Civilian employees within the Pentagon will soon be deployed to the Department of Homeland Security to assist with border security efforts, as well as immigration enforcement within the country.
The move was disclosed in a memo issued Monday by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to senior Pentagon leadership, defense agency and Pentagon field activity directors and military commanders but did not provide specifics regarding job duties and missions in which the employees would participate.
The memo did state that “detail assignments may be either reimbursable or non-reimbursable,” meaning paid or unpaid. Unpaid assignments would be authorized “where the expected benefit of a detail would be comparable to training or development programs that otherwise would be conducted at a DoD Component’s expense.”
“Protecting our homeland from bad actors and illegal substances has been a focus of the President and of the Secretary of Defense since Day 1 of this administration,” chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement. “Whether on the border or in our communities, allowing qualified DoD civilian employees to support DHS will accelerate the progress already made by service members in achieving our national security goals.”
Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Defense One that the jobs likely will be largely administrative.
“Note also that there’s no discussion about involuntary assignments,” Cancian said. “My assumption is that this would only apply to volunteers.”
Although the memo suggests the civilian employees might support Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, they, like service members, are not used for law enforcement activities. Federal law prohibits uniformed troops from acting as police, and DOD policy applies the same guidelines to civilians, according to Defense One.
“These would not entail large numbers of civilians,” Cancian said. “Mostly in headquarters for coordination. I expect that will be the case with the southwest border.”
A Pentagon spokesman referred Newsmax to DHS for details. Newsmax reached out to DHS for comment.
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