Amidst the government shutdown, inspectors who oversee the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers have stopped working. At the same time, ICE continues its operations during the shutdown. ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight falls under the Department of Homeland Security. Because of the Big Beautiful Bill, ICE secured $150 billion that has helped the agency stay afloat; meanwhile, many federal workers have been laid off or furloughed due to the shutdown. While ICE has acquired funding to continue its function, the agency has taken advantage of the government shutdown and targeted offices that are viewed as hurdles in ICE’s crackdown on immigration.
ICE has the funds and resources necessary to continue operations, even for its oversight agency. However, the agency has shuttered the key office that keeps ICE in check and provides public transparency for the conditions of detention centers.
2025 has been the deadliest year for immigrants in detention facilities, with ICE’s inspectors tracking over 150 lapses in self-harm incidents and death counts that have reached new highs in the last two decades. The brutal conditions immigrants are kept in deteriorate their health, and ICE’s response is to target offices holding the agency accountable.
The louver over this office is a display of President Donald Trump’s administration’s clear lack of concern for immigrants. Instead of apportioning part of the hundred billion dollars in funding to the inspection office, the administration has capitalized on the shutdown to furlough inspectors to achieve political ends.
As DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin stated, “We hope Democrats will open up the government swiftly so that this office can resume its work.”
Yet, ICE has chosen to disband ODO because playing political football with the lives of immigrants would offer them more leverage in the eyes of the American public.
ICE is committed to hunting down and detaining migrants, but not to preserving undocumented migrants’ humanity. ICE’s detainee population is upwards of 61,000, with immigrants living in overcrowded facilities with limited access to beds, showers and medical support — which are sometimes unavailable. Without proper oversight, ICE detention facilities go unchecked, while migrants suffer in silence in facilities that already overlook their well-being.
As the volume of detainees increases, the need for oversight has become essential. The government shutdown has laid the grounds for the degradation of immigrants to continue, except this time, ICE will bear no oversight in migrants’ dehumanization.
