The State Department cannot proceed with its reorganization, which was set to include thousands of layoffs, after a federal judge on Friday updated a previous ruling blocking federal workforce reductions to include the agency’s plans. 

State was already subject to an injunction that blocked most major federal agencies from issuing reductions in force, but the Trump administration had argued the department was a “special case” that merited different treatment. California-based District Judge Susan Illston rejected that argument, however, and on Friday issued a new order demanding State not proceed with planned layoffs. 

The administration had argued State’s reorganization was conducted separately from President Trump’s mandate that all agencies slash their workforces and instead occurred only at the instruction of Secretary Marco Rubio. Because Illston’s order applied only to Trump’s executive order and subsequent guidance from the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management, Justice Department lawyers said, State’s plans were not subject to the injunction.

Those attorneys said State could begin issuing layoffs as soon as Friday, but employees were subsequently told that would not occur. Still, absent the court’s intervention, the RIF notices were expected to hit inboxes in the coming days or weeks. All told, State is looking to shed its workforce by 3,400 employees. 

The department’s employees are not out of the woods yet: Illston’s larger injunction is now pending before the Supreme Court, with a decision expected any day. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals previously rejected the administration’s efforts to overturn Illston’s order. 

State has continued to prepare for RIFs. Last week, it sent a message to all civil service employees asking them to upload their resumes to an internal site by June 13 to “prepare for the reorganization.” It also asked staff to ensure all the information in their personnel files was accurate. Those steps are common just before agencies implement RIFs to enable HR offices to ensure they are relying on up-to-date information and determine their employee eligibility for other positions if they are laid off.

Other agencies have similarly taken steps so they can swiftly implement layoffs if the Supreme Court rules in the administration’s favor. 

The plaintiffs in the case had asked Illston to also reverse firings of dozens of probationary employees at the Housing and Urban Development Department, but the judge said she needed more information and instructed the Trump administration to allow her to review HUD’s reorganization plan.  

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Updated June 13 at 9:19 p.m.

As the Trump administration ramps up its efforts to detain and deport undocumented immigrants across the country, it is increasingly relying on federal employees to take on new roles to supplement those enforcement efforts. 

Those efforts are spearheaded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement within the Homeland Security Department, but agencies within and outside DHS are soliciting employees to help ramp up the renewed crackdown. The initiative has led to raids at worksites, farms, nightclubs,  residential areas and federal buildings where immigrants report for court hearings or check-ins. The efforts have led to widespread protests and, according to administration officials, increased violence against federal officers and agents. 

Within DHS, many components are providing support to ICE in different roles. In a new partnership, the Transportation Security Administration is offering 100 Federal Air Marshals to the agency. The vast majority of those employees volunteered for the assignment. On flights organized by ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division, the marshals will conduct in-flight security functions using ICE’s authorities and protocols. That will include taking detainees to the flight line or airport terminal, escorting the detainees onto the aircraft, providing armed and unarmed in-flight security, escorting detainees when they deplane and transferring custody upon arrival.  

The TSA agents will serve on 60-day assignments for their initial details. 

“TSA’s Federal Air Marshals are proud to support our ICE colleagues by providing in-flight security functions for select ERO flights,” an agency spokesperson said. “This new initiative is part of the interagency effort to support the President’s declared national emergency at the southern border.” 

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees have also received a push to sign up for ICE deployments, as it did in 2019. DHS commonly asks employees at components like USCIS to deploy to assist in disaster response or at times to provide assistance at the border. ICE details are rarer, but did occur in Trump’s first term in 2019. USCIS has in recent weeks sent hundreds of its employees to support immigration enforcement. 

A USCIS employee working on refugee operations in the Refugee, Asylum and International Operations Directorate said management there encouraged staff to sign up for the details to demonstrate their "adaptability" and to “justify our continued employment.” Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office freezing refugee resettlement, which is currently tied up in legal battles. 

Fifty employees from the refugee office alone have signed up for the assignments, meaning nearly one-in-four employees there are currently working for ICE. Detailees have been working largely on administrative matters, such as verifying an immigrant’s status or correcting information for ICE, the employee said. While many refugee officers personally object to the assignment, they added, they recognize the benefits of the opportunity. 

"USCIS is proud to support ICE with hundreds of volunteers with extensive expertise to help enforce our immigration laws and confront national security threats,” said Matthew J. Tragesser, a USCIS spokesperson. “Under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Noem, our agency remains committed in helping make America safe again.”

Customs and Border Protection is also sending its personnel in aid of ICE, currently on targeted operations in the Los Angeles area.

“Enforcing immigration law is not optional—it’s essential to protecting America’s national security, public safety, and economic strength,” a CBP spokesperson said, adding agency staff would be assisting ICE indefinitely. “Every removal of an illegal alien helps restore order and reinforce the rule of law.”

While some of DHS’ details to ICE are new or unusual, the agency is also tapping into other governmental entities for the first time. 

