WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk work to overhaul the federal government, they’re forcing out thousands of workers with insider knowledge and connections who now need a job.
For Russia, China and other adversaries, the upheaval in Washington as Musk's Department of Government Efficiency guts government agencies presents an unprecedented opportunity to recruit informants, national security and intelligence experts say.
Demonstrators rally in support of federal workers outside of the Department of Health and Human Services on Feb. 14 in Washington.Â
Every former federal worker with knowledge of or access to sensitive information or systems could be a target. When thousands of them leave their jobs at the same time, that creates a lot of targets, as well as a counterespionage challenge for the United States.
“This information is highly valuable, and it shouldn’t be surprising that Russia and China and other organizations — criminal syndicates for instance — would be aggressively recruiting government employees,†said Theresa Payton, a former White House chief information officer under President George W. Bush, who now runs her own cybersecurity firm.
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Each year an average of more than 100,000 federal workers leave their jobs. Some retire; others move to the private sector. This year, in three months, the number is already many times higher.
It's not just intelligence officers who present potential security risks. Many departments and agencies oversee vast amounts of data that include personal information on Americans as well as sensitive information about national security and government operations. Exiting employees could also give away helpful security secrets that would allow someone to penetrate government databases or physical offices.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, for instance, maintains information on trade negotiations that could help an adversary undercut the United States. Federal records house data on clandestine intelligence operations and agents. Pentagon databases contain reams of sensitive information on U.S. military capabilities. The Department of Energy oversees many of the nation's most closely guarded nuclear secrets.
“This happens even in good times — someone in the intelligence community who for personal, financial or other reasons walks into an embassy to sell America out — but DOGE is taking it to a whole new level,†said John Schindler, a former counterintelligence official.
“Someone is going to go rogue,†he said. “It’s just a question of how bad it will be.â€
Only a tiny fraction of the many millions of Americans who have worked for the federal government have ever been accused of espionage. The overwhelming number are conscientious patriots who would never sell out their country, Payton said.
Background checks, employee training and exit interviews are all designed to prevent informants or moles — and to remind departing federal employees of their duty to preserve national secrets even after leaving federal service.
It takes only one or two misguided or disgruntled workers to cause a national security crisis. Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen and former CIA officer Aldrich Ames, who both spied for Russia, show just how damaging a single informant can be.
Hanssen divulged sweeping information about American intelligence-gathering, including details that authorities said were partly responsible for the outing of U.S. informants in Russia who were later executed for working on America's behalf.
The odds that one angry former employee reaches out to a foreign power go up as many federal employees find themselves without a job, experts said. What's not in doubt is that foreign adversaries are looking for any former employees they can flip. They're hunting for that one informant who could deliver a big advantage for their nation.
“It's a numbers game,†said Schindler.
Frank Montoya Jr., a retired senior FBI official and former top U.S. government counterintelligence executive, said he was less concerned about well-trained intelligence community employees betraying their oaths and selling out to American adversaries. But he noted the many workers in other realms of government who could be targeted by Russia or China.
“When it comes to the theft of intellectual property, when it comes to the theft of sensitive technology, when it comes to access to power grids or to financial systems, an IRS guy or a Social Service guy who’s really upset about what DOGE is doing, they actually are the bigger risk,†Montoya said.
Once military and intelligence officials were the primary targets of foreign spies looking to turn an informant. But now, thanks to the massive amount of information held at many agencies, and the competitive edge it could give China or Russia, that's no longer the case.
“We have seen over the last generation, the last 20–25 years, the Chinese and the Russians increasingly have been targeting non-national defense and non-classified information, because it helps them modernize their military, it helps them modernize their infrastructure," Montoya said.
The internet has made it far easier for foreign nations to identify and recruit potential informants.
Once, Soviet intelligence officers had to wait for an embittered agent to make contact, or go through the time-consuming process of identifying which recently separated federal employees could be pliable. Now, all you need is a LinkedIn subscription and you can quickly find former federal officials in search of work.
“You go on LinkedIn, you see someone who was ‘formerly at Department of Defense now looking for work’ and it’s like, 'Bingo,’" Schindler said.
'Perverse' incentives: How local governments might cash in on Trump's migrant detention
'Perverse' incentives: How local governments might cash in on Trump's migrant detention
Just before the 2024 presidential election, Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones said that if former President Donald Trump won, he would get back into the "" Now, the suburban Ohio sheriff has set aside 250 to 300 beds for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, detainees—around a third of Butler County Jail's capacity, according to the and a boon to the county's revenue.
