The Pentagon has turned up the heat on its immigration enforcement recruitment drive. In a memo delivered to department leadership this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered supervisors to push their civilian staff toward volunteering for temporary assignments with the Department of Homeland Security.
"I expect every supervisor to encourage their civilian employees to volunteer," Hegseth said. "Leadership must continue to promote this detail program and educate their civilian employees on its importance."
The Pentagon first requested its civilian workers to consider volunteering for assignments last year to assist in the Trump administration's immigration enforcement crackdown. This week's directive signals a harder push. Hegseth called the work "vital to the national security of the United States."
Detailed Defense employees support Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection for up to 180 days. Their duties include data entry, developing operational plans for raids and patrols, providing logistics support for moving officers and agents, and managing the flow of detained migrants. The Defense employees do not carry out law enforcement responsibilities.
The Defense Department said about 500 DoD civilians have already signed up to participate. Under Hegseth's new directive, all supervisors will approve volunteer requests unless a deployment would conflict with mission-essential functions.
The administration frames this as straightforward national security work. But the move has triggered deeper questions about military readiness, fiscal responsibility, and whether the Pentagon should be stretched across two separate missions simultaneously.
The cost dimension troubles defence-minded lawmakers across both chambers. Congressional investigators found that the Department of Defense has obligated over $2 billion in support of Department of Homeland Security and immigration enforcement in 2025, diverting it from the intended use of national security and military servicemembers. One report called this "a baffling waste of military resources considering the appropriation of $170 billion to DHS to fund immigration enforcement earlier this year."
A group of lawmakers found the Pentagon has diverted at least $2 billion intended for barracks repairs, school upgrades for children of service members and training programs. The Pentagon redirected funding from military construction and infrastructure projects to support immigration operations, including elementary schools at Fort Knox and barracks in Japan. Funds originally allocated for a jet-training facility at Columbus Air Force Base and overseas barracks were reprogrammed to construct roughly 20 miles of border wall.
There are also concerns about the human cost. There are reports that deployments in support of DHS are hurting morale, and there are concerns about how this will impact recruitment and retention. During the first Trump administration, the DoD stopped deploying troops to the border after determining the deployments were hurting military readiness and morale. The border mission appeared to contribute to alcohol and drug abuse among service members and may have even contributed to a number of tragic suicides among Texas National Guardsmen.
The Pentagon disputes the severity of the readiness concern. The Pentagon press secretary said the Pentagon, which operates on an annual budget of nearly $1 trillion, is able to execute on many missions simultaneously, noting that "spending allocated money on one mission does not mean other missions become depleted."
Still, the underlying tension is real. When Hegseth took charge, he promised Congress that military readiness would be his sole focus. Yet the Pentagon now simultaneously maintains thousands of troops at the southern border, supports detention operations at military installations, funds deportation flights, and is preparing civilian staff for long-term detail assignments. The Pentagon might not be reimbursed by DHS for the lost hours of work from employees who take an assignment.
The employees themselves have been quiet. One Army civilian said there has not been any discussion of the detail opportunities since Hegseth first announced them last summer and the employee did not know of anyone who accepted such a role. "We all think it's absurd," the civilian said.
Whether this new push will generate meaningful participation remains unclear. What is clear is that Hegseth has decided the administration's immigration priority merits a direct, high-pressure recruitment campaign straight from the Pentagon's leadership. The fiscal and operational consequences of that choice will become apparent over time.