Report on Indigenous violence crisis removed from Department of Justice website

Lynette Craig marches with a poster of her brother who went missing in 2020 around the California State Capitol at the second annual Missing and Murdered Indigenous People Summit and Day of Action on Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2024, in Sacramento, Calif. Photo by: Jose Luis Villegas / Associated Press

A 212-page report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice detailing the causes of high rates of murder and human trafficking among Indigenous people and recommendations to address them has been removed from the Department of Justice’s website.

The Not Invisible Act, signed into law in 2020, created a commission to advise the Departments of Justice and Interior about the high rate of murder and human trafficking of Indigenous people. The commission delivered the report in 2023 to the U.S. House of Representatives

The commission’s findings had since lived on the DoJ’s website for public consumption. However, when Sun went looking for the report this week a message saying “page not found” was displayed.

Wayback Machine, an archive of the internet, shows the page had been disabled in early February. 

U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., the sponsor of the Not Invisible Act, wrote in a statement to the Sun that the report should be restored “immediately” and called its findings “extremely valuable.”

“Stripping it from the Department of Justice website erases years of work, including the testimony of tribal members,” Cortez Masto wrote. “This was a bipartisan effort that was signed into law by President Trump himself.”

The Trump administration has purged government websites of anything related to diversity, equity and inclusion since taking office earlier this year. That’s led to mistakes, such as taking down a page on Jackie Robinson, who broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier, and marking references of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, for removal.

But Trump’s press secretary at the time of the legislation’s passage, Kayleigh McEnany, praised the Not Invisible Act and Savanna’s Act, which Trump signed at the same time and requires the Department of Justice to develop ways to address the crisis.

“President Donald J. Trump was the first president to formally recognize the tragedy of Missing and Murdered Native Americans,” McEnany wrote. “These two bills reinforce many actions the President has already undertaken to fulfill his promise that Missing and Murdered Native Americans are no longer forgotten.”

The commission’s findings have also found their way into legislation proposed by Cortez Masto. One bill she sponsored last year would have granted tribal courts the same ability to issue warrants for electronic records — like texts and emails — that other American courts have.

“There is a crisis in tribal communities,” the Not Invisible Act Commission wrote in 2023. “A crisis of violence, a crisis of abuse, and a crisis of abject neglect affecting Indian Women & Men, Indian Children, and Indian Elders. The federal government must act now.”

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.