Special Counsel Files Complaints Against CBP Officials Alleging Inappropriate Hiring Practices
The Office of the Special Counsel (OSC) filed complaints against three CBP human resources employees alleging that they illegally conspired to hire candidates connected to then-CBP Commissioner Alan Bersin, the OSC said in an April 9 press release. The complaints were filed April 8 with the Merit System Protections Board, a governmental agency that has oversight duties over some federal employee issues. Bersin, now chief diplomatic officer for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is not named in the complaints. The disciplinary actions are OSC’s first complaints against management officials for political discrimination in over 30 years, it said.
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CBP "has and will continue to fully cooperate with the Office of the Special Counsel on all investigations but can’t comment on specific ongoing cases," said an agency spokesman.
Two of the CBP officials are said to have discriminated "in favor of political appointees and against all other potential candidates," said the OSC, an independent investigative federal agency. "They did so by improperly intervening in the hiring process to convert non-career political appointees into career appointments" as a result of their "close affiliation with the campaign to elect Barack Obama, the Obama Administration, and CBP’s politically appointed Commissioner." The "then-Deputy Assistant Commissioner and other CBP human resources employees knew that hiring these three candidates was a priority for Mr. Bersin, and that the then-Assistant Commissioner for Human Resources Management (no longer in federal government service) was actively monitoring these candidates’ progress" said the OSC. CBP did not at that time have any political positions into which the "favored candidates could be appointed noncompetitively" and the CBP officials subsequently allegedly "drafted career job descriptions to closely fit the résumés of the candidates." the OSC said.
The DHS’s Chief Human Capital Officer ultimately did not approve the hires of the three political employees for career service, finding them improper, said the OSC. Still, the then-Deputy Assistant Commissioner later tried to prepare and approve a "special noncompetitive appointment conversion," said the OSC. "This conversion violated CBP’s own policy by failing to notify other potential applicants of this noncompetitive opportunity for appointment in the civil service. Under questioning from OSC, the then-Deputy Assistant Commissioner asserted CBP did not need to follow its own policy." The Office of Personnel Management ultimately denied the conversion, it said.