The list covers career civil servants from the Department of Homeland Security, above, and other agencies. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

An organization funded by the conservative Heritage Foundation has compiled an online “watch list” of federal employees claims cannot be trusted to secure the US border and should be fired, a sign that supporters of Donald Trump’s immigration policies are preparing to help him neutralize the administrative state they believe has tried to thwart his first presidency.

The “DHS Bureaucrat Watch List” — a website unveiled in the final weeks of a presidential campaign in which immigration is a key issue — names 51 federal policy experts and senior leaders, most of whom are career civil servants at the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies. The group identified them largely using public comments on social media, previous work experience and campaign finance records.

Among the employee actions cited by the group are posts celebrating the legalization of same-sex marriage or praising the contributions and successes of undocumented immigrants, as well as donations of up to $10 to Democratic candidates. An employee union compared the effort to uncover the private views of public employees to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s 1950s campaign to purge federal workers he accused of being Communists.

The site’s founder, a former Republican congressional staffer named Tom Jones, told The Washington Post that he and his staff are trying to add more names to the list and have sent emails to more than 500 federal employees, asking them to help them to identify colleagues who they believe they have not committed to keeping undocumented immigrants out of the country.

Jones said his goal was to expose people he believed to have “long-standing and deep-seated prejudices” about immigration policy. In addition to tracking social media posts and political donations, Jones said he looks for indicators of past support on immigration issues, as well as other indicators of employee views, such as sharing gender pronouns and support for diversity, equity and inclusion.

“There are a large number of people in the administration who have dedicated their life’s work to helping migrants settle in the United States,” Jones said. He said it was “Pollyanna-ish” to expect those people to come back and implement Trump’s plan to deport tens of millions of people and close the borders, as he promised.

“These people won’t do it. In fact, they’re going to undermine it,” Jones said. He said he would support similar efforts to target employees at other agencies, including the Department of Defense, the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Jones said he has not coordinated with Trump’s campaign or transition teams, but he hopes any future administration will take note of his work and use it to identify staffers to resign.

The list has already caught the attention of Trump’s allies in Congress, with four Republican House members writing to the head of US Citizenship and Immigration Services demanding that the employee accused of praising undocumented immigrants. be fired

While many top government officials are politically aligned and appointed by presidents, the bulk of the federal workforce is made up of about 2.2 million career employees who work in Washington-based agencies and throughout the country, carrying out policies and taking into account the day-to-day activity. – day operations of the country regardless of the responsible party.

In 2020, Trump issued an executive order designed to eliminate protections for tens of thousands of civil servants, reclassifying them into a new employment category called “Annex F.” The order did not go into effect until Biden took office and rescinded it. Trump vowed to reissue the order on the first day of his second term if re-elected and vowed to “fire crooked bureaucrats and career politicians.”

Spokesmen for the Trump campaign and the Trump transition did not respond to requests for comment.

Reached by The Post, several of the affected employees said they did not want to speak out of fear for their jobs and the safety of their families. Others spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid drawing further attention to themselves or violating agency policy. They said they fear being targeted on a public list makes them vulnerable to threats and that if Trump wins, they will be called upon to express their loyalty to Trump and his party.

“Obviously, this is designed to intimidate career government officials who are public servants trying to carry out the department’s mission and do it across all administrations and do it with integrity,” said one staffer on the list.

Another said he was concerned about the watchlist’s effect on young people in government, particularly LGBTQ+ employees, “who have to ask, ‘How safe is it for me to be myself here?'”

The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents about 86,000 members at Homeland Security, drew parallels with McCarthy, who claimed hundreds of State Department employees were traitorous Communists and then used his congressional perch to investigate.

“It is designed to intimidate and frighten public servants who are involved in the service of their country,” union spokesman Andrew Huddleston said.

Department of Homeland Security officials said the agency contacted the targeted employees to provide security support. “We are extremely proud of the more than 260,000 DHS public servants who are dedicated every day to the safety and security of all Americans. We condemn in the strongest terms any effort to harass or intimidate our public servants,” DHS Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said in a statement.

Some of the named employees work at the Department of Justice or the Office of Management and Budget. A group of DOJ employees focused on gender equality wrote to agency management Thursday, citing the watch list and warning that the effects of such activities “on workers’ mental health, professional and personal reputation, finances and physical safety can be devastating.”

A DOJ spokesperson said the agency takes employee security seriously and encourages them to report any perceived threats to management. OMB did not respond to a request for comment.

Jones denied that the watch list posed security risks to named employees. “It’s a website that tells you about the people who work in government. This is a non-controversial area of ​​research,” Jones said in an interview with The Post.

Jones previously worked for conservative Republican senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Jim DeMint of South Carolina. He also did opposition research for candidates, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R.-Texas, during his failed 2016 bid for the White House.

Jones is now the president of the nonprofit American Accountability Foundation, which was formed shortly after the 2020 election and has sought to derail the confirmation of Biden appointees to political and judicial positions. The group sought to find and publish information about the nominees on a website similar to the new watch list, with photos of the targets and details of their past activities and political views. Some of the nominees targeted by the group eventually withdrew their nominations; others, including Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, were confirmed.

The American Accountability Foundation announced earlier this year that it would turn its focus to government employees. She developed the DHS employee watch list with the help of $100,000 from the Heritage Foundation, a longtime center of conservative power in Washington.

Heritage’s Project 2025 policy guide for a second Trump administration — which Trump has disavowed but was written by many of his former advisers — described “large groups” of federal workers as left-wing ideologues who undermined Trump’s policy goals during his first term.

In a May press release announcing the grant to Jones’ group, Heritage President Kevin Roberts, who led the 2025 Project, applauded the group for “their fight to hold our government accountable and rid it of bad actors.” .

Heritage remains proud to support “critical oversight of public officials who undermine America’s sovereignty and national interests,” spokesman Noah Weinrich said Friday.

Jones told The Post that he and five other staffers developed the list after emailing agency employees to look for names of colleagues who could undermine an immigration crackdown. In an email to a Homeland Security employee obtained by The Post, Jones explained that he was seeking the names of senior officials “who are leading the charge within the civil service for open borders.”

“If you are concerned that there are public service leaders who are not committed to securing the borders and preventing illegal aliens from living in the United States, I hope you will contact me with their names and details of their work enabling immigration,” he wrote Jones.

DHS officials warned staff last week that clicking on the list’s website could lead to malware attacks on their computers, according to emails viewed by The Post; Jones responded with a letter claiming the site was safe and warning the agency that his organization may consider legal action.

DHS officials did not respond to The Post’s questions about the dispute.

Peter Jamison contributed to this report.