The U.S. Secret Service spent thousands of dollars for agency personnel to attend a cryptocurrency conference in June that officials justified as “mission-critical” to its operations.
“This travel is mission-critical in compliance with field operations that advance the protection of the nations critical financial infrastructure,” states a public financial disclosure from the Department of Homeland Security. “It will further allow for collaboration with international partners and provide attendees with new methods and tactics for investigating complex cryptocurrency fraud.”
One problem: DHS simultaneously determined that the conference’s $8,502 cost was “non-mission critical” and involved “nonessential” travel.
It’s hardly the only example of conflicting spending explanations by the nation’s third-largest executive branch department, which is balancing its priorities of enforcing Trump’s expensive hardline immigration approach and implementing cost-cutting initiatives still lasting from the Department of Government Efficiency.
NOTUS found more than 130 instances in which DHS and its subagencies — including Customs and Border Protection, the Transportation Security Administration and the Secret Service — have justified official trips and trainings designated as “non-mission critical” with language also asserting the travel is “mission critical” this year, according to an analysis of agency spending records.
The dissonant designations appear on the same expenditure line items within agency financial documents that are intended to disclose “nonessential” travel expenses to the public. Every expense on these reports is a trip specifically designated as “non-mission critical,” and is hosted on a webpage called “Transparency for Non-Essential Travel.”
These financial documents are intended to show the public how much each DHS agency is spending on “nonessential” travel as part of a cost-savings and transparency initiative prompted by an executive order President Donald Trump signed in February. Mandated by DOGE, the order states these monthly reports exist ”to ensure Government spending is transparent and Government employees are accountable to the American public.”
One government financial accountability expert struggled to parse the Department of Homeland Security’s conflicting spending justifications after NOTUS asked them to review the data.
“They’re a little bit confusing, right? Because in the one column … it’ll say it’s a ‘non-mission critical’ trip. But then you go over to one of the justification columns, and then there they say it is ‘mission critical,’” said Demian Brady, vice president of research at the nonprofit National Taxpayers Union.
“I’m not sure how these forms are being populated. Or if one person thinks it’s non-critical, and then someone else thinks it is,” Brady added. “It’s so strange.”
When asked about the apparent contradictions, a DHS spokesperson said that it put in place new travel reporting requirements this year as part of its “efforts to eradicate waste, fraud and abuse of U.S. taxpayer dollars.”
The spokesperson added that all of DHS’s agencies are “required to submit the same data elements, however their exact phrasing may vary as each uses different reporting language and defines what is mission critical based on their actual mission.”
“There are currently efforts to make sure this data is correct, consistent, and accurately represents the travel of DHS components and their justification for travel,” the spokesperson said. “This data can also be preliminary and change as travel information is finalized.”
Separately, the Secret Service did not comment, and the Transportation Security Administration did not respond to a request for comment. CBP officials deferred to DHS.
“The Department of Homeland Security has taken actions to provide transparency for non-essential travel,” states the agency’s webpage where it hosts this data.
CBP alone listed nearly 90 travel expenditures as both “mission-critical” and “non-mission critical.” Those contradictory trips made up almost 18% of the agency’s nearly $1.9 million in publicly reported spending.
One expense for domestic travel in May, which cost taxpayers more than $11,000, is described in the documents meant to show “non-mission critical” travel expenses simply as, “THIS TRAVEL IS MISSION CRITICAL.” Another domestic travel expense in August for nearly $5,400 states that the trip was “Mission critical travel relating to operational and mission.”
The two most expensive “Non Mission Crtcl” trips disclosed by DHS were made by Secret Service personnel. One cost $68,920 to provide “external partners with investigative and mission briefings,” while another cost $53,257 “to provide life saving training for law enforcement.”
The latter trip was explicitly approved as “mission critical and in compliance with the Presidential Threat Protection Act of 2000.”
A plain reading of some of DHS’s “non-mission critical” expenses does make them appear to be non-mission critical.
For example, CBP spent about $2,500 for undisclosed personnel to attend Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” show for the agency’s 101st anniversary in May. It also cost more than $97,670 for dozens of agency personnel and guests to attend a July agency awards ceremony in Washington.
Some of these travel expenditures include clear, all-caps notations that such travel is “NON-MISSION CRITICAL,” according to the financial documents.
But expenses like those are listed alongside other “non-mission critical” or “nonessential” expenses that, on their face, appear quite urgent.
They include a $1,443.46 expenditure for a “MISSION CRITICAL EVACUATION FROM ISRAEL” in June, and a $34,715, 90-day trip to Peru, starting in May, involving a CBP seaport adviser.
Others include two expenditures that state the CBP spent a combined $15,000 in May for an unspecified program called “Operation Freedom.” Similarly, the agency spent nearly $8,000 across three trips dubbed “Operation ‘At Large’” and thousands of dollars across several trips for “Operation Magpie.” The agency did not say what the operations entailed.
There’s also a month-long CBP trip to “assist with ICE operations at large” valued at nearly $14,600. According to these financial statements, DHS labeled all of these expenses “nonessential.”
Another “nonessential” trip, which cost taxpayers more than $16,200, involved CBP personnel traveling to an undisclosed location on Aug. 9 and remaining there until Sept. 29. Officials also approved the expense two weeks after the agency personnel were said to have departed. The trip’s stated purpose, quizzically: “uploading hotel receipt.”
The CBP’s financial records indicate many of its travel expenses are approved retroactively: Of the more than 1,000 expenses NOTUS reviewed, more than one-third are marked as approved after listed departure dates. According to internal management directives at DHS, employees should “obtain approval, prior to travel, from a designated approving official.”
Four expenses since June indicate CBP personnel traveled to help with “ICE ERO LA PROTEST” — an apparent reference to the federal government’s response to protests that broke out in Los Angeles this summer over immigration enforcement raids. That travel cost taxpayers more than $20,000 and is designated as “nonessential” travel, although two of those expenses were also justified as “MISSION CRITICAL,” according to financial documents.
All four were also approved after the stated departure date.
CBP isn’t the only Homeland agency reporting “nonessential” travel expenses to assist with immigration enforcement operations.
The reports say that the TSA spent $1,370 to assist with “ALIEN ESCORT TRAVEL” in August. That travel was approved more than a week after the departure date, according to the report.
It also reported spending a total of nearly $46,000 last month for its personnel to provide “enforcement and removal assistance to ICE” across several reported trips to Mesa, Arizona; Harlingen, Texas; and Youngstown, Ohio. More than half of all listed expenses for TSA were justified as “mission critical,” despite the spending being listed on these “nonessential” travel expense reports, and the trips being designated as “NON-MISSION CRTCL” on these disclosures.
Some of Homeland Security’s immigration law enforcement components haven’t reported any separate nonessential expenses at all, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement or other entities housed within ICE, like Enforcement and Removal Operations or Homeland Security Investigations. The March report stated that some DHS agencies were exempt from Trump’s executive order.
A Government Accountability Office report from March 2025 found that DHS has often struggled with data management.
“DHS manages an annual discretionary budget of about $60 billion, but it has faced difficulties with IT and financial management,” states the report.
“GAO has issued numerous reports with thousands of recommendations to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over the department’s history,” the office wrote about DHS, which Congress created in 2002 in response to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. “DHS has yet to fully address many recommendations that would help ensure effectiveness and efficiency, including dozens of the highest priority recommendations.”