I’d heard reports that the Pentagon was sending out official emails to Pentagon employees telling them about the great new opportunities available working for ICE and the CBP. Then I was told about this new listing at USAJobs — the official jobs board for the U.S. government. It says the Department of Homeland Security is creating something called the ICE/CBP “Volunteer Force” which is open to all civilian DOD employees.
The listing reads …
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Volunteer Force (VF) provides Department of Defense civilian employees an opportunity to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in their commitment to ensuring a safe and orderly immigration system. Volunteers will serve in critical support roles up to 180 days at an ICE or CBP facility. Travel, lodging, and per diem may be reimbursed by the receiving agency. The detail is not a promotion opportunity.
It’s unclear from the description. But this doesn’t really sound like “volunteering.” More like you keep drawing your DOD salary but you go work for ICE for six months. And the listing title describes as a “DOD Detail” which would be that sort of temporary reassignment.
This comes amid what are already severe staff shortages at DOD in the wake of DOGE.
More to come.
Late Update: From what I can understand, the job listing has been up for almost two weeks. But it only seems to have gotten attention today when the Pentagon sent out an official email to its employees encouraging them to apply. Since posting, I noticed that 404 Media has also published a story on this now. I suspect we both heard about it from sources who learned about it from the DOD internal email. The timing of both of our stories makes that almost certain. This page suggests the DHS “volunteer force” was created as early as February of this year, though a version of it may have existed earlier. As a tell of the state of organization, the email you’re instructed to use to apply is a FEMA email address.
