CBP's $297 Million Debacle
Hiring one Border Patrol agent for the price of two
By Preston Huennekens on December 12, 2018
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is under fire for wasting millions of taxpayer dollars. The agency gifted Accenture Federal Services a lucrative contract to streamline the hiring of thousands of Border Patrol agents. This follows President Trump's goal of increasing physical enforcement at the Southwest border. CBP gave Accenture an upfront payment of $13.6 million. The entire five-year contract totals $297 million. For this sum, Accenture promised to onboard 7,500 total new agents. That would require it to hire 1,500 of them every year.
In the first year of this massive contract, Accenture hired only two agents.
The Department of Homeland Security's inspector general published a report last week detailing Accenture's incompetence. To say that it is damning would be a gross understatement. Its findings exhibit everything that is wrong with the modern Beltway Bandit system of federal contractors.
https://cis.org/Huennekens/CBPs-297-Million-Debacle