Around 250 Internal Revenue Service agents are currently detailed to DHS under an agreement between Kristi Noem, the department's secretary, and Treasury Department Secretary Scott Bessent, to provide added immigration enforcement manpower. The agents have been authorized under Title 8 of the U.S. Code to make arrests for civil violations of immigration law, according to a government official familiar with the agreement. The memorandum of understanding was reported by The New York Times in February, but new details have since emerged. 

IRS-Criminal Investigation's expertise is in financial and tax investigations, but the detailed agents are currently also assisting with immigration enforcement operations. They have primarily helped establish a perimeter during raids and other operations, according to the official, who did not know of any precedent for the type of work IRS is now conducting. 

The employees are serving for six months to start and the administration will then evaluate whether to move forward. The work is supporting normal IRS-CI operations as well, according to the official, as the agency is typically involved in cases that involve drug or human trafficking and frequently works with DHS partners in those efforts. 

DHS has significantly ramped up its arrests of undocumented immigrants without prior criminal convictions, however. 

Those IRS employees are operating separately from the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, to which an additional 100 IRS Criminal Investigations employees are currently assigned. 

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service is also providing resources to ICE, including by providing access to its data and with boots on the ground. 

USPIS’ involvement with ICE was first reported by The Washington Post. A spokesperson for the agency said no USPIS staff are detailed to ICE and if any personnel are present at an ICE enforcement operation it is because it involves postal matters.

President Trump has, with some controversy, sent active duty troops to quell protests in Los Angeles. Defense Department civilians are also gearing up for new assignments after Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier this month signed a memo authorizing their deployments for both border security and interior enforcement operations.

A now-retired, long-time ICE employee with 35 years of federal experience said his former colleagues are pleased the Trump administration has lifted restrictions on detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants, particularly those with criminal records, but said the pressures are also taking a toll. 

“They are overwhelmed with the requirements and are looking forward to any relief that might be provided,” he said, noting congressional Republicans’ tax and spending cut package—dubbed the Big Beautiful Bill—would provide ICE with significant new resources including 10,000 new hires.

This story has been updated with additional detail.

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Three contractors, a former government contracting officer, and two companies have admitted to a decades-long bribery scheme involving contracts worth over $550 million.

A Thursday Justice Department announcement lists the contractors involved as Walter Barnes, owner of PM Consulting Group, which did business as Vistant; Darryl Britt, owner of Apprio; and Paul Young, president of a subcontractor to Apprio and Vistant.

They pled guilty to federal conspiracy to commit bribery charges. Roderick Watson, formerly a contracting officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development, pled guilty to bribery of a public official.

Apprio and Vistant admitted to criminal liability and entered into three-year deferred prosecution agreements. The companies must continue to cooperate with Justice implement compliance and ethics programs, and make progress reports to the department.

Watson faces the stiffest penalty – up to 15 years in prison. His sentencing is set for Oct. 6.

Barnes, Britt and Young face maximum sentences of five years each. Britt’s sentencing is set for July 28, Young’s is scheduled for Sept. 3 and Barnes will be sentenced Oct. 14.

The bribery scheme began in 2013, when Watson agreed to use his contacting officer position in exchange for bribes to influence contract awards to Apprio. Vistant was a subcontractor to Apprio, according to Justice.

The contracts were 8(a) set-aside awards and when Apprio graduated from the program, the two companies switched positions with Vistant becoming the 8(a) prime and Apprio the sub.

Vistant won contracts influenced by Watson from 2018-to-2022. During this time, Britt and Barnes paid bribes to Watson. Often the payments were concealed by passing them through Young, a subcontractor to the two companies.

Justice said the bribes consisted of cash, laptops, thousands of dollars in tickets to a suite at an NBA game, a country club wedding, downpayments on two residential mortgages, cell phones, and jobs for relatives.

The department also alleges that Watson and Barnes defrauded a licensed Small Business Investment Company to enter into a credit agreement. Ahead of entering into the agreement, Watson vouched for Barnes and Vistant about their performance as a contractor.

With the credit agreement in place, Barnes had Vistant issue stock warrants that would make the SBIC a 40% owner of Vistant if exercised. The agreement included a $14 million loan to Vistant, which allowed Barnes to pay himself a $10 million dividend.

Britt and Apprio convinced a private equity firm to purchase a 20% stake in his company through an investment pool. The PE firm paid $4 million for the stake and gave Vistant a $4 million loan, secured by shares of Apprio stock.

Justice says that Britt, Barnes and Watson committed fraud when they made “false material representations” while negotiating these financial agreements.

Washington Technology has written about both Vistant and Apprio over the years.

When Vistant known PM Consulting, the company ranked No. 11 on the 2020 Washington Technology Fast 50.

Barnes also wrote several guest columns for Washington Technology. Topics included tips on working with subcontractors, and COVID 19’s impact on the market. His last column was titled: “All the things I wish I knew when I started my business.”

In October 2022, Barnes also appeared as a guest on our podcast that was known as Project 38 at the time.

Most of our coverage of Apprio featured contract award announcements and personnel moves.

