Approximately 400 U.S. Department of Homeland Security workers have been fired.
Federal layoffs have expanded to additional agencies, according to new internal letters and government officials.
Approximately 400 U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) staff have been fired, a DHS spokesperson told the Epoch Times via email on February 18th.
This includes more than 200 employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), more than 130 employees of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and dozens of U.S. citizenship and immigration services. Includes workers.
The CISA declined to comment. The other two agencies did not return requests for comment by publication time.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, we have made drastic cuts and reforms across the federal government to eliminate the terrible waste and incompetence that have happened for decades at the expense of American taxpayers. “We’ll do that,” a DHS spokesperson said.
A spokesman said the cuts at DHS, which had around 222,500 workers as of 2024, would result in around $50 million in savings, according to the Government Efficiency (DOGE).
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“The DHS component leads identified non-mission critical personnel on probation. We are actively identifying other useless positions and offices that do not meet DHS missions.” The spokesman said.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which monitors banks across the country and monitors bank deposits at banks via insurance funds, fired some workers on Monday evening.
An internal email said the agency had “separated certain probation employees.”
It was unclear how many employees were fired. Doge said the agency had more than 500 employees, but a total of 6,000 workers were there in less than a year.
Approximately 217,000 federal employees had been in the government for less than a year as of March 2024. This is the last month when data is available. At the time, there were approximately 2.3 million full-time government workers.
Typically, federal probation employees are there for a year or two and enjoy less protection than long-term workers.
Some lawmakers have criticized the firing, including Monday’s confirmation that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has let go of hundreds of employees.
White House press director Karoline Leavitt said in a February 17th post on social media platform X that the termination would not affect the operational integrity of the FAA.
“Neither the air traffic controller nor the experts in carrying out key safety functions have finished,” she writes.
During a meeting with staff from other agencies on February 13, personnel from the Department of Personnel Management (OPM) recommended fire probation employees at the agency, which a source familiar with the meeting told the Epoch Times.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) declined to say whether the worker was fired on Tuesday.
“NASA is compliant with the guidance and instructions provided by OPM. At this time, it is too early to discuss the impact on the agency,” a spokesman told the Epoch Times via email.
Another roughly 75,000 workers accepted the takeover provided by the Trump administration. The closed acquisition program offered salaries and benefits until the end of September while employees were searching for other jobs.
Tom Ozimek and Reuters contributed to this report.
