The partial government shutdown that went into effect Saturday is throwing the fate of oversight at the Department of Homeland Security into peril, with the department’s independent watchdog warning a lapse in funding could jeopardize several ongoing investigations.
DHS’s inspector general currently has eight active probes into the Trump administration’s nationwide immigration crackdown, including reviews of the use of facial recognition and allegations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents using excessive force.
But with a lapse in funding for DHS, the Office of the Inspector General has been forced to suspend approximately 85 percent of its audits, evaluations and inspections, according to the OIG.
Congressional Democrats are demanding sweeping reforms to ICE and Customs and Border Patrol before they’ll vote to fund DHS, including requirements that immigration enforcement agents wear body cameras and display their ID numbers and last names. With Senate Republicans and the White House refusing to budge on several key demands — including a proposed prohibition on federal agents wearing masks — the department is likely to remain unfunded for at least 10 days.
Democrats in Congress first asked Joseph Cuffari, the DHS inspector general President Donald Trump appointed during his first term, to investigate the use of force by ICE agents last June. The lawmakers, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, wrote to Cuffari earlier this month asking him to expedite the probe, citing the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis as underscoring the “urgent need” for moving quickly.
Republicans have raised concern about the shutdown’s effect on DHS agencies like TSA and FEMA, although it will likely take weeks for the public to start feeling the effects of the funding lapse.
Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement that “OIG investigations provide transparency and accountability, and any delay in funding will only disrupt these important efforts,” adding that the DHS appropriations bill passed in the House provided “critical funding” for the office.
“As we experience yet another DHS shutdown because Senate Democrats refused to pass this legislation, I urge them to negotiate in good faith so we can ensure these resources and the resources for numerous other components, like FEMA and TSA, are not held hostage because of Washington’s dysfunction,” he said.
ICE, on the other hand, is largely insulated from the effects of the shutdown, with GOP lawmakers having appropriated billions of dollars for the agency in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year.
But the lapse in funding raises several potential obstacles to the ability of members of Congress and investigators to conduct oversight of the agency. During the last government shutdown, ICE quietly furloughed most of its congressional relations team and blocked lawmakers from visiting immigration detention facilities. (Prior to the shutdown, Democratic lawmakers on several occasions clashed with DHS over their attempts to inspect detention facilities.)
And with approximately 60 percent of the OIG’s workforce furloughed — including auditors, data scientists and inspectors — only special agents like criminal investigators and personnel whose work is supported by secondary funding sources, like the Disaster Relief Fund, can continue working through the shutdown, per the office.
The effect of the funding lapse for the inspector general’s work is also slated to affect the office’s reviews of the Secret Service’s handling of the July 2024 assassination attempt against Trump, in addition to probes of DHS’s cybersecurity and counterintelligence operations.
The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency — an independent government entity that lays out annual legislative priorities focused on government oversight and accountability — has for years called on Congress to establish authority for IGs to continue oversight during government shutdowns.
Mark Greenblatt, who served as the Department of the Interior’s inspector general from 2019 until 2025, said while criminal investigations can sometimes continue despite a lapse in funding, IG offices are forced to pause oversight reviews, ceding valuable time on sensitive audits during shutdowns.
“These situations are raw. They need an independent voice providing facts on what’s happening on the ground with respect to these sensitive issues,” said Greenblatt, who was one of several IGs dismissed by Trump last year. “When they push the pause button on these things, they’re not delivering for the American people, and that, to me, is the problem.”
Democrats have accused DHS Secretary Kristi Noem of deliberately attempting to stymie the OIG’s ongoing probes. In a letter sent to Noem earlier this month, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) cautioned that “repeated tacit threats from your Office of the Secretary to DHS OIG may have already succeeded in weakening DHS OIG’s operational independence.”
That warning came after Duckworth met with Cuffari to discuss why her request for an independent investigation into use of force by federal agents during ICE’s “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago was denied. During the meeting, she wrote in the letter, Duckworth learned that DHS’s general counsel advised the OIG on several occasions that Noem has the power to halt its investigations.
Cabinet secretaries are empowered by a 1978 law to prevent the OIG from carrying out audits or investigations if they determine the reviews could put national security at risk.
“This broad authority effectively empowers you to select from a broad range of pretextual options to unilaterally prevent or halt any ‘independent’ DHS OIG investigation, regardless of your true intent,” Duckworth wrote.
No DHS secretary has ever invoked the provision, Duckworth wrote in the letter.
