Maryland Congress members took a tour of the Baltimore field office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday, weeks after being denied access to the same facility.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Reps. Kweisi Mfume and Sarah Elfreth, all Democrats, said they are seeking transparency from an increasingly opaque deportation process under the Trump administration and wanted to ensure that those being held there were afforded due process under the Constitution.

But the trio left the ICE office Wednesday with more questions than answers, they said.

Mfume said federal officials were unable to tell them the number of detainees held in the Baltimore facility from certain countries, data that ICE tracks. Van Hollen said he wanted to know how long people were being held, in rooms equipped for maximum 12-hour holds. Elfreth said she wanted to know whether detainees had access to lawyers and whether their due process rights were being honored.

ICE officials told them they’d have to get back to them on these questions and others, they said.

Some of the answers exist in DHS’s databases, including detainees’ countries of origin. Baltimore’s ICE facility keeps detainees for more than 50 hours on average, according to a Baltimore Banner analysis of ICE data. The longest stay, according to the analysis, was about eight days.

A recent memo from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem upped the length of a hold to 72 hours.

Members blasted the Trump administration for sweeping up law-abiding Maryland residents that by ICE’s own assessments do not pose a public safety threat.

Van Hollen, citing ICE’s data, said the Trump administration is not focusing its deportation efforts on migrants with criminal convictions. He said the data showed that the vast majority, 84%, of people across the country being detained by ICE “pose zero threat to public safety.”

Lawmakers also criticized the administration for denying detainees’ access to attorneys and daily medications and for failure to provide proper places to sleep. The conditions at the Baltimore facility are being challenged in court by two women who were detained there.

Mfume, whose district includes Baltimore, estimated that the detention rooms he saw had the potential to hold about 20 to 30 people, and described the facility as similar to a police station. They were able to see detainees through a glass window, he said.

“We saw people looking back at us wondering who we were, why were we there, and what were we looking at,” Mfume said.

They said they saw no evidence of people sleeping at just after 10 a.m. Wednesday, but saw a few dozen rolled-up mats which they said could have been used for sleeping.

Van Hollen said they saw about seven or eight detainees, but federal officials wouldn’t allow the lawmakers to talk with them, citing Maryland law. Lawmakers disputed the officials’ interpretation of the law.

“Clearly, they don’t want us talking to the people,” Van Hollen said.

The lawmakers said ICE officials blamed a 2021 law — the Maryland Dignity Not Detention Act — that banned detention agreements between ICE and local jurisdictions.

The roughly one-hour tour took place at the George H. Fallon Federal Building just across the street from a federal courthouse where a judge heard arguments Wednesday from Trump administration lawyers challenging the authority of Maryland’s entire federal bench on how it conducts immigration cases. The judge did not rule Wednesday.

Just weeks ago, six Maryland Congress members, including those who went Wednesday, were denied access to the Baltimore ICE facility. They leaned on a federal appropriations law that barred DHS from using government resources to keep them out.

On that visit, Acting Director Nikita Baker said she was following a directive from headquarters by not allowing them in, but didn’t specify who gave the order.

Maryland’s delegation had sent DHS a letter one week before they showed up at the building, more than the 72-hours notice requested of Congress members by Noem.

The Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts have overwhelmed ICE holding facilities across the country, and members of Congress from around the country have attempted visits.

A DHS spokesperson said in response to the politicians’ first visit attempt that the notice was required because officers had seen a “surge in assaults, disruptions, and obstructions to enforcement — including by members of Congress themselves.”

Days later, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, along with a cohort of fellow Democrats from other states, challenged Noem’s policy in court, saying it ”lacks a lawful basis.” In the complaint, each of the co-plaintiffs detailed instances in which they had been kept from exercising oversight of immigration detention facilities since the Trump administration took office.

In response to the lawsuit, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of public affairs for DHS, said the plaintiffs were “running to court to drive clicks and fundraising emails.”

DHS and ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment.