Two Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees have been terminated following an internal investigation that found they engaged in sexually explicit activities during work hours using government-issued equipment, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The misconduct was uncovered by DHS’s Insider Threat Program, which determined that the employees had used encrypted government devices to send explicit messages — including to foreign nationals — while at highly secure federal facilities.
“These employees, who had access to highly sensitive systems, spent their duty hours sexting strangers, including foreign nationals, on encrypted government devices,” DHS stated in a post on X. “Such conduct is unacceptable, and these employees have been terminated.”
One of the former employees worked in FEMA’s IT services division and held a top-secret security clearance. According to the Daily Caller, the staffer exchanged numerous explicit messages via Facebook Messenger with an individual believed to be in the Philippines. The messages revealed the employee was using Messenger during work hours because personal phones were not permitted inside the facility. The individual also expressed intentions to travel to the Philippines later this year and was found searching for hotels in the region.
The second dismissed employee, an environmental protection specialist based in Alabama, reportedly accessed pornography on FEMA’s unclassified network and engaged in sexually explicit conversations through an adult website. In one instance, the employee uploaded an explicit image from a computer file labeled “work memes,” and made a series of sexual comments during chats with multiple users, according to the investigation.
This follows the recent termination of two other DHS employees for viewing extreme and inappropriate content — including bestiality and racially explicit material — during work hours.
“These individuals had access to critical information and intelligence and were entrusted to safeguard Americans from emergencies — and instead they were consuming pornography,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.