Border Patrol Video

Media Tips for Dealing with Border Patrol

Mary's Page

Disclaimer: It should be obvious by now, but this is NOT an official Border Patrol web site and the information presented here is provided for your use in deciding if a Border Patrol career might be of interest to you. The information provided is by an individual retired agent NOT representing the Border Patrol, the Department of Homeland Security, nor the US Government.

2011 Payroll Calendar 

2012 Payroll Calendar

I am putting this section here because so many people have asked for the information. I realize that a person would be foolish if that person were to jump into a job without knowing something of the pay and benefits. There is something you need to know about this job. If you do not BELIEVE in what you are doing, if you are one to have your feelings easily hurt by a lack of public support, if you are not a true patriot, you are NOT going to enjoy this job. If you are seeking the job purely for the pecuniary benefits that it will yield, you will not be happy. Quite frankly, you couldn't pay me enough to do this job if I did not meet the criteria set forth above. On the other hand, if I were a lotto winner and didn't need to work at all, I would do it for free. That's how you need to be, as well.

Now, for the reason you came here:

The Border Patrol is a law enforcement organization, therefore you work when the law breakers work. In our profession, they work mainly at night. The Border Patrol kindly compensates you for being in the dark and having to sleep while the rest of the world is awake. This amount adds to your pay and is called Night Differential. You also work Sundays, holidays and overtime. These also add to your paycheck in a major way. 

The one item that you will learn to love is AUO, or Administratively Uncontrollable Overtime. This amounts to just about two hours of overtime per shift that you are expected to perform in order to cover shift changes and alien processing. AUO is almost always paid at the rate of 25% of your base pay. Now, let's take a look at the pay schedule and see how that 25% translates into a living wage:

I cannot repeat this often enough: Add 25% to those figures to determine your actual minimum salary. There is a lot more to the salary than we have space to discuss here.

Pay Calculator

The pay tables are linked at the bottom of this paragraph.  The first one shows the GL pay grades to which you will most likely be assigned.  (GL-5 or GL-7).  You will non-competitively promote to the next higher odd-numbered pay grade (Example:  GL-7 promotes to GL-9, GL-5 promotes to GL-7). 

The table below the GL schedule is known as the RUS (Rest of the United States) scale.  This is the LOWEST POSSIBLE pay you can earn as a federal law enforcement officer with no Cost of Living adjustments for locality.  Any other area that has a locality pay will be higher than this.  See the official OPM pay tables for that information.  And when you see a figure in the pay table you are going to do WHAT?  That's correct.  You are going to multiply the amount by .25 and add the result to the amount to determine your MINIMUM PAY POSSIBLE.  The will be deductions such as income tax (fed and state), Social Security, health insurance premiums, union dues and all that fun stuff.  However, there will be plenty of additions to offset those deductions, such as FLSA, AUO, holiday pay, Sunday pay, night differential, etc.