{"id":21390,"date":"2019-04-22T15:34:37","date_gmt":"2019-04-22T19:34:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-immigrationreform.pantheonsite.io\/?p=21390"},"modified":"2019-04-22T15:34:40","modified_gmt":"2019-04-22T19:34:40","slug":"tip-of-the-spear-cuts-cbp-hiring-contract-short-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2019\/04\/22\/tip-of-the-spear-cuts-cbp-hiring-contract-short-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Tip of the Spear\u2019 Cuts CBP Hiring Contract Short"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Cutting its losses, U.S. Customs and Border\nProtection (CBP) ended its $297 million contract with a hiring company that\nwasn\u2019t delivering needed personnel to the chronically understaffed agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The move came four months after <a href=\"http:\/\/live-immigrationreform.pantheonsite.io\/2018\/12\/17\/audit-shreds-border-patrol-hiring-contract\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">government auditors<\/a> blasted CBP\u2019s arrangement with Accenture. According to the five-year contract signed in November 2017, Accenture was to assist in hiring 7,500 CBP officers. One year on, Accenture was nowhere close to hitting that target.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>CBP paid the company $19 million in start-up costs, and some $2 million for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2019\/04\/05\/politics\/cbp-terminate-hiring-contract-accenture\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">58 people<\/a> who got job offers. The agency also has another $39 million left to &#8220;settle and close the books\u201d with Accenture, whose corporate motto is \u201cusing threats to grow resilience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Border Patrol had 19,437 agents in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/trumps-anti-immigration-push-border-patrol-forces-new-low-775839\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">fiscal year 2017<\/a>, nearly 2,000 short of the congressionally mandated minimum of 21,370. It was the lowest level since the final year of the\u00a0George W. Bush administration, when\u00a017,499 agents were on board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite the Accenture arrangement \u2013 or because\nof it \u2013 CBP\u2019s staffing situation didn\u2019t improve in 2018. Acknowledging persistent\nvacancies and high turnover as the \u201ctip of the spear\u201d agency faces an onslaught\nof illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border, new CBP chief operating officer\nJohn Sanders says progress is now being made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cFive years ago, it was taking 400 days to\nhire. Now it\u2019s 270,\u201d he told a Border Security conference last month. \u201cFor the\nfirst time, we are hiring more than are leaving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sanders expects further improvement. \u201cReally\ngood people don\u2019t want to wait 270 days,\u201d Sanders noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Preston Huennekens, at the <a href=\"https:\/\/cis.org\/Huennekens\/Conclusion-CBPs-297-Million-Hiring-Debacle\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">Center for Immigration Studies<\/a>, said Accenture \u201cwas clearly incapable of completing the work CBP contracted it to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cCBP should move forward immediately to award this important contract to a competent competitor, or do the work of hiring agents itself. Ideally, it won&#8217;t lose tens of millions doing so,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cutting its losses, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) ended its $297 million contract with a hiring company that wasn\u2019t delivering needed personnel to the chronically understaffed agency. The move came four months after government auditors blasted CBP\u2019s arrangement with Accenture. According to the five-year contract signed in November 2017, Accenture was to assist in<\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2019\/04\/22\/tip-of-the-spear-cuts-cbp-hiring-contract-short-immigrationreform-com\/\" title=\"Read More\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":15497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1513],"tags":[360,5355,1524,5356],"yst_prominent_words":[1951,5351,5350,2869,2623,5353,2043,2300,5354,2177,2461,2174,5352,1994,4657,1939,2128],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21390"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21391,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21390\/revisions\/21391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21390"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=21390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}