White House plan to hire more border agents raises vetting fear, ex-senior official says

As the White House moves forward with its plan to impose “extreme vetting” on immigrants to the US, a former senior official at Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has raised questions about the Trump administration’s ability to properly vet new hires as it fulfills its pledge to dramatically increase the number of border agents.

James Tomsheck headed CBP’s internal affairs department during the agency’s last hiring surge and found the screening process failed to weed out people later charged with, and convicted of, corruption, primarily for smuggling drugs and people through their checkpoints.

“If there is a rush to bring those persons into the organization, and those 5,000 border patrol agents and 500 marine interdiction agents are hired by compromising the existing security protocols, it would very likely compromise the future integrity of CBP and have strong negative implications on border security, and therefore national security,” Tomsheck told the Guardian.

The homeland security secretary, John Kelly, ordered the hiring of 5,000 more border agents and 500 air and marine agents in an immigration memo released on Tuesday. The White House has not specified a timetable for the plan, which, if successful, would increase the number of CBP border agents, currently about 19,800 people, by 25%. CBP said it is “in the process of developing a recruiting strategy”.

Tomsheck supervised CBP internal affairs during the agency’s last hiring surge, when the number of border agents jumped by about 5,000 people from 2006 to 2008. An increase in misconduct during the surge led CBP to introduce a polygraph test to its hiring process in 2010, according to government reports. Previously, applicants were only subject to a background check.

The polygraph wasn’t mandatory for all staff until 2011, but Tomsheck requested a scientific review of the polygraph results that had been conducted so far and found 1,000 CBP applicants failed to clear the polygraph test after passing the background check. The failed applicants revealed detailed admissions of their affiliations with criminal organizations and role in felony crimes, including one man who admitted to killing his infant son.

The polygraph exam has not rooted out all corruption in the agency and lawmakers have been critical of the process in recent years. The homeland security department’s inspector general said in December it was reviewing how effective the polygraph was for hiring.

Tomsheck said he was concerned about efforts to add shortcuts to the hiring process, which would increase the chance of corrupt border agents slipping through the system.

He started at the CBP in 2006 and was removed in 2014 amid criticism of agent misconduct, but his supporters inside the agency said he was pushed out because of his efforts to fight corruption and that he was thwarted from enacting any meaningful reform. He has been a vocal critic of the agency’s hiring practices since leaving.

“The presence of even one corrupt agent or officer deployed at the border has the potential to completely undermine whatever level of security has been put in place,” Tomsheck said. “Any acceptance of any corruption in the organization is destined to greatly contribute to the problem of corruption.”

Since October 2004, 197 CBP employees including border patrol agents, have been arrested for, charged with or convicted of corruption.

This includes Margarita Crispin, who was arrested at her CBP job three years after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) warned the FBI that the agent was allowing illegal drugs through her border post in El Paso. The FBI said she collected about $5m in three years for allowing marijuana through her border posts.

Tomsheck said the dangers of corrupt agents extend beyond making it easier for traffickers to smuggle people and drugs across the border. He said that 28 fatal shootings by agents were “highly suspect” and corrupt agents pose a risk to their colleagues. “If you’re a border patrol agent deployed to a high-risk position on the border and the agent that you’re asking to back you up or provide assistance to you, if that person is acting out in a corrupt way, it puts you at a significant risk,” he said.

These dangers are amplified by the inherently risky environment at the border.

Tomsheck said the highest-threat environment for US law enforcement is at the Mexico-US border, where criminal efforts to compromise the border grow as the border gets stronger.

Of the CBP’s 19,800 border agents, 17,000 are stationed at the US border with Mexico.

“They [criminal organizations] are going to do everything they can to create as many gaps as they can and exploit them,” Tomsheck said. “Those gaps include compromising the integrity of the workforce and having corrupt agents and officers working within CBP and in other organizations assisting them with their criminal activity.”

This is something Tomsheck warned of early on in his CBP tenure and is a lingering concern for current and former DHS officials, who told Reuters that border agents have accepted cash bribes and sex in exchange for allowing traffickers to use their checkpoints.

Trump pledged to hire more border agents during his campaign, but the memo on Tuesday certified this move as a White House priority.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memos also enabled federal authorities to more aggressively detain undocumented immigrants and restrict asylum claims. “The surge of immigration at the southern border has overwhelmed federal agencies and resources and has created a significant national security vulnerability to the United States,” the DHS secretary Kelly said in the guidelines.

If the administration wants to effectively employ 5,000 more staff, Tomsheck said the government should maintain the existing polygraph program, redo its background check system to include financial data, social media profiles and previous employment and add the psychological testing used at other agencies like the Secret Service and FBI.

Tomsheck said: “The presence of unsuitable persons in the workforce not only creates enormous risks that they may choose to engage in corruption or serious misconduct or excessive use of force, all under the heading of significant integrity issues, would greatly compromise the ability of that workforce to execute the mission to secure the border.”