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Maine Border Patrol Ranks Expected to Grow As Federal Gov't Goes on Hiring Spree

The Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) division hopes to hire 1,300 new border patrol officers over the next several months as the agency expands its presence along U.S. borders and ports of entry. CBP officials say the hiring surge is part of national effort to beef up security and inspections, particularly in some of the country’s northeast entry points.

The hiring push has been triggered, in part, by an executive order by President Trump to hire 5,000 Border Patrol agents and 10,000 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Keith Fleming is the area port director for Portland and southern New Hampshire. He says that in some northern tier states, border stations are located in isolated communities with small populations and that can make it tough to recruit.

“A lot of border populations are very small and looking for candidates who are interested in getting into federal law enforcement along the borders,” Fleming says. “There just aren’t as many candidates in these small towns.”

To that end, Fleming says the agency is offering a 25 percent salary bonus incentive over three consecutive years that CBP hopes will give an edge in the highly competitive field of law enforcement.

“We have recruitment incentives for Jackman, Coburn Gore and just recently it’s been approved for the Houlton port and we’ve seen our ability to hire in Jackman increase because of our offering the recruitment incentives,” Fleming says.

Applicants must be U.S. citizens and have lived domestically for the past three years. Sean Maher, regional recruiter in the CBP’s Boston office, says new recruits must pass a medical exam, fitness and drug tests, a background investigation, and a polygraph test. Maher says there’s an immediate need for the 1,300 CBP agents but he says the agency plans to vet prospective recruits intensively to ensure there’s a good fit.

“I mean, obviously we’d like to close that hiring gap as quickly as possible,” Maher says. “But with that being said, we’d obviously like to recruit the best and brightest to fill those positions, so we’re not going to compromise our standards to meet that goal.”

Maher says the agency is particularly interested in recruiting veterans who make up about 30 percent of the agency’s 60,000 employees.