The failed assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump has put the spotlight on staffing shortages at the Secret Service. But multiple federal law enforcement agencies are seeing employee shortfalls, including the organization that trains federal officers.

The Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) provides basic and advanced training to law enforcement officers at more than 90 federal agencies, as well as for state, local, tribal and territorial (SLTT) governments.

The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents many FLETC instructors and employees, is urging Congress to add $56.7 million to FLETC’s budget in fiscal 2025 for additional instructors, better facilities and other support costs.

“FLETC’s ability to provide the highest quality training is consistently harmed due to inadequate funding and resources,” NTEU wrote to House appropriators in May. “And the need for training continues to grow.”

Impact on training and recruitment

Multiple federal law enforcement agencies are seeking to boost hiring in the coming years. The Federal Protective Service, for instance, faces a deficit of several hundred officers and is seeking to fill many of those positions ahead of the presidential election this fall.

Customs and Border Protection is also ramping up hiring after receiving funding to increase its ranks by several thousand officers in fiscal 2024. NTEU, which also represents many CBP officers, is warning that the agency will need to accelerate its hiring efforts even more ahead of an expected retirement bow wave in 2028.

New officers at FPS, CBP, the Secret Service and other federal law enforcement agencies are trained at FLETC. But Doreen Greenwald, president of NTEU, said FLETC’s funding shortfalls could affect the overall federal law enforcement recruiting push.

“You can only hire so many because they have to get through this training pipeline,” Greenwald said in an interview. “And if the training pipeline is inadequate to address the numbers that have to go through it, it delays people getting the proper training and then delays them going on to work in the positions that they were hired for.”

Greenwald said FLETC has struggled particularly with hiring and retention after prior leadership made a decision several years ago to hire instructors as temporary, term employees instead of permanent staff.

“People don’t want to apply for jobs when it’s a temporary position, because it means moving your family temporarily,” Greenwald said. “And so I think that has led somewhat to increased turnover, and basically a vacancy need there for hiring instructors. So we would like to see more permanent instructors hired.”

FLETC instructors are also dealing with increased workloads, which has “affected the morale of the staff, increased burnout, and virtually eliminated the ability of staff to attend training programs to improve their own skill,” NTEU told House lawmakers in May.

NTEU also said FLETC has been forced to cancel several advanced courses in recent years, such as CBP driving training programs, due to staffing shortfalls.

Uncertainty about future FLETC funding

FLETC’s funding outlook for fiscal 2025 is murky.

After striking a bipartisan budget deal with House Republicans, the Biden administration’s fiscal 2025 budget request for FLETC included a cut of $14 million compared to the agency’s 2024 budget.

And the House’s version of the fiscal 2025 homeland security spending bill, approved along party lines in late June, included $366 million for FLETC, about $10 million less than what the training centers received in fiscal 2024.

Senate appropriators, meanwhile, have yet to introduce their version of the fiscal 2025 homeland security spending bill.

The House report on the appropriations bill includes direction for FLETC to report on its efforts to meet the training needs of state and local law enforcement. It also directs FLETC to schedule training at all four of its training facilities “to ensure they are fully utilized at the highest capacity throughout the fiscal year.”

But Greenwald and NTEU argue FLETC need a funding boost if lawmakers want to see increased law enforcement training.

“There’s been a greater emphasis looking at federal law enforcement, making sure they have the right resources and the training in place, based on some of the news lately,” Greenwald said. “This should really emphasize to Congress the importance of having the right resources in place.”

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