United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) employees and contractors have been accused of widespread misuse of sensitive government databases, allegedly accessing private information for personal reasons, including to spy on romantic interests, track family members, and monitor colleagues. Records obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, spanning from 2009 to 2022, detail hundreds of such allegations, highlighting concerns about the potential for abuse of powerful surveillance tools by federal agents.
The internal records, sourced from CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), reveal a range of alleged misconduct. These include instances where officers reportedly used databases to contact flight attendants, pulled information from trusted-traveler applications to ask individuals on dates, and provided border-crossing data to a person involved in a "heated divorce." One particularly notable allegation describes a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employee using commercially derived mobile location data, typically associated with ad-tech, to track several coworkers' cell phones. This is believed to be the first publicly known internal abuse case involving DHS's use of such data.
The allegations also extend to more serious misconduct, with some employees accused of providing sensitive law enforcement information to individuals suspected of criminal activity. In one instance from 2016, OPR investigated a CBP employee for allegedly giving database information to a drug-trafficking organization. A 2021 entry describes a Border Patrol agent accused of querying databases to advise smugglers on which border lane to use. The records do not indicate whether these serious allegations were substantiated or if any accountability measures were taken.
The dataset, comprising nearly 300 data-related entries, shows that 138 allegations were referred to CBP management for review, while 78 were deemed serious enough to be assigned to OPR criminal investigators. Another 43 cases were classified as "Information Only," meaning OPR did not initiate its own investigation. A smaller number of cases fell into other categories, including management review, law enforcement records cases, immediate management actions, and administrative inquiries. CBP withheld 21 cases, citing an exemption for active law enforcement proceedings, which suggests potential criminal misconduct.
Among the identified entries, 99 involved alleged breaches or unauthorized disclosures of data, and 48 explicitly concerned improper database queries. Many of these incidents occurred around 2020, coinciding with the shift to remote work during the pandemic, which reportedly led some CBP employees to email work files to personal accounts. At least six entries explicitly describe employees querying themselves, a practice that Daniel Altman, former head of OPR, stated is treated as a warning sign for future misconduct, often preceding corruption cases.
Specific examples of alleged personal misuse include a 2010 case where a customs officer reportedly pulled data on an Air New Zealand flight attendant to contact them. In 2017, another officer faced an OPR investigation for allegedly misusing government databases to harass a different airline employee, though the case's resolution is not provided. That same year, an officer was accused of querying neighbors in federal computer databases. More recently, in 2022, an employee allegedly used a CBP database to obtain an ex-husband’s leave schedule as part of a harassment campaign. The records indicate these cases were closed, but generally do not reveal whether the allegations were substantiated or if disciplinary actions were taken.
According to Altman, the frequent absence of resolution fields in the Joint Intake Case Management System is likely due to data-entry integrity issues, as staff do not consistently fill in required fields even for completed investigations. In response to these findings, a CBP spokesperson affirmed the agency's commitment to taking misconduct allegations seriously, emphasizing its dedication to upholding the rule of law and accountability. However, federal privacy laws prevent CBP from commenting on individual cases.
