In 2017, President Tump issued an executive order calling for an additional 5,000 Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) Agents. In response, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) initiated a series of reports related to hiring practices at DHS. The findings are so humiliating that DHS wishes they were lies.
According to one of the reports, CBP spent $5.1 million administering polygraph tests on 2,300 applicants that had already been disqualified based on information that had already been disclosed during pre-test processes. Pre-test admissions could have been anything from “illegal drug use, drug smuggling, human trafficking, [or] having close personal relationships with people who commit such crimes.”
The polygraph test is not only an embarrassing waste of money, the test also contributes to the glacial pace of hiring and inability for DHS to meet goals to protect the border. Another recent DHS OIG report found the CBP hiring practice takes more than 7 months to complete. At their current pace, it would take a decade to hire the President’s 5,000 additional agents.
While CBP did accept OIG’s recommendations to immediately stop the selection process if a candidate admits to any wrongdoing, it is hard to believe the agency charged with protecting our borders could not even stop a candidate that admitted to drug smuggling or human trafficking from crossing into the next hiring stage.
CBP promised “increased efficiency” in their hiring process, but 4 years of wasted taxpayer dollars places this discovery in the Swamp Story archive.
