Trump appointee grilled in court about shuttering Homeland Security offices tasked with civil rights oversight
A federal judge said that she had concerns about being 'hoodwinked' by plans put forward in her courtroom Monday by a Trump appointee to rebuild three offices focused on civil rights oversight within the Department of Homeland Security that were eviscerated with mass layoffs set to take effect this week.
US District Judge Ana Reyes said that she found the three-plus hours of testimony from the appointee, US Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman Ronald Sartini, to be 'credible.'
The judge believed he was working in 'good faith' to come up with proposals for restaffing his office and the two others offices in the case before her, and that if those plans came to quick fruition, there would not be irreparable harm that would justify a court's intervention.
The administration's gutting of those offices comes as President Donald Trump is pushing – and at times overstepping – the law in his efforts to quickly fulfill his campaign promise to deport millions of immigrants.
Reyes also said that a 'cynical view' of the state of play in the legal challenge was that the administration did not actually intend to restore those offices to their congressionally mandated functions, because their work might slow Trump's mass deportation agenda. She raised the possibility that Sartini's testimony was 'window dressing for the court' to head off the legal case, brought by advocacy groups that work on civil rights issues on behalf of migrants and are challenging the dismantling of those offices.
Sartini, who spent 16 years in various career positions within the federal government before his May appointment as CIS ombudsman, told the judge he believed DHS leadership when it told him that the offices would be up and running again. Legal arguments in the case will continue on Tuesday.
More than 300 total employees at the CIS ombudsman office, the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman were put on administrative leave on March 21, in terminations that will take effect on Friday. Just a handful people – all at the executive level – are currently working across the three offices, Sartini testified Monday. He acknowledged that, particularly at the two offices he does not lead, statutorily mandated work is not being performed.
Sartini, however, defended the monthslong shutdown in work that is required by Congress. There was 'nothing' in law 'to preclude' a new administration from 'taking a beat,' he said, to decide whether there was a better way for those offices to operate.
Days before its workforce was put on leave, the Office of Civil Rights and Liberties opened an investigation into the controversial arrest of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who remains in detention while a separate court reviews the constitutionality of the administration's efforts to deport him.
The challengers in the case before Reyes – the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights foundation, Urban Justice, and the Southern Border Communities Coalition – have put forward examples of complaints they've filed with the oversight offices alleging sexual assault, medical neglect, abuse of force and other alleged civil rights violations by DHS officials.
The complaints prompted investigations that apparently halted with the rollout of the mass terminations, according to the court filings, or were filed around the time of the closures, including a complaint alleging due process violations with the administration's deportation of a 10-year-old citizen suffering brain cancer with her undocumented parents.
Sartini was pressed Monday about statements made by the administration in March – including in the layoff notices that went out to employees – that those oversight offices were being dissolved entirely. Though he has since been told internally that the administration intended to reopen those offices, Sartini said he was not aware of DHS communicating that change of plans to the public, stakeholders or even the fired employees.
He said, that before his formal appointment as CIS ombudsman, he was brought on around the time of the March 21 layoffs to review what duties those offices should be carrying out going forward.
'These offices were not the model of efficiency,' Sartini said, testifying that, before the layoffs, there was mismanagement, dysfunction and a bloated operation that duplicated work that was being done elsewhere in the agency.
Sartini is prepared to present to DHS leadership a proposal for rebuilding the offices with new hires, detailees and contractors. But, he said, it would be up to leadership whether his ideas were put into action and there was no meeting scheduled yet for leadership to hear his recommendations.
Reyes quizzed the official on how quickly the work could restart once his plans were presented and approved. She also asked a DHS lawyer present at the proceedings to call Sartini's point of contact in leadership mid-hearing to get a date on the books for such a meeting to happen. The lawyer later told Reyes that the leadership official, DHS acting general counsel Joseph Mazzara, was about to get on plane, and so the administration will be filing a response to the judge's query on Tuesday morning, ahead of more arguments on the legal issues in the case.
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