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President Donald Trump’s administration used his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to shutter the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which investigated allegations of abuse against migrants in the department’s custody.
Recently, the Trump administration moved to raid the DHS civil rights office’s coffers to fund the president’s $200 million propaganda campaign — and only backed off after Rolling Stone published this story. The ads feature Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem repeatedly thanking Trump and warning immigrants to leave now or avoid coming to America.
According to a report from ProPublica last week, DHS’ Civil Rights and Civil Liberties office was shuttered last month and most of its staff was fired as part of Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts. The office closure resulted in the effective suspension of over 600 complaints against DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
“All the oversight in DHS was eliminated today,” one worker wrote in a text, ProPublica reported. The civil rights and civil liberties office was formally shuttered just days after the Trump administration shipped hundreds of migrants, without due process, to a notorious torture prison in El Salvador, as part of a financial arrangement with the Central American nation’s president, who calls himself the “world’s coolest dictator.”
Since February, DHS has been leading an exceedingly expensive domestic and international ad campaign focused on thanking the president for his immigration crackdown and “for closing the border.” Speaking at a Conservative Political Action Conference dinner in February, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem stated that President Trump directed her to tape these taxpayer-funded ads — and asked that she thank him in them.
“I want you to do [ads] for the border, and I want you to do those everywhere, not just in the United States, but I want them around the world. I want you to tell people not to come to this country if they’re going to come here illegally,” Noem recalled Trump saying. “I want you in the ads, and I want your face in the ads … but I want the first ad, I want you to thank me. I want you to thank me for closing the border.”
The Trump administration selected two Republican-linked consulting firms to work on the ad campaign, without a traditional competitive bidding process — asserting there was “an unusual and compelling urgency” requiring them to move fast. The administration also exempted the ad campaign from DOGE’s review of discretionary spending through federal contracts and grants.
As it turns out, the administration was ready to use funds from the now-defunct DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to pay for these ads.
According to federal procurement documents reviewed by Rolling Stone, in March, the funding office for the contract listed the DHS Office of Public Affairs as its funding source. In a separate document produced in April, the funding office was changed to Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. (The document, again, exempts the ad spending from DOGE’s review.)
Two hours after this story was published, the Trump administration modified its procurement website to change how it’s funding his propaganda ads. The funds will once again come from the DHS Office of Public Affairs, rather than its Civil Rights office.
Prior to our story, the DHS oversight office was about to be turned into a petty cash fund for Trump’s anti-immigrant propaganda, at a time when civil rights protections for migrants in the United States are desperately needed.
The first months of the Trump administration have seen green card holders be stripped of their residency and black-bagged into DHS custody in retaliation for criticism of Israel’s abuses in Gaza.
Hundreds of Venezuelan and Salvadoran migrants were essentially renditioned to a gulag known for torture and human rights abuses in El Salvador without any sort of due process or criminal conviction. In a Monday meeting with Salvadoran president Nayib Bukle, Trump affirmed that his administration is exploring ways to deport U.S. citizens. On top of it all, the Trump administration is fighting tooth and nail to ensure that they’re allowed to continue flouting established civil and human rights laws in their immigration crackdown.
While the Trump administration’s defiance of the Supreme Court is front-page material, the gutting of enforcement and oversight departments within executive agencies is part of the administration’s behind-the-scenes demolition derby.
You almost saw the results on your TV — in ads where Noem proclaims: “Thank you, President Donald J. Trump, for securing our border, for deporting criminal illegal immigrants, and for putting America first.”
Update: This story has been updated to note that, following publication, the Trump administration modified its procurement website to change how it’s funding the DHS ad campaign. It will now be funded by the DHS Office of Public Affairs, rather than its Civil Rights Civil Liberties office.
