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The Trump administration on Monday ordered former staff members for as many as 17 fired inspectors general to immediately arrange for the return of work laptops, phones, parking decals and ID cards — even as questions remained over whether President Trump broke the law in dismissing independent watchdogs.

Some of the fired officials were seeking to raise alarms about what had happened. Among them was Mark Greenblatt, whom Mr. Trump had appointed as the inspector general of the Interior Department five years ago and who had led an interagency council of the watchdog officials until the new year.

“This raises an existential threat with respect to the primary independent oversight function in the federal government,” Mr. Greenblatt said in an interview. “We have preserved the independence of inspectors general by making them not swing with every change in political party.”

He warned that the credibility of the inspectors general would be at issue if Mr. Trump put in “lackeys that are rubber-stamping his programs and exonerating allegations for his own people willy-nilly.” Doing so would give the next Democratic president incentive to fire them all, too, setting off “a never-ending cycle of politicization.”

Aboard Air Force One on Saturday, Mr. Trump defended the purge. “Some people thought that some were unfair or some were not doing the job,” he said, falsely claiming that a mass removal of inspectors general was “a very standard thing to do.”

That is not true. While it is the case that after Congress enacted the Inspector General Act in 1978 and President Ronald Reagan removed all of those he inherited from President Jimmy Carter in 1981, he later rehired some of them. And since then, the norm has been that they remain in place when new presidents take office, underscoring their role as nonpartisan officials.

Even as word began to seep out late Friday and into the weekend that the White House had tersely dismissed officials, citing its “changing priorities,” it had not released a comprehensive list of who had been fired, leading to confusion about the extent of the purge.

In an interview on Monday, Hannibal Ware, who goes by Mike and who took over as the chairman of the interagency council in January and was among those fired, said the dismissals he knew of extended to 17 officials covering 18 agencies. He had held the watchdog role for two agencies, one of which was in an acting capacity.

The agencies were, he said, the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.

They also included, he said, a special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction and the internal watchdogs at the Environmental Protection Agency, the White House’s Office of Personnel Management and Mr. Ware’s own two agencies, the Small Business Administration and the Social Security Administration.

But, underscoring to the confusion, at least one of those inspectors, Krista A. Boyd of the Office of Personnel Management, found herself locked out of the system even though she had not received an email informing her that she was fired, according to people familiar with the matter. The inspector general community is assuming that she is terminated, too.

In response to the purge, Mr. Ware, in a letter to the White House late Friday, suggested that the firings were illegal because they violated a law that requires giving Congress 30 days’ advance notice with the reason for any removal of an inspector general.

He said on Monday that even though he was not removed in accordance with the law, he was effectively fired given that he no longer had access to the building and computer systems.

Mr. Greenblatt, for his part, said he had decided against going to the office on Monday, even to retrieve his personal items from his desk, because he did not want to provoke a security incident.

Congress passed the Inspector General Act as part of the wave of post-Watergate reforms to government. The idea was to have officials embedded in major parts of the executive branch who did not report to that department or agency’s head, and so were able to perform independent internal oversight.

In 2020, Mr. Trump summarily ousted or sidelined a series of inspectors general who were seen as investigating his administration aggressively. Partly in response to that, Congress strengthened the 30-day-notice law by requiring presidents to provide a “substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons” for the firing.

In an interview, Mr. Ware warned that if the administration could flout that part of the Inspector General Act, then it would establish that it need not abide by the rest of that law — including provisions requiring giving the watchdogs unfettered access to agency files — either.

“What strength is there in the Inspector General Act if they say they don’t have to abide by parts of it?” he asked. “This is a threat to our democracy.”

Another person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deliberations, said several of the fired watchdog officials were discussing whether to file a lawsuit over the fact that Mr. Trump had defied the notice law.

It was not yet clear if any would do so.

Some advisers to Mr. Trump have been interested in advancing the so-called unitary executive theory, an expansive view of presidential power. According to the theory, the president must have complete control of the executive branch, so Congress may not give other officials independent decision-making authority or restrict the president’s ability to fire them.

Michael J. Missal, who was removed as the inspector general for the Department of Veterans Affairs, pointed to Congress as a potential defense of the institution.

“For inspectors general to continue to improve government services and ensure taxpayer funds are spent effectively, they must continue to be truly independent and have the support of Congress,” he said.

Democrats have vehemently denounced the purge, portraying it as clearing the way for corruption to go undiscovered.

In a letter over the weekend, the ranking Democrats on House oversight committees rebuked Mr. Trump.

His “attempt to unlawfully and arbitrarily remove more than a dozen independent, nonpartisan inspectors general without notice to Congress or the public and in the dead of night” was a blatant violation of the law, they said.

But because Democrats do not control Congress, attention has zeroed in on Republican leaders who style themselves as champions of inspectors general — especially Iowa’s two senators, Charles E. Grassley and Joni Ernst. Days before Mr. Trump was inaugurated, the pair announced they were starting a bipartisan caucus to support the watchdogs.

Mr. Grassley and a spokeswoman for Ms. Ernst issued relatively measured statements over the weekend saying they wanted to learn more about Mr. Trump’s decision.

Mr. Grassley noted that “the 30-day detailed notice of removal that the law demands was not provided to Congress,” while Ms. Ernst said she looked forward to working with Mr. Trump on nominations for successors.

Representatives for both did not respond to requests for further comment on Monday.

Sarah Kliff and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.