Kristi Noem shrugs off oversight as detainee deaths surge: report

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is casting off government oversight as she carries out President Donald Trump's mass deportation orders, according to a report.

At least 11 people have died while in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement since the start of the fiscal year — one short of the 12 deaths reported in all of last year — and Republicans just handed the agency the DHS secretary oversees a historic budget increase. But Noem has shut down three oversight offices and cut staff down to the bone, reported CNN.

“People’s lives are at risk,” said Michelle Brané, a former immigration detention ombudsman, who said there were possibly far more deaths than reported.

DHS is opening new detention sites, including one in the Everglades dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," and private detention contractors CoreCivic and GEO are reopening or expanding sites around the country to house migrants captured by ICE agents — which worries civil rights advocates.

“As the Trump administration is doubling down on immigration enforcement and the number of people in custody is rapidly increasing, we should be increasing oversight, not eliminating it,” said Katie Shepherd, one of the hundreds of oversight employees affected by the cuts.

Shepard was among dozens of whistleblowers who submitted a disclosure to Congress in May the dangers they saw — including inhumane conditions, neglect and abuse — in Trump's mass deportations and detentions, and she said the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties where she had worked had more than 500 open investigations underway when she left.

“It’s problematic in many different ways,” she said.

DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin told CNN that the department remains “committed to civil rights” and claimed the CRCL office where Shepard had worked "sadly ... actually undermined civil rights protections as well as basic federal law-enforcement."

“All legally required functions are still being carried out — but in a more efficient and cost-effective way, and without compromising the department’s core mission of securing the homeland,” McLaughlin said. “Oversight offices continue to receive and open new complaints and investigations.”