The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is reassigning hundreds of employees across several of its agencies to assist in the Trump administration’s broad immigration crackdown. According to news reports, staffers who refuse to comply will be dismissed.
The department moved staffers from the U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA to other agencies within the federal department, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. Many of these CISA employees had focused on issuing cyber guidance to help U.S. government agencies and critical infrastructure defend from cyber threats.
Reports indicate that many of the affected CISA staffers are in the agency’s Capacity Building unit, which helps to improve the cybersecurity posture of federal agencies, as well as the Stakeholder Engagement Division, a group that leads CISA’s partnerships with international agencies and organizations. Other CISA staffers have been moved to the Federal Protective Service, a police unit that works with ICE and CBP on deportations.
The Trump administration has made immigration enforcement a flagship policy since taking office in January. Lawmakers in July authorized one hundred and fifty billion dollars in taxpayer funding to support deportations by ICE. Much of the funding will go towards using technology, from spyware to data brokers and location data, to track millions of individuals across the United States.
News of the reassignments comes at a time when the U.S. is facing a wave of hacks targeting private industry and the federal government. In recent weeks, an English-speaking crime gang has stolen reams of data from dozens of companies who store customer information in Salesforce databases. Russian hackers have stolen sealed documents from the U.S. federal courts system. A SharePoint bug earlier this year allowed hackers to breach several U.S. federal departments, including the agency tasked with maintaining the security of the U.S. government’s stockpile of nuclear weapons.
In an emailed statement, Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the agency routinely aligns personnel to meet mission priorities while ensuring continuity across all core mission areas. She did not dispute the media reports that hundreds of staffers would be reassigned. McLaughlin stated that any notion that the Department of Homeland Security is unprepared to handle threats to the nation because of these realignments is ludicrous. However, when asked if the reassigned CISA roles would be backfilled or would remain vacant, McLaughlin would not provide an answer.