Briefing: Quick updates on Immigration + Federal Workforce
Our Immigration and Equitable Federal Workforce teams both delivered updates this week. Before we get into their briefings, a request: Several of our teams are looking for help interpreting the more arcane legal maneuvers we encounter. If you have legal expertise to lend and would be willing to join us as a volunteer subject advisor, please get in touch!
Immigration
The Immigration team added 28 events to our timeline this week, including one new death in ICE custody. A Mexican American dual citizen has sued DHS after they detained and deported him. The Illinois Accountability Commission has delivered its final report documenting DHS violence and rights violations in Chicago, and a separate review of internal ICE records revealed 780 documented uses of chemical weapons or physical force on immigrants in detention facilities across the country. Immigrants incarcerated at the North Lake Processing Center in Michigan, the largest ICE facility in the Midwest, have begun a hunger strike to protest detention conditions.
In this update, we added several entries from last year on a tactic we’ve been following since reports first surfaced: The administration is transferring control of public land along the US–Mexico border to the military, which allows military personnel to act as border police in those zones. Our “militarization” tag collects these and related attempts to use troops for domestic enforcement.
Equitable Federal Workforce
The Equitable Federal Workforce page added 4 events to our timeline. Yet more job cuts seem likely at the IRS, and leadership is raising the alarm about plans to fill the gaps with technology, including generative AI. Lawmakers demanded that the Office of Personnel Management drop its attempt to force insurance companies to provide personally identifiable medical information about federal employees and their family members. The scale of this proposed HIPAA violation is massive: All told, it would route more than 8 million peoples’ most sensitive data — including detailed information about prescriptions, diagnoses, abortions, gender-affirming care, mental health, and other private health matters — into insecure systems that open extraordinary risk of leaks and misuse. FEMA reinstated 15 whistleblowers who’d been placed on leave after signing a letter criticizing staffing cuts at the agency.
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