Democratic members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee blasted Department of Homeland Security officials Wednesday after learning the agency has signed a contract that pays recruiters $40,000 for every $40,000-salary employee it hires.
“Forty thousand dollars per employee is outrageously high. We are paying $40,000 to hire somebody we’re gonna pay $40,000,” the committee’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, said during the roundtable discussion. “For folks where I live who think the government’s lost its mind, that would be Exhibit A.”
DHS Undersecretary for Management Claire Grady defended the practice by saying the initial $40,000 costs was for more than just finding candidates and getting them to sign a job contract.
“One of the things that was important to us about that contract was structuring it so that we pay for actual onboarding when we get the job offers. We’re not paying for effort, we’re paying for delivery and results,” Grady said. “That includes initial start-up costs that are granted towards the recruiting efforts, safeguarding information associated with PII [personal identifiable information], and all the branding efforts upfront.”
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-Mo., said the costs were still too high and said DHS, whose Customs and Border Protection agency has struggled to hire and retain members of its 60,000-person staff, were not being creative enough in their recruitment efforts.
“I spend a lot of time as you know on the northern border, and I talk to the Border Patrol and I talk to the challenges. And with a few tweaks, you could get them to stay instead of paying $40,000,” Heitkamp said. “You could walk into a high school and recruit high school students. You guys aren’t being creative enough. And this is hard work and it’s gonna require different thinking.”
Grady, who was joined by DHS Deputy Secretary Elaine Duke, again defended human resources’ attempts to adequately staff the border security agency.
“Despite the efforts of using a range of options, including retention incentives and different things we had done from a recruiting perspective, we have an average net loss of about 400 positions for Border Patrol agents every year. This year first quarter we’re down another 100,” said Grady.
In light of President Trump’s executive order to hire an additional 5,000 CBP officers, which includes the Border Patrol, Grady said the department chose to go “above and beyond” normal procedure and hired a recruiting company that has a “proven track record to accomplish just that.”
Duke promised to share documents about that contract with McCaskill by Feb. 21.
Duke, who oversees much of the internal affairs at the department, said morale is improving as evident by a recent federal survey that found the culture within DHS has improved in recent years. However, DHS said CBP officers have expressed concerns about certain stations and is considering changing policies in order to allow agents and officers to switch bases.
