Agencies and employee advocate groups are moving to organize safety and security resources in response to a “watch list” that names dozens of feds as “targets.”

The naming of mostly career employees on a website, called the “DHS Bureaucrat Watch List,” opens a new front in a steady campaign of threats targeting federal employees in recent years. It also comes amid an uncertain future for many feds as President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to remove civil service protections for thousands of policy jobs.

The watch list, organized by a conservative opposition research group with funding from the Heritage Foundation, is nominally aimed at “exposing the career staff who have outsized influence on efforts to secure the southern border.” It names employees at both the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department.

As of Tuesday, the site had listed 60 employees. The site’s founder told the Washington Post there are plans to add more names to the list.

None of the employees on the watch list are alleged to have broken the law, violated any rules or committed misconduct. Many are listed for having made small campaign donations to Democrats in the past; for expressing partisan viewpoints in op-eds written while they were in college; or for previously holding jobs advocating for immigrant rights.

A former senior DHS official noted that some of the people on the watch list have worked at DHS for well over a decade, supporting transitions across the Bush, Obama and first Trump administrations, respectively.

“Demonizing them or pointing out that they’re the enemies of the incoming administration is not only incorrect, it also kind of sets up a very adversarial, confrontational scenario that wouldn’t necessarily play out face to face,” the former official said. “It kind of gives people pause about, ‘Do I really want to work in this environment?’”

Instilling that uncertainty and fear seems to be central to the strategy.

The watch list founder told the Post he hopes Trump will consider the list as part of his “Schedule F” revival. Russell Vought, who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget during the first Trump administration, said in a private speech that he wants to put career civil servants “in trauma,” adding that they should “not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”

The threat of doxing has become especially acute in recent years amid a rise in anti-government sentiment. The former DHS official noted it would have previously been unthinkable for career officials, who don’t control or initiate policy, to be targeted online.

“In the age of social media, it’s become much easier for people to intimidate and circulate information, sometimes false, that really puts people on the spot and makes them worry about their job and their families,” the official said.

The Federal Protective Service last month began publishing a series of personal safety and security awareness tips, including guidance for employees to protect against doxing. FPS says the series will continue into 2025.

One person who works with federal employee and public service advocacy groups, speaking on condition of anonymity, said several associations are meeting to understand “what can be done, what information can be shared with affected employees” regarding initiatives such as the watch list.

The person said groups are also working with the Biden administration and members of Congress on how public employees can be better protected moving forward.

“Folks are trying to figure out how to respond and proceed, but have chosen to do more behind the scenes right now,” the person said. “[The watch list] is a bad idea and we don’t want to give it more oxygen, but we still need to figure out how to respond.”

Debra D’Agostino, a founding partner of the Federal Practice Group law firm, said agencies have an obligation to protect an employee if they’ve been notified of specific harassment from a third-party. But she said the publication of the watch list, even one that uses inflammatory language such as “targets,” likely constitutes free speech.

“What’s terrifying to someone like me is the notion that these people will stop doing the job that they’re paid to do because they’ve been identified as a target. They shut up and start saying ‘yes’ to everything,” D’Agostino said. “That’s not a civil service that serves the American people, in my opinion. But I certainly understand if these folks are terrified, and I would suspect they’re probably more terrified about their personal safety, given how they’ve been identified, than their career at this point.”

A spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget did not immediately respond to a request for comment on what OMB is doing to help agencies respond to threats.

“We are immensely proud of the more than 260,000 public servants in DHS who dedicate themselves every day to the safety and security of all Americans,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. “We condemn in the strongest terms any effort to harass or intimidate our public servants.”

A DHS official, speaking on background, said the department’s chief security officers are “working closely with the individuals mentioned on the list and their leadership, as well as the interagency and local law enforcement.”

The DHS official also said the department launched an “initiative” in October aimed at providing safety and security awareness tools and resources to its employees.

Meanwhile, a DoJ employee group pointed to the watch list in a recent letter to department leadership that asked for more action to combat “doxing” and other online threats.

A Justice Department spokesman said department officials “treat all threats against our workforce with the utmost seriousness.”

“The women and men of the Justice Department are dedicated public servants who work every day to ensure the fair and impartial application of our laws,” the spokesman said. “Protecting their safety and security is necessary for the department to carry out its vital mission. We continue to encourage our employees to report to their management any perceived threat, and we will take all appropriate action to keep them safe both on and off the job.”

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