Career staff at the Department of Homeland Security faced an extraordinary campaign of intimidation over the past year, according to interviews with more than three dozen current and former officials. The pressure intensified during Kristi Noem's leadership and has continued under her successor, Markwayne Mullin.
Trump loyalists in senior positions sidelined or removed career officials who raised concerns about potentially illegal acts, threatened termination or arrest to suppress dissent, and subjected employees to polygraph examinations conducted by military personnel. Entire offices were dismantled. Divisions handling refugee policy, asylum, humanitarian protections and family unity bore the brunt of the upheaval.
Harun Ahmed spent nearly 17 years in federal service as a deputy chief in the refugee affairs law division at US Citizenship and Immigration Services. His job was to ensure legal protections for refugees and asylum seekers. After Trump returned to office in 2025, he said, career officials faced relentless pressure to endorse policies they believed violated both law and principle.
"They wanted employees to sign off on efforts even when we believed they were immoral, illegal or ahistorical," Ahmed said. "It didn't matter what our expertise was. They wanted our blessing."
Under Noem, the department executed more than 675,000 deportations and expanded detention to record levels. It halted nearly all refugee resettlement while fast-tracking admissions for white South Africans, resumed family separation, expanded offshore detention, sent immigrants to El Salvador's Cecot mega-prison and began using Guantanamo Bay as an immigration detention facility.
Career staff objected internally. Those who pushed back were sidelined, blacklisted or removed from projects. When the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency offered buyouts, Ahmed accepted reluctantly. "I took it reluctantly," he said. "Not because it's what I wanted, but because I didn't see another path forward."
The Polygraph Tactic
Multiple current and former DHS officials reported undergoing polygraph examinations not as routine security reviews but as tools of intimidation. The Guardian spoke with several officials whose accounts corroborated each other in significant detail. The examinations were administered by Air Force personnel, a detail previously unknown to public reporting.
The polygraphs were ostensibly prompted by unspecified security clearance concerns. None of the officials said they were shown allegations or given a chance to respond before being ordered to submit. All believed the justification was fabricated to create fear.
Several officials recalled being read their Miranda rights before questioning began. "Miranda warnings are only for criminal investigations and prosecutions," one former official said. "There is no civil or employment context for being read your rights. It strongly implied that I was going to be arrested and leave in handcuffs."
Written notices described the examinations as voluntary. But supervisors told employees that refusal could cost them their security clearance and their job.
At least three former DHS officials described being placed in small, windowless rooms fitted with pulse monitors, foot sensors in the floor, blood-pressure cuffs and chest bands measuring breathing. They were instructed to face a blank wall while the examiner sat behind them. A video camera recorded from the corner. One room had two-way mirrored glass.
Examiners warned officials not to alter their breathing and said failure to comply could invalidate results. One official's blood-pressure cuff remained inflated so long her hand turned bright red. Another felt suffocating because she was forbidden from taking deep breaths.
Some examinations lasted six hours. Several employees were required to return for additional sessions. "They encourage you to spill everything, saying that you'll 'get through' the questions if you don't have anything on your mind," one former employee said. "Trivial things from your personal life, from years ago. Then they make you feel like a very immoral person."
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment. The Air Force referred questions to DHS, stating that any polygraphs would have taken place under DHS direction and authority.
For many officials, the polygraph was only the beginning. They were ordered to report to offices in different parts of the country, often in roles for which they had no experience and at agencies with entirely different missions. Employees were given only days to decide whether to accept. Some resigned. Others took buyouts. A few remained.
Several current officials said they stayed despite disagreeing with the department's direction, bound by obligations to family, health insurance, rent and their children's education. One senior DHS official described the decision as a daily moral compromise.
Ron Rosenberg, a former senior executive service leader at USCIS with more than 26 years in federal service, experienced reassignment pressure during Trump's first term. He served as district director for the mid-Atlantic region, overseeing 450 employees and leading the agency's response to Afghanistan evacuations, supporting the resettlement of more than 75,000 evacuees in six months. He earned a presidential rank award, one of the highest honors in federal service.
Political appointees repeatedly tried to push him out during the first Trump administration through reassignment. When that failed, they attempted to relocate his position out of state, which would have uprooted his family. He threatened legal action and the proposal was abandoned. He remained for another six years.
But the second Trump administration was fundamentally different. "If the first one was bad, the second one was like lighting a canister of jet fuel on day one," Rosenberg said.
Within weeks, career staff were being reassigned, offices were ordered to remove pronouns from email signatures and gender-inclusive bathroom signs were taken down. "Every day became another culture war issue," Rosenberg said. "There were no filters, no constraints. They were going to move as fast and hard as possible."
Rosenberg saw something darker than policy disagreement. "There's a petulence and a vindictiveness that is endemic in these people," he said. "It's reminiscent of the anti-communist paranoia of the McCarthy era. It's no different."
One former senior Customs and Border Protection official said Noem frequently clashed with career leaders she lacked authority to remove. When those efforts failed, members of their staff became targets. Employees who had spent decades in the department, including front-office personnel responsible for scheduling and daily operations, were reassigned, pushed aside or dismissed.
Trump fired Noem in March 2026 amid bipartisan backlash following the killings of two American citizens by federal immigration agents in Minnesota, scrutiny over a $200 million taxpayer-funded advertising campaign promoting her leadership and questions about department contracting practices.
In late March, weeks after Noem's dismissal, the Senate confirmed Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator from Oklahoma and Trump's fiercest defender, as the new DHS secretary in a 54-45 vote. During his confirmation hearing, Mullin pledged to bring steadier leadership. "My goal in six months is that we're not the lead story every single day," he said.
Dorothea Lay, a former senior USCIS attorney and current vice president of policy at Jesuit Refugee Service/USA, said the remark missed the larger issue. "A desire to avoid bad press for cruel and harsh immigration enforcement is not a commitment to stop engaging in it," she implied.
Author James Rodriguez: "The playbook here is as old as authoritarian management: make people so afraid they stop asking questions, so exhausted they stop resisting, so desperate they stop thinking. It worked, and that's what makes it terrifying."
Comments