The federal government wants the help of an outside contractor to help recruit the 5,000 Border Patrol agents President Trump ordered hired in an executive order.
Customs and Border Protection loses more agents than it hires every year, and its acting deputy commissioner, Randolph Alles, said at a recent event that “attracting and recruiting high-quality individuals is a challenge for us.”
The pre-solicitation notice for bids posted Thursday aims at addressing just this. The potential contractor would conduct recruiting and help with associated hiring activities such as “applicant testing, screening for suitability, and application process streamlining.” These services would be for “thousands of Border Patrol Agents over the next several years,” the notice said, and “competitive offerors will be able to provide research and analytics driven marketing, advertising, and recruitment services.”
MISSION, TX – JULY 24: U.S. Border Patrol agents look for immigrants crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico (L), to the United States at dusk on July 24, 2014 near Mission, Texas. Tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants, many of them families or unaccompanied minors, have crossed illegally into the United States this year and presented themselves to federal agents, causing a humanitarian crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border. Texas’ Rio Grande Valley has become the epicenter of the latest immigrant crisis, as more immigrants, especially Central Americans, cross illegally from Mexico into that sector than any other stretch of the America’s 1,933 mile border with Mexico. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
In his campaign for office, Trump called for the hiring of 5,000 additional Border Patrol Agents and 10,000 additional Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. While he has ordered for this to occur through executive action, implementation will be difficult.
The White House’s budget blueprint for Fiscal Year 2018 funds just the hiring of 500 additional agents. A Department of Homeland Security official told TheDC that the Border Patrol and ICE need time to “significantly ramp up their recruiting pipeline and absorb this surge in new employees.” The full cost of 5,000 agents is estimated to be $5 billion, according to internal documents obtained by The Washington Post.
As of January, there were 19,627 Border Patrol agents and an October inspector general report revealed it took nine months to hire a single Border Patrol agent. A CBP memo about this hiring surge said that the Border Patrol will need to cut attrition by ten percent and increase the amount of applicants by 25 percent to achieve the president’s desired staffing.
FALFURRIAS, TX – SEPTEMBER 09: A U.S. Border Patrol agent tries to tackle an undocumented immigrant in dense underbrush on September 9, 2014 near Falfurrias, Texas. He missed but the immigrant was later caught by a fellow agent. Thousands of migrants continue to cross illegally from Mexico into the United States, and Texas’ Rio Grande Valley has more traffic than any other sector of the U.S.-Mexico border. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
The memo also said that difficulties in recruitment for the agency are partly due to a polygraph test in the hiring process, and the prospect of working in remote areas. To achieve this increased staffing CBP wants to remove the polygraph requirement for certain applicants, and have the authority to change the level of background check needed for the job.
A recent report, however, highlighted that this could be an issue as 170 border law enforcement agents and officers have been arrested, indicted, or convicted of corruption charges in the past fifteen years.