Hundreds of Department of Homeland Security employees have been marked for reassignment to agencies focused on Trump-era border-security and deportation work, and could be dismissed if they don’t comply, according to multiple people familiar with the matter and a copy of one notice viewed by Nextgov/FCW.
In recent weeks, the employees have been directed to transfer from various DHS agencies (including Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Transportation Security Administration and the U.S. Coast Guard) to other ones (including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Protective Service, and Customs and Border Protection).
The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly communicate their knowledge of the shifts.
The notice seen by Nextgov/FCW gave the employee it addressed just one week to accept the Management-Directed Reassignment, or MDR, or face possible termination. They are then given 60 days to move, with some flexibility on deadlines in certain circumstances.
“If you do not respond, the Department of Homeland Security will consider your non-response as a declination of the directed reassignment,” it reads. “If you choose to decline this reassignment or accept but fail to report for duty, you may be subject to removal” from federal service, it says. Bloomberg News first reported details of the reassignments.
The MDRs have targeted people in CISA’s Cybersecurity Division, including its Capacity Building subdivision that focuses on improving and centralizing the cybersecurity posture of federal agencies, one of the people said. The Stakeholder Engagement Division, which oversees the agency’s national and international partnership work, was also affected, the person added.
Another person said hundreds of FEMA staffers, including human resources and personnel security workers, were moved to positions in ICE throughout hurricane season, the peak of which occurs from around August to October. Many of those employees are still there, that person added.
The moves align with broader White House immigration-policy priorities. The Trump administration has steered tens of billions of dollars toward immigration and border-security agencies as part of a renewed push to expand detention capacity, accelerate deportations and fortify barriers along the U.S. southern border.
Many, but not all, of the reassignments direct staff to ICE, CBP, and FPS, two people said.
The shifts could slow responses to cyber threats that have targeted the federal government.
CISA personnel are addressing a Cisco vulnerability — recently exploited by a hacking group potentially linked to China — that predominantly affects government networks. And over the summer, a hacker stole employee data from both the Federal Emergency Management Agency and CBP, Nextgov/FCW first reported.
Cybersecurity has been historically a bipartisan darling of Washington, but CISA, the nation’s core civilian cyberdefense agency, has been criticized by Donald Trump ever since it declared the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.” Top officials in the second Trump administration have aimed to “refocus” its mission amid GOP accusations that the agency engaged in censorship of Americans’ free speech. Those claims stem from CISA’s earlier collaboration with social media platforms to remove false information online concerning the COVID-19 pandemic, elections and other divisive subjects around 2020.
Across DHS, there is widespread uncertainty and fear among some employees about the financial and legal consequences of accepting or refusing the reassignments, including potential loss of severance pay, penalties or restrictions on future government work, the people familiar said.
DHS staff who have taken offers to leave the government are largely barred from interacting with people still inside the agency, and risk fines and jail time if they are caught doing so, another person said, describing their experience trying to seek help on completing a task by asking a former employee for assistance.
The reassignments appear to be used as a strategy to encourage voluntary departures without direct firings, the person added. When they applied for their current position, for example, this person indicated that they were unwilling to relocate, and the reassignment they received completely circumvented that constraint.
“DHS routinely aligns personnel to meet mission priorities while ensuring continuity across all core mission areas,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Any notion that DHS is unprepared to handle threats to our nation because of these realignments is ludicrous, especially given the abject failure at the hands of CISA in the last administration.”
“CISA was adrift and was focused on censorship, branding, and electioneering instead of defending America’s critical infrastructure. Today, CISA is focused squarely on executing its statutory mission: serving as the national coordinator for securing and protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure and is delivering timely, actionable cyber threat intelligence, supporting federal, state and local partners, and defending against both nation-state and criminal cyber threats,” she added.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comment from DHS.
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