Former employees claim the Trump administration rolled back enforcement of civil rights laws in favor of the president’s priorities.
Published December 9, 2025
A group of more than 200 former U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) employees has signed an open letter condemning the “destruction” of the Justice Department’s civil rights division under President Donald Trump.
The letter, published online Tuesday, says the Trump administration has “upended” the department’s core mission of defending civil rights, leading to an exodus of staff.
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“While each election brought changes, the fundamental mission of our movement remained the same, which is why most of us intended to remain in the division after the 2024 elections,” the letter said.
“But after watching the current administration destroy much of our work, we, along with hundreds of colleagues, including about 75 percent of our attorneys, made the heartbreaking decision to leave. Now we must sound the alarm that the once-revered crown jewel of the Department of Justice is nearly destroyed.”
The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division was first created in 1957, during what was known as the Jim Crow era, to combat codified racial segregation and discrimination against black people in the American South.
The department also investigated and punished patterns of discrimination in areas such as housing, police, and voting rights.
But President Trump and his allies have often portrayed efforts to address racial inequality as a form of discrimination aimed at white people.
A Tuesday letter from former Justice Department officials said the civil rights division’s focus has shifted to issues that align with President Trump’s own priorities.
“Rather than rigorously evaluating the evidence to pursue only the most egregious cases, they asked us to find facts that fit the administration’s predetermined outcomes,” the letter said.
The letter references Attorney General Pam Bondi’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit filed under former President Joe Biden challenging voting access restrictions in Georgia. It also points to the dismissal of another case involving allegations of sexual abuse of unaccompanied immigrant and asylum-seeking children.
The Civil Rights Division, under the leadership of Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, also retracted an earlier report highlighting abuses at several police departments across the country.
Bondi and Dillon responded to the letter by saying they were upholding the agency’s traditional mission.
“His strong enforcement record on a wide range of priorities, including protecting elections, eliminating onerous consent statutes, and eradicating anti-Semitism and race-based admissions on college campuses, is historic,” a spokesperson said in response to the letter.
