DoD asks civilian employees to volunteer for ICE, CBP supporting roles

The Pentagon is asking its civilian employees to sign up for a “volunteer force” to support operations along the southern border, according to a department-wide email sent Wednesday.

“The secretary of Defense has authorized DoD civilian employees to participate in details to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS),” the email reads. “Selected department employees will have a chance to offer critical support to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as they fulfill the President’s intent to ensure a safe and orderly immigration system.” 

A defense official told Federal News Network that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo on June 1, which allows DoD civilian employees to participate in the volunteer program for up to 180 days. A job application page says volunteers will serve in critical support roles at ICE or CBP facilities. DoD civilians may be asked to deploy within 96 hours of receiving all approvals.

The email prompts DoD civilians to submit their application through USAJobs, after which DHS will review applications and seek approval from the employees’ home organizations. Those not immediately selected will remain in the applicant pool to fill the agency’s future needs.

Volunteers’ duties may include data entry, operational planning support, processing and throughput logistics and logistical support, according to the job application page. Michael Cogar, the deputy assistant defense secretary for civilian personnel policy, said DHS is seeking skills ranging from transportation security, data input and analysis, targeting and intelligence analysis, firearms, corrections, detention and prisoner processing, linguistics, case processing and human resources. 

Detailees may be required to work evenings, weekends and holidays — extensive overtime may be required, according to the job posting. Assignments will take place at ICE and CBP facilities along the U.S. border, but locations may extend to other geographic areas depending on agency needs. 

The job application page says conditions at some locations could be austere and deployment locations are not negotiable.

“Candidates should be committed to improving the efficiency of the federal government, passionate about the ideals of our American republic, and committed to upholding the rule of law and the United States Constitution,” the job application page says. 

The office of the Secretary of Defense did not clarify which agency will ultimately bear the costs of the details. Typically, such arrangements are governed by memorandums of understanding that spell out which expenses the receiving agency will cover, but those terms are negotiated case by case and can leave some costs with the lending agency. The job application page says the receiving agency may reimburse the Defense Department for all base pay, overtime and premium pay incurred by employees while serving on interagency detail.

“It’s usually done in cooperation with both departments, and so it may be the case that some of those costs wouldn’t be reimbursed, but that would be a negotiation between DoD and DHS,” Chris Cummiskey, chief executive officer of Cummiskey Strategic Solutions, LLC and former under secretary for management at DHS, told Federal News Network.

It is not unusual to see these kinds of partnerships between DoD and DHS — DHS has a history of drawing on DoD for additional resourcing and support when it faces big surges in demand, especially during national disasters and emergency response operations. 

With DoD as a partner, DHS usually benefits in two key ways: speed and expertise. DoD civilians often already hold security clearances and have specialized training, so they can be deployed quickly without going through lengthy vetting and onboarding. 

“These folks are cleared or have particular expertise that can be brought to bear quickly, which is something that is harder to do with some federal civilian agencies or even partnerships we tried to set up with the private sector in the past. Using DoD as a source of expertise gets you the kind of swiftness that oftentimes these kinds of initiatives require,” Cummiskey said.

“The reconciliation package calls for 10,000 ICE agents, 3,000 border patrol agents over the next four years. But hiring at those levels takes time, and so I would imagine that speed is kind of the reason you’d want to stand up a program like this. It gives you some additional resource capability in the near term, while you go through the process of sifting through I think 110,000 applicants for the ICE positions. It’s going to take them a while to not only stand up the internal processes to hire people at that scale, but it’s also going to take time to vet and clear, even with the relaxed standards of eliminating the age requirement things of that nature,” he added.

Typically, these programs are coordinated with employees’ managers who assess whether they can spare these workers for a span of time without degrading their own mission set. The Defense Department did not say how many civilians it expects to detail to DHS, how the program will impact its own operations, or how it plans to manage the additional workload created when employees are away from their jobs.

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the Defense Department has been working to shrink the size of its civilian workforce.  The department fired thousands of probationary employees as part of the initial workforce reduction effort. Additionally, the White House offered all federal employees the option to resign from their positions; approximately 21,000 civilian workers left during that time. The Pentagon later rolled out the DoD-specific deferred resignation program in March. Some commands are currently offering their civilian workers another chance to resign from their positions in exchange for four months of pay. 

“I think that even with the reduction of force that’s taken place through the various programs, you’re still going to have a segment or a percentage — it may be small — that would be available for a program like this based on the need of the receiving department as well as a desire on the lending department to actually support the mission at DHS,” Cummiskey said.

“In this case, while it’s voluntary, they’re going to be looking across programs to see if there are people that are in a position to go help at DHS in the near term, but I think with the full expectation that they would return to their positions, so it shouldn’t impact them. And usually there’s language in there that protects the employee during that span of time when they’re on loan,” he added.

The Defense Department said about 500 DoD civilians have already signed up to participate.

Meanwhile, the military’s role in immigration enforcement has expanded significantly since Trump took office — there are currently thousands of troops at the U.S. southern border, where the scope of their authority has shifted dramatically.

“ICE, CBP, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense are embracing President Trump’s whole-of-government approach to protecting the American people. DoD civilians — who have already undergone rigorous vetting and demonstrated their commitment to serving this nation — are invited to volunteer for temporary ICE assignments to help make America safe again and remove national security threats—including gang members and terrorists from our country,” a DHS spokesperson told Federal News Network.

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