Fridays are becoming bloodbath day in the federal workforce. In the same way that bad news stories used to be held for Friday late afternoon, that’s when we now hear about a lot of these firings. Midafternoon, I heard that the Department of Homeland Security had essentially abolished all its international civil rights and detention abuse agencies. They abolished the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman and the Office of the CIS Ombudsman. In other words, basically everyone in the department charged with providing some oversight of the treatment of people by the department’s various policing agencies or when in detention. They’re all gone. The only exception is the department Inspector General. But an IG really has a much broader brief. In any case, all terminated immediately, out of the blue. Those are all, I believe, statutory offices. I know the Office of Civil Rights is. So you really can’t abolish those. Except when you do. So that’s where we are.
