As the death toll at immigrant detention centers across the country continues to rise, the Trump administration is kneecapping federal efforts to monitor allegations of abuse at these facilities.
Sites such as the Dilley Immigration Processing Center and Camp East Montana — both located in Texas and used to aid President Donald Trump’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown — have been decried by human rights advocates over reported deaths and alleged abuse.
You may have heard of Camp East Montana earlier this year, after a medical examiner determined that an immigrant who was being held there died by homicide via asphyxia, contradicting officials who said the man died after attempting suicide. Last month, NPR reported that the number of immigrants to have died in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has already hit a record annual high in the current fiscal year, which began in October. And CBS News reported that a record high for the calendar year is possible as well.
Meanwhile, the administration is undermining efforts to investigate unlawful and abusive behavior toward detained immigrants. HuffPost reported on an internal email, which MS NOW hasn’t independently seen, indicating that the Department of Homeland Security is closing an office tasked with investigating claims of abuse at immigration facilities.
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The Department of Homeland Security is closing an office responsible for investigating misconduct and abuse in the immigration detention system, according to an internal email to DHS employees obtained by HuffPost.
The Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman is in the process of removing all its public signage and ending its inspections, according to the email.
The office’s public-facing website, which advised the families and attorneys of detainees on how to file complaints, was down as of Monday afternoon. Even basic informational webpages explaining the office’s responsibilities appeared to have been taken offline.
The report shows how the Trump administration — which is currently laser-focused on securing funding for the president to construct a White House ballroom — blamed congressional budgeting for the closure.
The email attributed the closure to a lack of funding in the Homeland Security appropriations bill that ended the recent shutdown, though the text of that bill does not require the closure of the ombudsman’s office.
“DHS did not shutdown the Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman — Congress did,” an agency spokesperson told HuffPost in an email. “The House passed the DHS appropriations bill without objection, and it was signed into law last week.”
Absent any proof of Congress actually shutting down this office, the administration’s response clearly sounds like a dubious excuse to gut federal oversight of immigrant detention centers — facilities that many experts say meet the definition of “concentration camps.”
The Trump administration has been eager to use fear of physical harm as a tool to intimidate immigrants. We’ve seen this in its use of an infamous Louisiana prison, built on the site of a former slave plantation, as a lockup, as well as the rhetoric Trump and his allies used while talking about Florida’s so-called Alligator Alcatraz, where detained immigrants have reportedly been subjected to torture reminiscent of chattel slavery.
The gutting of the Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman fits alongside those actions, as a move that signals to immigrants that they may face violence if they’re detained — and may have little, if any, recourse to report it.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.