Migrants in US custody risk increased abuse, illness, and death after the Trump administration’s dismantling of a civil rights office amid increasing detentions and deportations, immigrants’ rights advocates and lawyers warn.
The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties was investigating alleged mistreatment at detention facilities, reviewing police departments’ immigration enforcement, and weighing concerns about Guantanamo Bay conditions before nearly all its staff received pink slips last month.
Immigrants, advocates, and lawyers with pending claims fear the cases of vulnerable individuals will be discarded without review. Watchdogs have long documented dangerous conditions at migrant detention centers, such as spoiled food, inadequate medical care, and standing-room only settings for days.
The Department of Homeland Security office was central to investigations during the first Trump administration of a wave of child migrant deaths, as well as the separation of thousands of children from their families. Those issues drew bipartisan outcry and investigations on Capitol Hill.
“Knowing that there’s no possibility of recourse for harms and abuse and rights violations that happen in detention is a really difficult pill to swallow,” said Alex Mintz, an attorney at the American Friends Service Committee’s Immigrant Rights Program.
Mintz was pursuing a complaint to CRCL in the weeks before its dismantling on behalf of a New Jersey resident from Trinidad and Tobago held at the Farmville Detention Center in Virginia, alleging poor sanitary conditions, overcrowding, and retaliation for voicing concerns.
Department leaders slashed the civil rights office and two other DHS oversight teams on March 21, saying they hindered President Donald Trump’s illegal immigration crackdown. The move is part of a broader Trump effort to shrink the federal government and sideline internal watchdogs.
Trump Aides Shutter Homeland Security Civil Rights Office
More than 500 complaints were pending at CRCL that day, according to two employees who spoke anonymously for fear of retaliation.
DHS didn’t respond to questions about the fate of the office’s open cases but maintained legally mandated duties will continue. The office also technically remains open, though all but a few of its 150-person staff are on administrative leave ahead of termination next month.
‘Exhausted’
The civil rights office fields complaints across DHS’s work—including discrimination allegations by disaster aid applicants or travelers searched at airports. Its demise has reverberated most within the immigrants’ rights community.
Bloomberg Government talked to seven lawyers and advocates who have open complaints or regularly file with CRCL, and all said they haven’t heard from the office since its effective closure.
“Nothing in my email box, nothing,” said Tania Wolf, southeast advocacy manager for the National Immigration Project, whose team is pursuing complaints about conditions at the Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana and alleged abuse by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Liz Casey, a social worker at the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, recalled sharing the news of CRCL’s fate in recent weeks with clients.
“People are really exhausted, just almost can’t believe the conditions that they’re living in and that there’s nobody now who essentially will be able to help — if they could help before,” she said.
At least three migrants died in ICE custody since Trump took office this year. The agency reported an average of eight deaths per year since 2010, according to a Bloomberg Government analysis, while Customs and Border Protection reported 55 in-custody deaths for fiscal 2023 alone. Reported deaths don’t imply agency fault.
Advocates stressed they’ve never seen CRCL as a panacea: The office has limited authorities that render most of its findings mere recommendations for DHS to improve civil rights protections. Congress created the office under 2002 bipartisan legislation establishing the department.
Still, advocates say CRCL represented one of few avenues for challenging the department’s actions.
“It really takes away one of the only doors that people who are detained have to knock on to get relief from the abuse that they were facing in detention,” National Immigration Project staff attorney Ann Garcia said.
Disability Rights
Disability cases are one area where CRCL’s work has more surefire pay-off, due to the office’s binding role enforcing a federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability.
Casey said she’s used the provision extensively to advocate for detained immigrants to receive glasses, orthopedic shoes, and other accommodations.
She referenced a client who has significantly impaired eyesight — 20/100 vision — who doesn’t have glasses and said CRCL’s cuts mean “there’s nobody who can intervene right now to get him what he needs.”
Officials from the civil rights office also liaise between ICE and local community groups, and they conduct site visits at detention facilities to ensure they’re meeting health and safety standards. Advocates worry facility operators, many of whom are for-profit companies, will loosen compliance as oversight diminishes.
“They understand when there are inspections that take place or when there are oversight bodies that come in, they often clean up the facilities,” National Immigrant Justice Center senior policy analyst Jesse Franzblau said.
DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin maintained DHS “remains committed to civil rights protections but must streamline oversight.”
Work in Limbo
Other CRCL work was also thrust into uncertainty with the office’s abrupt dismantling.
That includes the Women, Peace, and Security initiative supporting the role of women in building domestic and international peace and security. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sponsored
Lawmakers last year directed DHS to continue to carry out the law’s requirements, but that work was based within CRCL. DHS didn’t respond to questions about the program’s status.
The office’s mandatory review of ICE’s partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies is in limbo, too. The program known as 287(g) allows local jurisdictions to use immigration enforcement authority otherwise reserved for federal officials. Lawmakers have yet to receive a report they ordered last year from CRCL documenting compliance and alleged violations.
The stakes of receding oversight are clear in the case of the detainee fighting against alleged abuse and retaliation in Farmville, Va. Mintz, the attorney, filed her complaint on his behalf just weeks before CRCL shed its staff.
It’s not clear the office would have intervened, but Mintz will never know. Her client has already been deported.
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