Homeland Security Shifts Cybersecurity Personnel to Bolster Deportation Efforts
WASHINGTON D.C. – In a move raising concerns about national security, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has reassigned hundreds of staff members from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure security Agency (CISA) to agencies focused on immigration enforcement, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), according to reports from Bloomberg and Nextgov. The reassignments come as the Trump management prioritizes increased immigration enforcement.
Many of the affected CISA staffers work within the agency’s Capacity Building unit, responsible for improving the cybersecurity of federal agencies, and the Stakeholder Engagement Division, which manages partnerships with international organizations. Some personnel have also been moved to the Federal Protective Service,a police unit that collaborates with ICE and CBP on deportations.
The shift in personnel coincides with critically important funding allocated to ICE for deportation efforts. Lawmakers authorized $150 billion in taxpayer funding in July to support ICE’s operations, with a substantial portion earmarked for technology – including spyware, data brokers, and location data tracking - to monitor individuals across the United States.
News of the reassignments arrives amid a surge in cyberattacks targeting both private industry and the federal government.Recent breaches include a data theft from companies using Salesforce databases by an English-speaking crime gang, the compromise of sealed documents from the U.S. federal courts system attributed to Russian hackers, and a SharePoint vulnerability exploited earlier this year that impacted several U.S. federal departments,including the agency responsible for securing the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
In a statement to TechCrunch,Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated the agency “routinely aligns personnel to meet mission priorities while ensuring continuity across all core mission areas,” and confirmed the reassignments. “Any notion that DHS is unprepared to handle threats to our nation because of these realignments is ludicrous,” McLaughlin added. However,she declined to specify whether the vacated CISA roles would be filled.