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President Donald Trump’s creation of his promised Department of Government Efficiency within one of the federal government’s most notable civic tech organizations, the U.S. Digital Service, has sent shockwaves though a community that has long sought to use technology as a vehicle for improving customer experience.

“I think Musk and DOGE has made it difficult in some respects by tarnishing some of the tools that CX relied on to make services better, including connecting data from different sources to reduce frictions and service delivery,” Donald Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan, told Nextgov/FCW.

In the wake of the Healthcare.gov crash, President Barack Obama established USDS, something he later described as “a SWAT team, a world-class technology office inside of the government” deployed to other agencies when needed.

The unit was a flagship organization in the civic tech movement, which emerged over a decade ago with the intent of improving government using technology, data and better design. On his first day back in office, Trump transformed USDS into the vehicle for billionaire Elon Musk’s DOGE. 

Set up with an ostensible focus on technology and a model of bringing outside talent into the government — similar to that of its predecessor — DOGE has led efforts to shrink the size of government and hoover up agency data. Government civic tech teams, including legacy employees at USDS itself and 18F, have been downsized or eliminated altogether. 

Six months later, civic tech appears to be at a juncture, figuring out what’s next.

“The fact that modernization is a thing people talk about — that part is good,” Amanda Renteria, CEO of Code for America, said of DOGE during an interview with Nextgov/FCW at the civic tech nonprofit’s annual conference in May. 

But “right now, my worry is that the general public sees modernization as firing people and doing it in a super cruel way,” said Renteria. “I think we all wish we would’ve told our stories about what this work has been.”

Arguably, one of the civic tech movement’s most high-profile projects is Direct File, a free online tax service that was run out of the IRS last year and this spring. The tool is reportedly being shut down by the Trump administration, despite high marks from users. 

“There is no overlap” between DOGE and civic tech, Direct File’s former deputy, Merici Vinton, told Nextgov/FCW via email.

“Civic tech launches products and services that are designed with users,” she said. “DOGE hired some engineers that came into the federal government, and after asking no questions to understand mission, fired hundreds of thousands of employees, cut congressionally mandated programs, ransacked agencies, and have built nothing.”

For those interested in civic technology and service delivery, “we should view Direct File as the floor, not the ceiling, of what is possible,” said Vinton, who pointed to problems with government delivery that existed before DOGE.

“The status quo has been broken for awhile [sic] — it’s time for bold new services and agencies (where needed!) that deliver tangible outcomes and results for Americans,” she said.

“Direct File is a great product,” longtime civic tech leader Jennifer Pahlka told Nextgov/FCW via email. But “that team succeeded despite a hostile environment, and that needs to change.”

There are several factors that those behind Direct File say made it successful: a blended team with different areas of expertise, agile methodology, human-centered design and iterative development. The team also started small with a pilot instead of trying to build a giant product all at once. 

“Everything around a project like that is set up for a different process than what that team used to succeed. The staffing, the procurement, the need to start small, the oversight … it’s all mismatched to the need,” Pahlka said of Direct File. Civic tech knows how to build systems, “but it will struggle to deliver on them until we fix the people, procedure, and outdated paradigm problems.”

Pahlka helped found several civic tech organizations and is now advocating for an "Abundance" agenda, which includes a focus on dismantling administrative burdens like regulations to address scarcity of things like housing. Getting that done, Pahlka has said, will require better state capacity. 

“Civic tech needs to put itself more clearly in the service of a broader bipartisan movement, one that focuses less on the tech and more on the fundamental shift that needs to happen to update the core operating models of government,” she said.

Like Renteria, Pahlka and others worry that DOGE’s work could hurt the brand of government modernization, and that negative reactions among those who disagree with what DOGE has done could stymy future progress. 

“I expect to read a lot of ‘I told you so’ and ‘Good riddance’ from people whose careers depend on the status quo,” Mikey Dickerson, the first administrator of USDS, said in a statement. 

Musk, who is stepping away from the effort, has described monotonous work combing through line-items — “a lot of hard work” — as the biggest obstacle for DOGE. 

“But the fact that the government is so dysfunctional that not even Elon Musk can make a difference is not something to be proud of,” said Dickerson. “I'd like to hope that it drives interest in a real reform effort that is aimed at the core problems in hiring and procurement."

As for what the civic tech movement may want to take from DOGE, some may envy the aircover that DOGE had to get things done, Moynihan said.

“A consistent complaint and shortcoming of people working within civic tech was that the movement never really had a powerful champion at the heart of government,” he said. 

Code for America is planning to focus more on working with states, said Renteria. It’s currently working on improving the accessibility of government PDFs using AI, alongside Salt Lake City, Utah and the state of Georgia, for example.

“You can feel some of the fieriness here because we’ve been doing this a while,” she said of the mood at the group’s recent conference. “We know how to do it.”

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Volume 52, Issue 1, January-April 2025, Page 1-22
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Volume 52, Issue 1, January-April 2025, Page 23-37
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Volume 52, Issue 1, January-April 2025, Page 66-90
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