Schutt Kyle Doge

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They Don’t Care About Civil Rights”: Trump’s Shuttering of DHS Oversight Arm Freezes 600 Cases, Imperils Human Rights

The closure of the 150-person office, which protected the civil rights of both immigrants and U.S. citizens, strips Homeland Security of its internal guardrails as the Trump administration turns DHS into a mass-deportation machine, analysts say.

by J. David McSwane and Hannah AllamApril 8, 2025,

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On Feb. 10, more than a dozen Department of Homeland Security officials joined a video conference to discuss an obscure, sparsely funded program overseen by its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. The office, charged with investigating when the national security agency is accused of violating the rights of both immigrants and U.S. citizens, had found itself in the crosshairs of Elon Musk’s secretive Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

It began as a typical briefing, with Homeland Security officials explaining to DOGE a program many describe as a win-win. It had provided some $20 million in recent years to local organizations that provide case workers to keep people in immigration proceedings showing up to court, staff explained, without expensive detentions and ankle monitors.

DOGE leader Kyle Schutt, a technology executive who developed a GOP online fundraising platform, interrupted. He wanted Joseph Mazzara, DHS’s acting general counsel, to weigh in. Mazzara was recently appointed to the post after working for Ken Paxton as both an assistant solicitor general and member of the Texas attorney general’s defense team that beat back public corruption charges.

Schutt had a different interpretation of the program, according to people who attended or were briefed on the meeting.

“This whole program sounds like money laundering,” he said.

Mazzara went further. His facial expressions, his use of profanity and the way he combed his fingers through his hair made clear he was annoyed.

“We should look into civil RICO charges,” Mazzara said.

DHS staff was stunned. The program had been mandated by Congress, yet Homeland Security’s top lawyer was saying it could be investigated under a law reserved for organized crime syndicates.

“I took it as a threat,” one attendee said. “It was traumatizing.”

For many in the office, known internally as CRCL, that moment was a dark forecast of the future. Several said they scrambled to try to fend off the mass firings they were seeing across the rest of President Donald Trump’s administration. They policed language that Trump’s appointees might not like. They hesitated to open complaints on hot-button cases. They reframed their work as less about protecting civil rights and more about keeping the department out of legal trouble.

None of it worked. On March 21, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem shut down the office and fired most of the 150-person staff. As a result, about 600 civil rights abuse investigations were frozen.

“All the oversight in DHS was eliminated today,” one worker texted after the announcement that they’d been fired.

Eight former CRCL officials spoke with ProPublica about the dismantling of the office on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution. Their accounts come at a time when the new administration’s move to weaken oversight of federal agencies has faced legal challenges in the federal courts. In defending its move to shut CRCL, the administration said it was streamlining operations, as it has done elsewhere. “DHS remains committed to civil rights protections but must streamline oversight to remove roadblocks to enforcement,” said DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.

CRCL staff “often functioned as internal adversaries to slow down operations,” McLaughlin added. She did not address questions from ProPublica about the February meeting. Mazzara and Schutt did not reply to requests for comment.

The office’s closure strips Homeland Security of a key internal check and balance, analysts and former staff say, as the Trump administration morphs the agency into a mass-deportation machine. The civil rights team served as a deterrent to border patrol and immigration agents who didn’t want the hassle and paperwork of an investigation, staff said, and its closure signals that rights violations, including those against U.S. citizens, could go unchecked.

The office processed more than 3,000 complaints in fiscal year 2023 — on everything from disabled detainees being unable to access medical care to abuses of power at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and reports of rape at its detention centers. For instance, following reports that ICE had performed facial recognition searches on millions of Maryland drivers, a CRCL investigation led the agency to agree to new oversight; case details have been removed from the DHS website but are available in the internet archive. The office also reported to Congress that it had investigated and confirmed allegations that a child, a U.S. citizen traveling without her parents between Mexico and California, had been sexually abused by Customs and Border Protection agents during a strip search.

Those cases would have gone nowhere without CRCL, its former staffers said.

“Nobody knows where to go without CRCL, and that’s the point,” a senior official said. Speaking of the administration, the official went on, “They don’t want oversight. They don’t care about civil rights and civil liberties.”

The CRCL staff, most of them lawyers, emphasized that their work is not politically motivated, nor is it limited to immigration issues. For instance, sources said the office was investigating allegations that disaster aid workers with the Federal Emergency Management Agency had skipped over houses that displayed signs supporting Trump during the 2024 election.

“The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties touches on everyone,” one fired employee said. “There’s this perception that we’re only focused on immigrants, and that’s just not true.”

