It seems apparent that the Trump administration war on Civil Rights is stranding thousands who have filed complaints about mistreatment or bias.
We can only guess that Donald Trump’s culture war stances against “wokeness” leave him at ease with rules, government procedures, business and policing practices that leave those who find themselves on the short end of the stick for circumstances they do not control.
His administration took big swipes last week to drop civil rights law enforcement at the Department of Education, the Social Security Administration, the Justice Department and several agencies overseen by Homeland Security. At the same time, he took a swipe at museums, criticizing exhibits he said were based on incorrect perceptions of race and identity in America. And he ordered national review of state voter rolls to clear out non-citizens by some magic Elon Musk technical review.
It is interesting that Trump, who like other politicians of all stripes, likes to single out individual stories in the American quilt that match his partisan point of view, is silent about the effects of all this on ordinary citizens in a pluralistic country. Instead, he repeats his general pitch about radical leftists using diversity, equity and inclusion as an activist agenda to unfairly hire, promote or even recognize achievement by anyone not white, male, and straight.
The BBC managed to find a Cleveland mom now in limbo with unresolved complaints about educational services for her 13-year-old adopted son who is not receiving school services for his fetal alcohol syndrome, ADHD and other mental health problems, Eliminating the civil rights staff at the Department of Education’s Cleveland office (and six others) leaves the family with an unfinished mediation and no one to call.
Nor can they call the Social Security Administration, which has dismissed — under court challenge — 200 enforcement officers who follow on complaints about the disabled.
And at the General Services Administration (GAO), which manages federal property and contracts, the Trump administration has removed a rule that prohibited federal contractors from allowing segregated facilities. The GAO memo applies to all civilian federal agencies, said the prohibition was not in line with Trump’s views on diversity.
Justice and Homeland Security
The Justice Department’s freeze on civil rights litigation and formal decision to pursue policing reform agreements has created a series of live legal cases abandoned.
A simple internet search shows a long list of dropped cases involving Alabama and Virginia purging voter rolls and Texas adopting challenged election maps, state immigration enforcement challenges, police and fire discriminatory hiring cases, lawsuits involving a shelter provider sexually molesting migrant kids, a North Carolina case challenging the state ban on transition treatments for minors and a Utah suit about prison placement for trans prisoners, among others.
The dismissal of most employees in the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and two separate DHS ombudsman offices seem intended to eliminate legal roadblocks to its immigration crackdown efforts. Interestingly, the legal streamlining effort comes just as issues surrounding deportations are running into court challenges. Separations will take 60 days.
As The Hill.com reports, the layoffs at DHS’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and two ombudsman staff who hear complaints, were in response to Justice Department belief that these offices “have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining DHS’s mission. Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations.”
The eliminated Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman provides a platform for those to bring concerns about the immigration process, while the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman is a route for the public to flag issues about the problems facing those held in immigration detention.
Homeland’s statement was that “These reductions ensure taxpayer dollars support the Department’s core mission: border security and immigration enforcement. “These offices have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining DHS’s mission. Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations.”
Redefining Civil Rights
The fallout from the Homeland decisions will affect specific individual complaints, of course, but also the politics of Trump’s mass deportation politics.
Rep. Bernie Thompson, D-Miss, noted that Homeland is silencing those who provide a critical review of its policies, a bid overall to end oversight of Homeland Security operations. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus added that civil rights oversight is “not a bureaucratic hurdle if you don’t break the law, geniuses.”
The Trump administration and the courts are warring over whether immigration policies are being based on legal and constitutional footing, on the procedural aspects of roundups and deportations, and on whether the administration is actively ducking court orders on administrative law. Claiming the 1798 Alien Enemies Act as justification for forgoing due process before immediate deportation to El Salvadorean prison camps, for example, crosses all those lines.
From a broader perspective, the Trump Justice Department wants to prosecute or otherwise investigate cases that the Biden administration would have sought to protect, including transgender treatment cases or racially discriminatory policies followed by policing agencies.
Through its actions, the Trump administration is redefining what civil rights means by target and by whether there is anyone to take up the complaint of discrimination.
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