WASHINGTON, D.C.— U.S. Senators Gary Peters (D-MI), Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, are demanding accountability for the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) decision to gut three key oversight offices in March 2025. In a letter addressed to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, the senators raised serious concerns over the abrupt firings of the staffs of the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman (OIDO), and the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman (CIS Ombudsman).
“In light of your decision to shutter key Department of Homeland Security (DHS) oversight offices in March 2025, recent whistleblower disclosures related to this decision, and disclosures made in ongoing litigation, we request additional information regarding how DHS is carrying out its statutory duties to protect individual rights and liberties and to ensure our immigration system functions properly,” wrote the senators.
“Congress recently received CRCL employees’ whistleblower disclosures,” the senators continued, “that describe how the abrupt closure of their office violates the law, prevents the office from carrying out its statutory functions, and creates threats to public health and safety. According to the disclosures, CRCL employees have had to abandon approximately 550 open complaints investigations and hundreds of other complaints pending review.” These cases include potential discrimination against travelers based on national origin, disability rights violations, and FEMA’s bias against disaster victims based on political affiliation.
According to the senators, “Judge Ana C. Reyes, who is presiding over the [ongoing litigation], stated that she did not believe it was in her ‘purview or ability to determine’ if the Administration’s plan for the future of the oversight offices ‘is effective or good one.’ However, as Ranking Members of the committees of oversight, it is within our purview, and we are deeply concerned with what we know so far about your plans.”
The senators then raised concerns that the Administration’s gutting of these offices violates the Homeland Security Act. The law blocks an Administration from abolishing any congressionally mandated agency, entity, organizational unit, program, or function of the Department and only permits changes or reorganizations to non-congressionally mandated elements after the Department provides Congress with 60 days notice and a clear rationale.
“We believe that you are in violation of these statutory provisions,” concluded the senators, who have provided a July 31, 2025, deadline for the Department to provide additional information related to the termination of staff in these offices and plans to reconstitute them.
The full text of the letter can be found here.
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