Politics

DHS watchdog warns shutdown could imperil immigration enforcement oversight

Published

2 months ago

February 15, 2026

The partial government shutdown that went into effect Saturday is throwing the fate of oversight at the Department of Homeland Security into peril, with the department’s independent watchdog warning a lapse in funding could jeopardize several ongoing investigations.

DHS’s inspector general currently has eight active probes into the Trump administration’s nationwide immigration crackdown, including reviews of the use of facial recognition and allegations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents using excessive force.

But with a lapse in funding for DHS, the Office of the Inspector General has been forced to suspend approximately 85 percent of its audits, evaluations and inspections, according to the OIG.

Congressional Democrats are demanding sweeping reforms to ICE and Customs and Border Patrol before they’ll vote to fund DHS, including requirements that immigration enforcement agents wear body cameras and display their ID numbers and last names. With Senate Republicans and the White House refusing to budge on several key demands — including a proposed prohibition on federal agents wearing masks — the department is likely to remain unfunded for at least 10 days.

Democrats in Congress first asked Joseph Cuffari, the DHS inspector general President Donald Trump appointed during his first term, to investigate the use of force by ICE agents last June. The lawmakers, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, wrote to Cuffari earlier this month asking him to expedite the probe, citing the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis as underscoring the “urgent need” for moving quickly.

Republicans have raised concern about the shutdown’s effect on DHS agencies like TSA and FEMA, although it will likely take weeks for the public to start feeling the effects of the funding lapse.

Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement that “OIG investigations provide transparency and accountability, and any delay in funding will only disrupt these important efforts,” adding that the DHS appropriations bill passed in the House provided “critical funding” for the office.

“As we experience yet another DHS shutdown because Senate Democrats refused to pass this legislation, I urge them to negotiate in good faith so we can ensure these resources and the resources for numerous other components, like FEMA and TSA, are not held hostage because of Washington’s dysfunction,” he said.

ICE, on the other hand, is largely insulated from the effects of the shutdown, with GOP lawmakers having appropriated billions of dollars for the agency in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year.

But the lapse in funding raises several potential obstacles to the ability of members of Congress and investigators to conduct oversight of the agency. During the last government shutdown, ICE quietly furloughed most of its congressional relations team and blocked lawmakers from visiting immigration detention facilities. (Prior to the shutdown, Democratic lawmakers on several occasions clashed with DHS over their attempts to inspect detention facilities.)

And with approximately 60 percent of the OIG’s workforce furloughed — including auditors, data scientists and inspectors — only special agents like criminal investigators and personnel whose work is supported by secondary funding sources, like the Disaster Relief Fund, can continue working through the shutdown, per the office.

The effect of the funding lapse for the inspector general’s work is also slated to affect the office’s reviews of the Secret Service’s handling of the July 2024 assassination attempt against Trump, in addition to probes of DHS’s cybersecurity and counterintelligence operations.

The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency — an independent government entity that lays out annual legislative priorities focused on government oversight and accountability — has for years called on Congress to establish authority for IGs to continue oversight during government shutdowns.

Mark Greenblatt, who served as the Department of the Interior’s inspector general from 2019 until 2025, said while criminal investigations can sometimes continue despite a lapse in funding, IG offices are forced to pause oversight reviews, ceding valuable time on sensitive audits during shutdowns.

“These situations are raw. They need an independent voice providing facts on what’s happening on the ground with respect to these sensitive issues,” said Greenblatt, who was one of several IGs dismissed by Trump last year. “When they push the pause button on these things, they’re not delivering for the American people, and that, to me, is the problem.”

Democrats have accused DHS Secretary Kristi Noem of deliberately attempting to stymie the OIG’s ongoing probes. In a letter sent to Noem earlier this month, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) cautioned that “repeated tacit threats from your Office of the Secretary to DHS OIG may have already succeeded in weakening DHS OIG’s operational independence.”

That warning came after Duckworth met with Cuffari to discuss why her request for an independent investigation into use of force by federal agents during ICE’s “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago was denied. During the meeting, she wrote in the letter, Duckworth learned that DHS’s general counsel advised the OIG on several occasions that Noem has the power to halt its investigations.

Cabinet secretaries are empowered by a 1978 law to prevent the OIG from carrying out audits or investigations if they determine the reviews could put national security at risk.

“This broad authority effectively empowers you to select from a broad range of pretextual options to unilaterally prevent or halt any ‘independent’ DHS OIG investigation, regardless of your true intent,” Duckworth wrote.

