The BOP’s challenges have only intensified since Trump’s inauguration, which coincided with the resignation of Director Colette Peters. In the absence of permanent leadership, Acting Director William Lathrop has issued a flurry of directives to address sweeping policy shifts, including a mandatory return to in-office work, a hiring freeze, and the identification of probationary employees and those on administrative leave. These measures have left many BOP staff grappling with uncertainty.
The deferred resignation offer has added to this turmoil. Employees were instructed to simply type “Resign” in reply to the email if they wished to accept the offer, with little additional guidance or answers to their questions. The deadline for employees to respond is February 6, but the vague communication and lack of clarity surrounding retirement benefits or other long-term implications have caused widespread confusion.
President Donald Trump’s administration sent out a memorandum to all federal workers offering them the opportunity to take a “deferred resignation,” that would allow them to collect a severance until September 2025. The offer, with the subject line “Fork in the Road,” from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), said federal employees can agree to leave their jobs and receive about eight months of salary.
The memorandum bore similarities to one sent out by Elon Musk shortly after his purchase of Twitter, now X. In 2022, Musk sent a similar email to Twitter employees asking them to commit to a hard work schedule or leave. The subject line of that memo was the same “fork in the road.” Musk heads the non-governmental group known as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), meant to trim trillions dollars from the national deficit.
The initial days of the Trump administration have meant big changes at the BOP. A hiring freeze, a mandatory return to in-office work, identification of those BOP employees on a probationary period or administrative leave and now an offer to resign have all led to a crisis inside of the BOP. This comes at a time when the BOP just saw its Director, Colette Peters, resign on the first day of Trump’s presidency. According to a BOP insider who did not want to be identified there are non-stop meetings trying to address the sweeping changes.
The deferred resignation was made available to all full-time federal employees except for military personnel of the armed forces, employees of the U.S. Postal Service, those in positions related to immigration enforcement and national security. While the BOP was not specifically named in the email sent to all government employees, it was listed on another memorandum from Homeland Security that gave “Any law enforcement official in the Federal Bureau of Prisons… ” to perform investigation to determine the location and identification of any illegal immigrant, the same function performed by an immigration officer.
“When I first received the email,” one BOP employee told me and who wished not be identified, “It thought it was a on-line phishing scheme until I started getting texts from my co-workers who got the same message.” The BOP employee also told me that such an offer usually comes with some way to reach out with questions or presents frequently asked questions beyond the offer. ”We sort of got what we got and we all have questions,” the BOP employee said.
Three groups of employees are expected to weigh the offer differently. Near-retirement employees face uncertainty about how accepting severance would affect their retirement packages, leading many to hesitate. Newer employees, who may be dissatisfied with their positions, might be more inclined to leave due to the attractiveness of eight months of severance despite their short tenure. This possibility could undermine recent recruitment efforts, which have sought to address severe understaffing issues. The largest group—mid-tenure employees—finds themselves caught in the middle, facing mounting stress and unclear futures.
That second group of those who are new to the BOP will leave the agency in a predicament if they left. The BOP has been on a non-stop recruiting drive costing millions of dollars to fill vacant positions throughout the BOP. Former Director Peters said that staffing was the primary challenge faced by the BOP but hiring had picked up. However, even those efforts did not fully staff federal prisons and now the group of new employees could see this offer as welcome if they are unhappy with their new position. Some within the BOP worry that this group may take the opportunity to leave because they have so little vested in their career at this point, thus whipping out the gains over the past few years.
Those who are in the middle of their BOP tenure are truly struggling with what they should do and what is expected of them. The OPM memorandum said that those who did not take the offer to resign may be subject to losing their jobs with the continued government shakeup. Aaron McGlothin, President of a local chapter of AFGE Council 33, representing officers at the Federal Correctional Institution at Mendota, California, told me, “There is so much uncertainty with all these rapid changes as new staff fear for their job, no relief from constant mandatory overtime and the constant pressure and stress of working in a correctional facility.” McGlothin told me in an earlier interview that the challenges in the agency are taking a toll on the staff which means more difficult conditions for the prisoners in their care.
The BOP is currently searching for a new Director and one is not expected to be named until Trump Attorney General candidate Pam Bondi is confirmed by the Senate. Until then, Acting Director William Lathrop directives to the staff have lacked clear guidance and appear that he is simply passing on information as he received it from the Department of Justice. Whenever a new administration comes into office, agencies like the BOP are often in a reactionary position to enact changes demanded by new leadership but these changes and the pace of the changes are unprecedented.
Everett Kelley is the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which is the largest union representing federal and D.C. government employees and he issued his own directive saying “… we are encouraging all members and civil servants not to make a hasty decision to resign and not to respond to this email until you have further details.”
McGlothin told me that it is difficult to work with such uncertainty and with new directives coming out every day. “I appreciate that there is change coming to the BOP, but reacting to what we are seeing now, in the poor condition we are in now, is going to take a toll on those who choose to stay,” McGlothin said.