Low Pay and Geography Contribute to Hiring Woes at Immigration Detention Facilities

Homeland Security continues to struggle with recruiting and retaining mental health care providers to work at immigration detention facilities across the country, a weakness the department’s watchdog highlighted five years ago.

Officials cited an inability to offer competitive pay, a lengthy security clearance process, and geography as major obstacles in hiring and keeping mental health staff, particularly psychiatrists, at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Health Service Corps, according to a new inspector general report.

“For instance, ICE officials explained it is difficult to attract and retain psychiatrists at detention facilities in rural and remote areas,” the July report said. “With high demand in the public and private sectors for mental health care providers, IHSC has to compete to hire providers.”

The IG first identified vacancies in mental health jobs and the management of mental health cases at the agency as concerns in a 2011 report.

The ICE Health Service Corps has a workforce of more than 1,100 employees -- including officers of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, civilian workers and contractors -- who provide medical and mental health care to 13,500 detainees in 21 ICE immigration detention centers throughout the country. In addition, the agency manages and oversees medical care for 15,000 detainees at 119 non-IHSC staffed detention facilities.

Since the 2011 IG report, IHSC has increased its workforce by roughly 280 employees, and has used Title 38 to hire health care professionals such as psychiatrists and nurses faster and at higher salaries. ICE also hired a permanent assistant director for the Health Service Corps, developed a staffing plan, and created an electronic health records system of detainees’ medical history and needs in response to the watchdog’s 2011 recommendations.

But it doesn’t look like ICE will have its recruitment problem solved anytime soon, according to the latest review conducted between January and May 2016.

“According to ICE officials, although they have made progress, staffing challenges are likely to continue because the contributing factors are mainly outside of their control,” the IG report stated. “We requested, but did not receive, documentation to support this assertion and to quantify the staffing issues.”

The watchdog said that ICE “needs to maintain data and provide evidence to substantiate the ongoing challenges outside of its control and the continuing staffing limitations.”