A document obtained by the Washington Examiner on Friday revealed that CBP personnel were told not to use three dozen terms related to DEI following Trump’s executive actions on the matter.
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Select CBP personnel were told to remove references to the terms from existing documents and not to use them going forward in communications, including government social media accounts or press releases.
The terms included: Affirmative action; DEI; DEIA; Diversity & Inclusion; Diversity and Inclusion; Diversity Equity & Inclusion; Diversity Equity and Inclusion; Diversity Equity Inclusion; Diversity Inclusion; Diversity, Equity & Inclusion; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Diversity, Equity Inclusion; Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion; Equity & Diversity; Equity and Diversity; Gender Equality; Gender Equity; IDDP; Implicit Bias; Inclusion Diversity and Equity; Inclusion, Diversity and Equity; Inclusion, Diversity, Equity; Inclusive Diversity; LGBT; LGBTQ; LGBTQ+; LGBTQI; LGBTQIA; Racial Equality; Racial Equity; Social Justice; STEER; STRIDE; and Unconscious Bias.
CBP declined to confirm or deny the publishing of the document to staff or the precise date that the notice was issued.
“CBP is following President Trump’s Executive Order to end discriminatory DEI-related material and programs. CBP does not confirm/deny or comment on information that was purportedly leaked or otherwise obtained unofficially,” CBP said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, reasoned that it was a waste of federal employees’ time to have to go back through old documents and remove certain words and terms.
“Forcing agencies to do a manual search of all of its documents for right-wing buzzwords does nothing to improve our security,” Thompson wrote in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “With all the chaos it’s causing, the Trump administration would be wise to not waste time on pointless culture wars.”
Upon taking office in January, President Donald Trump took various executive actions targeting DEI and accessibility initiatives that were expanded under the Biden administration.
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Simon Hankinson from the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington said the Trump administration’s intent was to make federal agencies hire and operate on the basis of merit.
“We’ve got now this entrenched bureaucracy of DEI in federal agencies that is woker than a college campus and sees it as their mission to discriminate against certain groups in order to achieve equal outcomes,” Hankinson, senior research fellow at Heritage’s border security and immigration center, said in a phone call. “So I think the purpose of this is to try to eradicate this race- and sex-based preference system throughout the federal government and go back to meritocracy and equal opportunity.”
