CBP Leaders’ Handling of Social Media Misconduct

We determined that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Border Patrol headquarters officials were only aware of a few of the 83 CBP employees’ cases of social media misconduct. CBP and Border Patrol senior officials only responded to one of those cases, upon direction from DHS. In contrast, the senior Office of Field Operations (OFO) headquarters leader issued guidance to remind OFO employees of acceptable use of social media. With regard to the posts media outlets published in July 2019, we found no evidence that senior CBP headquarters or field leaders were aware of them until they were made public by the media. We also found some senior leaders questioned the legality or the application of CBP policies, which may undermine CBP’s ability to enforce the policies. We made two recommendations to help reduce the incidence of social media misconduct. First, we recommended the Commissioner ensures CBP uniformly applies social media misconduct policies, and establishes social media training for new recruits and annual refresher training for all employees. CBP concurred with all recommendations.