Trump official tells court he’s never seen document his office is required to enforce

President Donald Trump’s Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman (OIDO), who is supposed to protect the human rights of incarcerated immigrants, did not even read the 2011 standards book that he is required by law to implement.

“[T]he guy the Trump admin installed as the leader of the Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman testified that he'd never even heard of or seen a copy of the 2011 National Performance-Based Detention Standards — the very ones his office are required to enforce!” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, posted on X. Reichlin-Melnick was responding to a post by Third Way Director of Senior Policy Sarah Pierce, who wrote “People are dying in immigration detention at record levels. Meanwhile, the Trump appointee in charge of detention oversight works about 5 hours a week — [and] testified he wasn’t even aware of the detention standards he’s supposed to enforce.”

“A top DHS official in charge of the detention oversight office had not heard of the office before he became its acting ombudsman,” reported The Guardian. “He also had never seen the 15-year-old manual that outlines the standards used to manage conditions in immigration detention centers, according to a transcript of a deposition given on 3 December by the official, Joseph Guy, deputy chief of staff to [former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi] Noem and acting ombudsman for the OIDO.”

The Guardian also reported that a total of 32 people died in immigration custody in 2025, the deadliest year for American immigration enforcement in more than two decades. Despite this, “the Trump administration radically limited the methods people can use to submit civil rights complaints, including, for example, that complaints to the watchdog teams are now only accepted in English.”

In response to these allegations, an unnamed spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said the agency “remains committed to civil rights protections and is streamlining oversight. In the past, these offices had obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining DHS’s mission by going beyond their statutory missions. Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often functioned as internal adversaries as opposed to neutral oversight bodies.”

Trump’s draconian anti-immigrant policies are very controversial in America right now. In February a Washington Post survey found that among the 60 percent of Americans who oppose Trump, they frequently identified his immigration policies as a reason. Trump was criticized for things like “detaining and deporting immigrants with no criminal background,” granting “ICE all the power they have,” authorizing “Gestapo style of deporting illegal immigrants... even killing at least two U.S. citizens. We are a ‘nation of immigrants’” and “everything with ICE, deporting immigrants, etc.”

Similarly the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops condemned Trump’s immigration policies as antithetical to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

"At its core, this case is not solely a question about citizenship status or the Fourteenth Amendment,” the bishops stated. “It is a question of whether the law will affirm or deny the equal worth of those born within our common community — whether the law will protect the human dignity of all God’s children."

The group continued: "Birthright citizenship accords with the Church’s teachings concerning the State’s obligation to uphold and protect human dignity because it treats birth within a community as a sufficient and objective basis for political belonging. The Church teaches that equal human dignity is inherent in the mere fact of personhood and does not depend on citizenship, immigration status, or parentage.”

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