(NewsNation) — Like many law enforcement agencies across the country, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are also facing headwinds when recruiting new agents.
The agency is dealing with a vast shortage that is only getting worse as it deals with historic numbers of migrants along the southern border.
To broaden the hiring pool, the agency has eased its policies on things like tattoos and facial hair and increased the sign-on bonus for new hires by an extra $10,000 to $30,000 if they go to areas in need.
“When we look at recruiting as a whole, we’ve been taking a holistic approach to our recruitment program to be as creative as we can, meeting people where they are,” said Andrea Bright, CBP assistant commissioner of human resources. “We’ve leveraged social media platforms, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and even Pinterest, so we’re really trying to identify people in as many places as we can.”
In a report last year, the inspector general of DHS found, “The agency’s current method of managing law enforcement is unsustainable … despite greater workloads, staffing levels remained the same with CBP and ICE using details and overtime to temporarily address rising numbers of encounters.”
The report also found that those “fixes” pushed agents to the limit, and as a result, many who can retire or quit do so.
In 2022 alone, the number of those leaving was at a high of 7.4% — the highest number in the past four years.
In 2015, there was one agent for every 19 encounters. In 2019, that grew to one agent for every 50 encounters, and by 2022, there was one agent for every 132 encounters.
As congressional members and politicians play the blame game as to who is responsible for the crisis on the border and how to fix it, two separate bipartisan Senate bills would authorize as much as $157 million to increase staffing at ports of entry. That includes hiring as many as 600 Border Patrol officers each year.
Neither bill has moved yet, and the issue will worsen in the coming years. Eight thousand to 10,000 agents who were hired under former President George W. Bush during a swell of recruitment in the early 2000s are now coming up for retirement over the next four years.
“We are optimistic about it,” Bright said. “We monitor our hiring. We are continuously monitoring to make sure we meet our needs.”
The agency has begun asking retired agents to consider going back to work, offering extension packages to those eligible for retirement to stay on longer.
The problems along the southern border are not an easy fix, however. Just this week, agents in multiple sectors made several high-profile arrests tied to alleged murder, drug busts and other crimes.
While the agency is trying to “meet people where they are” regarding new hires, it’s added 200 recruiting officers to go into communities and spread the message.
The agency has also added a processing coordinator to help ease agents’ administrative work, allowing them to return to the field.