May 5 (UPI) — The Department of Homeland Security confirmed that it closed an office that works as a watchdog serving those in immigration detention.
The Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman was where people could report misconduct, excessive force or other rights violations, but it’s now closed, and its page is archived on the Homeland Security website.
The Huffington Post first reported the closure.
“DHS did not shut down the Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman — Congress did,” a spokesperson told the media via email. “The House passed the DHS appropriations bill without objection, and it was signed into law last week.”
The appropriations bill passed last week didn’t mention the OIDO and didn’t require its closure. Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second administration, 46 people have died in immigration detention, The Hill reported. It now holds about 60,000 people in its detention centers.
Closing the OIDO “fits in with a larger strategy here, of trying to get people to give up on their immigration cases — and give up on their asylum cases — by holding out the threat of detention and making sure that that detention will be in the most miserable conditions possible,” Adam Isaacson of the Washington Office on Latin America, co-author of a recent report on the “dismantling” of DHS oversight bodies, told HuffPost Monday.
“If you’re trying to make detention as miserable as possible — because you believe, in some twisted way, that that’s a deterrent — then you’re going to do what you can to get rid of the ombudsman’s office, because that would have been a source of friction for you,” Isaacson said. “It’s death by a thousand cuts, and this is just one more way that they’re trying to get people out of the immigration system.”
Isaacson said he believed closing OIDO was illegal because it was established by Congress. The office was created in 2019 and launched in 2021.
At the beginning of 2025, the department had more than 100 employees, and in March a court filing showed the office had only five employees. The number of immigration detention facilities has doubled over the past year.
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