Border security

U.S. customs agency is so short-staffed, it’s sending officers from airports to the Mexican border

While lawmakers this week argued over the merits of President Trump’s $18 billion border wall and a potential government shutdown, the federal officers tasked with stopping drugs and terrorists from entering the country faced a different threat: exhaustion.

An acute staffing shortage of customs officers at the border has gotten so dire that the government this month began pulling screeners from U.S. airports and reassigning them to southern Arizona on an emergency basis.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has deployed 175 officers to the agency’s Tucson sector through at least March, according to union officials who say CBP officers are being routinely asked to work back-to-back eight-hour shifts to make up for the staffing shortfalls.

“They are supposed to do their job with the same mental clarity and acuity,” said Anthony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 25,000 CBP employees, “but when you work 16-hour days, days on end, it’s a pretty difficult thing to do.”