Federal Groups, DHS Respond, After Group “Targets” Employees on “Watch List”

Imagine your name, picture, salary, and financial situation posted online in one place for all to see, simply because you are doing your job.

That’s the situation some federal employees find themselves in today, after the far-right nonprofit American Accountability Foundation released a "DHS Bureaucrat Watch List” to “target” and remove so-called “subversive bureaucrats” from government. American Accountability Foundation is funded by the Heritage Foundation and the Conservative Partnership Institute.

According to the group, the “watch list” identifies “radical leftists” who are working in or with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), particularly on immigration issues. The conservative group claims these civil servants cannot be trusted to secure the border.  

“We created DHSWatchlist.com to shine a light on the swamp’s darkest corners. No longer will these radicals be able to hide in anonymity,” said American Accountability Foundation president Thomas Jones, a former Republican senate staffer. Jones said he created the site to expose “long-standing and deep bias” on immigration policy.

The site posts the name of the civil servant, picture, salary, employment history, and even if they have credit card debt. Some employees are cited because they donated as little as $10 to Democratic campaigns. Others are cited because they made a social media support in support of diversity, equity, accessibility, inclusion topics or Democrats.

“Obviously this is designed to intimidate career government officials who are civil servants trying to fulfill the mission of the department and do it across administrations and do it with integrity,” said one anonymous employee on the list to the Washington Post.

DHS contacted the affected employees and offered security and support.

“We condemn in the strongest terms any effort to harass or intimidate our public servants,” DHS Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in a statement.

Employees named also work at the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The threats prompted calls for action from unions and federal employee groups.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) called it McCarthyism.

"Creating watchlists of so-called subversives inside government is a tactic straight out of the McCarthy era, plain in its intent to terrorize individual civil servants and frighten other Americans away from getting involved in politics and public service,” said AFGE National President Everett Kelly. "Far from doing anything to improve government, this shameful, un-American behavior makes it more difficult to attract top talent to important government positions, hurting the entire country in the process."

And in a post called “Can We Still Govern” on Substack, University of Michigan Public Policy Professor Don Moynihan wrote about the increasing conditions of “terror” that federal officials have to work and live under. Moynihan also noted that the American Accountability Foundation did not make it clear that some people on the list are political employees, and not career civil servants.

“It is completely misleading to present them as “career bureaucrats are that implement their orders” as AAF does,” wrote Moynihan.