DHS Treatment of Whistleblowers Under Investigation by GAO

Update: This story was updated with a comment sent by a DHS spokesperson on February 18.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has launched a review of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) processes for handling whistleblower reprisal complaints, according to a government email obtained by POGO Investigates, the news reporting division of the Project On Government Oversight.

According to the email, the GAO, which is Congress’s nonpartisan watchdog arm, is requesting interviews with DHS whistleblowers who filed complaints between October 1, 2017, and September 30, 2025. That period covers most of President Donald Trump’s first term, President Joe Biden’s term, and the first nine months of the second Trump administration.

A GAO spokesperson confirmed the review and told POGO Investigates it does not yet have an estimated date of completion. The review, according to the GAO spokesperson, was requested by the ranking members of the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees, who are, respectively, Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Senator Gary Peters (D-MI).

“The purpose of these interviews is to hear your firsthand perspectives about the whistleblower retaliation complaint and investigation process and how, if at all, whistleblower protections were communicated to you,” the email states. “We are also interested in hearing about your experiences reporting the underlying allegation of wrongdoing.”

The email says GAO will not “reassess” cases. Rather, it is seeking “complainants’ experiences with these processes to give us contextual background and help inform our review.”

GAO reviews normally result in a public report, such as a 2012 report on the Pentagon’s military whistleblower reprisal program, and often contain recommendations for improvements.

“DHS is committed to transparency and looks forward to explaining the lawfulness of its actions,” a DHS spokesperson told POGO in an email. The spokesperson provided no further information, and did not identify what actions they were referring to.

According to the email, GAO “would like to talk with people whose whistleblower retaliation allegations were investigated by DHS’s Office of Inspector General or the Office of Special Counsel — or whose appeals were heard by the Merit Systems Protection Board.”

The DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG), the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) are official government venues for civilian executive branch employees to file whistleblower reprisal complaints. The DHS OIG also can receive reprisal complaints from DHS contractor employees and uniformed members of the U.S. Coast Guard. (The author of this article formerly worked at OSC nine years ago.)

Two former DHS contractor employees named Barry Angeline and Dan McCabe criticized the DHS OIG’s handling of whistleblower complaints in a December opinion piece in the Washington Examiner.

“From fiscal 2019 to fiscal 2025, the Office of Inspector General’s Whistleblower Protection Division reviewed 3,144 retaliation complaints. It confirmed just 11 — a validation rate of 0.35%,” Angeline and McCabe wrote. “Other federal watchdogs corroborate 3%–8% of retaliation cases.”

“That makes the Office of Inspector General between ten and 25 times less likely to confirm retaliation than comparable federal offices,” they wrote.

Sixty-six percent of DHS employees responding to the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey in 2024 said they could “disclose a suspected violation of any law, rule or regulation without fear of reprisal.” That is somewhat lower than the government-wide score, which was 72% in 2024. The Trump administration canceled the survey last year.

POGO has previously reported on the DHS OIG’s handling of a whistleblower alleging reprisal and politicized intelligence during the first Trump administration.

The DHS OIG and MSPB did not respond to requests for comment. OSC declined to comment.