Spending bill would solidify Trump cuts in DHS oversight

WASHINGTON — A compromise spending package would solidify the Trump administration’s drastic cuts to oversight components at the Department of Homeland Security at a time when clashes with the public have raised concerns about the policies involved in massively expanded immigration enforcement.

The Homeland Security portion of the measure would reduce congressionally allocated funding from $43 million to $10 million for the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which Congress included as an internal safeguard when DHS was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The spending package also would eliminate $28.6 million in stand-alone funding for the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, which oversaw complaints about immigrant detention and aided those who might have been mistreated.

And it would cut from $11.6 million to $5 million the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, which helps on issues related to legal immigration.

The Trump administration essentially gutted those offices in March, and an earlier House GOP proposal sought even steeper cuts. The compromise measure does include a $20 million increase earmarked for immigration detention oversight in funds for the DHS Office of Inspector General, the internal watchdog for the department.

The Senate plans to take up the roughly $1.33 trillion spending package this week to meet a deadline Friday, when current funding for many federal agencies is set to run out. But Senate Democrats now say they will seek to block it if funding for the Homeland Security Department remains part of it, increasing the risk of another partial government shutdown.

Spending for those three DHS oversight offices is dwarfed by the resources that would go to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the bill, on top of funds already provided in the reconciliation law President Donald Trump signed on July 4.

But the spending bill would keep Trump administration cuts on entities that could be a check on DHS actions amid reports of immigration agents detaining U.S. citizens and asserting authority to enter homes with an administrative warrant, along with an estimated 53 deaths in immigration detention facilities.

DHS in March terminated swaths of staff from the oversight offices. A DHS spokesperson in a statement at the time said the cuts would “streamline oversight” and the offices “have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining DHS’s mission.”

The Trump administration’s fiscal 2026 budget requests sought steep cuts to the three entities, and House Republicans highlighted the reductions in a summary of the Homeland Security portion of the spending package.

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, had pointed to restrictions under the measure that would restrict Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s ability to reprogram money as she did under fiscal 2025 funding to slash resources for DHS oversight offices.

After federal immigration agents fatally shot a Minnesota man this weekend, Murray posted on Sunday that she would not support the DHS portion of the bill as it stands, noting the reconciliation funds and that “Americans must be eyes wide open that blocking the DHS funding bill will not shut down ICE.”

“But we all saw another American shot and killed in broad daylight,” Murray said. “There must be accountability, and we must keep pushing Republicans to work with us to rein in DHS.”

A source familiar with the DHS portion of the bill said it “represents a compromise” because the legislation would mandate that the Trump administration spend more on the entities than it had under previous spending measures.

“These offices are inherently dormant (staffed by only 1-4 individuals) with an inability to open new investigations into serious incidents, to include civil rights violations or deaths in custody or use of force incidents or to simply adjudicate concerns with immigration applications,” the source said via email.

Ongoing challenge

Three outside groups have been challenging the DHS firing of the staffs of the oversight offices, arguing in filings as recently as last week that the cuts were unlawful and that the required functions of all three offices continue to go unperformed, as a single government employee “is essentially running the three offices by himself with a skeleton crew for assistance.”

The groups said in a court filing that Congress in a 2007 law required the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties office to “periodically investigate and review” departmental “actions, policies, procedures, guidelines, and related laws” to ensure that departmental actions adequately consider civil liberties.

Scott Shuchart, a former official with ICE who worked for the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, said the office “did policy oversight to make sure that the parts of DHS have sound policies that complied with constitution and civil rights laws” and had up to 200 employees before Noem fired or reassigned the officials.

Shuchart, however, said that at the end of the day he isn’t sure whether it would matter if these agencies were reliable and staffed up because top leaders are “giving false legal advice on television constantly” and telling ICE officials they can operate with impunity. Vice President JD Vance and White House adviser Stephen Miller have said ICE agents have immunity.

“And so, in a world where the top of the command structure is saying disregard training and disregard accountability, I don’t know mechanically whether more efficacious work by the oversight offices would really change officer behavior, right?” Shuchart said.

“It is clear that this Department of Justice is not going to prosecute any federal officer for any legal or constitutional violation, so long as it was in the service of the immigration enforcement or other aspects of the president’s agenda,” he said.

In June, the House Appropriations Committee voted down a proposed amendment from Rep. Sanford D. Bishop Jr., D-Ga., that sought to restore the funding level to the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to $43 million.

“Whether you agree that ICE should get a billion dollars in new funding or not, these members of Congress have a duty to protect the civil rights and civil liberties of every person in America, because when one person has his or her constitutional rights violated, every American citizen’s rights are put at risk,” Bishop said.

Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada, chair of the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said what was once a relatively small office grew into a $43 million organization that did far more than what the law authorized.

“Earlier this year, the administration reduced the scope of this office back to the original authorized functions. The action reduced the worst workforce of 135 down to just four full-time positions,” Amodei said.

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