I am always afraid that I spend too much time on a single topic when I’m doing my research. The truth is, a lot of the time I do research on something, I actually put other stuff aside for a later date that I may be waiting to hear back from a different source or get a FOIA request in.
Those can take forever. Despite being on a timeline, they can play little games like saying “the information you are requesting is not present in the way you requested it” and such. So sometimes I have to go back and rewrite the entire request and deal with that stuff. That’s not important, I expect bureaucracy to suck. Especially when it comes to protecting the people.
Other times I will have something that seems like it is missing a single little piece to make the story click. I honestly do my best not to just theorize things and I always prefer to actually have the proof or at least the mechanism in place before I make a claim.
I think out of all things I’ve covered, between the Epstein files and ICE, those may be the two I unfortunately know inside out. That isn’t a brag. I wish I could wash both those topics out of my brain since they are in my psyche.
In fact, I’ve had dreams that I’ve been chased by ICE agents. I’ve had dreams that they have broken into my house. Not because I worry about things that never happen, but because in my research I have seen how many times they have actually done it time and time again.
That’s why unless there is something that is really important that happens or develops, when I get a news article about ICE I file it away for later. It’s been the way I can save my own mental health from this constant assault and barrage. Unfortunately, today is one of those days that something important happened.
Per NPR’s reporting, The Office of Detention Oversight (ODO), created to conduct internal inspections, and the Immigration Detention Ombudsman’s office (OIDO), tasked with investigating detainee deaths, have both had budgets gutted and suffered mass layoffs.
I know very few people are as familiar with the way that ICE operates like I am, and for that be thankful. What is important is to understand what both of these offices are and do. Starting with the ODO, think of it as the Health Inspector of the detention centers.
Think of a restaurant health inspection. Someone from outside the restaurant strolls in, checks the cooler temperatures and makes sure there isn’t shit all over the floor of the walk-in, they check the handwashing station, make sure everything is trying to remain somewhat healthy. Afterwards they make a report and post a grade in the window. The inspector does not give a shit if the food tastes good or bad. The inspector cares whether the kitchen is run in a way that won’t make everyone who eats there sick.
The OIDO isn’t there to make sure everything is clean, instead it wants the survey at the bottom of the receipt. It is there to make sure that if something happened, they can check it. If someone is denied dental care, they are the ones who you tell. If you sat in a restaurant and someone spit in your food, you have the server bring the manager. If the manager tells you that it isn’t spit, it’s just flavor spice, then everyone in the restaurant will be ‘us vs you.’
The OIDO is the landlord of the restaurant who will listen to you and they will take your complaint and truly investigate it. They are there to make sure that when something happens that is fucked up, the place doesn’t just bury your complaint. It actually has a chance to be looked into.
OIDO and ODO were part of four separate bodies that were designed to supervise detention centers. DHS Office of Inspector General, and DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties make up the other two. What is important about this is out of all four, ODO is the only one that was INSIDE ICE. They were staffed by federal inspectors that physically walked the facilities every day.
ODO focused on 15 or 16 “core standards.” They specifically looked at the things that had the greatest impact on the life, health, and safety of detained people. In practice that meant things like medical care, suicide prevention, food service and storage, use of force, strip search protocols, and incident reporting.
The most important thing that the ODO did was conduct investigations into all deaths in detention. Death reviews were based on medical and other records, interviews with medical, custodial, and ICE staff, and in most cases a security and healthcare compliance report from Creative Corrections, a management and consulting firm contracted by ICE.
The reviews included the person’s immigration and criminal history and a timeline of relevant medical and detention events, and concluded with specific findings on which detention standards were violated.
When someone died in a cell or in the facility, a team from a separate chain of command examined what happened in the hours before the person died, and any rules that were broken or bent were documented and put in the public record.
ODO documented in March 2024 that people at Moshannon Valley Processing Center were being made to refuse care they did not understand, with non-medical staff signing the forms. Twenty-one months later a man is dead at that facility and the official record says he refused care. They were the government response to a call for accountability.
It is also important to understand that they were created by the government. So accountability comes with terms like “a facility had no seizure protocol and no doctor,” but they couldn’t say things like “that is why he died.”
As all of us have experienced far too many times across this administration, if there is accountability then there is a problem. So this administration does whatever it can to kill and limit anything that may force them to be accountable for their actions.
During the 2025 shutdown, DHS’s own shutdown plan put only about eight percent of employees on furlough. That’s right, the agency that had gotten $170 billion for immigration and border operations had to actually furlough employees. No, the math doesn’t track. Yes, that’s the point.
In that 8% that they cut? ODO was entirely furloughed. The safeguard for people in ICE detention was completely cut. Yes, I stated it twice because it is that important to understand.
In FY2024, ODO conducted over 70 detention center inspections. You know, the year before they suddenly had a massive influx of people being arrested for not being white.
More than 60,000 people were in custody nationwide with no independent inspection or accountability. The furlough of ODO occurred even as DHS’s press and communications staff remained fully operational. They made the press staff essential. People who make sure that the rules are followed are optional.
