Secretary of Homeland Security
Confirmed as Secretary of Homeland Security. Oversaw the department responsible for ICE, CBP, and FEMA. Under her leadership, ICE detention deaths hit a two-decade high, sensitive locations protections were rescinded, and FEMA disaster preparedness was dismantled.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
46 deaths in ICE custody since January 2025 mark a two-decade high. ICE's October 2025 halt of medical care payments left detainees without access to health services as the detention population reached record levels, creating conditions that contributed to preventable deaths.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The rescission of the sensitive locations policy removed decades-old protections for churches, schools, hospitals, and shelters (courthouse arrests were governed by a separate ICE directive, also loosened in January 2025) from immigration enforcement. The rescission coincided with a broader surge in arrests of non-criminal immigrants and chilled access to essential services including healthcare and education.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
A systematic effort to dismantle federal disaster preparedness and response capacity through budget cuts, mass layoffs, program terminations, and structural reorganization. FEMA's workforce has already shrunk by one-third, with plans to cut it in half. The disaster response workforce faces a 41% cut and the surge workforce an 85% cut, leaving the country dangerously unprepared for hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, and other disasters.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
An ICE directive and BIA precedential decision eliminated bond hearings for millions of immigrants, creating a system of indefinite detention without judicial review. 71.7% of the 57,861 ICE detainees had no criminal convictions.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
At least 10,588 people were subjected to solitary confinement in immigration detention over 14 months spanning two administrations, with usage surging under the Trump administration. PHR reports that from 2018 to 2023 nearly three in four placements lasted 15 days or longer, the duration beyond which the UN Special Rapporteur on torture considers solitary confinement prohibited and capable of amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; whether a given placement amounts to torture depends on its purpose and severity, assessed case by case. DHS oversight offices were simultaneously decimated from 150 to 22 staff.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
ICE deported 363 pregnant, postpartum, and nursing women in 13 months and recorded 16 miscarriages in detention. Women were shackled while miscarrying, denied prenatal care, and subjected to invasive procedures without consent -- all in violation of ICE's own 2021 directive against detaining pregnant individuals.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
A sweeping expansion of travel restrictions targeting predominantly Muslim-majority and African nations, growing from the original first-term ban to cover 39 countries. The bans affect millions of people and have been widely characterized as religious and racial discrimination codified into immigration policy.
Grade 2 of 5: Major Abuse of Power
DHS terminated humanitarian parole for 532,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, stripping legal status effective April 24, 2025. The Supreme Court allowed the mass revocation in a 7-2 ruling, and DHS urged affected individuals to 'self-deport immediately.'
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
TPS was terminated or targeted for termination across 11 countries, de-documenting over 1 million people. Federal courts have blocked or paused several terminations. The State Department maintains 'Do Not Travel' advisories for many of the same countries DHS claims are safe for return.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
Immigrants transferred to Guantanamo Bay face conditions that Human Rights Watch says may amount to ill-treatment prohibited under international law: isolation for up to 23 hours a day, punitive restraint in a chair, and incommunicado detention. ACLU and CCR lawsuits challenge the offshore detention as unconstitutional and beyond the authority of the Immigration and Nationality Act.