Border Patrol may loosen lie-detector requirement
SAN DIEGO — 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 a “significant deterrent and point of failure” for applicants and a recruiting disadvantage against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a separate agency that is responsible for deporting people settled in the U.S. ICE is under Trump’s orders to hire 10,000 people, and it 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 about being 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, which would deprive Trump of hitting his target during his current term.
Any waiver of the liedetector mandate may require congressional approval due to a 2010 law that introduced the requirement to root out corruption and misconduct after an earlier hiring surge doubled the size of the Border Patrol in eight years.