland Security heads into the new year with border numbers no administration has posted in generations and a deportation total no ICE team has ever reached. Starting in January, it will also face a Democratic Congress that wants to put the machinery behind those numbers under the microscope.

Congressional Democrats are building a broad investigative agenda aimed at President Trump's immigration policy, and one of their first targets is DHS's costly purchase of a private prison for immigration detention, The Washington Post reported Friday. Homeland Security officials have cast the coming probes as politically motivated and signaled the department is ready to fight back, the Post reported.

Before the subpoenas fly, the department's results deserve a fair hearing. Border Patrol recorded 98,708 apprehensions at the southwest border in fiscal 2026, a 95% drop from the more than 1.8 million a year it averaged under President Biden, DHS reported in October. The entire year's total came in 60% below the Biden administration's single worst month of 249,740, and nationwide encounters fell to 379,243, compared with about 2.7 million a year under the prior administration. DHS also called it the first fiscal year in which Border Patrol released no one into the country.

Inside the country, the pace has been just as historic. New DHS figures show more than 483,000 deportations and 491,000 immigration arrests in fiscal 2026, both records, CBS News reported.

The department did not invent its own mandate or its own budget. A law signed in July 2025 set aside about $170 billion for immigration enforcement and border security, including $75 billion for ICE, CBS News reported. Democrats now want to know how DHS has spent the more than $100 billion Congress provided since last year, according to the Post. That is a fair question for an oversight committee to ask. But the answer begins with the fact that Congress passed the law, the president signed it, and the department is carrying it out.

The prison purchase is the opening move. Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, who is preparing to lead the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is investigating DHS's $495 million purchase of an immigration detention facility in Minnesota after reports that the seller had earlier offered it to the state for $75 million, the Washington Examiner reported. Hassan has asked DHS and the seller, private prison operator CoreCivic, to preserve their records, according to the Post. The facility is the former prison in Appleton, Minnesota, which this site covered when it opened to ICE detainees this week.

The price gap is real, and taxpayers are owed a clear accounting of it. But a records request is not a finding of wrongdoing, and no investigation has yet shown that anyone broke the law.

The broader agenda reaches well beyond one building. Democratic staff have flagged conditions inside detention centers, the use of deadly force by federal agents, and DHS spending as possible lines of inquiry, the Post reported. On the House side, Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, has written to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin demanding written assurance that the department will preserve its records, Federal News Network reported. Democrats there have signaled their priorities range from ICE's rapid expansion to staffing cuts at the nation's cyber defense agency.

The politics behind the push are on display in southwest Kansas. Federal agents detained 104 people in late September in a region where meatpacking plants in Dodge City, Garden City and Liberal rely on a largely immigrant workforce, Reuters reported. The three hardest-hit counties swung about 20 points toward Democrat Adam Hamilton in this month's Senate race compared with President Trump's 2024 share, according to results compiled by Reuters and USA Today.

Local leaders told Reuters they were left in the dark, with Dodge City officials saying they learned of the operation on social media. Even Republican Sen. Roger Marshall faulted federal agents for not giving local police advance notice or the cooperation he expected. DHS responded that it will keep enforcing the nation's laws, and the White House defended the president's immigration agenda.

That criticism from a Republican senator is worth hearing. Enforcement works best when federal agents partner with sheriffs and police chiefs who know their towns, and good coordination protects both officers and the communities they serve. It does not follow that the law should go unenforced.

Democrats take control of both chambers in January, and with the gavels comes subpoena power. Expect early fights over document requests, testimony from top immigration officials and the Appleton contract, along with a department that has already said it intends to push back.

The Constitution gives Congress real authority over how taxpayer money is spent, and honest oversight can make enforcement better. The test for the new majority will be whether it uses that power to account for every dollar or to unwind a border where, by DHS's count, crossings have fallen to the lowest level on record.