Leaders in the FBI are reportedly pushing to move one of the bureau’s training programs from its headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, to Huntsville, Alabama, as part of President Donald Trump’s desire to move federal agencies out of the Washington D.C. area.
Dan Bongino, the FBI deputy director, has preliminarily proposed moving the FBI National Academy, a 10-week training academy for 250 domestic and international law enforcement officers, to Huntsville, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
The FBI’s training program for new bureau hires and other parts of its facilities, including the laboratory division, would remain at Quantico, people familiar with the discussion told The Post.
While the proposal is still in preliminary stages, it aligns with Trump’s April deadline asking agencies to create plans to move their headquarters from Washington D.C., to separate areas of the country to “be where the people are.”
However, the push to move to Huntsville, the most populous city in Alabama, has drawn criticism from some personnel who believe the move could be unjustifiably costly, The Post reported.
While the FBI has operated at Redstone Arsenal, a U.S. Army base near downtown Huntsville, for decades, some expressed concern that sending hundreds of staff and agents to set up the training facility would require upgrades.
“If you look at FBI field offices, for example, you’ll see many that are not located in downtown areas given the highly specialized nature of these facilities and their security requirements,” Norman Dong, the former Public Buildings Service commissioner under the Obama administration, told Federal News Network in April.
“In places like Atlanta or Sacramento, these FBI offices are located far outside of the central city,” Dong added.
The FBI Academy is currently located in Quantico, a town in Prince William County, Virginia, which is approximately 35 miles outside of D.C.
A spokesperson for the FBI said that any relocation options were being evaluated to determine if it could save the bureau money while also serving as a sufficient facility.
Since Trump took office in January, the bureau has undergone significant changes, beginning with its leadership. Trump nominated Kash Patel to serve as FBI director despite Patel having a history of taking controversial pro-Trump stances.
The president then tapped Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who became a popular right-wing podcaster, as deputy director. After Patel was sworn in, he said he would relocate roughly 1,000 staff and agents out of the D.C. office and said he’d move 500 people to the Huntsville facility so the FBI could have more of a presence in other cities.
Trump proposed moving federal buildings and agencies outside of D.C. during his first administration, but the plan did not have immense success, in part due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Trump moved the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters from D.C. to Grand Junction, Colorado in 2019 so it could be closer to the land it manages. However, a review by the Biden administration found that the move caused more than 80 percent of the agency’s employees to leave.
Eventually, the headquarters were restored back to Washington D.C.
