Critically low staffing at the U.S Department of Homeland Security is forcing the agency to rely on overtime to fill gaps at ports of entry, the agency’s in-house watchdog testified on Tuesday.

Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, a Trump appointee who was confirmed in 2019, answered questions by lawmakers who said they are concerned by DHS’s use of temporary duty details to fill holes along the Southern border.

Democrats questioned Cuffari’s testimony and cast doubt on his cooperation regarding other investigations regarding the Secret Service and sexual harassment in the workforce. As inspector general, Cuffari is not in charge of devising, implementing or enforcing agency policies; his statutory duty is to investigate agency operations and report to Congress on inefficiencies, fraud or areas for improvement.

“We rely heavily on our inspectors general to cooperate with us,” said Rep. Steven Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts. “It’s been a good relationship ... our relationship with you is different. We have not had the cooperation and the relationship of trust that we have had with other inspectors general.”

“It’s no surprise that the Biden administration and my colleagues across the aisle don’t like him,” said Louisiana Republican Clay Higgins, who highlighted that because of understaffing, law enforcement officers are being pulled away from regular duties onto temporary details to assist workload surges.

Criminal investigators, classified as the 1811 job series, and law enforcement officers have been doing “some” law enforcement, Cuffari said, “but they’re also providing care and welfare services” to those who have been detained.

These ways of coping with insufficient staff to meet the demands of border entry have resulted in poor morale and risked the health of Homeland Security employees, according to Cuffari. According to his audit, the number of border patrol agents and Immigrations & Customs Enforcement personnel has stagnated while the number of monthly encounters at the border has more than doubled. Interviews with staff reveal employees feel overburdened by work that is not under their primary job duty, Cuffari testified.

These findings were based on a survey of 9,311 personnel, of which 16% responded. Rep. Robert Garcia, a Democrat from California, cited that response rate as evidence that the survey could not provide a complete picture.

“The attrition data in the report is full of basic math errors,” he added. “The data is not reliable. And a small subsection of [employees] were actually interviewed.”

The audit, conducted in 2021, acknowledges that the agency “did not test the accuracy of data associated with the current operating environment at the Southwest border” due to a lack of access to systems used by ICE and CBP. Some of the data also came from publicly accessibly files. Nonetheless, the audit maintains that the data was not the sole source of information and, as context, it provides a “reasonable basis for our findings.”

However, the agency’s 2024 budget justification argues for hundreds of new law enforcement officers to keep up with border operations, since current recruitment efforts are only keeping attrition at bay.

The agency has also consistently scored low in recent years among the best federal agencies to work for. In 2022, it was second to last among large federal agencies, and its overall satisfaction score fell from the year before.

Rep. Maxwell Frost, the Gen-Z Democrat representing Florida, also called attention to particularly low engagement scores for DHS’ inspector general office.

“Inspectors general are meant to be a safe haven for whistleblowers,” he said. “How is a whistleblower supposed to trust your office when members of your own staff don’t even feel safe to report wrongdoing themselves?”

The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents Customs and Border Protection employees, has also been sounding the alarm since the COVID-19 pandemic over the agency’s ability to meet the resumption of travel with a depleted workforce.

Homeland Security is the third largest federal agency, employing 252,000 civilian and military personnel.

Molly Weisner is a staff reporter for Federal Times where she covers labor, policy and contracting pertaining to the government workforce. She made previous stops at USA Today and McClatchy as a digital producer, and worked at The New York Times as a copy editor. Molly majored in journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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