Uncertainty and Panic

The final days of the civil rights office unfolded in a cloud of uncertainty and panic, as with other federal offices getting “RIF’d,” the Beltway verb for the government’s “reduction in force.”

Staff members described the weeks before the shutdown as a whittling away of their work. Dozens of investigative memos posted online in a transparency initiative? Deleted from the site. The eight-person team on racial equity issues? Immediately placed on leave. Travel funds to check conditions at detention centers? Reduced to $1.

As fear intensified that the civil rights office would be dismantled, staff tried to lie low. Leaders told staff to stop launching investigations that came from media reports, previously a common avenue for inquiries. Now, only official complaints from the public would be considered.

Staff was particularly frustrated that under this new mandate it couldn’t open an official investigation into the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and legal resident who was arrested for participating in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

CRCL staff was unable to open an investigation into Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest after they were told to stop launching investigations that came from media reports. Credit:Bing Guan/The New York Times/Redux

With dozens of employees spread across branches or working remotely, many civil rights staffers had never met their colleagues — until the Trump administration’s return-to-office order forced them to come in five days a week. By early March, when reality had sunk in that their jobs were likely to be eliminated, they began quietly organizing, setting up encrypted Signal chat groups and sharing updates on lawsuits filed by government workers in other agencies.

“It’s inspiring how federal employees are pushing back and connecting,” one worker said.

Beyond Trump’s mandate to remove all references to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, leaders told staff to omit from memos words such as “however,” which might sound combative, or “stakeholders,” which came across as too warm and fuzzy.

“Daily life was one miserable assignment after the next,” a staffer said. The orders coming down from Trump appointees were intended to “basically tell us how to undo your office.”

In what would be the last days of the office, the atmosphere was “chilling” and “intimidating.” Some personnel froze, too afraid to make recommendations, while others risked filing new investigations in final acts of defiance.

When the news came on a Friday that they were all being fired, civil rights staff were told they couldn’t issue any out-of-office reply, one former senior official said.

They are still technically employees, on paid leave until May 23. Many have banded together and are exploring legal remedies to get their jobs back. In the interim, if complaints are coming in, none of the professionals trained to receive them are around.

What’s Been Lost

Days after the meeting in which allegations of money laundering and organized crime were loosely thrown at CRCL employees, the program in question was shut down. That effort had essentially earmarked money to local charities to provide nonviolent immigrants with case workers who connect them to services such as human trafficking screening and information on U.S. law. Created by Congress in 2021, the goal was to keep immigrants showing up to court.

Now, Trump’s DHS is suggesting the case worker program is somehow involved in human smuggling. Erol Kekic, a spokesperson for the charity the federal government hired to administer funds in that program, said Church World Services received a “weirdly worded letter” that baffled the organization’s attorneys.

“They said there could be potential human trafficking,” he said, referring to DHS. “But they didn’t accuse us directly of it.”

The nonprofit is working on its response, he said.

Elsewhere, the absence of Homeland Security’s civil rights oversight is already reverberating.

With their office closed, CRCL staff now fear the hypotheticals: At ports of entry, Americans’ Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizure are relaxed; if CBP abuses its power to root through phones and laptops, who will investigate? And if DHS began arresting U.S. citizens for First Amendment protected speech? Their office would have been the first line of defense.

As an example of cases falling through the cracks, CRCL staff told ProPublica they had recommended an investigation into the deportation of a Lebanese professor at Brown University who was in the country on a valid work visa. Federal prosecutors said in court she was detained at an airport in Boston in connection with “sympathetic photos and videos” on her phone of leaders of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Reuters reported she told border authorities she did not support Hezbollah but admired the group’s deceased leader Hassan Nasrallah for religious reasons.

Staff also wanted to look into the case of a 10-year-old girl recovering from brain cancer who, despite being a U.S. citizen, was deported to Mexico along with her parents when they hit an immigration checkpoint as they rushed to an emergency medical visit.

In Colorado, immigration attorney Laura Lunn routinely filed complaints with CRCL, saying pleas with ICE officials at its Aurora detention center were often ignored. Those complaints to CRCL have stopped her clients from being illegally deported, she said, or gotten emergency gynecological care for a woman who had been raped just before being detained.

But now, she asks, “Who do I even go to when there are illegal things happening?”

Lunn’s group, the Rocky Mountain Immigration Advocacy Network, has also joined in large group complaints about inadequate medical care, COVID-19 isolation policies and access to medical care for a pod of transgender inmates.

