All of the lawyers assigned to the Justice Department’s Sanctuary Cities Enforcement task force have now resigned, with the final member departing this week, after claiming they were not given substantive legal duties.
“The assignment was a sham,” Bonnie Robin-Vergeer, a former chief of the Civil Rights Division’s appellate section who left after six weeks, told The Washington Post. “We did very little.”
The task force was created in the first weeks of the Trump administration, with about a dozen senior career attorneys reassigned from high-profile divisions, including civil rights and national security.
But rather than being assigned to serious cases, the lawyers were directed to conduct basic research into sanctuary city policies and were not involved in lawsuits filed against cities such as Los Angeles, New York, and Denver.
Some participants compared the reassignment to New York City’s “rubber rooms,” where teachers accused of misconduct were paid to sit idle while awaiting disciplinary decisions. The group’s members, many with decades of senior-level experience, sometimes referred to the office as the “VIP rubber room.”
A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment, but the departures come as the administration faces challenges over personnel actions, which have included the dismissals of dozens of lower- and mid-level career staffers.
Many of those who were dismissed have filed appeals with the Merit Systems Protection Board, arguing the firings violated due process. This month, the board ordered the reinstatement of two immigration judges, a decision the administration could continue to contest.
Senior employees placed in the sanctuary cities working group have less recourse because they were not formally fired. Some resigned immediately, while others opted into a deferred resignation program that allowed them to collect paychecks until Sept. 30.
Robin-Vergeer said she initially accepted the reassignment in hopes of eventually returning to her old post, while others stayed on while searching for outside jobs.
Several attorneys said they continued to study legal issues around sanctuary cities, expecting they might be asked for input. That request never came.
“At first, when we asked about what they needed from us, no one would know,” one former member said. “The whole thing was bizarre.”
The reassignments were largely issued before Attorney General Pam Bondi took office in February, which avoided a federal guideline requiring a 120-day moratorium on certain reassignments after new leadership arrives.
Federal law prohibits most political appointees from unilaterally moving career employees, though the rule does not apply to members of the Senior Executive Service, which includes several of the attorneys reassigned.
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