The top Homeland Security spokesman, brought in to serve last month by acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan, is a former Border Patrol agent whom U.S. Customs and Border Protection once attempted to fire for faking a crime against himself, according to three CBP officials with first-hand knowledge of the incident and a fourth who is also aware of it.
DHS acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Media Operations Jose “Lu” Maheda was terminated by Border Patrol a year into his service during the 1990s. Since then, as one official put it, he has “failed up,” getting his job back and eventually becoming a regional Border Patrol spokesman. And now he is the top spokesman for the 240,000-person department because of his connection to McAleenan.
“The guy’s a proven liar and can’t testify in court and yet he’s a spokesman for DHS,” charged one CBP official who worked with Maheda at the time of the incident. “He is 100% a McAleenan sycophant.”
Under the 1972 Giglio v. United States decision, a witness whose integrity has been called into question cannot testify in court.
While working at the Border Patrol station in Nogales, Arizona during his first year on the job in 1996, Maheda left his loaded gun on the front seat of his work vehicle and set out on foot.
“While he was out — and unbeknownst to him — a supervisor came across the car and saw the” firearm, the official said. “He [Maheda] had failed to secure it, and it was just laying there, and that’s when the supervisor saw it and was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve got to get this out of here.’ So the supervisor pulled the gun out. When Lu got back to the vehicle, he saw the shotgun was missing and didn’t realize the supervisor had taken it. So what he did was, he bust the window out, then went back and reported the shotgun stolen.”
A second official who worked with Maheda at the time confirmed the set of events, as did a third.
“He had a longarm go missing from his Border Patrol four-wheel drive so he busted the window out and made a notification that it was stolen, when it was in fact that an agent had just played a joke on him when he left his door unlocked,” said the third person, who also worked in Tucson at the time.
“There was no squirming out of that one. They had him dead to right,” the first official said.
Another source, a union official with secondhand knowledge of the incident, said the supervisor took the gun out of the vehicle to “safeguard” it, not as a joke. Maheda “broke the window and reported it was stolen,” he said.
While DHS does not comment on specific employee personnel actions, a DHS official provided the following information.
“Over 20 years ago, we can confirm that there was an allegation and subsequent full investigation,” the official said. “The employee was afforded due process and since then, the employee has had an exemplary record being promoted throughout the ranks without ill effect.”
Maheda was served termination paperwork a day after the incident. He fought the termination with the help of the National Border Patrol Council and kept his job on what the union official described as a “technicality” because he was issued a termination notice on the last day of routine year-long probation period.
The third official with first-hand knowledge of the incident said the move to provide him the termination paperwork the day after may have been intentional because it gave him a way to fight the decision, since the letter should have been served immediately.
“There were all these rumors that his brother, who was a BORTAC (Border Patrol Tactical Unit) agent that was very well thought of — that somebody may have been looking out for the family with that clerical mistake,” the official said.
At the time, Border Patrol agents in their first year could be fired for any reason without being able to appeal the decision or respond to the chief patrol agent’s concerns. A union representative at the time “argued that he was technically no longer on probation because his regular shift had ended before they fired him” and therefore the probation period was technically up, and was able to get an arbitrator to agree, according to the first CBP official. Maheda was reinstated and went to work for the union.
At a certain point in his career at DHS, Maheda began to have “direct interface” with McAleenan, who would eventually promote him to his current position.
The third official said Maheda was reprimanded during his work for the internal Border Patrol headquarters division during the 2000s for having “abused travel all over the country basically to install flat screen TVs.”
“He got transferred out of that branch during a bottom-up review that was done by the Border Patrol headquarters staff, led by then Operations Chief Kevin Oaks,” said this source said.
“The United States Border Patrol often conducts reviews and assessments of programs and personnel assignments. During Chief Kevin Oaks’ tenure, the United States Border Patrol restructured several programs and divisions within the Headquarters element, resulting reassignments of multiple personnel and program responsibilities,” the DHS official said.
The first official described Maheda’s promotions as “one of those things you just keep scratching your head” over.
“The Department is proud to include a member of the United States Border Patrol within the Department’s Office of Public Affairs,” said Andrew Meehan, Acting Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs. “Border Patrol agents have a unique and first-hand knowledge of the impact of the crisis on the southern border and continue to provide thoughtful guidance on how to communicate those challenges to the public.”