She’s among those trying to find clients who were housed in the Aurora facility but have mysteriously disappeared. Her clients had pending proceedings, she said, yet were summarily removed, something she’d never seen in 15 years of immigration law.

“Ordinarily, I would file a CRCL complaint. At this moment, we don’t have anyone to file a complaint to,” Lunn said.

That sort of mass deportation is something CRCL would have inspected. In fact, staff members said they had just launched a review into Trump’s increased use of Guantanamo Bay to detain migrants, an inquiry which now appears to have vanished.

A new camp site where the Trump administration plans to house thousands of undocumented migrants at Guantánamo Bay, seen in February 2025. A recent CRCL review of the administration’s use of Guantanamo Bay has vanished. Credit:Doug Mills/The New York Times/Redux

In New Mexico, immigration lawyer Sophia Genovese said she’s filed more than 100 CRCL complaints, helping her secure medical care and other services for sick and disabled people.

She said she has several pending complaints, including one about a detainee who has stomach cancer but can’t get medication stronger than ibuprofen and another involving an HIV-positive patient who hasn’t been able to see a doctor.

“CRCL was one of the very few tools we had to check ICE, to hold ICE accountable,” Genovese said. “Now you see them speeding to complete authoritarianism.”

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J. David McSwane

I write about national issues, including everything from health care to business to civil rights issues.

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I want to hear from current and former federal workers, lawyers and advocates — really anyone who sees an injustice worth investigating.

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From Washington, I cover national security issues, with a focus on militant movements and counterterrorism efforts.

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I’m interested in tips about counterterrorism, court cases involving surveillance or civil liberties, national security personnel changes, threat assessments and the proximity of extremist movements to federal power.

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DOGE Staffer Is Trying to Reroute FEMA Funds

Sources inside FEMA say DOGE representative Kyle Schutt gained access to FEMA’s proprietary software controlling payments.

Ka (Jessica) Burbank

Feb 12, 2025

DOGE has gained access to FEMA’s core financial management system, according to sources within FEMA, and “has been embedded for days now.” On February 10, a representative of DOGE, Kyle Schutt, gained access to FEMA’s proprietary software that runs FEMA Grant Outcomes (FEMA GO), according to FEMA staff and communications reviewed by Drop Site. FEMA GO is the system that “controls disaster grants as well as non-disaster grants throughout the country and territories.” Schutt also asked for the source code to FEMA’s Integrated Financial Management and Information System (IFMIS), which all approved FEMA grant payments go through.

Though unconfirmed, sleuths on X found some evidence that Kyle Schutt is the programmer behind the DOGE application website for prospective employees. Sources within FEMA identified Kyle Schutt as the same person pictured in this GitHub profile, which is now a broken link.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ezTn!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb0b3e174-3923-4627-a79b-d72a7c49f8d3_396x500.png)

In a meeting, Schutt asked employees about making deobligations in the FEMA system. Once funds are appropriated to a federal agency by Congress, deobligating them would effectively terminate them. The only way to get the money back, once deobligated, would be to go through the Treasury, sources within FEMA told Drop Site.

Now that the Trump administration and DOGE have been blocked by the courts from accessing the Treasury payment system, deobligating funds would be a new workaround—rendering appropriated funds unusable from within federal agencies.

At least four FEMA employees have been fired with letters that cite Article II of the Constitution, “executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America,” and “this termination is an exercise of that power.” A source within FEMA told Drop Site: “the four people fired were just following instructions as required by Congress.”

Drop Site has no government contracts. Considering becoming a subscriber.

FEMA staff asked their bosses how employees were notified they were fired. “I don’t know,” an administrator replied. This led FEMA workers to wonder: if administrators are not responsible for the firings, who is? When asked, union representatives told FEMA employees they “didn’t think it was appropriate to mention” who fired the employees and how.

DOGE currently has FEMA employees tasked with combing through grants for DEI-related keywords for all grants dating back to 2021. DOGE’s list of “problematic" keywords include: Disadvantaged, Marginalized, Underserved, Environmental Justice, Climate, Equity, Equitable, Inclusion, Diversity, and Culture.

One source within FEMA confirmed to Drop Site that the funds being reviewed were appropriated by Congress. FEMA does not have discretion over how funds are used. Their job is to guarantee recipients—the most vulnerable populations in America—meet the requirements outlined by Congress.

As a consequence of DOGE gaining access to IFMIS, it now has access to personally identifiable information on migrants and disaster relief grant applicants. DOGE has access to Alien Numbers—called A-numbers within FEMA—for any migrants in the Shelter and Services Program (SSP). A-numbers help the agency track services allocated to migrants. A-numbers are like the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) version of a social security number. They can be used to trace any funds allocated by FEMA to migrants, pull personally identifiable information, and access final destination information in the CBP system.

