A Border Patrol initiative to recruit new agents with the promise of a five-figure signing bonus during the Biden administration’s border crisis has been a flop.
Border Patrol’s overseeing agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, is doubling the amount of cash it will pay new agents, it announced Friday.
“To address the unprecedented hiring and recruiting challenges for law enforcement agencies, we are offering a $10,000 recruitment incentive for all newly appointed Border Patrol Agents who successfully complete the academy and another $10,000 if the Agent completes two years at a designated remote location,” said CBP’s assistant commissioner for human resources management, Andrea Bright, in a statement.
The massive increase indicates that its initial offers of $5,000 for completing the five-month academy and another $5,000 if stationed in certain remote locations on the southern border were not enough to persuade job seekers to join the federal law enforcement agency amid a morale crisis. CBP declined to comment about what prompted it to increase its financial offer from the first one in August.
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Amid the worst illegal immigration crisis in U.S. history, staffing levels at the Border Patrol have taken a hit.
“There is no morale,” one agent told the Washington Examiner in an interview earlier this year.
The physical workload has been brutal, as has implementing changes in policies from President Donald Trump to Joe Biden. But the biggest factor in the demoralization of the Border Patrol has been the feeling that Biden has demonized agents for enforcing immigration laws that lawmakers like him passed in Congress, eight agents said in interviews.
Border Patrol agents in early 2021 were pulled from working in the field to instead taking in immigrants 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 immigrants 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.
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.
The Biden administration has touted its plans to hire 300 more agents in the coming year. However, attempts to boost its ranks have proven unsuccessful in the past. 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.
Money might not be enough to fill out the ranks.
“Money is not the driving force for most people who enter law enforcement or public service jobs. It’s the mission,” said former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott in a previous interview. “If Customs and Border Protection [in] 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.”
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Remote locations include Texas towns Sierra Blanca, Presidio, Sanderson, Comstock, Freer, and Hebbronville; Lordsburg, New Mexico; and Ajo, Arizona.
