Washington DC - A federal judge has barred the Trump administration from blocking members of Congress from making unannounced visits to ICE facilities as a lawsuit plays out.

US District Judge Jia Cobb ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration cannot enforce new rules issued in June requiring lawmakers to provide seven days' notice before visiting ICE detention facilities.

The Department of Homeland Security also declared ICE field offices "off-limits for congressional oversight."

A dozen House Democrats, led by Representative Joe Neguse, sued over the DHS policies in July. They argued that the notice requirement gives ICE time to cover up the true conditions at its facilities.

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"The changing conditions within ICE facilities means that it is likely impossible for a Member of Congress to reconstruct the conditions at a facility on the day that they initially sought to enter. This issue is even more pronounced to the extent that Defendants’ policies – such as the field office policy – prohibit Plaintiffs from entering certain facilities at all," Cobb wrote in her 73-page decision.

"Such information about the on-the-ground conditions is 'lost forever to history,' and cannot be retroactively provided to Plaintiffs following resolution of the merits of this litigation."

"We just learned that the court in our lawsuit – Neguse et al. v. ICE – has temporarily stopped the Trump administration from blocking Members of Congress from unannounced oversight visits to immigration detention facilities," Neguse wrote on X after the ruling. "The rule of law will prevail."