The DOJ Civil Rights Division Is Being Dismantled

From Japanese internment to foster care to ICE detention, the U.S. keeps forgetting its darkest lessons. This time, it’s policy.

When the Department of Justice stops investigating, abuse doesn’t cease. It just goes underground.

On January 22, 2025, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division received a quiet internal directive to halt all ongoing litigation carried over from the Biden administration. That meant lawsuits already filed, motions already in court, even settlement talks already underway were frozen. No new complaints would be filed. No amicus briefs. No statements of interest. Nothing.

It wasn’t issued as an executive order. It didn’t carry a name. And it barely made the news.

For months, the policy sat in the shadows of public awareness. That is, until this summer when the effects became impossible to ignore. Police reform agreements in cities like Louisville and Minneapolis were suddenly dissolved. Civil rights attorneys began resigning in droves. And families waiting on federal justice learned that their cases were gone, without warning or recourse.

This isn’t bureaucratic reshuffling. It’s structural abandonment.

The DOJ wasn’t just freezing litigation. It was sending a message to every institution, every agency, every state: we are no longer looking. And if history tells us anything, it’s what happens when no one’s watching.

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The Collapse Behind the Curtain

By early May, the scale of the DOJ’s retreat began to come into focus. More than 70 percent of attorneys in the Civil Rights Division had either resigned, been reassigned, or placed under administrative review. Some left quietly. Others submitted public letters, citing what one former litigator called a “deliberate dismantling of federal responsibility.” The unit that once investigated patterns of discrimination, abuse, and neglect across the country had become a shell, hollowed out from within.

And the cases they left behind?

In Louisiana, a Department of Justice lawsuit revealed that the state’s Department of Corrections had been routinely holding people in prison long after their official release dates. The investigation found that some inmates remained incarcerated for weeks, even months, despite court orders for their release. The lawsuit was filed under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA), a rare federal tool used to confront deeply embedded systemic abuse. But in the wake of the January memo, the case was effectively frozen.

In South Carolina, DOJ attorneys had been investigating group homes for adults with serious mental illnesses, facilities that were supposed to provide community-based care. What they found instead were punitive, isolating environments where residents were confined for years with no therapeutic services, no education, and no access to the outside world. According to investigators, the homes functioned more like “warehouses” than treatment centers. The case had been moving toward formal litigation until the pause order came down.

Neither of these cases had reached a resolution. Neither will, now, without intervention.

The rollbacks that did make headlines, such as the dissolution of police reform agreements in Minneapolis and Louisville, were dramatic, visible, and politically explosive. They received the coverage they deserved. But beneath those spotlight cases lies a deeper erosion: the quiet abandonment of institutional accountability in prisons, group homes, and civil facilities where no cameras roll and no protests form. These are the places where silence has always been the status quo.

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What History Already Taught Us

The Boys They Buried

It was called a reform school. The Florida School for Boys, also known as the Dozier School, operated from 1900 until its closure in 2011. For over a century, the state sent children there, many of them poor, Black, or simply “difficult”, under the promise of rehabilitation. What they found was something else entirely.

Survivors describe beatings so brutal that they lost consciousness. They speak of a building called “the White House,” where punishments were delivered in secret, and screams were muffled by walls thick with silence. There were stories of sexual abuse, forced labor, and solitary confinement. For decades, their accounts were ignored until researchers uncovered 55 unmarked graves on school grounds in 2013. Some of the boys had never been reported missing. Others had simply vanished from the rolls.

The public was horrified. Officials offered apologies. And then the story receded from the headlines until the next time the bones of forgotten children were pulled from the ground.

Dozier wasn’t a unique failure. It was a model, one repeated across the country in institutions labeled as schools, homes, academies, and treatment centers. It’s why we can’t afford to believe that places like this are relics of the past.

The Children in the Dark

In the early 1970s, a young reporter smuggled a camera into Willowbrook State School, a sprawling institution for children with developmental disabilities on Staten Island. What he captured shocked the country. Children, naked and alone, sat on the floors of overcrowded wards. Some rocked back and forth in silence. Others screamed. Most had no access to education, medical care, or even basic hygiene. The staff was indifferent, and the system was unaccountable.

Willowbrook had become a dumping ground. It wasn’t the only one. Across the U.S., similar institutions warehoused children with disabilities out of sight, out of mind. Lawsuits eventually forced closures. Public exposure led to federal oversight, but only after generations of suffering had already been institutionalized.

