Kristi Noem Guts ICE Oversight as Detainee Deaths Surge

Source: The New Republic

Kristi Noem Guts ICE Oversight as Detainee Deaths Surge

Edith Olmsted
Tue, July 8, 2025 at 11:26 AM EDT
2 min read

As Donald Trump has rapidly expanded immigration enforcement, he and his administration have also begun stripping government oversight—and people are already dying, according to a report published by CNN Tuesday.

Court documents filed in April as part of a lawsuit against the Trump administration revealed that the Trump administration effectively shuttered three watchdog organizations at the Department of Homeland Security. Employees at the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, or CRCL; the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, or CISOMB; and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, or OIDO, were abruptly suspended in March and given a separation date of May 23.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s budget requests for the fiscal year 2026, zeroed out the OIDO budget. The Trump administration has claimed that the budget request was merely a recommendation from the president, according to CNN.

While the DHS has claimed to have plans to reconstruct department oversight, rebuilding the watchdogs would likely take time—time that immigrant detainees don’t have. The new Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman Ronald Sartini, the person charged with reassessing the DHS’s oversight efforts, was stranded as the only employee assigned to CISOMB, CRCL, and OIDO, according to CNN.

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Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/kristi-noem-guts-ice-oversight-152604639.html