The government auditor for the Department of Homeland Security issued a damning report outlining its failure to care for its workforce at the forefront of a burgeoning border crisis.
The DHS Office of Inspector General released the results of an audit this week that stemmed from interviews with 9,311 federal law enforcement at U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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The audit concluded that the DHS agencies were pushing to the limit its 80,000 combined employees in response to the highest-ever influx of illegal immigrants ever in national history.
“We determined that CBP’s and ICE’s current management of law enforcement staffing resources is unsustainable. CBP and ICE workloads have grown significantly due to factors beyond DHS’ control, such as increasing border encounters and travel volume,” the IG report stated.
“Despite greater workloads, staffing levels have remained the same, with CBP and ICE using details and overtime to temporarily fill staffing gaps along the Southwest border,” the report continued. “Our interviews and survey responses showed that the details and overtime have had negative impacts on the health and morale of law enforcement personnel, who already feel overworked and unable to perform their primary law enforcement duties.”
In one example, Border Patrol had 16,700 agents on staff in fiscal 2019 and apprehended on average 71,000 immigrants per month that year. In 2022, Border Patrol’s 16,600 agents dealt with 183,000 immigrants.
A DHS spokesperson refuted the findings of the report and blasted it as relying on a “single inadequate survey” despite the thousands of respondents.
“Secretary Mayorkas has prioritized providing the Department of Homeland Security’s workforce with the resources and support they need to accomplish their mission while thriving personally and professionally,” the DHS spokesperson said in a statement issued Friday evening. “Despite four decades of congressional inaction that have left our immigration system badly broken, this Administration has handled unprecedented irregular migration and continues implementing new plans and policies to address regional migration.”
A DHS official pointed to the White House’s budget request for fiscal 2024, which requests funding for 300 additional Border Patrol agents. Although the DHS has touted it as the first such increase in more than a decade, the 300 new employees would still leave the Border Patrol short of about 700 agents — the result of 7% annual attrition.
The DHS also pointed to its hiring 1,000 non-agents tasked solely with processing immigrants brought into custody, a way that the department has been able to get agents back into the field and not confined to stations.
ICE and CBP have launched nationwide focus groups and mindfulness programs to help individuals with overall mental health, in addition to benefits including confidential counseling with an outside mental health professional and peer support groups.
But suicides rose in 2022 in CBP, prompting greater concern. CBP has hired the federal government’s first non-military suicidologist, Dr. Kent Corso. Corso told the Washington Examiner last year that the workload was not the main or even a top reason for employees taking their lives — a point that border state Congressman Tony Gonzales (R-TX) strongly refuted.
DHS also said that morale has been consistent for years. However, Border Patrol agents in particular have shared with the Washington Examiner that morale collapsed once President Joe Biden took office and began rescinding Trump-era policies.
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The inspector general warned that unless CBP and ICE examine and implement changes to how they staff, the “heavier workloads and low morale may lead to higher turnover rates and earlier retirements among these employees.”
Losing more employees would, in turn, worsen staffing challenges along the border, which could impede the ability to carry out DHS’s congressionally mandated mission to enforce federal immigration laws.
