The Department of Homeland Security is dismantling the office that investigates civil rights violations in immigrant enforcement and other departmental work as President Donald Trump aims to downsize federal agencies.
Employees in the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties received news of the closure in a meeting Friday afternoon, according to a Senate aide and four people in the meeting or briefed on it in real time. Bloomberg Government first reported on the development. DHS is also slashing the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, which helps members of the public resolve problems with immigration benefits, according to the department.
“These offices have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining DHS’s mission,” agency spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a text message confirming reductions in force in both offices. “Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations.”
DHS is also cutting staff in the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, which looks specifically at detention conditions, because it “has misused taxpayer funds by facilitating complaints that encourage illegal immigration,” McLaughlin said.
The personnel in the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties will be placed on administrative leave and then terminated, the Senate aide said.
Civil rights advocates and lawmakers had raised alarm in recent days that deep cuts to DHS oversight were imminent and would undermine oversight as the Trump administration ramps up immigrant detention and deportations.
“It’s an office that serves a fire alarm function,” said University of Michigan law professor Margo Schlanger, who led CRCL for two years under then-President Barack Obama.
Conservative critics have derided the office as a liberal activist group bent on weakening immigration enforcement. Project 2025, backed by the Heritage Foundation, recommended slashing the entire unit in favor of a single officer who reports to DHS’s general counsel.
“A decision to eliminate the CRCL office or make significant reductions in CRCL staff will jeopardize DHS’s ability to comply with statutory requirements and to protect the civil rights and civil liberties of the American people,” Democratic Sens.
‘Literally Dangerous’
Congress established the civil rights officer position while creating DHS in 2002, tasking the appointee with ensuring that efforts to combat domestic threats didn’t infringe on basic rights and liberties.
The role has grown into an office of around 150 people, as of CRCL’s latest congressional report. It’s divided into sections that review DHS employees’ discrimination complaints, advise the department and its agencies on policies that implicate civil rights, and investigate alleged violations.
The team’s budget and staff increased dramatically in just the past few years, from $25 million and 97 employees in fiscal 2019 up to nearly $46 million and 144 employees in fiscal 2023. Congress has since reduced annual funding to around $43 million.
Some of the growth stems from an expanding set of responsibilities lawmakers have given to CRCL, including reviewing immigration enforcement agreements with local law enforcement agencies. Statutory responsibilities will be moved to other parts of DHS, people briefed on Friday’s meeting said.
The office lacks veto power over agency actions that raise concerns, but it can influence how policies are crafted and carried out. During Joe Biden’s presidency, for example, CRCL advised DHS agencies on intelligence gathering and the expanded use of artificial intelligence to identify potential bias problems.
Compliance officials in the office regularly visit immigrant detention and holding facilities to review conditions. CRCL was instrumental in shedding light on family separation during Trump’s first term, uncovering that officials weren’t properly tracking children and parents to be able to reunite them, said Schlanger, the Obama-era official.
That type of oversight is more important now than ever, advocates say, as DHS’s Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement aim to ramp up immigrant detention and mount the biggest deportation campaign in history.
“As the number of detention facilities owned and operated by the private prison industry grows, and those companies reap millions of dollars in profits from President Trump’s mass deportation policies, CRCL must be allowed to investigate conditions of detention and its continued full funding is crucial to carrying out those responsibilities,” Katherine Culliton-González, who led CRCL during part of Biden’s term, said. She’s now chief policy counsel at the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The results of scaled-back oversight are dire, said former CRCL career official Scott Shuchart, who later served as a Biden ICE appointee.
“It is literally dangerous,” he said. “People die in ICE custody. People die in CBP custody. And sometimes it happens for unpreventable reasons and sometimes it happens for preventable reasons.”
‘Considerable Waste’
The Heritage-backed Project 2025 provided a playbook last year for dismantling the DHS civil rights office. The project noted federal mandates require a civil rights and civil liberties officer at DHS, but not an entire unit.
The current size and scope of the office duplicates inspector general work and “results in considerable waste of limited component resources,” the document said. The authors called for downsizing to a single officer with a focus on equal employment opportunity compliance and civil rights incidents within DHS headquarters — allowing subagencies to handle their own investigations.
Trump disavowed Project 2025 on the campaign trail last year but has since embraced many recommendations.
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The cuts at CRCL and other offices come as Homeland Security officials work to carry out a White House directive to plan broad reductions in force and reorganizations. The offices were also among the few parts of DHS eligible for earlier deferred resignation offers.
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Peters and Durbin, the top Democrats on the Homeland Security and Judiciary committees, argued in their letter this week that DHS must “fully support” the agency’s CRCL officer with staff and resources to comply with the congressional mandate for the position.
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