Sen. Grassley calls on Secretary Mayorkas to end retaliation against CBP employees

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) called on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last week to end retaliations against three Customs and Border Protection whistleblowers who reported on the agency’s failures.

Grassley, 89, in an Aug. 18 letter asked the Department of Homeland Security and CBP to “immediately institute corrective action” for three Operational Field Testing Division (OFTD) employees who he said have suffered financial and professional consequences for several years.

The employees — Fred Wynn, Mike Taylor and Mark Jones — alleged that their superiors discouraged their protected disclosures to Congress and demoted them after the trio drew attention to agency delays in collecting DNA from detainees.

“The CBP’s unrelenting retaliation against these whistleblowers is unacceptable and demands correction,” Grassley said in a statement.

“Whistleblowers are patriots who step forward when the government isn’t operating the way it’s supposed to — they ought to be praised for their courage, full stop.”

The disclosures were made legally in 2018, according to a 2021 report from the US Office of the Special Counsel, but that hasn’t stopped agency higher-ups from revoking responsibilities, performance awards and promotions, Grassley said.

The whistleblowers outlined subsequent retaliations to the DHS Office of the Inspector General and DHS Office of the General Counsel on Dec. 20, 2022.

Grassley added that three of those retaliatory examples made their way to his office.

In the first instance, their division’s acting director, George Talton, made clear their disclosures were an “issue” for the office during an “all-hands meeting” with Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott.

The meeting took place on March 16, 2021, when the special counsel investigation was still ongoing.

In the second, Talton disparaged the whistleblowers for responding to a query from US Central Command about potential weapons of mass destruction.

“Why did they call you?” Talton reportedly told them on April 25, 2022. “That is like someone calling a Border Patrol Agent that has been retired for 10 years to ask what is currently going on inside the agency.”

Grassley noted later in the letter that CBP and the DHS Office of Intelligence eliminated its Weapons of Mass Destruction Division.

When the whistleblowers raised the issue of past retaliation, the acting director also responded, “Decisions regarding you and Mike are being handled above my pay grade, I have no input in all that, all I care about is OFTD.”

The third retaliation occurred in a June 23, 2022, memo that gave new titles to every employee in the division except Taylor and Jones — and stripped them of their badges, firearms and law enforcement authority.

Taylor, a 30-year veteran of federal service, had his retirement coverage and future pension payments taken as well.

The 2021 Special Counsel’s Office report found that past retaliatory “actions were motivated by the agency’s displeasure with the Complainants’ perceived and actual involvement in bringing to light the agency’s intentional, decade-long failure to implement a law designed to protect public safety.

“[F]rom the evidence we have seen, it seems clear that the agency does not have strong evidence in support of the personnel actions against these Complainants,” it also states.

“The government’s apparently illegal and unwarranted actions only serve to chill other employees from reporting wrongdoing and demonstrate a complete failure by CBP leadership to obey the letter and intent of federal whistleblower protection laws,” Grassley told Mayorkas in his letter.

He further asked the Homeland Security secretary to answer by Sept. 1 what steps the agency has taken to correct problems for such whistleblowers, especially as identified in the special counsel’s report.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.