DHS issues RIF notices and a department-wide stop-work order shutting down CRCL, OIDO, and CISOM

Every GS employee of the three offices received a RIF notice stating the reason was the "dissolution" of their office, with separation dates of May 23, 2025, and was simultaneously placed on administrative leave and ordered to stop work — a departure from the default rule that employees remain on duty during the 60-day notice period. The DHS human-resources official administering the RIF testified she had never in a nearly 30-year federal career seen every position in an office abolished. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the offices "have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining [the department's] mission," and that DHS would "streamline oversight to remove roadblocks to enforcement"; a DHS statement characterized the offices as "internal adversaries that slow down operations." On that date 778 complaints were pending with CRCL and 388 with OIDO; roughly 600 CRCL investigations froze. Reporting on the frozen caseload identified, among the pending group complaints, one concerning access to medical care for a pod of transgender detainees at the ICE facility in Aurora, Colorado. The stop-work order also halted CRCL's PREA sexual-abuse intake, disability-discrimination investigations, and trafficking-survivor confidentiality work.