Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

5. Department of Homeland Security · Notable · Needs Congress

Eliminate the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman

Partially done

165 5. Department of Homeland Security

“OIDO. The Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman should be eliminated. This requires a statutory change in Section 106 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    DHS's own published organizational chart, dated 2026-05-19, no longer carries the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman. The chart shows one ombudsman box -- the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman -- and OIDO is absent from it. This is the first Primary record of the office's disappearance to sit alongside the reporting, and it corroborates the functional finding rather than replacing it. The Status stays `partial`: section 106 is still on the statute book, so the elimination the Quote asks for has not happened in law.

  2. Partially done

    The office stopped operating during the 2026 DHS funding lapse and did not reopen. Its acting deputy ombudsman said in a court declaration that staffing had fallen from about 100 at the start of 2025; DHS said Congress had done it, though the DHS appropriation enacted 2026-04-30 did not direct a closure. That is the ask's object actually dark rather than routed around, which under §3b's eliminates-versus-routes-around rule is a piece delivered.

  3. Attempted

    DHS issued reduction-in-force notices to all employees of the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, alongside CRCL and the CIS Ombudsman, with a spokesperson calling the three offices internal adversaries. The Quote itself says eliminating OIDO requires a statutory change to section 106 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020; Congress has done nothing, and on this date the office was still operating. Executive downsizing against a Requires-Congress abolition ask is `attempted`.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

The 2026-05-19 chart is the Primary source #278 and #286 could not find when they were first researched; it is added here because this Quote’s object is OIDO alone. An org chart is evidence of function, not a substitute for it, and that holds here: the functional evidence is NPR’s 2026-05-07 report that the office has wound down and its acting deputy ombudsman’s court declaration.

  • Trail: #278 (partial, dismantle the supporting components) and #286 (partial, soft-close ineffective offices), both researched earlier, both on the same instruments. This item is the narrow ask that names OIDO, and it lands on the same Status for the same reason.
  • Not done: the statutory office survives, and DHS told a court in May 2025 that each of the three offices “continues to exist and will perform its statutorily required functions”.
  • Litigation lead from that earlier research: Kennedy Human Rights Center v. DHS, D.D.C. 1:25-cv-01270 — docket not readable without authentication.
Action
eliminate
Object
Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman
ID
445