Today, the names have changed. Now they’re called group homes or behavioral centers. However, the risk remains the same. In South Carolina, DOJ attorneys found adults with serious mental illness trapped in places that resembled Willowbrook more than any therapeutic environment. Without oversight, those places remain open, and the people inside remain forgotten.

The Girls Who Were Silenced

For decades, across the United States, young women who became pregnant outside of marriage were sent away. Sometimes by their parents. Sometimes by courts. Always by shame.

They were sent to places called maternity homes, facilities run by religious organizations, social welfare groups, or state agencies. Inside, they were told that having a baby out of wedlock was a moral failure, that keeping their child would destroy their lives, and that surrendering the baby for adoption was the only path to redemption. Many were forced to sign papers they didn’t understand. Some were never even told their child survived.

One of the most infamous cases centered on Georgia Tann, who ran the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. Tann orchestrated a black-market adoption ring, stealing children from poor women, often by claiming they had died, and selling them to wealthy families. She operated with impunity for over two decades. By the time the truth emerged, hundreds of babies were gone. Many remain unaccounted for.

We tell ourselves this is ancient history. But the logic that enabled it—hide the scandal, protect the image, control the girl—still echoes in the way we treat vulnerable mothers today. Many of the facilities involved have simply rebranded, now offering “faith-based family services” or “crisis pregnancy care.” And with federal oversight disappearing, those old patterns are poised to resurface in new packaging.

The Kids We Failed Twice

The foster care system was meant to be a safety net. Instead, for far too many children, it became a trap.

The case of five-year-old Terrell Peterson is among the most damning in U.S. foster care history. In the late 1990s, Terrell died of abuse while under state supervision by Georgia’s Department of Human Services. Investigators found him emaciated, covered in cigarette burns and bruises, yet officials failed to protect him and later attempted to cover up the facts. He was one of over 800 children believed to have died in state care between 1995 and 1998 .

Meanwhile, in Washington state, a lawsuit filed in 1998 (Braam v. Washington) exposed widespread neglect and instability across the foster system. After 24 years of advocacy, reforms were implemented to reduce frequent placement changes and guarantee safety and oversight for children in the state's custody.

Yet today, thousands of children still cycle through foster placements, many with disabilities, LGBTQ youth, or histories of trauma, and too many land in unregulated group homes, detention settings, or privately run facilities masquerading as care.

LGBTQ+ youth and children with mental illness are particularly vulnerable. In New Hampshire, a recent class-action suit highlighted that teens with serious mental health needs were being warehoused in institutional settings rather than receiving support in family-like homes.

Foster youth face significant risks, including homelessness, overdose, incarceration, and early mortality, all elevated in comparison to their peers. Around them, oversight remains under-resourced, fractured, and now, with the DOJ civil rights enforcement shutdown, virtually unsupported.

The Kids They Tried to Fix

For decades, LGBTQ+ youth were sent to places that promised to "correct" them, sometimes by parents, sometimes by churches, sometimes by courts. These programs went by many names—conversion therapy, reparative therapy, faith-based reform—but they shared a single purpose: to suppress identity through shame, fear, and psychological abuse.

In New Jersey, the group JONAH—Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing—was sued in 2012 for consumer fraud. Former participants testified to being subjected to humiliation, role-played “abuse reenactments,” and forced into confrontational group exercises meant to “cure” their queerness. The court ruled in 2015 that JONAH’s practices were fraudulent and harmful. The group was shut down only to resurface under a different name, with many of the same staff.

And JONAH was far from alone. Across the U.S., hundreds of so-called “therapeutic boarding schools” and religious camps have operated under religious exemptions or private licensing, offering thinly veiled conversion practices with little or no government oversight. Some continue to operate today.

The harm is lasting. Survivors report depression, PTSD, substance use, and suicidal ideation stemming from the trauma. And while some states have banned conversion therapy for minors, enforcement is uneven, and adult “programs” remain legal in many jurisdictions.

With the DOJ no longer investigating civil rights abuses in religious or private institutional settings, these facilities are freer than ever to thrive in the shadows, behind the veil of “belief.”

The Boys They Tried to Break

They were sent to the woods, the desert, or the mountains, anywhere far enough that no one could hear them scream.

In the name of discipline, thousands of American children have been placed in so-called "boot camps" or “tough love” programs for "behavioral correction." Many were teens who struggled in school, clashed with their parents, or exhibited signs of mental illness or queerness. These facilities promised transformation. What they delivered was trauma.

One of the most horrifying cases emerged in Florida in 2006, when 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson died after being beaten and suffocated by guards at a state-run juvenile boot camp. Video footage showed guards forcing ammonia capsules into his nose and mouth while he struggled to breathe. Martin died the next day. The guards were acquitted.

