DHS handling of border crisis damaged staff ‘health and morale’: IG report
Anna Giaritelli
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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.
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.”
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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.
The Washington Examiner reached out to DHS for comment.