No DHS secretary has ever invoked the provision, Duckworth wrote in the letter.

Politics

Trump’s white supremacy refugee policy is in full effect

Published

2 hours ago

April 12, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Apr. 11, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

The United States once prided itself on being the final destination of people around the world seeking refuge from war and strife. The State Department reports that America has welcomed a total of more than 3.1 million refugees to its shores since the U.S. refugee program was established in 1980. But President Donald Trump has decimated the number of applicants who were granted refugee status — and those who made it through are overwhelmingly the beneficiaries of an insidious shift in policy to favor white South Africans.

Of the 4,999 refugees admitted, 4,496 were from South Africa; the remaining three newcomers were from Afghanistan.

Last November, the Trump administration announced it would be putting the lowest cap on the number of refugees that would be admitted in the refugee program’s decadeslong history. Only 7,500 applicants will be provided refugee status in fiscal 2026. That’s a 94% drop from the 125,000 cap the Biden administration had in place for each of the two fiscal years before Trump’s second term began.

The latest numbers from the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration only add insult to injury. As of March 31, there have been 4,499 refugees admitted to the U.S., more than half the annual cap. Of those, 4,496 were from South Africa; the remaining three newcomers were from Afghanistan.

“The largest share of South African refugees — over 500 — have arrived in Texas, followed by Florida and California,” The Christian Science Monitor reported last week. The bureau’s data doesn’t include race or ethnicity. But the memo in the Federal Register establishing the 7,500-person cap also required that those slots “primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa … and other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands.” It’s no great leap then to presume the South African arrivals this year are all white.

While Trump’s war on undocumented immigrants has hogged the spotlight since January 2025, the administration’s campaign against legal immigration has been no less pernicious. The White House’s chief anti-immigration hard-linerdeputy chief of staff Stephen Millerhas been busy both removing protections for those who have already made it to the U.S. and discouraging those who are hoping to gain entry.

The Guardian reported last fall that Miller, who is also the White House homeland security adviser, has made significant inroads into influencing operations at Foggy Bottom. A top anti-immigration ally, Christopher Landau, is second-in-command at the State Department. Much like his past calls haranguing Department of Homeland Security staffers about deportations and arrests, Miller has also reportedly instated daily calls “to drill the diplomats on visa and immigration issues.”

White South Africans have been one major loophole to Miller’s immigration gatekeeping. Trump has been yelling about the supposed plight of the country’s minority for years now, buying fully into far-right claims that a “genocide” is being carried out against Afrikaner farmers. The truth is that white farmers control about 75% of the country’s farmland and still make up the vast majority of senior positions in South African corporations. As the Rev. Nontombi Naomi Tutu wrote for MS NOW last year“If white South Africans are experiencing genocide, then it is truly an enviable genocide.”

Concerned for white South Africans’ imagined hardship, in the face of a new law that replaced an apartheid-era ruleTrump issued an executive order in February 2025 cutting off foreign aid to South Africa. He also directed his government to “prioritize humanitarian relief, including admission and resettlement through the United States Refugee Admissions Program, for Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.” Three months later, even while busy stripping parolees awaiting asylum claims of their legal status, the first several dozen white South Africans landed in the U.S.

The cruelty of this racist policy is only exacerbated when you consider the compounded effect of the other actions Trump has taken.

The cruelty of this racist policy is only exacerbated when you consider the compounded effect of the other actions Trump has taken. The administration slashed the foreign aid budget to ribbons, leading to a projected spike in deaths worldwide. Thousands of applicants from the Global South who were told to wait in line have been shunted to the back in favor of an unoppressed minority whose skin just happens to be the right color for this administration.

None of this is meant to directly shame the white South African immigrants who have taken advantage of this policy. The opportunity to emigrate to the U.S. is a dream shared by millions across the world, so it is hard to fault them for taking an opportunity when presented to them. Their new communities should welcome them with open arms, as all newly arrived immigrants should be. It’s hard not to hope, however, that there is a twinge of introspection in the back of their minds when they tell the story of how they came to be so fortunate as to find themselves in America.

Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House.

Politics

2028 Democrats say anyone can win. Voters aren’t so sure.

Published

24 hours ago

April 11, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

NEW YORK — A fear of losing again is already shaping how Democrats think about 2028.

Chants of “run again!” reverberated through the packed room as Kamala Harris spoke Friday at the National Action Network convention, a gathering of Black voters, lawmakers and power brokers that saw drop-ins from a steady stream of potential presidential candidates. But several Black attendees openly questioned whether anyone other than a straight, white man can win the White House.