But Martin’s story is not isolated. Across the U.S., militarized youth facilities—some state-run, many private—have faced repeated allegations of physical abuse, sexual assault, solitary confinement, and even death. Survivors report being denied medical care, subjected to forced labor, and psychologically broken under constant surveillance.

The blueprint for these programs dates back over a century. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, religious “reform homes” operated under similar pretenses. Girls deemed promiscuous or disobedient were locked away in harsh conditions, often for years. Boys were sent to "correct" their defiance with manual labor, corporal punishment, and scripture. Many never left. Many others left with scars no one could see.

These programs were designed not for healing, but for obedience. And without civil rights enforcement, the same machinery of discipline and disappearance is still turning, just under different names.

The Elders Left to Die

They were the generation that built the postwar nation. And when they became inconvenient, we hid them away.

Long before COVID-19 laid bare the dysfunction of American elder care, there were signs. Reports of understaffed facilities, unqualified aides, infections, dehydration, and untreated wounds. But it wasn’t until the pandemic hit that the crisis became unignorable. In 2020 and 2021 alone, over 200,000 nursing home residents and staff died from COVID-related complications, many preventable. Families were kept in the dark. Facilities falsified records. State agencies underreported death tolls.

The DOJ opened investigations in several states where officials were accused of covering up data or exposing seniors to deliberate risk. Few led to lasting accountability. And now, with civil rights enforcement frozen, those investigations have gone quiet.

This isn’t a new problem. For decades, for-profit nursing home chains have prioritized shareholder profits over patient care. Whistleblowers have exposed everything from medication errors to bedsores infected to the bone. Elderly residents have been abused, ignored, restrained, sometimes for days at a time.

Oversight is weak. Regulations are spotty. Families often don’t know where to turn. And now, the last line of federal scrutiny has been silenced.

We don’t see these people in campaign ads. They don’t march. They don’t tweet. And too often, they die quietly, made invisible one final time.

The Camps We Keep Repeating

We’ve done this before.

We did it with Indian boarding schools, institutions designed not to educate, but to erase. Native children were taken from their families, forced into uniforms, and punished for speaking their languages. Many died there. The last of these schools didn’t close in the 1800s. It’s misleading to say these schools ended long ago. The formal federal boarding school system operated until around 1969, and vestiges persisted into the 1970s. Under the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, the system was officially dismantled, but many of the same institutions continued under different management. In recent years, the Biden administration’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative found that between 417 and 526 institutions operated across 37 states, with at least 973 confirmed child deaths and multiple burial sites exposed. In some cases, federal investigations are still unearthing mass graves on school grounds.

See our previous article on this here:

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Columbus, Cuts, and the Continued Erasure of Indigenous America

We did it again in the 40s. During WWII, the U.S. government forcibly relocated approximately 110,000–120,000 Japanese Americans—most of them U.S. citizens—into ten wartime camps, including thousands of children. Nearly 2,000 died through neglect or illness. Though the camps closed in 1945–46, the trauma was long buried. Redress came only in 1988, with formal apologies and reparations.

See our previous reporting here. This series begins with some information about Japanese internment.

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Detention Nation: How America Turned Detention Into Policy

And now, we do it again at the border.

In 2018, the U.S. government began forcibly separating immigrant children from their parents, detaining them in for-profit facilities under policies later ruled unconstitutional. Many of those children were never reunited with their families. Some were babies. Some are still missing.

Conditions inside detention centers remain dire, and as the Trump2.0 administration ramps up raids and deportations, more camps are popping up daily. Children sleep under aluminum blankets in freezing cells known as “iceboxes.” Some are held without soap, showers, or medical care. Others report sexual abuse and retaliation for speaking out. Dozens have died in custody. And the companies profiting from these camps—GEO Group, CoreCivic—continue to receive millions in federal contracts.

We’ve reported on this extensively. See our latest article here:

18 Days: How Long it Took to Expose Alligator Alcatraz as a Humanitarian Disaster

The DOJ had opened investigations. Some states faced consent decrees. Oversight, while imperfect, existed.

Now it doesn’t.

And we are once again being asked to pretend that what we’re doing is not what we’ve already done.

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The Comfort of Forgetting

We’ve always struggled to face the truth.

When the evidence of injustice becomes undeniable, we mourn it briefly, publicly, and from a distance. Then we package it up, call it history, and move on. Japanese internment. Indian boarding schools. Dozier. Willowbrook. Terrell Peterson. Martin Lee Anderson. We tell ourselves we’ve learned, that we’ve changed, that we would never let it happen again.

