Court records reveal gutting of DHS oversight: 'Incredibly dangerous'

Source: The Guardian

Sun 8 Mar 2026 07.00 EDT
Last modified on Sun 8 Mar 2026 08.12 EDT


The Trump administration has so radically transformed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) independent watchdog teams that thousands of cases related to conditions in immigration detention, deaths in custody and officers’ use of force are not being investigated, according to court records reviewed by the Guardian.

Hundreds of pages of court filings in a key legal battle in federal court serve to contradict the Trump administration’s repeated claims that the DHS watchdogs are performing “all required functions”. The allegations of failings within the shrunken oversight offices at the DHS, tasked by Congress with investigating civil rights and related concerns, come as the department grapples with public criticism of killings by immigration agents, escalating arrest tactics and plans to increase immigrant detention.

The latest documents in the case were submitted in February this year as part of a lawsuit in federal court in Washington DC brought last year by the Robert and Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center and immigration advocate organizations the Southern Border Communities Coalition and the Urban Justice Center, against the DHS and the newly ousted homeland security secretary, Krisi Noem. The action came after the DHS dismantled the independent watchdog teams last March.

At the time, the DHS said the offices “obstructed immigration enforcement” and were being closed. After the lawsuit was filed last April, the department backtracked and allocated a very small number of people to run them, court filings from last August and last month show. The plaintiffs accuse the DHS and Noem of having exceeded their powers “to eliminate” the watchdog offices and say such actions “violate the constitutional separation of powers” and are illegally “arbitrary and capricious”.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/08/dhs-oversight-court-record-review