The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice was created in 1957 to serve as the federal government’s independent investigative and enforcement mechanism for civil rights laws in the United States. The office oversaw emblematic cases such as Brown v. Board of Educationthe enforcement of voting rights for black Americans in the desegregated South and the investigation into the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
The division may have investigated The murder of Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, but in the wake of Rene BuenoAfter the ICE killing there earlier this month, he is now more concerned about those protesting ICE’s brutal and seemingly unconstitutional conduct in the city. The Civil Rights Division’s new mission is a direct result of Donald Trump’s return to office, after which he cut staff and reoriented focus less on the rights of the underrepresented and more on the president’s retaliation agenda, the exclusion of transgender athletes from sports, and alleged slights against white Christian Americans.
After his re-election, Trump nominated a lawyer and former Fox News host Harmeet Dhillon to serve as deputy attorney general of the Civil Rights Division. Dhillon, who worked as legal counsel for Trump’s 2020 campaign, moved quickly to purge the division of top officials and dismiss a series of ongoing cases, many of them focused on police brutality and police misconduct. In a series of memos, Dhillon highlighted that the division would shift its priorities to “Keep Men Out of Women’s Sports” and “End Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Education.”
It was “really difficult to write transition memos feeling like they were going to go in the trash,” says a former Civil Rights Division employee. Rolling stone. The former employee, who was granted anonymity to speak more freely about his experience, described the frenetic turnover of personnel between departments and agencies amid the first DOGE cuts and mass management layoffs.
“I think about the people I worked with who filed complaints [to the DOJ] and they were looking for help from the US government, and it just completely disappeared,” they say. “It’s particularly shocking when [it’s] the U.S. government. When you are a person facing discrimination, you go anywhere looking for help and someone actually responds and all of a sudden you never hear from that person again.”
Many of the cases handled by the Civil Rights Division had been ongoing for years. Others were confidential, as the department tends to keep active investigations secret until they determine that a finding is in the public interest. The employee remembers that in one case, they had been ordered to investigate a viral post on X “as if it were a complaint we would receive from a citizen.”
Dhillon’s management of the division came under national attention again this month after the Justice Department declined to open an investigation into the murder of Renee Good, a Minneapolis mother of three who was shot to death in her car by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. Shortly after his murder, the Department of Justice indicated it would not launch an investigation into the incident, and sources told CBS News that the division’s criminal section was explicitly ordered not continue an investigation into Good’s murder, sidelining them from a case they would normally have investigated in previous administrations. Instead, sources within the department he told various media that the Justice Department had begun investigating Good’s widow, Becca Good, over allegations of impeding a federal official and ties to activist groups. Dhillon, a prolific social media poster, pushed unfounded claims on social media that Good was associated with “Antifa”and statements by Trump describing Good as a “professional agitator.”
Stacey Young, founder and executive director of Justice Connection, a Department of Justice alumni network, and former senior attorney for the Civil Rights Division, says rolling stone that Dhillon’s management of the division, which reflects the administration’s affinity for bold statements on television social media, is undermining the department’s work.
“It’s all about clicks and PR,” Young says. “You’re seeing Harmeet Dhillon not only prematurely announce investigations on social media, but he threatens people and entities on social media.”
“Using the incredible power and influence of the Department of Justice to threaten people online,” he adds. “I mean, it’s hard for the division to maintain any kind of integrity when its leader is willing to engage in that conduct.”
Earlier this month, a half-dozen Minnesota federal prosecutors I’m sorry about the Justice Department’s handling of Good’s case. Among the departures was Joseph H. Thompson, who had led the state’s case against a widespread social services fraud ring that has become a flashpoint in the administration’s anti-immigrant messaging.
“When you lose senior leaders in positions like that, not only do you lose your own institutional knowledge and experience, but it is extremely destabilizing for the rest of the office,” Young explains of the mass exodus occurring throughout the Justice Department. “Some of the most senior people in the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Civil Rights Division lost almost the entire leadership structure. [and] “That will crush the morale of those who stay and degrade the work that office will do in the future.”
As reports continue to emerge of ICE misconduct in Minnesota, including beatings and mistreatment of detained people, racial profilingand the kidnapping of citizens and other people with legal status: the focus of the Department of Justice is on the actions of anti-ICE protesters.
On Sunday, Dhillon announced a Justice Department investigation into a protest held at a church in the Twin Cities area. A group of activists, along with former CNN anchor Don Lemon, who was covering the protest, disrupted a service at Cities Church in St. Paul. About 40 people sang and marched inside the church, where Pastor David Easterwood, acting field director of the St. Paul ICE office, preaches.
Protesters chanted “ICE Out!” and “David Easterwood, out now!” They then left the church and marched towards a nearby alley. Right-wing commentators were quick to label the protest an example of domestic “terrorism,” and Dhillon appeared on conservative broadcaster Benny Johnson’s show and announced that the Civil Rights Division was investigating the incident as a possible hate crime, and was studying the possibility of filing charges against protesters under the FACE Act and the KKK Act of 1871.
The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act is a 1994 law that prohibits the use of force or intimidation against people seeking abortion services, exercising their religious rights in a place of worship, as well as vandalism and destruction of reproductive clinics or places of worship. The Enforcement Act of 1871, known as the KKK Law, prohibits certain forms of conspiracy to violate people’s civil rights.
“Whenever someone conspires to violate the protected civil rights of American citizens, the Klan Act can be used to bring a conspiracy charge,” Dhillon told Johnson.
In a post on X, Dhillon directly warned Lemon that he was “on notice.”
“A place of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws! Nor does the First Amendment protect your pseudojournalism from disrupting a prayer service,” he wrote.
Searching “social media to find violations” is an “absurd way to try to enforce civil rights laws,” says Young, a former Civil Rights Division attorney. Rolling stone. “Doing the division’s work through social media is a fool’s errand.” Young adds that Dhillon’s plans to use the FACE and KKK laws against protesters would be a “novel use” of the laws, and that given the nonviolent nature of the protest, it was not an incident that “would normally be seen in a case that the Civil Rights Division would pursue.”
Regardless, the administration is moving forward. Attorney General Pam Bondi added a separate post that “attacks on law enforcement and intimidation of Christians are met with the full force of federal law. If state leaders refuse to act responsibly to prevent lawlessness, this Department of Justice will remain mobilized to prosecute federal crimes and ensure that the rule of law prevails.”
Trump, who has long been a critic of Lemon, amplified calls for his arrest on Truth Social, writing that the participants in the protest were “troublemakers who should be imprisoned or expelled from the country.”
On Thursday the administration announced the arrests. or three people who participated in the protest. Although the incident was a peaceful demonstration, members of the administration, including DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel, have described it in several instances as a “riot” either an “attack” in the church. The Justice Department also attempted to bring charges against Lemon, but a federal judge refused the measure, citing First Amendment protections for Lemon in her role as a journalist.
