Department of Homeland Security Dismantling Civil Rights Offices as States Continue to Push Law and Policy That Coincidentally Aids Federal Government Agenda

This means martial law, and the national guard respecting civil rights and liberties of citizens for no reason other than out of the goodness of their own hearts.

Pimento Mori

26 Mar 2025 — 8 min read

Photo by Chris Henry / Unsplash

There are so many despicable things occurring right now, that it can be difficult to name just one thing to despise about current government officials. However, one thing that never fails to make my blood boil, are the continued attempts to push federal policies at the state level in order to make them seem like they're simply small government ideas looking out for the interest of citizens. It's a blatant attempt to manipulate Americans into thinking these policies look out for their interests while falsely promoting ideals of transparency and increased accountability.

The most recent attempt involves "bipartisan lawmakers" to liberate the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The FEMA Independence Act, was introduced on Monday March 24th by Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) and Byron Donalds (R-Fla.). The bill would make FEMA an independent, Cabinet-level agency reporting directly to the president.

Rep. Moskowitz, was originally one of Trump's top contenders to manage FEMA during his second administration. When the bill was launched on Monday, Moskowitz is quoted as saying “DHS has become too big and too slow to oversee what needs to be a quick and flexible emergency response." Moskowitz mentions that DHS is allegedly weighed down by bureaucracy due to also handling immigration enforcement, border security, and a range of other missions.

That doesn't sound unreasonable. Has there been anything else going on to suggest that there could be ulterior motives here?

Well, the same day Moskowitz was announcing his bill, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said she planned to “eliminate” FEMA during a televised Cabinet meeting: What a coincidence. Meanwhile, what else is going on with DHS lately? Last Friday, March 21, DHS announced cuts to three key offices that oversee civil rights protections, and suggested that they were impeding immigration enforcement efforts. However, only two of those offices, the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, and the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, are directly involved with immigration.

The third Office Noem included was the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL). As in, the the office that protects the rights and liberties of American citizens. The webpage for CRCL describes the office as supporting "DHS's mission to secure the nation while preserving individual liberty, fairness, and equality under the law." CRCL also manages Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for DHS.

If you were to somehow piss off the wrong government official, and end up on a DHS watchlist, this would be who is in charge of making sure your rights aren't violated, and if they are, making sure you can obtain records related to that violation.

As you can see in the organizational chart below, CRCL is one level above FEMA.

Interestingly, FEMA also has its own Office of Civil Rights.

FEMA's OCR handles "enforcement of federal civil rights laws before, during, and after disasters." Their website states, "Our vision is to fully integrate civil rights into all aspects of FEMA’s culture and work."

So, it seems like with FEMA gone and the main Office of Civil Rights facing cuts, nobody will be standing in the way of DHS carrying out any of its work that might involve violating the civil rights of immigrants or U.S. citizens.

If that sounds like paranoid hyperbole, you might want to consider the fact that earlier this month, Noem pledged to step up lie detector tests on ICE employees to identify those who may be leaking information about operations to the media.

As Secretary Noem pointed out, “The authorities that I have under the Department of Homeland Security are broad and extensive and I plan to use every single one of them to make sure that we’re following the law."

Good thing she's getting rid of those pesky civil rights divisions getting in the way of her enforcement efforts. Otherwise she might be breaking the law.

Meanwhile, last Friday, as Noem was announcing her plans to steamroll civil rights, Pete Hegseth's chief of staff released a memo saying that Defense Department personnel could face polygraphs for recent unauthorized disclosures.

(Sidenote: To be clear, the unauthorized disclosures the memo appeared to be referring to are the reports that Elon Musk would receive briefings on a hypothetical war with China. The memo was not in regards to the news that broke the following Monday, March 24th, which revealed a reporter had somehow been added to a signal group chat where Hegseth shared intel of U.S. plans to bomb Yemen, with several other high ranking Trump officials.)

According to the Associated Press, the memo states that "if this effort results in information identifying a party responsible for an unauthorized disclosure,” then such information “will be referred to the appropriate criminal entity for criminal prosecution." The Justice Department on Friday also announced its own investigation into “the selective leak of inaccurate, but nevertheless classified, information."

As the AP article also points out, polygraphs are inadmissible in court. This is because they are notoriously unreliable, and often produce false positives. Polygraphs have been used since the 1990s as tools of intimidation to keep sources from speaking with reporters, with a 1999 Pentagon report stating it was expanding a program to use polygraphs on defense personnel “if classified information they had access to has been leaked.”

A 2014 Department of Defense press release indicates the DOD and DHS have to cooperate and work together to meet the broad spectrum of challenges of the future.

So to clarify, DHS is attempting to reduce or completely remove the role of civil rights and civil liberty offices within their own department. This would include the main Office and a branch within FEMA.

DHS has suggested they will use polygraphs to smoke out individuals who are getting in the way of their mission, while the DOD appears to be threatening the same against any employees that speak to the press, stating that if an employee fails a polygraph they will be referred to the appropriate criminal entity for criminal prosecution. This is extremely concerning, and is at best, a blatant attempt to threaten and intimidate American citizens right to free speech and due process.

Meanwhile, in a completely unrelated coincidence, on Thursday March 20th, the governor of Louisiana announced his own plans to restructure the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP) under the control of the Louisiana National Guard. Below is an organizational chart of GOHSEP.

So, let's say that small government loving Florida bill passes. Not only does that also help DHS achieve their goals at the federal level, it will have major impacts at the state level as well. If the bill passes, it means FEMA is no longer a federal agency. It becomes a cabinet positions headed by a Senate nominee who reports directly to the president. That means that FEMA doesn't do anything without the president's authority.

Meanwhile, let's say a natural disaster occurs in Louisiana (unlikely, I know, but try to use your imagination for the sake of this silly fictitious argument). This means the National Guard is now in control of everything.

If a state of emergency occurs, FEMA does not intervene for any reason unless the president directs them to do so. This means U.S. citizens are potentially cut off from the rest of the world due to a natural disaster and loss of electricity and tools of communication, fully dependent on armed members of the national guard for resources such as food, water, and shelter. This means martial law, and the national guard respecting civil rights and liberties of citizens for no reason other than out of the goodness of their own hearts.

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