An assortment of advocacy groups filed a lawsuit on Thursday aimed at stopping the Department of Homeland Security from permanently shuttering its internal oversight divisions after the Trump administration fired critical staff members, grinding operations to a halt.
The lawsuit was filed in New York and brought by Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, along with two immigration rights groups. It seeks to preserve some of the main guardrails within the agency, all created by Congress, that help uncover and prevent human rights abuses by its officers.
The suit asked the court to restore the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to the status quo before President Trump began to cut away at oversight and accountability functions throughout the federal government. It is also seeking to restore two ombudsman’s offices that inspect detention facilities and process complaints regarding visa applications.
The Trump administration has said that layoffs at the Homeland Security Department and elsewhere are part of an overarching effort to reduce bureaucratic redundancies. A spokeswoman for the department, Tricia McLaughlin, said at the time that the layoffs were made in the name of efficiency.
“These offices have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining D.H.S.’s mission,” she said. “Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations.”
But in the complaint filed on Thursday, the groups argued that the Trump administration had taken a specific interest in removing limitations and safeguards within immigration enforcement.
They cited a March letter by two top Senate Democrats warning that the offices were required to operate under the law Congress passed establishing the Department of Homeland Security in 2002. It raised similar alarms that efforts to effectively shutter the offices by cutting their staffing to a bare minimum would open the door to dangerous abuses in detention facilities and remove a critical channel for the public to engage with the office.
“A decision to eliminate the C.R.C.L. office or make significant reductions in C.R.C.L. staff will jeopardize D.H.S.’s ability to comply with statutory requirements and to protect the civil rights and civil liberties of the American people,” they wrote, referring to the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. “If you move forward, your actions will be in direct conflict with Congress’s intent.”
The groups are being represented by lawyers from Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy nonprofit that is behind multiple challenges to Mr. Trump’s agenda.
Besides acting as an internal check on immigration enforcement practices, the oversight offices within D.H.S. also serve a range of administrative functions, which the lawsuit said were at risk of abandonment.
The complaint cites reports from legal aid groups that detainees with stomach cancer or H.I.V. had been unable to receive medical attention while being held. It said applicants for visas, green cards and work permits were unable to check on the status of their application after staff cuts reduced the offices by more than 97 percent.
It asked the court to reverse the mass layoffs within the three offices and to declare attempts to hamper their operations illegal.
The lawsuit mirrors others that have sought to restore a degree of internal accountability across other agencies, after Mr. Trump moved to eliminate a variety of offices that have historically shouldered that role.
Mr. Trump has presided over the firing of more than dozen inspectors general, as well as the heads of other accountability offices such as the Merit Systems Protection Board. He has also downsized and repurposed civil rights offices at other agencies, such as the Education Department, broadly redefining their traditional mandate and enlisting them in his efforts to stamp out diversity initiatives and roll back transgender rights.
