The Education Department is reimbursing the U.S. Marshals Service roughly $1 million per month to help cover the costs of providing a security detail to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
A Memorandum of Understanding that was agreed to on March 28 stipulates that the Education Department will pay $7.78 million to the U.S. Marshals Service through Sept. 30. The agreement reaches retroactively back to Feb. 14, just days after DeVos was blocked from entering a public school in Washington, D.C., by protesters.
Prior to that incident DeVos had been protected by department officials, which is the norm for Cabinet-level officials. The Marshals Service is a federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Justice that acts as the enforcement arm of the federal courts.
According to a statement the U.S. Marshals Service provided the Washington Examiner, the MOU establishes “roles, responsibilities and terms between the agencies to monitor and mitigate threats against the secretary.” It is valid for up to four years and can be terminated by either agency with two-months notice.
It is unclear whether the Education Department intends to keep reimbursing the U.S. Marshals Service past September. The department did not immediately return a request for comment.
The U.S. Marshals Service would not disclose the number of employees currently protecting DeVos, or the types of threats she might be facing, but did say, “the number of USMS personnel assigned to the detail is commensurate with the existing threat and based on USMS protective service requirements, experience and methodology.”
The Washington Post, which first reported the story, cited an unnamed U.S. official who said DeVos had received an unusually high number of threats for an education secretary. The Post also cited another unnamed source briefed on the security situation that the marshals are hiring nearly two dozen people to guard her.
