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FEMA Employees Reassigned to ICE

Probationary employees who had been on paid leave were told to report to ICE within seven days or lose their jobs. It could signal problems with ICE recruitment.

A number of employees with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) were informed via email late on Tuesday that they have been reassigned, effective immediately, to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The workers had seven days to accept the reassignment, under threat of being removed from the civil service.

According to sources familiar with the matter, those reassigned were probationary employees with less than one year at FEMA, who because of presumed weaker civil service protections were fired early in the Trump administration but reinstated after a court order. Like at many federal agencies, these employees had been on paid administrative leave for months, among the over 100,000 men and women across the federal government who have been collecting a salary yet doing no work.

But now, these probationary FEMA employees on leave are apparently being shifted as a stopgap maneuver to bolster the ranks of ICE, which received tens of billions of dollars in the GOP mega-bill but faces the daunting task of hiring thousands of new agents to an unpopular agency with plummeting morale.

The Prospect reviewed an email from Sara Birchenough, an acting division director in staffing at the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer. The email, with the subject line “Management Directed Reassignment Effective August 5, 2025,” notified recipients that they would be reassigned to ICE “due to the mission requirements of the Department.” The Department refers to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); both FEMA and ICE are under its umbrella.

It’s unclear how many employees were reassigned from FEMA in this manner and exactly how they would serve. Employees were told that the position description would be explained to them separately. They were given seven calendar days from receipt of the letter to accept or decline the appointment; a non-response would be considered acceptance. “If you choose to decline this reassignment, or accept but fail to report for duty, you may be subject to removal from Federal service as provided in 5 U.S.C. § 7513,” the email reads, referring to a portion of the U.S. Code.

In a statement, a DHS spokesperson told the Prospect, “Under President Trump’s leadership and through the One Big Beautiful Bill, DHS is adopting an all-hands-on-deck strategy to recruit 10,000 new ICE agents. To support this effort, select FEMA employees will temporarily be detailed to ICE for 90 days to assist with hiring and vetting. Their deployment will NOT disrupt FEMA’s critical operations. FEMA remains fully prepared for Hurricane Season. Patriotic Americans are encouraged to apply at join.ice.gov.”

Under federal rules, executive branch agencies do have the authority to involuntarily reassign employees within departments, as long as the employee gets notice and has the ability to reject the reassignment. Removal is allowable as a disciplinary measure for rejecting a reassignment.

AFGE Local 4060, the union local for FEMA employees, could not be reached for comment.

Reassigning dormant employees to ICE in particular signals how difficult it has been to add employees to an agency tasked with controversial abductions throughout the country.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act more than tripled ICE’s budget, allowing for the hiring of up to 10,000 new agents. But experts immediately questioned how successful this effort would be. In Trump’s first term, a proposed hiring surge failed to come close to reaching its goals. There’s less margin for error this time, with White House officials making brutal demands to round up, detain, and deport millions of people living in the country.

Since the law’s passage, ICE has advertised hiring terms that look increasingly desperate. It has offered signing bonuses as high as $50,000 as part of a program to lure back recent retirees. It has dangled student loan forgiveness and generous repayment plans for new recruits, while tightening student loan options for everyone else. It briefly offered cash bonuses to agents for rapid deportations before canceling the proposal.

Reassigning employees from FEMA who likely have no experience with immigration enforcement appears to be yet another attempt to bolster the ICE head count. If their task is to assist with hiring and vetting, as DHS says, it suggests a deficit of human resources professionals to vet new ICE agents. But the workers coming from FEMA are not necessarily trained in human resources, particularly in vetting agents who go out into the field for immigration operations.

A rushed process to boost staffing levels by any means necessary is likely to lead to relaxed hiring standards and improper practices. Already, American citizens have been detained and deported, numerous human rights violations have been alleged, and several detainees have died in custody.

~ David Dayen

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