Washington, Nov 6 (PTI) Indian-American Harmeet Kaur Dhillon has resigned as the US Assistant Attorney General and head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, becoming the first senior official to leave the Trump administration since the mid-term elections.
Attorney General Todd Blanche announced her resignation in a social media post, saying Dhillon had "led the Civil Rights Division with conviction".
“She has defended the civil liberties of every American and enforced the law without fear or favour,” Blanche wrote on X on Thursday.
“The department is grateful for her dedicated public service, and we wish her every success in her future endeavours,” he added.
Dhillon, whose law firm was part of Donald Trump’s campaign legal team, told Fox News she resigned of her own volition and withheld her announcement at the request of Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, until after Election Day.
“Serving my country as AAG for Civil Rights has been the honour of a lifetime. We ushered in the downfall of illegal DEI, we fought to protect women and girls’ sports, and so much more. I want to thank President Trump for giving me this opportunity. I look forward to what’s next,” Dhillon said in a post on X.
Born in Chandigarh into a Punjabi Sikh family, Dhillon's parents initially moved to London before eventually settling in the United States.
A staunch ally of President Donald Trump, Dhillon ran her own law firm in San Francisco for several years before joining the Justice Department. She is a frequent guest on conservative podcasts and maintains a very active presence on social media.
Unlike her predecessors, she frequently took to social media to post videos about the work her division was undertaking.
She acknowledged in media interviews that she often generated ideas for civil rights investigations based on various posts she encountered on social media.
Addressing the Moms for Liberty event in New York in May, Dhillon termed coming to the US as the “greatest gift” her parents gave to her.
“My dad was an orthopaedic surgeon. Mom and Dad left India in the 1970s because it was a Russian client state. They had a dictated two-children policy and a planned economy, and Mom and Dad didn't want to raise their kids in that kind of an environment, so they came to America,” Dhillon, who rose to fame as a civil rights attorney.
“Besides life, the greatest gift that Mom and Dad gave me was bringing me here to America and allowing me to be sworn in as a naturalised American citizen when I was 10 years old,” she said.
Dhillon said her parents came to the US when there was a shortage of doctors here, and Washington was inviting medical professionals during the Vietnam War.
