The Biden administration will roll out five-figure signing bonuses to new recruits who sign on for at least one year with the Border Patrol, the federal government announced Monday.
Amid the worst illegal immigration crisis in U.S. history, staffing levels at the Border Patrol have taken a hit, prompting its parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, to dig into its pockets in an attempt to get men and women into its ranks, though current and former officials say this type of move has not proven successful in the past.
CBP debuted the recruitment incentive ad on its website Monday, wooing interested applicants with the promise of up to $10,000 should they make it through the polygraph and five-month academy training.
“Newly appointed Border Patrol Agents who meet the criteria … will be offered a $5,000 recruitment incentive upon successful completion of the academy,” the advertisement states.
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“Additionally, new agents assigned to a hard-to-fill duty location will be eligible for an additional $5,000 recruitment incentive (for a total of $10,000),” the ad continues. “Hard-to-fill locations include: Sierra Blanca, Texas; Presidio, Texas; Sanderson, Texas; Rocksprings, Texas; Comstock, Texas; Lordsburg, N.M.; Freer, Texas; Hebbronville, Texas; Ajo, Ariz. will be eligible for an additional $5,000 recruitment incentive (for a total of $10,000).”
New hires with no previous law enforcement or military experience are eligible for the sign-on bonus, as well as current police and veterans.
Border Patrol went through a massive hiring frenzy under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, doubling its size around 2006.
However, by 2017, it was losing more agents to other jobs, retirement, termination, and resignation than it was hiring, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s 2019 report on attrition. Then-President Donald Trump signed an executive order in 2017 mandating that an additional 5,000 Border Patrol agents be hired, but it did not come to fruition.
Under the Trump administration, Congress shrunk the number of Border Patrol personnel it required from 21,370 to 19,500.
Rodney Scott, the previous Border Patrol national chief who departed his post last year, told the Washington Examiner on Monday that staffing level projections that he saw before leaving his post in mid-2021 indicated Border Patrol would lose around 1,100 agents on top of the ones it hired by the end of 2022. While some agents would be forced to retire because of their age, leadership believed that others would choose to leave prematurely.
“Money is not the driving force for most people who enter law enforcement or public service jobs. It’s the mission,” said Scott, senior distinguished fellow for border security at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin. “If Customs and Border Protection, the current administration really cared about Border Patrol and wanted to hire more Border Patrol, they would allow them to do the mission as it was designed. That would mean a lot more than the $10,000 bonus.”
Border Patrol agents have been pulled from working in the field to instead taking in migrants who surrender to them after being pushed by smugglers across the border in large groups. Agents transport, intake, feed, and even care for adults, children, and babies in custody. In recent months, the majority of migrants apprehended for illegally entering the United States from Mexico have not been returned to their country of origin — instead, they have been released into the U.S.
The rise in illegal immigration and change in how they respond has frustrated Border Patrol agents greatly. Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said CBP’s approach with the financial incentive is “not addressing the root issue” of its staffing shortfalls.
“They’ve done this before and it didn’t work before, so there’s no reason to think it’s going to work again,” said Judd, who oversees the Border Patrol’s national union. “Our hiring pool is way down from what it’s been in years past. It goes back to the whole stigma of ‘If you do this job, you’re going to be vilified.'”
Eight Border Patrol agents assigned to the southern border spoke with the Washington Examiner in June about their experiences working during the largest migration event in U.S. history. The physical workload has been brutal, as has the change in policies from Trump to President Joe Biden, they said.
One agent described work as nothing more than a paycheck and sometimes a source of guilt because “it feels like we’re committing a crime by allowing all these people into our country” versus expeditiously removing them or transferring them to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for detention through the duration of immigration proceedings in court.
An agent who quit late last year wrote in his resignation letter that the job had become “unrecognizable,” as the majority of agents on a shift were no longer patrolling the border but transporting, intaking, and releasing people who had illegally entered the country, a federal crime.
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More than 2 million migrants were stopped while attempting to enter the U.S. from Mexico illegally in the calendar year 2021, an astronomical figure. Of the 2 million, roughly 1.1 million were immediately expelled back to Mexico or flown to other countries. Some attempted crossing multiple times, inflating the numbers. But nearly 800,000 were released into the U.S.
CBP has begun hiring and training non-law enforcement personnel to intake and process migrants in custody in an effort to allow Border Patrol agents to return to the field and has recruited 1,200 volunteers from across the federal government to assist at the border.