“The Democratic Party, they’re going to have to consider … who can win? Who can win, Black, white, who can win?” the Rev. Kim Williams, 63, a New Yorker and registered independent said in an interview.

“I don’t think [the country is] ready for another different type of person,” said Annette Wilcox, a 69-year old New Yorker.

It’s an open question the party is grappling with in the wake of Harris’ decisive 2024 loss to President Donald Trump. Conversations with a dozen people on the sidelines of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s gathering found some lingering concerns that America remains too bigoted — and that as a result, the desire to diversify the highest reaches of government is in tension with the desire to win.

In interviews, several of the prospective 2028 Democrats themselves argued that anyone can win. They poured into the midtown Manhattan ballroom over the week to build their relationships with Black voters for what became a barely-hidden shadow primary.

Sen. Ruben Gallego, a first-term Democrat who won statewide in Arizona despite Harris losing the state, told Blue Light News on the sidelines of the convention that the party shouldn’t let fear narrow who ultimately runs.

“If you got stuck into this idea of what an ideal character is … you could potentially miss some really great talent,” said Gallego, who leaned intohis identity as a Latino veteran in his 2024 campaign.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, another possible 2028 candidate, said that he doesn’t “know many people back in 2022 who thought that an African American who had never held political office in his life was gonna be the next governor of Maryland.”

“People want to know, does your message meet a moment,” he added.

On stage with Sharpton on Friday, Harris seemed to agree. She made her most explicit overture at running again for the presidency, telling the audience she was “thinking about it” — to loud cheers and applause. Her appearance at the convention energized an otherwise largely staid event.

But even Harris, the first Black and South Asian woman to become vice president, has tacitly acknowledged the limitations of the country.

In her latest book, she divulged that former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — another 2028 contender who also made a pit-stop at NAN — was her top vice presidential pick in 2024. But she didn’t select him because she didn’t believe the country was ready for both a woman of color and a gay man in the White House.

A spokesperson for Harris declined to comment.

Some women, from former first lady Michelle Obama to various convention attendees disappointed by Harris’ 2024 loss, have said the U.S. isn’t ready for a female president.

“I believe the current climate of this country is not ready for a Black woman as president,” Aaliyah Payton, 30, a middle school teacher in the Bronx, said while waiting to see Harris speak on the third day of the convention in a line that spanned far outside the convention room.

“If Kamala Harris is running as a Democrat, and there is another white man also running as a Democrat, she would have a tough time winning,” said 60-year-old Donna Carr, who lives in New Jersey. “It’s a man’s world.”

“I’m not going to lie, it may be too soon,” said 27-year-old New Yorker Justina Peña when asked if Harris should run again.

The same handwringing roiled the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, and voters ultimately selected Joe Biden — a more moderate straight white man — to block Trump from winning a second consecutive term.

The debate within the Democratic Party over what kind of candidate is electable played out again most recently in Texas, where the Democratic Senate primary was defined by tensions over race and concerns over which candidate could unify enough Democrats, independents and disillusioned Republicans to flip the red state. Voters chose seminarian James Talarico, a white man, over political firebrand Jasmine Crockett, a Black woman, in the end.

“We saw it with the race with Crockett, and I saw a woman say she wanted to vote for Crockett, but she knew she could not win against [a] white male Republican,” said Williams, the 63-year-old reverend.

Now, those conversations are already emerging for 2028 before a single Democrat has officially announced a bid for the White House. The question over 2028 ambitions hovered over Moore, Gallego, Harris, Buttigieg, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and California Rep. Ro Khanna this week — and while nobody said they officially are, nobody ruled it out. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly are slated to speak on Saturday.

Buttigieg has dismissed concerns over his viability, including in a direct response to Harris’ revelation of why she didn’t choose him as a running mate in 2024.

“My experience in politics has been that the way that you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what they think you’re going to do for their lives, not on categories,” Buttigieg told POLITICO in a September interview.“Politics is about the results we can get for people and not about these other things.”

Some of the Black voters at the conference similarly expressed frustration with the idea that candidates’ identities should be a consideration in the looming 2028 primary.

“My concern — biggest concern — is when we get into a crisis like this in this country, people want to go to the ‘center,’ which usually is right of center in my view. A lot of people get kind of left out,” said Wilcox, the 69-year-old New York voter.

“In my experience, or history I’ve had with the Democratic Party, I feel like when that happens, Black people get tossed to the side.”