Just before Labor Day weekend, the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division put out a call on social media for job discrimination complaints. Harmeet K. Dhillon specifically asked American citizens if they believed a foreign worker with a visa was wrongly hired over them.
Over the next few days, about 80 complaints came in, overwhelming the four attorneys tasked with handling them and prompting the lone supervisor to quit in frustration, according to three people familiar with the situation. The number of attorneys doing such work in the division’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section is down from about 25 at the start of the second Trump administration.
The episode illustrates an exodus of employees at the Civil Rights Division as Dhillon has led a major priorities shift – focusing less on the historical mission of combating racial discrimination and more on fighting diversity initiatives, antisemitism and bias against American citizens.
Dhillon said in May that about half of the Civil Rights Division’s roughly 380 attorneys had left during the new administration, most resigning or taking a voluntary buyout. Since then, dozens have followed, often citing the shift in priorities as a reason, according to multiple people familiar with the situation, who like others in this article spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.
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“I came to the Civil Rights Division to do work that was actually helpful to people,” said one former Immigrant and Employee Rights Section employee who left in recent months. “But I wouldn’t be able to do that work – they weren’t even giving us the tools or respect to do that work.”
Dhillon said in a statement that the Justice Department is working on hiring attorneys to fill the vacancies, and she has no problem with people leaving if they don’t agree with the agenda.
“The Civil Rights Division is enforcing the law consistent with our statutory authority,” Dhillon said. “The more violations of the law that occur, the more work there is for us to do. If Department staff are unwilling to perform their duty, they are free to leave. We are fortunate that many qualified attorneys are ready to take their place.”
The division’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section is a stark case study. It has historically focused on cases involving non-American citizens who are in the country legally but have alleged discrimination in the workforce.
Since taking over the Civil Rights Division, Dhillon has made one of her priorities tackling employment discrimination against American citizens. People interviewed said that type of discrimination exists – most often in the form of employers hiring foreign-born workers because they may be willing to work for lower salaries – but that it typically represents a small number of the discrimination allegations that the section receives.
Two people familiar with the section in the current administration say it has significantly slowed formal investigations of employment discrimination cases against non-Americans and pushed out top attorneys in the section. The longtime section head was sent to a newly created working group that did little and where all the staffers quit. The current acting head had given notice before the recent complaint crush and is set to leave in the next two weeks, the people said.
Meanwhile, Trump administration officials have amplified complaints focused on discrimination against American citizens.
The H1-B visa program – which allows U.S. employers to temporarily hire foreign workers in specialty occupations for which they cannot find qualified Americans to do the job – has been at the center of those complaints, with many conservatives arguing that these foreign workers are wrongfully take jobs that should go to Americans in fields such as tech and engineering.
Other specialty visa programs are also being scrutinized as the administration claims these programs allow foreign workers to enter the country without proper vetting, posing a danger to Americans.
Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that he would pause issuing work visas to some foreign truck drivers after a deadly Florida crash in which a truck driver from India made an illegal U-turn and killed three people. Florida officials said the driver had a commercial driver’s license but was in the country illegally and wasn’t proficient in English, fueling debate about whether the U.S. should be issuing such licenses to foreign drivers.
It was in the midst of this debate that Dhillon posted her plea on X.
“Are you an American citizen who has been harmed by inappropriate preferences for foreign workers, eg H1-B or other? Follow the link,” she wrote, sharing a link to a Justice Department website where people could submit their complaints.
She continued: “It’s also a place to report human trafficking of immigrant workers, and Title VII employment discrimination,” referencing the civil rights provision that prohibits employment discrimination based on race, religion and sex.
Details on the more than 80 complaints that followed was not immediately known but that number was up from around 10 the section typically receives each week.
That’s significant because the section is required under federal statutes to vet each complaint within 10 days. That includes assigning it to a staff attorney to conduct an initial review to determine legitimacy and, if warranted, to send a notice about the complaint to the employer. The attorneys then decide whether to launch a formal investigation, which may result in hefty civil penalties against the employers.
This year, the section is on track to collect a far smaller amount in civil penalties than it has in recent years, one of the people familiar with the section’s work said.
The people added that they were frustrated that Dhillon put out a call for such complaints when the section’s dwindling staff wouldn’t be able to handle the volume. They noted that the Immigrant and Employee Rights section has opened some legitimate investigations that align with the administration’s priorities, but even those cases don’t have enough staff to aggressively pursue.
Dhillon has used social media in a different way than her predecessors, often posting about cases, chiding the subjects of investigations and promoting the president and his administration. She has also said in interviews that she scours social media for instances of antisemitism to help determine what investigations to launch.
“The department has extraordinary powers and it is critical that they use it with care and caution,” said Kristen Clarke, who headed the Civil Rights Division during the Biden administration. “Whether it’s a social media posting or complaint from any source, you need to make sure that everything is accurate and actually actionable.”