DHS plans to shed most of its intel office workforce

The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis is planning to reduce its staffing by around 75%, cutting its workforce from some 1,000 full-time employees to 275, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The office is one of 18 units in the U.S. intelligence community and one of two housed under DHS, the other being Coast Guard Intelligence. I&A, stood up after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, disseminates threat information to state, local, tribal and territorial governments across the country.

The agency has faced a salvo of controversies in recent years over domestic spying abuses, and many have called for the office to fully reexamine its scope and mission. The exact reasoning behind the intent to shed so many staffers was not immediately clear, but the move aligns with broader Trump White House priorities to decrease the overall size of the federal government and reduce what’s been widely viewed as bloat and spending waste.

On June 27, Daniel Tamburello, the top official performing the duties of the I&A undersecretary, told the intelligence agency’s workforce that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem signed off on plans to reduce the size of the agency to 275 staffers, two of the people said. All sources for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to communicate sensitive information about planned reductions inside a U.S. intelligence office.

The staffing decision was briefly put on hold, given budding concerns about Iranian threats on U.S. soil that stemmed from a Trump-ordered bombing of key Iranian nuclear facilities late last month, said one of the people, adding that around 10 or so I&A staffers were reassigned to other DHS units including the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

But on Tuesday, members of the I&A workforce were notified in an email that the reduction to 275 people is still planned, according to another person with knowledge of the email’s contents. It wasn’t immediately clear who authored that notification.

DHS leadership wants around 80 of the 275 remaining employees to be dispatched to I&A “fusion centers” across the country, another person said. The centers are localized intelligence hubs that bring together personnel and information from federal agencies, as well as state and local governments. 

Some people inside I&A expect another option to take a deferred resignation from their jobs to go out after the July 4 holiday, with the workforce reduction to be executed immediately after, the third person added.

Spokespeople for DHS and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — the latter of which oversees the U.S. government’s intelligence programs and policy — did not respond to requests for comment.

The intelligence community, including top offices like the National Security Agency and CIA, have been targeted for workforce reductions under Trump’s second term. CISA has also been marked for downsizing.

But the little known intelligence office at DHS has faced controversy for its role in alleged unchecked domestic surveillance. During the 2020 George Floyd protests, I&A analysts collected intelligence on journalists and demonstrators in Portland, which sparked vast internal oversight and led to the removal of a top official.

A separate congressional investigation after the January 6, 2021 riots at the U.S. Capitol said that I&A and the FBI received numerous tips about online posts threatening violence at the site of the day’s events but that such intel was not analyzed and flagged to law enforcement.

In the final days of the Biden administration, a policy manual was published by former I&A undersecretary Ken Wainstein that aimed to outline the mission scope of the intelligence unit and its appropriate functions. But watchdog groups warned the same legal and cultural gaps that enabled past abuses could easily persist.

Matthew Kozma, the former CIO of the intelligence community, is nominated to head I&A in Trump’s second term. Last week, he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In a list of pre-hearing questions, Kozma was asked if he had a human capital strategy to recruit and retain top talent for I&A.

“We need a strong pipeline of talent with diverse analytic competency and networks that can access, integrate, correlate, and craft valuable, actionable intelligence,” he wrote in his response. “The underlying mission and approach to protect the American Homeland must be strong enticements to join DHS and, in particular, I&A.”