What The Hell America!

The Trump administration has gutted three key oversight offices responsible, in part, for safeguarding the rights of immigrant victims of gender-based violence, including immigrant victims of domestic violence and trans immigrants facing abuse in detention. 

The decision to weaken the agency’s oversight powers has had an immediate impact on the lawyers and advocates who regularly act on behalf of victims of gender-based violence, including victims of domestic violence and LGBTQ+ people facing abuse based on their gender identity. Amid long-standing systemic issues, and as the administration forges ahead with its push to deport more immigrants, three offices at the Department of Homeland Security that advocates described as the only “open doors” at the agency are now closed. 

In late March, the Trump administration fired dozens of staffers working within the offices — one tasked with overseeing compliance with civil rights laws, and two internal watchdogs overseeing the agency’s detention and legal immigration policies. The decision impacted more than 100 jobs, according to The New York Times. It’s unclear how many staff members remain at these offices or their capacity to carry out their previous functions.; 

In a statement, a senior DHS spokesperson said that the agency “remains committed to civil rights protections” but that the three offices that suffered staffing cuts “have obstructed immigration enforcement.” DHS did not respond to questions about how many staff remain at these offices or their capacity to investigate complaints.

The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties “really created a deterrence against abuse, and when abuses happened, they were a mechanism to reduce, eliminate or mitigate against them,” said Aaron Morris, the executive director at Immigration Equality, which has filed complaints of abuse or mistreatment on behalf of LGBTQ and HIV-positive immigrants. The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which was gutted by the administration’s actions, was the first stop for flagging systemic issues or pleading on behalf of specific clients who were facing discrimination or abuse at the hands of the agency. 

“There’s no longer a place to go to if something bad happens, and also bad actors are no longer deterred from doing the wrong thing, and that sets up a really disastrous system without any oversight.” 

Overseen by the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties was the Council on Combating Gender-Based Violence, which focused on victims of domestic violence, sexual violence and other crimes that disproportionately impact women. It’s not clear to what degree the council is still staffed; the council’s main webpage, which detailed the agency’s commitment to these victims, was removed from the agency’s website. (An archived version is still available on a non-government website.)

Irena Sullivan, senior immigration policy counsel at the Tahirih Justice Center, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of immigrant survivors of gender-based violence, said her organization has regularly worked with the office to help with individual cases and address systemic issues. 

The council in 2022 developed and distributed a “know your rights” pamphlet with the agency’s logo detailing domestic violence, female genital mutilation, stalking, forced marriage and sexual violence, and urging immigrant victims to seek help within and outside the agency. 

Sullivan said the agency also helped ensure that other branches of DHS were complying with confidentiality requirements for victims of violence — for example, that their address or the status of their immigration case was not shared with an abuser. DHS is also barred from using information provided by a known abuser to make a decision on a case. When issues cropped up with individual cases, lawyers at Tahirih could reach the office to help address them and get recourse for those victims. 

“There is no other point of contact at the agency with expertise on this issue,” Sullivan said. 

Last year, advocates at Tahirih became aware of instances in which border agents were taking away prescription medication to treat post-traumatic stress disorder from survivors of sexual violence. The group raised those concerns with the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at DHS, which by August had issued a policy directive that would ultimately allow more detainees to continue taking their medication.

More broadly, the council also helped make sure that other DHS branches were taking a trauma-informed approach to adjudicate cases and conducted interviews with survivors of gender-based violence according to established guidelines set by the agency. In addition to the civil rights watchdog, advocates also regularly engaged with two other gutted offices: the Office of Inspector General, known as OIG, and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, or OIDO.

In addition to the staff cuts, the agency has also deleted an online library of past investigations into alleged abuses or malpractice within the agency. The memos sometimes validated an immigrant’s account of individual abuse, or detailed systemic issues and corrective action at detention centers. 

Advocates made clear that these watchdog offices were not always effective at addressing systemic or individual issues and said that even before the offices were gutted, abuse was pervasive within the system. Last June, Immigration Equality, the National Immigrant Justice Center and Human Rights First published a report highlighting the “widespread abuse” facing LGBTQ and HIV-positive people in the agency’s custody. 

Morris said that the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties has long lacked sufficient enforcement power. 

At the same time, advocates saw it as a way to engage with the agency over the most egregious instance of civil rights violations, and a way to keep other branches within the agency in check. In 2022, for example, Immigration Equality and nine other organizations filed a complaint calling on the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to investigate Houston’s Asylum Office over its handling of the “credible fear” interviews administered to asylum seekers. They argued that the office was not following established guidelines for interviewing people fleeing abuse based on their sexual orientation, or who had survived trauma and torture. 

A few months later, the watchdog issued a memo notifying the Houston Asylum Office and U.S. Customs and its parent agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, that it had received a complaint and would begin an investigation over the office’s practices. (That memo has now been removed from the agency’s website; only a preview is available.)

Morris said that an attorney with Immigration Equality recently reached out to the agency to ask if they were still accepting complaints of civil rights and civil liberties violations. Someone at the agency responded simply that yes, they are still accepting complaints. 

“OK? I mean, to what extent can they adjudicate any of them? I don’t know,” Morris said, noting that before the administration did away with dozens of positions, the agency was facing a backlog of several hundred complaints. “Someone is still taking complaints, but I don’t know how they would prioritize or triage or get through all that.” 

Sullivan said her group is working through how it will engage with those left at the agency, “to the extent there are people still there who are willing to talk with about these things.” While Congress may step in and provide some oversight, Sullivan said the biggest impact will be on individual victims. Advocates’ ability to quickly resolve a delay or an error made in the case of a victim who has faced harrowing abuse “are not necessarily shiny examples, but extremely impactful for those who are applying for relief.”

In the absence of a responsive watchdog within the federal government, Morris said that advocates will be forced to turn to the courts more often.

“Litigation is expensive for everybody. It’s inefficient,” he said. “But it is the mechanism we’re left with.”