Local 2366 has learned that CBP has had the incorrect DHS OIG email address listed on CBP’s Joint Intake Center (JIC) intranet webpage for at least the past six months. The website previously had the email address DHSOIGHOTLINE@dhs.gov, but then changed it to DHSOIGHotlineMailbox@dhs.gov. Both email addresses are incorrect and employees will receive a bounce-back message if they send an email to those addresses – but they will only receive that message if the employee first sent the email from within the DHS network.
Any employees who have sent an email to those email addresses from outside of the DHS network did not and will not receive a bounce-back message explaining that the above email accounts are not valid. That means that any allegations or complaints submitted to DHS OIG from outside of the DHS network (via Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc), were not received by DHS OIG, going back to at least October 2014.
If you relied on the information on CBP’s JIC webpage on the intranet and sent DHS OIG an allegation or complaint via email from outside of the DHS network and have not heard from them, you should contact DHS OIG and confirm that they are indeed aware of the allegation or complaint that you submitted – it’s likely that they never received it.
If you attempted to report misconduct to DHS OIG and haven’t been contacted, protect yourself and make sure that they are aware of the issue. The last thing we want to see are employees getting in trouble for failing to report something that they believe they already reported.
To report an allegation or complaint to DHS OIG, it would be best to either manually look up the address in Outlook or use DHS OIG’s online form – at the time of this post, the email address is still incorrect on the JIC webpage on CBP’s intranet.