The Trump administration is pursuing twin strategies to shrink the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, laying off staffers and ordering others to either take new jobs elsewhere or leave the government.
The layoffs and forced relocations are the latest phase of the White House’s massive downsizing of CISA, which experts warn could further deplete the U.S.’s already weakened cyber-defense force. While the full consequences of the staff reductions remain unclear, they could include diminished support for critical infrastructure organizations and a reduced readiness to counter evolving nation-state and criminal threats.
The Department of Homeland Security has laid off 176 employees since the federal government shut down on Oct. 1, according to a court filing, and a DHS statement indicated that CISA accounted for the bulk of those layoffs due to its past work combating election misinformation. “During the last administration, CISA was focused on censorship, branding and electioneering,” a spokesperson said. “This is part of getting CISA back on mission.”
According to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter, the layoffs targeted employees in CISA’s Stakeholder Engagement Division, which manages the agency’s relationships with state, local, international and critical infrastructure partners; the Integrated Operations Division, which delivers services to partner organizations and runs CISA’s around-the-clock watch center; and the Infrastructure Security Division’s Chemical Security unit, which helped protect chemical facilities. The Cybersecurity Division did not experience any layoffs, two officials said.
In addition to the layoffs, the Trump administration is also pushing out CISA employees in a less direct way.
DHS has spent the past several months sending relocation orders, known as Management Directed Reassignments (MDR), to CISA staffers working on a wide variety of critical tasks, according to six U.S. officials and a former official familiar with the matter, all of whom requested anonymity to speak freely. DHS is reassigning CISA employees to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Protective Service, which guards immigration centers and other federal facilities. Refusing an MDR can be considered grounds for termination.
Cross-country marching orders
Many of these new jobs are across the country from where CISA employees live. “They’re MDRing someone from Georgia up to New York and MDRing someone from New York over to Texas,” said one U.S. official, who, like others interviewed for this story, requested anonymity to speak candidly.
Two CISA employees were reassigned to ICE jobs in D.C., even though “one of them lives nowhere near D.C.,” said a second U.S. official. “I know these people very well. They are doing sensitive and important work.”
In other cases, this person said, CISA staffers in D.C. are being ordered to move to Massachusetts, Texas and other states. One employee who was ordered to report to a new job in Alaska quit rather than relocate, according to the first official.
“In all cases,” said the second official, “it seems like it’s in an effort to get them to quit instead of firing them.”
Employees have been given seven days to respond to their new orders, multiple officials said. It is unclear how the ongoing federal government shutdown will affect that timeline, including whether DHS is extending the deadline until normal agency operations resume. Many employees still don’t know if they will be given more time to make a decision.
“It is playing, insecurity-wise, with your paycheck, your stability,” the first official said.
Agency under siege
The reassignments at CISA, first reported by Bloomberg, come as the agency is already in serious trouble, reeling from the loss of one-third of its workforce during the Trump administration and intense criticism from Republican lawmakers about its efforts to combat election-related mis- and disinformation during the 2020 election.
Congress created CISA in 2018 to streamline and empower the government’s cyber defense work, and the Biden administration raised the agency’s public profile, expanded its mission and gave it new authorities. But the Trump administration’s recent attacks on the agency have raised alarms across the cybersecurity community that the government is reversing years of progress toward more vigilant and better coordinated cyber defense.
“As the world grows more contentious and adversaries harness AI to amplify the scale and sophistication of their attacks, this is not the time to disrupt what remains of our federal cybersecurity apparatus,” said Caitlin Durkovich, who served as President Joe Biden’s deputy homeland security adviser for resilience and response. “We need continuity and laser-focus on the evolving threat landscape. Reassignments and internal churn are counterproductive and leave the U.S. and critical infrastructure operators more vulnerable.”
From election security to meteorology
Reassignment orders have targeted people in all corners of the CISA workforce.
Mona Harrington, who had led the agency’s National Risk Management Center since early 2022, was reassigned to FPS, according to two officials. Harrington, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, is the senior-most CISA official known to have been reassigned. In a LinkedIn post announcing her new job, she wrote that she was “looking forward to continue serving and supporting DHS’s vital mission.”
The first CISA employees to be reassigned were members of the agency’s election security team, who were already on leave as part of a Trump administration review of their work. That team — some of whose members have now left the government — worked under Harrington in the NRMC, which officials said was one of the reasons why the division had received significant scrutiny from the administration.
“Of the core group that was put on [administrative] leave for working on elections disinformation,” said a former U.S. official, “I don’t know anyone who did not get [reassigned].”
One CISA employee was reassigned from a job working on ransomware response, a top priority of the agency as cybercriminals grow increasingly bold with disruptive attacks on hospitals, schools and other vulnerable organizations.
“Because he was associated with [former CISA Director] Jen [Easterly], he is being told to go to FEMA … as a supervisor [in another state] or resign,” said a third U.S. official. Easterly led CISA during the Biden administration and has criticized the Trump administration’s treatment of her former workforce.
In many cases, employees are being reassigned to jobs that do not match their skill sets or experience. One CISA staffer who was reassigned to ICE received “a technology position, though not clearly cybersecurity,” said the second official.
Sunny Wescott, CISA’s chief meteorologist, posted on LinkedIn about her reassignment to FPS. “Is that truly the best use of my knowledge and skills?” wrote Wescott, who worked on efforts to protect critical infrastructure from extreme weather events.
Other reassignments have targeted employees in CISA’s strategy and policy office, according to a fourth official.
Another group of employees received reassignment orders last week, the second U.S. official said.
CISA referred questions about the reassignments to DHS, which did not respond to a request for comment. A DHS spokesperson told Bloomberg that the department “routinely aligns personnel to meet mission priorities while ensuring continuity across all core mission areas,” adding that the government will pay for relocations of more than 50 miles.
Feeling ‘useless’
The forced relocations and shutdown-related layoffs have deepened a morale crisis inside CISA, where many employees lack the sense of purpose they once had.
“You walk around that office, it’s quiet. Nobody wants to talk. When they do talk, it’s only whispers,” the first official said. “It’s very difficult to do anything. Do we answer emails? Do we talk to stakeholders? What do we even say to them? … We all feel a little useless.”
The Trump administration’s travel restrictions have prevented CISA staffers from attending meetings where they could build and strengthen relationships with state, local and private-sector partners.
“We can’t go to conferences,” the first official said. “A lot of people have been taking personal leave and then showing up at conferences because it’s still critical to them for their mission set, for their knowledge base, their personal growth.”
Employees with relocation orders have been discussing their situations with each other as they try to decide whether to move or leave. In many cases, the first official said, reassigned employees “were just waiting for the hammer to fall” on them, and they had already begun transferring their projects to colleagues who could carry the work forward.
Inside CISA, some beleaguered employees hope things will improve once they get a director who can stand up for them and resist pressure from White House and DHS leadership. The Trump administration’s nomination of Sean Plankey to lead CISA has languished in the Senate for six months because of a hold placed by a Democratic senator.
“There’s a feeling that this will only get resolved with a confirmed director,” the second official said. “This isn’t coming from within CISA.”
But another official was more pessimistic.
“I think Plankey’s going to do fantastic things,” this person said, but “I don’t know that he’s going to be able to undo the doings that are being done.”
