DHS won’t tell Congress how many people it’s cut from CISA

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., leveled that charge at DHS Secretary Kristi Noem at a hearing Wednesday.

The Department of Homeland Security won’t tell Congress how many employees at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency it has fired or pushed to leave, a top congressional Democrat said Wednesday.

“You’ve overseen mass reductions in the workforce at CISA and” the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, told DHS Secretary Kristi Noem at a hearing of the panel. “Despite repeated requests from this committee on how many people have been fired or have been bullied into quitting … DHS has refused to share that information.

“It should worry every American that we do not know how many people are left at FEMA to respond to disasters and how many cyber defenders still work at CISA as China and other adversaries attack our systems every day,” he continued.

Thompson made his remarks at the close of the hearing, meaning Noem didn’t have a chance to reply. In response to a request for comment about Thompson’s assertion, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin didn’t comment specifically on the Mississippi Democrat’s claim, but said CISA under Noem is refocusing its mission, “starting with election security” and staffers who worked on those issues.

“The agency is undertaking an evaluation of how it has executed its election security mission with a particular focus on any work related to mis-, dis-, and malinformation,” McLaughlin said. “While the agency conducts the assessment, personnel who worked on mis-, dis-, and malinformation, as well as foreign influence operations and disinformation, have been placed on administrative leave.”

Thompson also said there’s no plan for CISA, and he criticized Noem for “falsely” accusing CISA of censorship as the Trump administration uses the latter contention as a major justification for a proposed $491 million cut to the agency for fiscal 2026. “Now we are all paying a price for you buying into a baseless conspiracy theory,” he said.

Past and future cuts at CISA have been a source of bipartisan worry on the Hill. Rep. Andrew Garbarino, the New York Republican who chairs the panel’s cyber subcommittee, raised his own concerns again Wednesday. 

Garbarino brought up his own letter in February seeking information about CISA staff firings and their titles. He said he had not received a reply. He asked Noem for a commitment that she would answer it “sometime soon,” to which Noem replied, “Absolutely.”

Garbarino said he was “concerned that reducing CISA’s staff will not help CISA accomplish the mission of protecting cybersecurity.”

In cyber issues unrelated to personnel reductions, Garbarino asked Noem about whether she would support a process of reopening industry consultation rather than restarting the writing of regulations under a law to require critical infrastructure owners to report major cyber incidents. Republicans and industry have said that pending regulations are overly burdensome.

“Yes, we would support that, sir,” Noem answered. “More input from the private sector is important to make sure we’re doing appropriate action.”

And Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., called for a floor vote on his legislation to address the cyber workforce gap.

“Madam Secretary, I look forward to working with you on finding creative solutions to our cyber workforce shortage, as well as ensuring that the agencies under DHS tasked with defending our cyber borders, primarily CISA, remain focused on that task,” he said.

This story was updated May 14, 2025, with comments from DHS’s Tricia McLaughlin.

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