Sources: the US DHS has reassigned hundreds of CISA workers into jobs that support deportations, including at ICE, and said it would dismiss anyone who refused
“It seems like it's in an effort to get them to quit instead of firing them,” a US official told me. — I'm off for the rest of the week (timing!) but I'll have a story on this shortly after I get back. … Patrick Howell O'Neill / @patrickhowelloneill.com : New: DHS has reassigned hundreds of national security specialists, including cyber personnel from CISA, into jobs that support President Donald Trump's mass deportation efforts and said it would fire anyone who refuses to go along. Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/article... Forums: r/cybersecurity : Homeland Security Cyber Personnel Reassigned to Jobs in Trump's Deportation Push
Context & Ripple Effects
The reported reassignment lands after substantial erosion in CISA's staffing and leadership: related coverage described roughly 1,000 departures from the agency and the exit of leaders across most operational divisions and regional offices. It turns personnel allocation into another lever shaping the agency's available cyber capability.
The episode also fits a broader pattern of workforce disruption at CISA, where employees had already described the operational toll of layoffs and weak leadership.
First-order effects
- Hundreds of CISA specialists, including cyber personnel, are redirected to DHS and ICE work supporting deportations; those who refuse face dismissal, according to the report.
- CISA loses immediate access to the reassigned staff for its core mission while affected employees must choose between the new roles and leaving federal service.
Second-order effects
- The reassignment can compound retention pressure at an agency already depleted by departures, increasing the burden on remaining teams and making continuity harder to preserve.
- DHS's immigration priorities gain access to personnel with national-security expertise, while CISA's cyber work must be prioritized around a smaller or less stable workforce.
Third-order effects
- If repeated, using specialized cyber staff as a flexible pool for other departmental priorities would make federal cyber capacity more dependent on short-term political and operational demands than on a dedicated staffing base.
- The later need to rebuild CISA through hiring, reflected in its planned 2026 hiring push, suggests that workforce reductions and redeployments can create a longer-lived capability and institutional-knowledge gap.
The trend: This is one data point in the reprioritization of federal cybersecurity institutions' personnel toward immediate DHS policy objectives, with potential costs to specialist capacity and continuity.