Then ICE went and modified its entire inspection policy. It went from semiannual inspections to annual or even biennial reviews depending on facility type. ICE claims that ‘smaller’ facilities receive biennial rated inspections. But some non-dedicated facilities hold just as many people as dedicated ones. Five of them hold an average of more than 500 detainees.
Ready for this to get really nasty? The budget in April 2026 that funded DHS outside of ICE and CBP earmarked $20 million for detention facility inspections by the DHS Inspector General. The measure funding ICE and CBP, passed in July 2026, does not include requirements for ODO inspections. The congressional mandate that existed since October 2022 is gone from the appropriation.
There was a 36.25% decline in ICE detention facility inspection reports published in 2025 compared to the previous year. As of late June 2026, 15 of the 45 immigration detention facilities holding 500 or more people had not been inspected in over 12 months. Five had no inspection on record at all. The Florida Everglades facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz” was never inspected by ODO at any point before it closed in June.
At Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California, state inspectors found medical and detention staffing inadequate for the surge and detainees reported being unable to get timely treatment even in emergencies. At Adelanto’s most recent ODO inspection in September 2025, officials recorded no medical deficiencies. Four detainees at Adelanto have died since Trump took office, three of them after that inspection.
Articles like this are difficult. I mean that in all seriousness. They take me trying to hold an agency that refuses accountability, accountable. It is like ice skating uphill, and we all know what Wesley Snipes as Blade said about people who do that.
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Yet with all of that, the number of deficiencies dropped by nearly 70% between fiscal years 2022 and 2025. The proportion of facilities receiving a “Superior” rating nearly tripled since fiscal year 2024, after having declined by 61% between fiscal years 2022 and 2024.
Deborah Fleischaker, former ICE acting Chief of Staff, on the glowing recent marks: “I would not be surprised if ODO understood its job to be to bless most of what they see and only say anything in the most significant circumstances.”
Understand that with all of the deaths in custody that have occurred, ODO is still claiming that “Superior” ratings tripled. For context on that, since 2019, inspections detected at least one deficiency in almost 90% of the centers reviewed, including failures in suicide prevention, inadequate food storage, poor medical care, and errors in recording incidents.
The OIDO got a different treatment altogether. Remember the people outside who were supposed to be the safeguard to ensure that things were investigated fairly and honestly so we can maintain some sense of civility and pretend that our laws matter?
In the start of 2025, the office had over 100 people. That isn’t a large force, but it is important work. As of the start of 2026? Five people. The appeal door is gone. Now when the facility denies your grievance, that is the final answer. Don’t like it? Fuck off.
The slaughter of this department can be traced directly back to that sack of shit that once bragged about walking into the dressing rooms of teenage girls and admitted to wanting to have sex with his own daughter. Not relevant for this article, just important to remember that he is a self-admitted pedophile.
On March 6, 2025, DHS’s Chief Human Capital Officer, Roland Edwards, sent a memo to the Office of Personnel Management saying DHS would conduct a “100% RIF” for OIDO, the CIS Ombudsman, and CRCL. RIF is reduction in force. It’s a fancy way to say cut them. The justification behind the memo? “Determinations made by the President, and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, that certain functions, programs, and capabilities of DHS do not advance mission of the Department to protect our homeland.”
That sentence is important because it actually gets around a bunch of legal hijinks and challenges. They didn’t claim the office was illegal or unnecessary, just that it wasn’t part of the mission. They reclassified it as no longer part of the operation. A DHS spokesperson stated the offices were closed because they are “internal adversaries that slow down operations.”
Nearly all employees of all three offices were placed on administrative leave with separation dates of May 23, 2025. Administrative leave means still on payroll, forbidden to work. For two months, the office existed, the staff were paid, and nobody was permitted to investigate anything. That two-month gap is when the deportation surge was running.
On April 7, 2025, DHS announced that qualifying employees from CRCL, CISOMB, and OIDO could participate in a Workforce Transition Program, which offered financial incentives in exchange for a release of claims. That is a fancy way to say you sign away your right to challenge what was done to you. Cash now, no lawsuit ever. This is how you make sure the people who know the most about what was destroyed cannot be plaintiffs.
On April 24, 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the Southern Border Communities Coalition, and the Urban Justice Center sued, arguing the closures exceeded DHS’s authority and violated both the separation of powers and the Administrative Procedure Act. The case went to District Judge Ana C. Reyes.
Judge Reyes denied the plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order to halt the workforce cuts. Instead, on May 23, 2025, the court ordered the government to publicly announce that CRCL, OIDO, and the CIS Ombudsman offices remained open and able to perform statutory functions.
Guess what happened? They declared the offices open. That’s it. Lights on, sign says open, business inside is completely empty. Well, almost. They did bring in five people. Five people, holding statutory authority over 220 active detention facilities and roughly 60,000 people in custody.
During the government shutdown in the fall of 2025, DHS said that immigration oversight officers were not working. Enforcement never paused. The press office never paused. The five remaining oversight employees stopped.
No one said anything.
Have you caught the second villain in the story yet? Sure, the Trump admin is fucking terrible and evil, but the fact that NPR and people like myself are the only ones who are drawing attention to this is the real crime.
This is why I always say,
Stay loud, stay informed, stay dangerous.
-Nicholas J. Orcutt
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