The Department of Homeland Security announced a marked increase in the number of applications it is receiving for new Secret Service agents.
The department said that there has been a 214 percent increase in applications compared to the same time last year, Fox News reported.
The department said that from Jan. 20 to May 1 of last year, it received around 7,000 applications, but at the same time this year, there were around 22,000 applications.
“For four long years, the previous administration demoralized and denied resources to our brave men and women in law enforcement, including in the Secret Service,” a spokesperson for the department said to Fox News Digital.
“Our country suffered the consequences of that disastrous approach. President Trump himself nearly lost his life because of it. Now, after reforming the Secret Service and providing it with the resources it needs to do its job, we are seeing a historic surge in applications. Americans naturally want to protect and serve. We simply have to let them,” the spokesperson said.
“I think the reality is that the Secret Service is returning to the core mission and the standards that made it great and that inspires a lot of really good people to want to be part of it,” Tim Miller, a former Secret Service agent, said to Fox News Digital. “I think now under the new director, they are trying to get back to having highly qualified people that are very mission focused.”
“I know when I got hired, I had been a U.S. Marine Corps officer and a police officer, it was a high standard to get hired. I think many now want to be one of the best of the best and the Secret Service is trying to get back to that gold standard,” the former agent said.
“The Secret Service has always been a top-tier protection organization until the last 10 or so years and I think returning to its mission and restoring the standards required to be an agent are making a huge difference and causing good men and women to want to join,” he said.
The Secret Service came under scrutiny during the 2024 presidential campaign when President Donald Trump was shot during a Butler, Pennsylvania, rally after questions arose about why a roof, within the line of sight of the stage, was left unprotected.
The organization had “deep flaws” that allowed the attack at the Trump campaign rally, according to an independent panel that reviewed the July assassination attempt against then-candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The panel also called for the agency’s “fundamental reform” to fulfill its mission of protecting top government officials worldwide.
The independent review panel noted in a letter signed by all four members that it had discovered “numerous mistakes” during its investigation that resulted in the attempted assassination of Trump, but also “deeper systemic issues that must be addressed with urgency.”
“The Secret Service as an agency requires fundamental reform to carry out its mission,” the members said. “Without that reform, the Independent Review Panel believes another Butler can and will happen again.”
The panel dedicated its work to Corey Comperatore, who was killed in the shooting, and James Copenhaver and David Dutch, who were injured, as well as their families.
“These actions will be responsive not only to the security failures that led to the July 13, 2024 assassination attempt but, importantly, to what the Independent Review Panel describes as systemic and foundational issues that underlie those failures,” the members said.
The group also cited “deeper concerns” it had discovered regarding the Secret Service, such as a “troubling lack of critical thinking” by Secret Service personnel in the days leading up to and following the assassination attempt, “corrosive cultural attitudes” regarding resources, and a “lack of clarity” regarding who has security ownership of a protectee’s site.
It criticized Secret Service leadership for what the panel claimed was an “insufficiently experience-based approach” by Trump’s detail regarding the choice of agents to carry out security-critical tasks and a failure to assume responsibility for security planning and execution at the Butler rally.
The breakdowns “reveal deep flaws in the Secret Service, including some that appear to be systemic or cultural,” according to the report.
It recommended new Secret Service leadership with outside agency experience and a return to its “core protective mission” to address the panel’s identified problems.
“The Secret Service must be the world’s leading governmental protective organization,” according to the report. “The events at Butler on July 13 demonstrate that, currently, it is not.”
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