The Department of Homeland Security is pulling hundreds of cybersecurity experts from CISA to support Trump's immigration crackdown, leaving critical cyber defense roles potentially unfilled as the U.S. faces an unprecedented wave of cyberattacks. The move comes as Russian hackers breach federal court systems and crime gangs target Salesforce databases nationwide.
The Department of Homeland Security just made a move that's sending shockwaves through the cybersecurity community. According to reports from Bloomberg and Nextgov, hundreds of cybersecurity professionals at CISA are being reassigned to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection to support the Trump administration's deportation efforts.
The timing couldn't be worse. These aren't just any government employees – they're the cyber experts who issue critical guidance to help federal agencies and infrastructure operators defend against increasingly sophisticated threats. Many of the reassigned staff work in CISA's Capacity Building unit, which directly improves cybersecurity across government agencies, and the Stakeholder Engagement Division, which manages partnerships with international cybersecurity organizations.
Some CISA staffers are being moved to the Federal Protective Service, a police unit that now works alongside ICE and CBP on deportations. The Trump administration has committed $150 billion in taxpayer funding to immigration enforcement, with much of it going toward surveillance technology including spyware, data brokers, and location tracking systems to monitor millions of people across the country.
But here's what makes this particularly concerning: America is currently under siege from cyberattacks. In just the past few weeks, an English-speaking crime gang has stolen massive amounts of data from dozens of companies using Salesforce databases. Russian government hackers breached the U.S. federal courts system, stealing sealed court documents. A SharePoint vulnerability earlier this year allowed hackers to breach several federal departments, including the agency responsible for securing America's nuclear weapons stockpile.
When TechCrunch pressed Homeland Security for answers, assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin offered the standard bureaucratic response: the agency "routinely aligns personnel to meet mission priorities while ensuring continuity across all core mission areas." She didn't dispute the hundreds of reassignments but insisted that "any notion that DHS is unprepared to handle threats to our nation because of these realignments is ludicrous."
