Homeland Security Reassigns ‘hundreds’ Of Cisa Cyber Staffers To Support Trump’s Deportation Crackdown

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is reassigning hundreds of labor crossed respective of its agencies to assistance successful nan Trump administration’s wide migration crackdown, and will disregard staffers who garbage to comply, according to news reports.

Bloomberg reported Wednesday that nan section moved staffers from nan U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA, galore of whom attraction connected issuing cyber guidance to thief U.S. authorities agencies and captious infrastructure take sides from cyber threats, to different agencies wrong nan national department, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). 

Both Bloomberg and Nextgov reported that galore of nan affected CISA staffers are successful nan agency’s Capacity Building unit, which helps to amended nan cybersecurity posture of national agencies, arsenic good arsenic nan Stakeholder Engagement Division, a group that leads CISA’s partnerships pinch world agencies and organizations. 

Other CISA staffers person been moved to nan Federal Protective Service, a constabulary portion that useful pinch ICE and CBP connected deportations, per nan publications.

The Trump management has made migration enforcement a flagship argumentation since taking agency successful January, pinch lawmakers successful July authorizing $150 cardinal successful payer funding to support deportations by ICE. Much of nan backing will spell towards utilizing technology, from spyware to information brokers and location data, to way millions of individuals crossed nan United States. 

News of nan reassignments comes astatine a clip erstwhile nan U.S. is facing a activity of hacks targeting backstage manufacture and nan national government.

In caller weeks, an English-speaking crime pack person stolen reams of information from dozens of companies who shop customer accusation successful Salesforce databases; Russian hackers have stolen sealed documents from nan U.S. national courts system; and a SharePoint bug earlier this twelvemonth allowed hackers to breach respective U.S. national departments, including nan agency tasked pinch maintaining nan information of nan U.S. government’s stockpile of atomic weapons.

In an emailed statement, Homeland Security adjunct caput Tricia McLaughlin told TechCrunch that nan agency “routinely aligns unit to meet ngo priorities while ensuring continuity crossed each halfway ngo areas,” and did not conflict nan media reports that hundreds of staffers would beryllium reassigned. 

McLaughlin said, “Any conception that DHS is unprepared to grip threats to our federation because of these realignments is ludicrous.” But McLaughlin would not say, erstwhile asked by TechCrunch, if nan reassigned CISA roles would beryllium backfilled aliases would stay vacant.