Overwhelming evidence shows immigrants are less likely to commit crime than people born in the U.S. that immigrants are not more prone to crime. However, he has echoed Trump's immigration rhetoric and vowed to to enforce Trump's plans to deport undocumented immigrants. "I believe in American citizens first. People who have blood and sweat into this country have fought for it, them first. These other countries aren't first. We are," Jones .
The detention part of the "deportation business" could be a profitable one for Butler County, reports. In 2024, the county made over $6.7 million renting jail beds to other local and federal government agencies, including the U.S. Marshals and the Bureau of Prisons. Even before Trump's re-election, Butler County budgeted for an increase in that revenue to an estimated $8.5 million in 2025, .
A county commissioner offered support for the sheriff's plans to rent more beds to ICE: "Obviously, the more prisoners we have, the more revenue it produces," Commissioner Don Dixon said.
Butler County isn't the only entity that could see revenue rise with the deportation of immigrants.
Trump's plans will require building a , including centers to detain people awaiting deportation, contracts to provide f during their incarceration, and fly them out of the country.
The Biden administration has already laid the groundwork for deportations by Still, Trump will face significant , , and limitations in building or expanding any kind of deportation infrastructure. But even if he only partially delivers on his promises, the financial and human impacts could be significant.
Since the election, there has been a lot of attention on how many for-profit companies, especially , stand to rake in big profits from mass deportations. Some have already seen their . But local governments may also assist Trump, for both political and financial reasons.
As The New York Times reported last month, it would be nearly impossible for Trump to execute his immigration plans .
Local law enforcement officers can after an arrest and pass them along to . And The New Yorker recently described how the Trump administration might make it so even more people who are arrested locally .
The job of detaining immigrants, though, is where local governments most clearly stand to profit. County jails may rent beds to ICE, expanding detention capacity. also sign intergovernmental agreements to provide detention for ICE, and then subcontract to private companies to actually run the jails — essentially acting as middlemen between private jails and the federal government. That allows ICE to bypass rules about documentation and competitive contracting, .
Local jails are that ICE uses, according to a recent report from Vera, an advocacy organization working to end mass incarceration. These kinds of agreements already exist under the Biden administration, but could expand under Trump's deportation plans.
A 2022 , a liberal public policy institute, found that local governments sometimes use jail space to generate income, by with the expectation of selling the extra space."
In some cases, immigrant detention is .
In Louisiana, more than a dozen facilities closed after the state passed laws reducing mandatory minimums and increasing chances for parole. But some buildings were quickly repurposed to house migrants. The complex interplay between state, federal and local governments and also between public and private entities often makes oversight and accountability difficult, . The journalistic investigation looked specifically at Louisiana's Winn Correctional Center, which is run by the private company LaSalle Corrections.
"The Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections owns the facility," reporters at Bloomberg wrote. "The Winn Parish Sheriff's Office leases the property from the state. The sheriff's office then signs a contract with the federal government to allow the facility to be used for ICE detainees. Finally, LaSalle Corrections is subcontracted to handle day-to-day operations."
When lawyers with an advocacy organization tried to get records to investigate troubling allegations of abuse, each agency insisted someone else was responsible for keeping them.
While such arrangements may grow under Trump, there is already a long history of local jails playing a role in immigration detention. "The Migrant's Jail," a by Brianna Nofil, shows how these practices stretch back to the 1920's and '30s. "By the end of the 20th century, sheriffs are funding city emergency services, buying new police technologies, and eliminating personal property tax off of migrant incarceration revenue," Nofil told .
The conditions of those jails were often inhumane. According to Nofil, in 1925, a grand jury found the situation at a Galveston, Texas jail so terrible, it declared it "."
Problems with poor conditions continue today. In August, Massachusetts Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, raising concerns about deficient medical care and allegations of staff violence at . But since then, the county has signed a new contract that more than doubles the jail's revenue, , "paying the sheriff's office $215 per detainee per day."
have taken action to limit how much local governments can contract with ICE, but have met resistance for financial reasons. Illinois passed a law in 2021, but two counties . In , Kankakee County Sheriff Michael Downey said the county's contract with ICE generated $16 million over four years, which paid for many aspects of local government. Losing the contract would lead to a need to increase taxes, cut budgets, and lay off staff, the sheriff testified. A federal judge .
Stacy Suh, Program Director at , an advocacy group that opposes immigration detention, told me that these kinds of incentives are perverse. Suh also argued that prisons and jails don't always deliver the jobs or .
"We're very concerned that this detention expansion is happening—both through local governments that are struggling with shrinking budgets, or private prison corporations that are looking to profit," Suh said.
was produced by , a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system, and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
