Harmeet Dhillon to step down as DOJ civil rights chief

Harmeet Dhillon, head of the US Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, plans to step down, HuffPost reports, citing Bloomberg.

The reported departure is the first from the Trump administration since the president’s party suffered heavy losses in the midterm elections.

Dhillon, a former personal lawyer to Trump, reportedly told colleagues she would leave after the midterms. The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.

Stacey Young, executive director of Justice Connection, a bipartisan group of former Justice Department and FBI officials, welcomed the news.

“Harmeet Dhillon has been the most destructive, lawless, and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history,” Young said.

“Americans’ civil rights don’t enforce themselves. For almost 70 years, the Civil Rights Division brought to fruition the civil rights laws that Americans demanded. Dhillon decimated it,” she added.

Young said more than three-quarters of the division’s lawyers left under Dhillon, and criticised her failure to open investigations into ICE-related shootings and deaths.