When Rand Paul called on senior officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to testify before the Senate, he invoked one of Congress’s most fundamental responsibilities: oversight of executive power. That responsibility is not partisan. It’s constitutional. Yet the moment in which this request arrives reveals how fragile and politicized that responsibility has become.

The call for testimony follows a series of highly controversial federal immigration enforcement actions, including fatal shootings that have drawn national attention and public outrage. Video footage, eyewitness accounts, and conflicting official statements have intensified demands for transparency. In such circumstances, congressional hearings are not optional. They’re the minimum requirement of democratic accountability when the state exercises lethal force.

But the larger question isn’t whether hearings should occur. They should. The question is whether Congress intends to use oversight to pursue truth and reform or to wield it as leverage in a broader political standoff over immigration funding and policy.

Oversight is meant to illuminate, not to coerce. When lawmakers summon agency heads, the goal should be to clarify standards, expose failures, and correct systemic problems. Instead, these hearings risk becoming entangled in a high-stakes budget fight, where testimony serves less as a fact-finding exercise and more as a bargaining chip in negotiations over Homeland Security appropriations.

That shift matters. Oversight that’s perceived as instrumental rather than principled doesn’t strengthen democracy; it erodes trust in it.

To be clear, the underlying concerns are real. Federal immigration agencies have seen enormous growth in funding, authority, and operational reach over the past decade. Their officers increasingly operate far from the border, in dense urban environments, carrying out civil enforcement actions that can quickly escalate into armed encounters. Unlike local police departments, these agencies often operate with limited public visibility and weaker external accountability mechanisms.

When deadly force is used, especially against citizens, the public is owed clear answers. What rules governed the encounter? What de-escalation training was required? Were body cameras active, and if not, why? How quickly are independent investigations triggered, and who controls their scope? These aren’t ideological questions. They’re governance questions.

Congress has both the authority and the obligation to ask them. Indeed, refusing to ask them would be a dereliction of duty.

Yet the credibility of that duty is undermined when hearings are folded into partisan brinkmanship. When one side threatens to withhold funding unless agencies are curtailed, and the other frames oversight as an attack on law enforcement itself, accountability becomes collateral damage. The public is left with spectacle rather than substance.

This is especially dangerous in the immigration context, where public trust is already strained. Immigration enforcement sits at the intersection of sovereignty, civil liberties, and community safety. It’s one of the few areas where federal agents regularly engage in armed operations against civilians for non-criminal violations. That reality demands a higher standard of transparency, not a lower one.

If Congress allows oversight to devolve into political theater, it will reinforce the perception that federal power is either unaccountable or weaponized, depending on which party controls the gavel. Neither outcome serves the rule of law.

What would responsible oversight look like instead?

First, hearings must be structured around concrete policy questions, not rhetorical ambushes. Lawmakers should press agency leaders on use-of-force standards, command-and-control decision-making, and the legal thresholds for armed deployments in civil enforcement actions. Vague assurances of professionalism are not sufficient.

Second, Congress should tie oversight to reform. If testimony reveals gaps in training, unclear rules of engagement, or inconsistent disciplinary processes, lawmakers must be prepared to legislate. That may include statutory requirements for body cameras, independent review of lethal force incidents, or clearer limits on operational authority away from the border. Oversight without follow-through is performance, not governance.

Third, funding decisions should be separated from fact-finding wherever possible. Using appropriations as a blunt instrument may produce short-term leverage, but it corrodes long-term accountability. Agencies that operate under perpetual funding threats become defensive and opaque, not transparent and responsive.

Finally, Congress must reaffirm a basic principle that’s been too easily lost in the immigration debate: enforcement power does not exist outside constitutional restraint. The legitimacy of federal authority rests not on the intensity of its actions, but on the clarity of its limits.

The stakes extend beyond any single hearing or incident. How Congress handles this moment will shape public confidence in both immigration enforcement and democratic oversight itself. If lawmakers demonstrate seriousness—by asking hard questions, demanding evidence, and pursuing reform—they can help restore trust in institutions that badly need it.

If, instead, oversight is reduced to a tactical maneuver in a broader political war, the result will be deeper cynicism, weaker accountability, and a further erosion of the norms that hold a divided republic together.

Congress must decide what oversight is for. The country is watching.