The Disaster Relief Fund portion of FEMA has migrated their financial management to FEMA GO as well, meaning DOGE has the names, addresses, and social security numbers for anyone who has applied for disaster relief, according to sources within FEMA.

DOGE claims to be auditing FEMA. But sources within FEMA report that the DOGE employees are primarily “computer science guys” and do not understand the basics of financial management. In one instance, a coder brought in by DOGE confronted a FEMA staffer about mismanagement of funds. The FEMA staffer clarified that no funds were allocated during the time period in question and that the DOGE representative simply misunderstood the data.

FEMA official Stacey Street on Monday told employees to pause grants on Monday in apparent opposition to a federal judge. DOGE is also working with a FEMA IT Specialist and a grant director, according to Drop Site’s reporting. “Everyone is complying. Everyone is afraid to lose their jobs,” sources within FEMA told Drop Site. They describe the situation as FEMA employees following a “chain of command and that leads to DOGE even though they’re not part of it.”

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Kyle Schutt

doge tracktool

##kyle Schutt

Wrecker, coder, age 37

Kyle Schutt is from the intersection of technologist and Republican party politics, having built an online fundraising platform Revv, that is frequently used by the GOP. He was also linked to the development of DOGE’s website doge.gov, which was hacked and vandalized at launch because he left the database accessible to the outside world, and his computer has been infected with credential-stealing malware multiple times. For its part, DOGE gave him access to a highly-sensitive database containing information on unaccompanied migrant children and admin credentials at CISA.

Positions

click for sources; full legend

Position	Notes
GSA	GSA c.2/18 appointed (GS-15/10, $195,200)
DHS	GSA DHS c.2/19 likely detailed DHS CISA 2/19 likely detailed Senior Advisor DHS CBP date unknown internal xfer DHS FEMA date unknown internal xfer DHS ICE date unknown internal xfer DHS TSA date unknown internal xfer DHS USCIS date unknown internal xfer
HHS	GSA? HHS 3/14 likely detailed

Position

Notes

GSA

GSA c.2/18 appointed (GS-15/10, $195,200)

DHS

GSA DHS c.2/19 likely detailed

DHS CISA 2/19 likely detailed Senior Advisor

DHS CBP date unknown internal xfer

DHS FEMA date unknown internal xfer

DHS ICE date unknown internal xfer

DHS TSA date unknown internal xfer

DHS USCIS date unknown internal xfer

HHS

GSA? HHS 3/14 likely detailed

Systems

click for sources; full legend

System	Notes
FEMA-Go FEMA	FEMA Grants Outcomes 2/10 A system for managing grant program for communities affected by disasters read access
IFMIS FEMA	Integrated Financial Management and Information System 2/10 A system for processing all FEMA grant payments source-code access
UAC Portal HHS	Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) Portal 3/21 The UC Portal manages all medical (mental and dental health included), educational, and sponsorship information for UC in ORR custody read access granted by CTO

System

Notes

FEMA-Go

FEMA

FEMA Grants Outcomes 2/10

A system for managing grant program for communities affected by disasters

read access

IFMIS

FEMA

Integrated Financial Management and Information System 2/10

A system for processing all FEMA grant payments

source-code access

UAC Portal

HHS

Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) Portal 3/21

The UC Portal manages all medical (mental and dental health included), educational, and sponsorship information for UC in ORR custody

