SAN DIEGO (AP) – The Border Patrol’s parent agency would exempt many veterans and law enforcement officers from a hiring requirement to take a lie-detector test under a proposal to satisfy President Donald Trump’s order to add 5,000 agents, according to a memo released by the agents’ union.
The memo by Kevin McAleenan, acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner, calls the polygraph as a “significant deterrent and point of failure” for applicants and a recruiting disadvantage against the separate Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which is under Trump’s orders to hire 10,000 people and does not require lie detectors.
The Associated Press reported in January that about two-thirds of job applicants fail CBP’s polygraph, more than double the average rate of law enforcement agencies that provided data under open-records requests. Those failures are a major reason why the Border Patrol recently fell below 20,000 agents for the first time since 2009. Many applicants have complained they are subjected to unusually long and hostile interrogations.
The undated memo lays out a plan for the agency to build a force of 26,370 agents in five years.
McAleenan said CBP is also considering a six-month experiment with an alternative polygraph test that takes less time to administer.