CISA among DHS offices exempt from taking OPM’s deferred buyout offer

At least two offices in the Department of Homeland Security were told Thursday that they are not allowed to take a deferred buyout offer from the Office of Personnel Management that was sent to the federal workforce earlier this week, arguing that their positions are vital for national security purposes.

Those bureaus include the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, as well as Customs and Border Protection, according to multiple people familiar with the matter and email notifications obtained by Nextgov/FCW.

The exemptions are not a total surprise. The Trump administration’s deferred resignation offer email sent to federal workers earlier this week said the proposal is available to all government employees except “military personnel of the armed forces, employees of the U.S. Postal Service, those in positions related to immigration enforcement and national security, and those in any other positions specifically excluded by your employing agency.”

Bridget Bean, who’s serving as acting director of CISA, told the cyber agency’s employees in an email that “per guidance from DHS Management, CISA employees are not permitted to participate in the Deferred Resignation program.”

Email correspondence to CBP employees sent Thursday showed the exempted positions are “considered national security.” It adds that relevant staff should “be aware that no further processing actions will be completed for a deferred resignation on your behalf” if they previously accepted the proposal. It was sent by Acting Commissioner Pete Flores and Acting Deputy Commissioner John Modlin.

Nextgov/FCW has reached out to DHS spokespeople for comment.

The offer for feds to continue to be paid until Sept. 30 — provided they resign by Feb. 6 — was emailed to every federal worker Tuesday evening, seemingly via a new email server installed at OPM in recent days that gave the Trump White House the capability to reach some 2.3 million federal civilian employees. On Thursday, OPM sent a follow-up email with a list of Q&A notes encouraging employees to take the offer.

The exemption notices demonstrate how agencies and their leaders are taking different approaches to the severance program. But CISA being among them is notable because the Trump administration has vowed to reduce the size and scope of the cyber agency.

CISA has historically enjoyed bipartisan support from members aligned on the notion that cybersecurity is a national security concern and shouldn’t be mired in politicization. But some Republican claims that the agency’s misinformation efforts have targeted conservative voices in the past two years, as well as a second election win for Trump, are setting the agency on a course for potentially far-reaching reevaluation.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem recently said the cyber agency needs to be smaller and more nimble, and that it should cease its work on calling out misinformation and disinformation that propagates across social platforms. Trump has not yet nominated leadership for CISA.

The Cyber Safety Review Board — a DHS investigatory body stood up through a Biden-era cybersecurity executive order to probe major cybersecurity incidents — was cleared out of at least its non-government members early last week as part of a DHS-wide push to cut costs under the Trump administration.

Nextgov/FCW Staff Correspondent Alexandra Kelley contributed to this report.