As two agencies at the center of President Trump’s efforts to clamp down on immigration and conduct mass deportations look to spend a windfall of new funding to bring on swaths of new employees, they will do so without the officials who have overseen those efforts since he took office.
Customs and Border Protection, which received $4 billion in Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act to hire 8,500 employees, recently fired Andrea Bright, a long-time career civil servant who has served since 2019 as the agency’s assistant secretary for human resources management. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, meanwhile, which received $8 billion to triple its workforce by hiring 10,000 officers and agents, recently saw its chief human capital officer, Tyshawn Thomas, take a similar role at another agency.
Bright received no indication of why she was fired, her attorney, Kevin Owen, told Government Executive, and the dismissal came as a surprise. Her termination notice stated she was fired pursuant to the president’s powers under Article II of the Constitution, a novel argument the administration has made repeatedly when firing employees since January. Bright, who has served in HR roles in government for nearly 30 years, had no performance or prior disciplinary issues, Owen said.
“There’s nothing about her that we believe this administration would find objectionable, so this really is an absolute mystery,” Owen added. “She’s a competent civil servant who does her job.”
In an August interview with Government Executive, Bright expressed confidence CBP would meet its lofty hiring goals and said years of built up capacity would help it do so. She called the hiring surge realistic, though she conceded it would depend on conditions in the job market and said CBP was entering “the unknown.”
Bright had overseen a dramatic uptick in those seeking CBP law enforcement roles—taking in 50,000 applications in the third quarter of fiscal 2025, a 40% jump from the previous year—though Border Patrol and the rest of the agency had struggled to build its actual hiring rate above that of attrition. Trump administration officials had reportedly grown angry in recent months with the rate of hiring at ICE.
Thomas left ICE within the last few weeks on his own volition, according to multiple officials familiar with his move, to return to the Office of Personnel Management—where he had worked for seven years before leaving for ICE in 2024—as its top HR official. Carmen Garcia served as OPM’s chief human capital officer until she left for the private sector last week.
The push to rapidly recruit and onboard 10,000 new officers and agents had created a “chaotic” situation within ICE HR, a source familiar with the matter said, which incentivized Thomas to return to OPM. ICE has offered $50,000 signing bonuses to employees, expanded student loan repayment, removed age caps and nearly taken over the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center as part of its effort to rapidly transform the agency’s workforce. Thomas’ departure follows widespread reports in late October of significant shakeups within ICE’s top ranks.
Bright received no indication that CBP was displeased with hiring efforts at her agency, said Owen, her lawyer.
He added it would be “terrible management if they’re not meeting hiring goals to fire their head of HR who’s got decades of experience in federal hiring.”
Bright has appealed her firing to the Merit Systems Protection Board and is currently awaiting a hearing. Both CBP and ICE declined to comment for this story.
Erich Wagner contributed to this report.
