DHS spending bill would formalize Trump cuts to oversight offices

The Department of Homeland Security spending bill at the heart of Congress’s latest shutdown fight would formalize cuts to three DHS oversight offices made by the Trump administration.

The compromise fiscal 2026 homeland security spending bill would reduce funding well below 2024 spending levels for three DHS organizations: the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL); the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman (OIDO); and the Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman (CIS).

Those cuts come in a negotiated DHS funding bill that Senate Democrats are now vowing to oppose after a Border Patrol agent shot and killed a Veterans Affairs nurse protesting in Minnesota over the weekend.

Some House Dems had pointed to funding cuts to the three offices as a key reason to oppose the DHS spending bill, even prior to the latest shooting.

The negotiated bill would provide $20 million for additional inspections and oversight of detention facilities by the DHS inspector general’s office.  And it would restrict Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s ability to reprogram money, as she did last year to effectively cut the offices to skeleton crews.

Under Noem’s leadership last spring, DHS laid off or placed on administrative leave most staff at all three offices and installed political appointees to oversee them on an acting basis. One career official, Ron Sartini, is simultaneously serving as the CIS ombudsman, the acting deputy immigration detention ombudsman and the acting deputy CRCL officer.

DHS justified the cuts by arguing the offices were impediments to immigration enforcement efforts.

Several nonprofits are suing DHS over the cuts to the oversight offices.

The 2026 appropriations bill would effectively shutter OIDO by zeroing out its annual budget that last year totaled $28.6 million. House Appropriations homeland security subcommittee Chairman Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) argued OIDO had been an office “led and staffed by people who fundamentally opposed ICE’s mission to detain and remove dangerous criminal aliens from our communities.” Amodei didn’t offer specifics on those allegations.

Congress created the immigration detention ombudsman role in 2019 during the first Trump administration “to resolve problems related to and improve conditions of individuals and families in immigration detention.”

The office is an independent entity within DHS, separate from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. By 2022, OIDO expanded to have enough case managers to maintain a “persistent presence” at nearly 100 detention facilities.

As part of DHS’s recent reductions, OIDO’s staffing has gone from roughly 100 people to fewer than 10 employees, according to testimony provided by administration officials.

Meanwhile, the number of people held in ICE immigration detention centers has ballooned to a record 73,000 people. The tax and reconciliation package passed last year gave ICE an extra $45 billion to expand immigration detention capacity.

The CRCL office’s budget would drop from $42.9 million in fiscal 2025 to $10 million in the 2026 appropriations bill.

The CRCL office had previously employed more than 150 staff. Its statutory mission is “to ensure that the civil rights and civil liberties of persons are not diminished by efforts, activities, and programs aimed at securing the homeland.”

Following the Trump administration’s cuts, officials testified that the new plan for CRCL involves roughly 20 staff. Sartini recently said in court that his primary duties at CRCL now involve handling Equal Employment Opportunity complaints filed by DHS employees.

A former CRCL employee who was placed on administrative leave as part of the cuts said in a recent court filing that the office no longer has the capacity to conduct “meaningful investigations” into civil rights and civil liberties incidents involving DHS personnel. The former employee specifically pointed to allegations of excessive force, such as the recent shooting by an ICE officer of Minneapolis resident Renee Good.

“In my experience, investigations into systemic issues like these required significant staff resources, which CRCL no longer has to devote to these important issues of civil rights and civil liberties,” the official wrote. “Nor does CRCL have the resources to conduct multidisciplinary onsite investigations at detention facilities, the need for which is greater than it has ever been as both the number of detention facilities and number of people detained has skyrocketed during 2025.”

Meanwhile, the homeland security spending bill would reduce the CIS Ombudsman’s budget would drop from $11.6 million to $5 million.

Administration officials have testified that the new plan for the CIS Ombudsman’s office involves a head ombudsman, a deputy and “an additional five to seven full-time employees to handle casework, and an additional employee to handle report writing and any additional responsibilities.”

The CIS Ombudsman office previously had approximately 40 full-time equivalent employees, according to fiscal 2025 budget documents.

The office assists individuals and employers facing challenges with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. It handled nearly 24,000 complaints in 2023.

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