In their letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley criticized the department for its response to a request for documentation the two lodged in June of this year.

Of the two responses the senators received, they wrote, one “did not answer any of the ten questions” they originally posed, while the other consisted of “two documents already in the public domain” and “500 pages of material, approximately half of which are mostly or entirely redacted.”

“We remind you that the oversight letters we send to the Executive Branch are signed in our capacity as sitting members of Congress, a separate and co-equal branch of government,” the senators wrote.

Noting that DHS cited Freedom of Information Act disclosure privileges in making the redaction, Hawley and Grassley pointed out that FOIA provisions “do not apply to the oversight requests we submit in our capacity as constitutional officers and should not be applied to the materials that DHS produces in response to congressional requests.”

[To be fair, Congress has acted as Biden’s lackey for the last two years. Executive agencies may need some time to adjust to a Congress that takes itself more seriously as a “co-equal branch of government.” — Ed]