Project 2025 Proposes Restructuring DHS Civil Rights and Oversight Offices, Eliminating Ombuds Positions, and Moving ORR to DHS
Project 2025 proposes eliminating the Immigration Detention Ombudsman (OIDO) and Citizenship Ombudsman (CISOMB), stripping the Civil Rights Office (CRCL) of independence, and moving the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to DHS—centralizing immigration enforcement and removing independent oversight. As of this writing, these specific statutory eliminations and the ORR transfer have not been fully executed, but the administration has taken steps to undermine IG independence and restrict DHS civil rights communications.
The Project 2025 blueprint for DHS treats independent oversight as an obstacle rather than a safeguard. Proposals to eliminate OIDO and CISOMB, and to absorb CRCL into the General Counsel's office under a political appointee, would remove the very mechanisms that ensure detention facilities meet basic standards and that immigration benefits are adjudicated fairly. This is not about efficiency—it is about removing accountability so that enforcement can operate without checks. The downstream security cost is clear: when oversight is gutted, conditions in detention deteriorate, legal abuses go unchallenged, and the U.S. loses credibility on human rights, which allies and international institutions use as a benchmark for cooperation.
A smarter approach would be to strengthen these ombuds offices with dedicated resources and clear authority, not eliminate them. Instead of moving ORR to DHS—which would subordinate refugee resettlement to enforcement priorities—DHS and HHS should maintain a formal coordination mechanism that protects refugee protections while ensuring border security. A restained policy would invest in independent oversight as a tool for legitimacy and operational improvement, recognizing that civil rights protections and effective immigration enforcement are not zero-sum. This aligns with the Quincy Institute's emphasis on using diplomacy and humanitarian partnership, not unilateral enforcement, to address migration at its roots.
Original source — excerpted
project2025 Project 2025 ch. 6: Department of State (pp 197-199)"— 164 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise that DHS will cease reporting on such matters. For other congressional reports, OLA should implement a sunset date so that Congress must regularly demonstrate the need for specific data. In both OPA and OLA, a change in mission and culture is needed. The clients of both components are the President and the Secretary, not the media, external organizations, or Congress. OPA and OLA should change from being compliance correspondents for outside entities airing grievances to serving as messengers and advocates for the President and the Secretary. OFFICE OF OPERATIONS COORDINATION (OPS) OPS was originally conceived by then-Secretary Jeh Johnson as an entity tasked with coordinating cross-DHS assets on an as-needed basis using a joint operations approach. This role is particularly challenging because of the disparate nature of mission sets across DHS. OPS should absorb a very small number of tactical intelligence professionals from I&A as the rest of I&A is shut down. Such intelligence officers would be a subordinate element within OPS placed within the National Operations Center. The intelligence officers would provi…"