OPINION — Set aside for a moment how you feel about building the wall. There is a more immediate issue in controlling the flow of illegal traffic and drugs on the southwest border, and that is the hiring and retaining of Customs and Border Patrol Officers.
With all of the recent debate about the wall, what has been ignored almost entirely, is the problem in implementing President Trump’s January 2017 Executive Order calling for an increase in the Border Patrol by 5,000. There has been no such increase. In fact, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), “as of early February 2019, Border Patrol had 19,443 agents on board, which is 6,927 agents below the [Trump executive order] target level.”
One reason has been that more Border Patrol agents have been lost to attrition than had been hired in the five years before fiscal 2018, which ended September 30. “From fiscal years 2013 through 2017, CBP hired an average of 522 Border Patrol agents and lost an average of 890 agents each year, resulting in an average annual loss of 368 Border Patrol agents over this five-year period,” according to the GAO.
The ability to retain officers is affected by ongoing staff shortages which have required current CBP officers to work overtime. Complicating things further, there is a on how much overtime they can earn in a year and there is diminished overtime funding for peak holiday travel times. Even when the overtime cap is waived, it requires long shifts for more days.
Another major retainment problem has been that some officers are required to work for years in remote areas of the border where there are few schools and a lack of jobs for spouses.
Recruitment is another story.
In the past, only one out of 130 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) prospects ever made it all the way through the process. Today, that figure is still only about three percent. One reason has been the almost 300 days it takes to go through the eleven-step hiring process. Another issue is that the failure rate of candidates taking the required polygraph test has averaged around 70 percent.
These staffing problems were the subject of a 98-minute, two-panel hearing held by the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight last Thursday that got none of the media attention that the wall attracts.
This seven-member oversight subcommittee is worth watching, in part because its top two members are freshmen. The chairwoman is Rep. Xochitl Torres Small (D-N.M.), a lawyer whose district runs along the Mexican border. When Torres Small, the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, was named subcommittee chairwoman, the Associated Press reported that she wanted “to find ways that Customs and Border Protection can recruit more qualified staff for remote areas while holding the agency accountable.”
In her opening statement, Torres Small said, “As a native of southern New Mexico, I know full well the challenges that CBP faces in attracting and retaining qualified personnel, particularly in remote areas where an employee’s spouse may have trouble finding a job and children must travel far to attend school.
The ranking Republican on the subcommittee is Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), another first termer and former Navy Seal. On the day of the hearing, Crenshaw joined in sponsoring a bill that waived polygraph tests for veterans and law enforcement officers seeking jobs with CBP. In his opening statement, Crenshaw said, “There is no substitute for boots on the ground. Without sufficient staffing, these tools [he had earlier mentioned biometric readers, sensors, radar, drones and barriers] are wasted.”
The subcommittee hearing focused in part on the polygraph issue.
Anthony M. Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents many in the CBP workforce, told the subcommittee that “CBP is the only federal agency with a congressional mandate that all frontline officer applicants receive a polygraph test.” He then pointed out until a new pilot polygraph program was initiated in 2018, “two out of three applicants failed its polygraph—about 65 percent—more than double the average rate of eight law enforcement agencies according to data provided to the Associated Press.”
Benjamine Huffman, Acting Executive Assistant Commissioner for Enterprise Services, told the subcommittee that several steps had been implemented to meet the polygraph problem. One involved delaying the polygraph while the full background investigation of a candidate was being conducted. On that basis, some applicants are permitted to attend the training academy on a provisional clearance.
This pre-security interview pilot program, Huffman said, was “designed to identify unsuitable candidates prior to administering the polygraph.” In addition, CBP has “permanently implemented a shorter but equally effective polygraph format,” he added.
Reardon told the panel, “Since the pilot has shown a polygraph passage rate that is more in line with other federal law enforcement agencies, NTEU [Reardon’s union] supports ending the pilot and CBP adopting this polygraph test for all CBP applicants.”
A cautious review of the new polygraph system was given to the subcommittee by Rebecca Gambler, the GAO’s director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues.
Gambler acknowledged in her formal statement that, “The new examination focuses on identifying serious crimes and is sufficiently rigorous to ensure that only qualified applicants are able to pass. Preliminary data from CBP’s pilot show that this new exam has demonstrated higher pass rates.”
However, Gambler said “Available CBP data indicate mixed results. Specifically, while the
average duration to complete this [polygraph] step decreased for all law enforcement officer positions from fiscal years 2015 through 2017, pass rates also declined slightly over this same period. For example, for Border Patrol agents, the pass rate declined from 28 to 26 percent, while for CBP officers, it declined from 32 to 25 percent.”
The subcommittee also heard testimony about a controversial, multi-million-dollar contract CBP awarded to Accenture Federal Services on November 12, 2017, “to manage the full life cycle of the hiring process from job posting to processing” for 7,500 CBP new hires.
Under the contract, Accenture was to receive up to $40,000 per hire, but on a sliding scale. It was to get 80 percent when an applicant is offered a job, having passed through the CPB 11-step process; and the remaining 20 percent when the applicant actually reported for duty.
The Department of Homeland Security Inspector General reported last December, “CBP may have paid Accenture for services and tools not provided,” based “on a hastily approved contract that is not meeting its proposed performance expectations.”
CPB and Accenture last December 11, agreed to “reduce emphasis” on some individual recruitment elements of the contract, according to a CBP spokeswoman.
John B. Goodman, Chief Executive, Accenture Federal Services, told the subcommittee, his firm had received “approximately $2 million…in performance fees for attracting and processing 56 individuals who accepted job offers with CBP.” But it also had been paid an additional $19 million for “building an infrastructure for CBP to better market to, track, and serve applicants,” Goodman said.
While much attention in the coming months will be on the additional $8.6 billion that President Trump seeks in fiscal 2020 for his southern border wall, the Torres Small and Crenshaw led subcommittee, I assume, will be more focused on the actual hiring of qualified, new CBP personnel.
Read more Fine Print by Walter Pincus here...
