DHS Reassigns More Employees to Immigration-Related Positions
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is sending out reassignment notices to employees across the department, designating them for duty on immigration matters.
Employees at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) were among those receiving the Management Directed Reassignments (MDRs).
The employees are being offered the choice of accepting the job at agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Border Patrol, and the Federal Protective Service (FPS), or face removal from service.
According to Federal News Network, one employee was given seven days to decide on a reassignment “hundreds of miles” from their current duty station.
Cybersecurity Dive reports that employees are being ordered to move to Washington, DC, Massachusetts, Texas, New York, and even Alaska, often nowhere near where the employee currently lives.
“In all cases,” said an anonymous CISA official, “it seems like it’s in an effort to get them to quit instead of firing them.”
The first CISA employees to be reassigned were reportedly members of the agency’s election security team, already on leave as part of a Trump administration review of their work in fighting election misinformation.
DHS Defends Personnel Shuffle
The latest shifts come after DHS transferred more than 100 employees to ICE in August, including 50 staff from FEMA’s human resources department.
DHS brushed off the notion that this reallocation of personnel is hurting the department’s ability to fulfill its mission, particularly when it comes to protecting against cyber threats and responding to disasters.
“DHS routinely aligns personnel to meet mission priorities while ensuring continuity across all core mission areas,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “Any notion that DHS is unprepared to handle threats to our nation because of these realignments is ludicrous, especially given the abject failure at the hands of CISA in the last administration.”