Who's Watching DHS?

Last Friday, Bloomberg Government reported that the Department of Homeland Security is effectively gutting key civil rights offices within the agency, slashing the number of staff at the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, and the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman. Each of these offices was created by Congress, but DHS has decided to move ahead anyway, saying they “have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles.”

Four days later, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts student with a valid F-1 visa, was pulled off a sidewalk in Massachusetts and sent to a detention center in Louisiana. 

Like the arrest of Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, Ozturk’s arrest was caught on video. In recent weeks, people legally in the U.S. have been arrested and detained following Trump’s executive orders to remove pro-Palestinian students who it alleges are “Hamas sympathizers.” No evidence has been provided to support Ozturk’s arrest and no charges have been filed against her. 

Footage from a security camera shows the 30-year-old Ph.D. student walking down a residential sidewalk in Somerville, Massachusetts, on Tuesday evening. 

Ozturk, in her rose-pink head scarf and white puffer coat, is clearly frightened when a man dressed in dark clothing with no apparent badge or insignia steps in front of her and blocks her path. It looks like he grabs her wrists. She screams. Several other people, some masked, surround the pair. Finally, a man can be heard saying, “We’re the police.”

The Associated Press spoke with the man whose camera caught the video. “It looked like a kidnapping,” he said. 

DHS Needs Oversight

The Department of Homeland Security, whose agents surround Ozturk in the video, has a long history of civil and human rights abuses. Under President George W. Bush, DHS was revealed to have created an operation to surveil and interrogate Muslim immigrants living in the U.S. The Obama administration saw public allegations of abuse in border stops, abuse at detention facilities, and abuse in holding facilities. The first Trump administration saw DHS executing family separation even as the agency made news for a secret Facebook group where agents posted shockingly racist, sexist, and xenophobic comments. By the time President Joe Biden came into office, it was clear that at least some elements within DHS were largely unaccountable, and the agency still drew headlines when a photographer captured images of agents in Del Rio, Texas, on horseback chasing down Haitian migrants on the banks of the Rio Grande. 

Across the agencies that comprise the department, DHS is home to the largest law enforcement cohort in the United States. Its agents have extraordinary powers to stop, arrest, and detain citizens and noncitizens alike throughout the country. And at POGO, we’ve long argued that this enormous law enforcement entity with equally powerful enforcement tools needs more oversight and accountability. 

In many federal agencies, that oversight begins with the Office of the Inspector General, but at DHS that office is occupied by Joseph Cuffari. After we published a dozen investigations detailing Cuffari’s failures to hold the agency accountable and keep Congress informed of its actions — and then made a podcast for good measure — we’re not holding out much hope there. Despite a years-long investigation into Cuffari’s misconduct by the Council of the Inspectors General that led to the group’s recommendation that Cuffari face discipline “up to and including removal,” Biden failed to do so before leaving office. And when President Donald Trump took office and illegally purged 18 inspectors general across the federal government, he — unsurprisingly — spared the DHS IG. 

But there are several other offices within the department where staff work to investigate and prevent systemic abuses. Many of those staff were fired last week. To show what DHS has lost — what all of us have lost — with the gutting of offices that investigate rights abuses, we’d like to share a few examples of the “bureaucratic hurdles” the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman have thrown up in the past. 

The Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

When Congress created DHS in 2002, it combined multiple federal law enforcement entities into a single, massive department. So it created the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) to provide oversight to guard against abuses. According to its website, “the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) supports the Department’s mission to secure the nation while preserving individual liberty, fairness, and equality under the law.”

The office addresses allegations of civil rights violations across any of DHS’s many law enforcement and intelligence gathering components, and provides recommendations on how to prevent this abuse in the future. 

Investigating Rights Violations by DHS Agents

For example, after the first Trump administration enacted a policy requiring asylum seekers to remain in Mexico, CRCL uncovered that the administration had placed people with disabilities, including children, and other medically vulnerable people into the program, in clear violation of DHS’s “guiding principles.” Just last year, CRCL investigated and reported on an illegal operation by the U.S. Coast Guard to interdict Haitian asylum seekers at sea and return them to Haiti, essentially denying them access to the U.S. asylum system. And after DHS agents intercepted a family on their way to a Texas emergency medical appointment last month, ultimately deporting a 10-year-old American citizen in treatment and recovering from brain cancer along with her undocumented parents and four of her U.S. citizen siblings, it was CRCL to whom the family turned to request an investigation. 

Uncovering Systemic Problems in Detention Centers

During the Biden administration, POGO won a years-long legal battle with DHS to access and publish a number of CRCL reports. We found the agency investigated issues within detention centers, including inadequate access to medical care, extensive use of solitary confinement, shortcomings in rape and sexual assault prevention and response, and more.

Keeping Congress Informed About DHS Abuses and Recommendations

Every year, CRCL files a report to Congress. CRCL’s reports provide an overview of their work, including data about the number of civil rights complaints and a rough breakdown of the types of complaints against each agency within DHS. These reports shine a light on the darkest corners of federal law enforcement activity, and they provide vital information to Congress needed for the creation of meaningful legislation to prevent future abuses.

In its fiscal year (FY) 2023 report, for example, CRCL reported that it received over 3,000 allegations of misconduct and opened 758 investigations into issues ranging from treatment of travelers at airports to discrimination by DHS law enforcement to sexual abuse in DHS custody to deaths in DHS custody. 

The Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman 

On its website, the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman (OIDO) makes its independence from DHS immigration enforcement agencies clear, stressing that “OIDO is NOT a part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and is NOT a part of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).” Instead, the mission of the office is “to independently examine immigration detention to promote safe, humane conditions.” Here’s a small sample of the work OIDO has done.

Monitoring Solitary Confinement 

Several years ago, POGO first reported on the overuse of solitary confinement in DHS facilities — our investigation found some people were held for months at a time, or isolated up to 23 hours a day. In its FY 2023 report, OIDO flagged that within “segregation” (DHS’s term for solitary), “humane treatment of detained people is a critical concern.” It reviewed the segregation units at five detention facilities. When it found a center that fell short of DHS standards, it reported the failure to the agency in charge and to Congress, and the problem was swiftly addressed. Recent newsletters show the office has continued its reviews.

Advocating Directly for People in Detention

OIDO case workers embedded at DHS facilities provide an opportunity for those held in detention to get help from someone other than guards. In its FY 2023 report to Congress, the agency offered examples of how case workers intervened on behalf of those held in detention to help them get medicine and menstrual supplies.

Keeping Congress Updated 

In FY 2023, OIDO reported to Congress that it completed 22 inspections in immigration detention facilities, evaluating conditions and treatment of detainees against national standards and making 36 recommendations for improvements (several of which were implemented by DHS).

If CRCL and OIDO can no longer issue these reports, Congress — and the public — will be in the dark.

What’s Next? 

In the last month, this administration has doubled down on Trump’s campaign promise of the “largest deportation program” in American history. Directing the power of federal law enforcement on student protestors is part of a much larger, ominous escalation of abuse, coming at the same time as allegations of physical mistreatment of green card holders and lawful residents intercepted at U.S. airports and land crossings and the mass rendition of people in the U.S. to a prison in El Salvador known for horrible conditions. 

If what’s past is prologue, we can count on the department’s top watchdog to keep secrets from Congress and look the other way on allegations of these rights abuses. 

Now a few more “bureaucratic hurdles” have come down. Who will be targeted next? And who will stop them?