The Trump administration ousted 405 employees at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in an ongoing workforce purge that has affected other federal agencies and departments.
The majority of the cuts occurred at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the country’s disaster relief agency, where 200 workers lost their jobs on Friday while over 130 employees were terminated at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), according to a source familiar with the matter.
A minimum of 50 employees were cut at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services while the DHS Science and Technology Directorate saw a 10-person reduction, the source added.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are making sweeping cuts and reform across the federal government to eliminate egregious waste and incompetence that has been happening for decades at the expense of the American taxpayer,” a DHS spokesperson told The Hill in an emailed statement.
Another 12 members of the Coast Guard who worked on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, all based in Washington, were placed on administrative leave. They were impacted by the reduction in force with an offer to back the border security efforts at the southwestern U.S. border.
The spokesperson said the DHS’s “component leads identified non-mission critical personnel in probationary status” and are actively “identifying other wasteful positions and offices that do not fulfill the department’s mission.”
As part of the federal purge greenlighted by President Trump and, in part, orchestrated by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) leader Elon Musk, thousands of workers who had been on the job for a year or two were fired this past week, getting ousted while still on their probationary period.
The Interior Department terminated some 2,300 employees. The Department of Veterans Affairs cut around 1,000 workers while the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ousted nearly 400 personnel.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), huge agencies within DHS, headed by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, did not appear to be affected by the Friday cuts. Both are paramount in Trump’s second-term crackdown on illegal immigration and curbing the number of illegal crossings at the southern border.
DHS spokesperson also added that Friday’s ousters “will result in roughly $50 million in savings for American taxpayers and incalculable valuable toward accountability and cutting red tape.”