But we are letting it happen again.

This administration isn’t just cutting oversight. It’s cutting memory. We’ve reported on the executive orders restricting how schools can teach history, on national park signage policies that ask visitors to report any language they find “upsetting.” The goal is clear: control the story, erase the discomfort, bury the bones before they can speak.

But this time, we cannot comply.

These are not abstract debates. They are about real people, in real facilities, right now—children in detention, elders in understaffed homes, disabled adults in locked rooms, foster kids shuffled and silenced. The DOJ has told them, and us, no one is coming.

So it’s on us.

To remember what they want us to forget.
To speak where they want us to be silent.
To insist on humanity where the state has withdrawn.

Because if we don’t see them, no one will.

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What You Can Do

Call Your Representatives

Demand congressional oversight of the DOJ Civil Rights Division and the immediate reinstatement of paused investigations.

Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

Sample script:

"Hi, my name is [Your Name] and I live in [Your City/Zip]. I'm calling to demand congressional hearings and immediate oversight regarding the DOJ's abandonment of civil rights investigations, including those into prison abuses, mental health facilities, and immigrant detention. This is not just a legal issue. It’s a human rights crisis. I urge [Senator/Representative] to take public action now."

Support the Watchdogs Doing the Work

Independent legal groups and grassroots organizers are still fighting for the people the DOJ has abandoned. Consider supporting or following:

• The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

• Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund (DREDF)

• Youth Law Center

• National Center for Youth Law

• Freedom for Immigrants

Keep Learning. Keep Speaking.

We’ve included a complete bibliography of primary sources and investigative reporting below. Share them. Teach them. Cite them. They are the bones we must not bury.

Bibliography:

• “Trump’s New Justice Department Leadership Orders a Freeze on Civil Rights Litigation.” AP News, January 22, 2025.

• Department of Justice. Justice Department Sues State of Louisiana for Incarcerating People Beyond Their Release Dates. December 20, 2024.

• Department of Justice. Justice Department Sues South Carolina for Violating Americans with Disabilities Act. December 9, 2024.

• Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Special Litigation Section Case Summaries.

• “U.S. Justice Department Civil Rights Unit Faces Mass Exodus.” Reuters, July 23, 2025.

• “US Justice Dept Freezes Its Civil Rights Litigation.” Reuters, January 22, 2025.

• “Boy’s Remains Identified from Shuttered Florida Reform School.” CBS News, August 7, 2014.

• “27 Suspected Graves Found at Infamous Florida Reform School.” TIME, April 12, 2019.

• Geraldo Rivera’s 1972 exposé of Willowbrook State School. Preserve Pennhurst / OPB, about Willowbrook’s conditions and closure.

• Michelle Steffers, “Cold War Experiments.” The New Yorker, January 14, 2013.

• Wikipedia. “Willowbrook State School.”

• “Tag: Martin Lee Anderson.” Florida State University News.

• Wikipedia. “Death of Martin Anderson.”

• Wikipedia. “Georgia Tann.”

• Emory Law Journal. “Did Anyone Ask the Child?: Recognizing Foster Children’s Rights.” 2022.

• Youth Law Center History. “Landmark 24-year lawsuit resolved after Washington state achieves key benchmarks within foster care system.” November 18, 2022.

• “New Hampshire class action approved for foster teens with mental health disabilities.” AP News, September 19, 2024.

• Department of the Interior. Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report, May 2022 (Vol. II).

• “Nearly 1000 Native American Children Died in Abusive US Boarding Schools, Report Finds.” Teen Vogue, August 1, 2024.

• EJI. “President Biden apology to Native Americans for boarding school system. “ October 25, 2024.

• Library Of Congress. Timeline of Japanese American internment camps.

• Densho.org. “Common Myths of WWII Incarceration: ‘More Than Half Were Children.’” June 21, 2016.

• Wikipedia. “Internment of Japanese Americans.”

• “Department of Justice Launches National Nursing Home Initiative.” U.S. Department of Justice, March 3, 2020.

• “US: Concerns of Neglect in Nursing Homes During COVID-19 Pandemic.” Human Rights Watch, March 25, 2021.

• New York State Office of the Attorney General. Nursing Home Response to COVID-19 Pandemic. January 28, 2021.

• “DOJ Investigations of Nursing Facilities During Coronavirus (COVID-19).” Nixon Peabody Insights, April 15, 2020.