A highly suspicious 16 percent of Department of Justice hires for its student program were family members of current employees, a report from the Office of the Inspector General found.
The OIG conducted the review after discovering that four student hires for an internship program were related to three senior officials at the organization.
But, according to the OIG report, they soon found that “the practice of hiring relatives of employees…was widespread over a period of years.”
In one instance, the director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, Juan Osuna, gave his daughter’s resume to a subordinate, and “more likely than not” participated in hiring her as another subordinate. A year later, he secured her another position by asking a subordinate, “can we get that paperwork moving.”
The OIG ruled that this violated several government statutes, and that this kind of behavior “infected the entire organization from the highest levels down.”
Federal law requires that departments hire based on merit, and specifically bans nepotism.
DOJ will require “continued viligance” to uproot these practices, OIG concluded.
