Hiring

Within U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Border Patrol agents are responsible for patrolling our international land borders and coastal waters surrounding Florida and Puerto Rico. We conducted this audit to determine to what extent Border Patrol agents meet workload requirements related to investigative and law enforcement activities. Border Patrol needs to manage its workforce more efficiently, effectively, and economically. CBP and Border Patrol must expedite the development and implementation of a workforce staffing model for Border Patrol as required by Congress. Without a complete workforce staffing model, Border Patrol senior managers are unable to definitively determine the operational needs for, or best placement of, the 5,000 additional agents DHS was directed to hire per the January 2017 Executive Order.

We found that CBP administered polygraph examinations to unsuitable applicants who provided disqualifying information during the pre-test interview.  This occurred because CBP’s process is not sufficient to prevent unsuitable applicants from continuing the polygraph examination.  We made two recommendations to CBP to improve its screening by establishing an in-person pre-security interview process, requiring examiners to use the on-call adjudication process, and discontinue testing of unsuitable applicants.  CBP concurred with both recommendations and agreed that conducting the in-person pre-security interview prior to the polygraph examination is a best practice.  CBP has implemented one of the recommendations and has initiated a pilot program for a new polygraph format.

We determined that CBP, ICE and USSS have been able to maintain staffing levels close to the authorized number of law enforcement personnel, but they continue to have significant delays in hiring. The additional steps in the hiring process add to the time it takes to hire law enforcement officers, but the components also do not have the staff or comprehensive automated systems needed to hire personnel as efficiently as possible.  Although they have taken steps to reduce the time it takes to hire law enforcement personnel, it is too early to measure the long-term effects of the Department’s and the components’ recent actions. We made five recommendations to make the law enforcement hiring process more efficient.