read access granted by CTO

Events

click for sources; full legend

Date	Event
1/23 GSA	Sighting: A GSA employee reports meeting Kyle Schutt and Ethan Shaotran and also bumping into Edward Coristine. They are described as being giddy and interested and curious and then shifting in tone the following week with DOGE staff “frantically running around trying to do impossible shit with no context and no flexibility and no ability to push back.”
c.2/11 FEMA	Disruption: In a meeting, Kyle Schutt asks FEMA staff about the viability of deobligating appropriated funds for the agency, in essence returning the money to Treasury rather than using it for its appropriated purpose.
2/10 FEMA	Access: Kyle Schutt is granted access to the FEMA Grant Outcomes (FEMA GO) system that is used by FEMA for tracking disaster and other grants across America. He is also given access to the source code for FEMA’s Integrated Financial Management and Information System (IFMIS) which processes payments.
2/10 DHS	Report: In a meeting providing him with an overview of DHS programs, Kyle Schutt stuns federal staff in the Office of Civil Rights by declaring one of their programs (CRCL) looks like money laundering.
2/11 DOGE	Report: Online security researchers post evidence that the DOGE website was developed and is hosted by Outburst Data, a company run and operated by Kyle Schutt.
2/19 CISA	Access: Edward Coristine and Kyle Schutt are reportedly given elevated access to CISA systems, including documents and staff emails.
3/04 GSA	Directory: Wired reports that some DOGE staff (Kyle Schutt, Nate Cavanaugh) are being paid as full-time GSA employees, but other staff are listed as volunteers for that agency. Edward Coristine, Ethan Shaotran, Kyle Schutt, Luke Farritor, Nate Cavanaugh Nicole Hollander Derek Geissler
3/19 DHS, DOD, EPA, GSA	Interagency: During a discussion on how to strip grants from the University of Pennsylvania and San Jose State, GSA FAS Commissioner Josh Gruenbaum sends an email to coordinate grant freezes from DOD, DHS and the EPA. He includes DOGE staffers Kyle Schutt, Adam Hoffman and Kathryn Armstrong Loving as the recipients of these requests. Adam Hoffman, Kathryn Armstrong Loving, Kyle Schutt Josh Gruenbaum
3/20 GSA	Directory: Wired Magazine list DOGE staff stationed within GSA, all of whom were listed on GSA payroll on March 20, the same day Stephen Ehikian claimed there were no DOGE staff in the agency. Edward Coristine, Jeremy Lewin, Kyle Schutt, Luke Farritor, Nate Cavanaugh, Riley Sennott Nicole Hollander, Thomas Shedd Ashley Boizelle, Justin Aimonetti
3/21 DHS	Disruption: The Trump administration eliminates the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and two ombudsman offices responsible for investigating allegations of abuse from immigrants. This also includes the CRCL program that was characterized as “money laundering” by DOGE staffer Kyle Schutt.
3/28 USCIS	Access: USCIS CIO William McElhaney sends a message to DHS Deputy Secretary asking them to review access that was granted to DOGE staffers Kyle Schutt, Edward Coristine, Aram Moghaddassi and Payton Rehling.
3/29 HHS	Directory: In response to a discovery request made in AFL-CIO vs. DOL, the government provides an incomplete list of DOGE staff who have worked at HHS. Edward Coristine, Kyle Schutt, Luke Farritor, Marko Elez Amy Gleason
3/XX DHS	Disruption: Kyle Schutt and Edward Coristine repeatedly pressure staff over the next two months at DHS to use Grok, a chatbot from Elon Musk’s xAI, despite the fact it had not been approved for use in the agency. A DHS spokesperson later denied the allegations.
4/11 DHS	Directory: Politico profiles a DOGE immigration task force that is located within DHS but has contacts with DOGE staff at other agencies. It includes multiple DOGE staffers detailed from various agencies. Aram Moghaddassi, Edward Coristine, Kyle Schutt, Marko Elez, Payton Rehling Antonio Gracias
5/23 DHS	Disruption: Reuters reports that DOGE staffers Kyle Schutt and Edward Coristine have attempted to gain access to DHS employee emails in recent months and ordered staff to train AI to identify communications suggesting an employee is not “loyal” to Trump’s political agenda. Given earlier reports, the AI in question is like xAi’s “Grok” AI system.
7/08 FEMA	Disruption: Funds for FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program (SSP) normally used for disaster relief are redirected to instead provide $608.4 million to ICE for the construction of an immigration detention camp in the Florida Everglades. This anount is only slightly smaller than the entire 2025 budget for the program, which has only $83.5 million in reserve for this fiscal year. Possibly, DOGE aide Kyle Schutt might have assisted in finding money by deobligating other grants.

subdomains

Kyle Schutt DOGE subdomain | DocumentCloud

ggl 10 25

[### Stolen Credentials from DOGE Employee Found in Multiple ...

Cyber Press

https://cyberpress.org › stolen-credentials-from-doge-e...](https://cyberpress.org/stolen-credentials-from-doge-employee/)

May 9, 2025 — Kyle Schutt, a 37-year-old software engineer for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is at the center of a growing cybersecurity controversy.

[### DOGE bro Kyle Schutt's computer infected by malware ...

micahflee

https://micahflee.com › doge-bro-kyle-schutts-computer-...](https://micahflee.com/doge-bro-kyle-schutts-computer-infected-by-malware-credentials-found-in-stealer-logs/)

May 8, 2025 — His computer was apparently compromised with malware, because his email address and passwords have shown up in four separate stealer log datasets.