Harris touts plan to bring on more border agents, but hiring is already lagging

Vice President Kamala Harris is embarking on her first trip to the southwest border as the Democratic nominee for president Friday evening, where she is expected to reiterate her call for the addition of thousands of new federal officers and agents to the region. 

Her proposal, however, is likely to butt up against a reality that has plagued each of the last three administrations: it is exceedingly difficult to hire those personnel. 

Harris is expected to criticize former President Trump for his role in spiking a bipartisan agreement earlier this year, a significant portion of which focused on adding staff to key border agencies. The legislation would have supported more than 4,300 asylum officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 1,500 new Customs and Border Protection personnel—including both Border Patrol agents and customs officers—1,200 Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees, 100 immigration judges and support staff and additional USCIS staff.

Ahead of her speech Friday, the Harris campaign released an ad that promised the vice president has a plan to “hire thousands more border agents.” The campaign did not respond to requests for clarification, but the pledge appeared to go far beyond the Border Patrol hiring included in the failed bipartisan bill. 

Just this week, however, the Government Accountability Office released a report that found Customs and Border Protection—including its Office of Field Operations, Border Patrol and Air and Marine Operations—has mostly failed to boost its workforce in recent years despite funding and presidential promises to do so. CBP has found some success in hiring personnel more quickly and bringing on more employees each year, but it has failed to keep pace with attrition in key areas. 

“Over the last 10 years, CBP has frequently fallen short of its staffing targets for law enforcement positions, challenging the frontline workforce’s ability to fulfill the agency’s mission,” GAO said. 

Border Patrol failed to reach its hiring goals from fiscal 2021 through fiscal 2024 and its total onboard staff has decreased in each of those years. The number of authorized agents jumped from 19,000 to 22,000 in that period, but the actual number of agents employed has declined. The reduction came despite Border Patrol managing to double its average annual hires in recent years. President Biden has boasted the he secured funding for small increases in Border Patrol staffing during his presidency, though his requests for supplemental funds for more dramatic hiring surges have gone unfulfilled. 

The number of customs officers climbed significantly from fiscal 2018 through fiscal 2020, but has leveled off since then and dropped off so far in the current fiscal year. 

That followed CBP missing its agency-wide hiring goals from fiscal years 2013 through 2017. Trump shortly after taking office vowed to ramp up the border security workforce and his administration signed a contract worth up to $300 million to help it bring on 7,500 border personnel, but canceled it after it managed to hire just 15 employees. Lawmakers for years were forced to claw back money appropriated for CBP hiring after the agency failed to meet its targets.

CBP has taken many steps to improve its hiring processes, incentivize potential hires to apply and motivate current employees to stay, GAO said, though the efforts have led to mixed results. The agency saw applications for law enforcement positions decline from fiscal years 2018 to 2022, though it ticked up in fiscal 2023. It has invested in advertising—spending $43 million on ads for job openings in fiscal 2023—thousands of recruiting events per year and hiring and retention incentives. Border Patrol, for example, is offering $20,000 recruiting incentives, which can go up to $30,000 in certain locations. 

Officials said negative opinions of law enforcement in general and CBP in particular, increased demands on the workforce, worse work-life balance, reduced physical fitness among the general population and the remote locations and extreme weather conditions in many areas their employees work all have contributed to the recruiting issues. 

Joining CBP is an arduous, time-intensive process with 12 steps that include a medical, physical and polygraph examination. After hovering around just 25% for many years, CBP has managed to increase the applicant pass rate for the polygraph test to 40%. That success is in part due to the agency no longer deeming marijuana use within the prior two years disqualifying. It has reduced that window to 90 days and an admission of use no longer leads to an automatic rejection. 

CBP has struggled with poor morale since 2005, GAO noted, and the situation has hardly improved despite a significant investment of resources. The agency was ranked 432 out of 459 federal subcomponents in the most recent Best Places to Work rankings, which the Partnership for Public Service maintains based on Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey data. Attrition has accelerated over the last decade, with CBP officials pointing to competition with other law enforcement agencies, a lack of services in its remote locations and a poor work-life balance. It has offered retention and relocation bonuses on a limited basis and, in some cases, implemented special salary rates. 

The bipartisan border bill, which came together after months of negotiations between the White House and senators on both sides of the aisle and which Harris is promising to bring over the finish line if elected president, included some additional provisions to ease hiring. USCIS and ICE would receive direct hire authority—allowing the agencies to bypass normal restrictions that slow down federal onboarding—while the former agency would have been able to boost pay for some workers. CBP would have allowed more applicants to bypass the polygraph exam, provided they previously passed one.  

Trump has also vowed to ask more of the federal immigration workforce, including his promise to institute mass deportation of millions of undocumented U.S. residents, though he has not specified how significant of a hiring surge he would require. 

Either candidate, should they push for more CBP personnel, would likely face additional headwinds. The agency told GAO it is preparing for a retirement wave in the coming years as a significant swath of its workforce becomes retirement eligible at once. It anticipates a particularly acute problem at Border Patrol, after its surge of 2007 hires becomes retirement eligible in 2027. CBP is already planning to mitigate the issue, including by establishing contingencies if it is unable to restock its rolls in a timely manner.