Homeland Security ex-officials warn of security risks from shutdown

A TSA employee at Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, N.J., on Jan. 23, 2019, looks at a food stamp program as she is given a box of provisions at a food drive to help government employees who are working without pay during the government shutdown. (Photo: Julio Cortez/AP)
A TSA employee at Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, N.J., on Jan. 23, 2019, looks at a food stamp program as she is given a box of provisions at a food drive to help government employees who are working without pay during the government shutdown. (Photo: Julio Cortez/AP)

Former Department of Homeland Security officials and the leaders of unions representing federal workers held a panel discussion on Capitol Hill on Thursday to discuss the personal toll the ongoing government shutdown is having on frontline DHS personnel and the potential risks this poses to national security.

“We are in the midst of a security crisis, and it is one of our own making,” said former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson.

“The people we depend on to protect us are now the people on which we are inflicting financial insecurity,” he said, warning that the “breaking point may come tomorrow, when they miss a paycheck for the second time this year.”

Johnson, who served as head of the department under President Barack Obama from 2013 to 2017, was one of five former DHS secretaries who signed a letter Wednesday urging President Trump and members of Congress to fund the department. Among the letter’s signers was John Kelly, who served under Trump as both DHS secretary and, until last month, White House chief of staff.

In their letter, the former secretaries condemned as “unconscionable” the continued failure to pay frontline homeland security workers, including Transportation Safety Administration officers, Customs personnel, Border Patrol agents and Coast Guard members. They said it posed both immediate and long-term national security risks, as agencies struggle to retain and recruit talent.

The same concerns were echoed by participants in Thursday’s panel, including Vice Admiral Peter Neffenger, former administrator for the TSA and former vice commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard.

“I fear that this shutdown, aside from the impact it’s having on individuals, it’s having a long-term, extremely detrimental effect on the nation’s preparedness and ability to respond to disasters and terrorist attacks on United States,” said Neffenger.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee about election security on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 21, 2018. (Photo: Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters)
Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee about election security on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 21, 2018. (Photo: Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters)

“I remain very concerned about a terrorist-inspired event,” said Caitlin Durkovich, former assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at DHS. She said a number of “strategic risk efforts and security awareness campaigns are on hold” despite recent ISIS attacks on Americans in Syria.

While she said “we should take solace that Homeland Security employees on duty, without pay, are doing exceptional jobs,” Durkovich emphasized that DHS’s cyber and infrastructure security missions rely heavily on the work of contractors who, she predicts, will be harder to recruit once the shutdown is over. Officials at other agencies that deal with intelligence and national security, such as the FBI, have expressed similar concerns about the impact of the shutdown on current operations as well as future recruitment.

A more immediate safety concern is the increasing toll of the shutdown on the TSA, whose frontline officers are among the lowest-paid federal employees, despite the crucial role they play in airport security.

“They cannot afford to go to work without pay,” said J. David Cox, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, pointing to reports of TSA officers calling in sick and even resigning in large numbers as the shutdown drags on.

Cox said he shares many of the concerns expressed by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which released a jarring statement on Wednesday along with the Association of Flight Attendants and the Air Line Pilots Association, about the increasingly serious safety risks created by the shutdown.

“I believe we are moving very swiftly toward a breaking point at TSA,” said Cox.

“There are people in this world who would love to harm this country and they know exactly what’s going on in this country, because it’s all we’re talking about right now.”

J. David Cox, national president of the AFGE, is led away by U.S. Capitol Police after participating in a protest against the government shutdown outside the Capitol Hill office of Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Jan. 23, 2019. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
J. David Cox, national president of the AFGE, is led away by U.S. Capitol Police after participating in a protest against the government shutdown outside the Capitol Hill office of Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Jan. 23, 2019. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) has sued the Trump administration over the partial government shutdown, alleging that hundreds of thousands of federal employees are being illegally forced to work without pay. A similar lawsuit is also being pursued by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents 150,000 employees of 33 federal agencies including Customs and Border Protection, the Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration, and the IRS.

During Thursday’s panel discussion, NTEU national president Tony Reardon clarified that the union’s lawsuit, which was originally filed on behalf of two Customs and Border Protection officers, “absolutely does not mean that we don’t support border security.”

“In fact, our members and NTEU strongly support border security,” Reardon said, explaining that the “CBP employees I represent are frustrated that government leaders seemingly do not recognize that securing national ports of entry is just as vital to the nation’s security as securing the border between ports of entry.”

Border security — specifically, President Trump’s demands for billions in funding for a wall on the southwest border — is at the root of the shutdown.

On Thursday afternoon, with the shutdown approaching its 34th day, the Senate failed to pass two bills designed to reopen the government. One, which was already passed by House Democrats, would have temporarily funded the government through February and did not include money for the border wall. The other bill, proposed by President Trump and backed by Republicans, sought to reopen the government by offering short-term, limited extensions of immigration programs the administration has already acted to terminate, including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and Temporary Protected Status, in exchange for $5.7 billion in border wall funds.

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