The PEARL Act directs the Department of Homeland Security, through U.S. Customs and Border Protection, to stand up a pilot program that adopts dogs from local animal shelters and trains them for use in CBP’s Support Canine Program. The law is short and prescriptive about the program’s purpose and institutional home, but it does not include funding, training standards, or operational detail.
This matters to federal HR and occupational health officials, CBP operations managers, and animal-welfare organizations. The measure creates a new, time-limited authority that combines employee wellbeing and shelter-adoption objectives, and it forces CBP to make near-term implementation choices on training, medical care, access, and security without statutory guidance on those topics.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill requires DHS, through the CBP Commissioner, to establish a pilot program that adopts dogs from local animal shelters and trains them as support dogs for CBP’s Support Canine Program. The statute locates the pilot inside CBP and limits it to a defined, temporary period.
Who It Affects
Primary actors are CBP (lead implementing agency), CBP employees who may receive support services, local animal shelters that supply dogs, and any private trainers or veterinary providers CBP engages. HR, occupational health, and security offices within DHS will be central to implementation.
Why It Matters
The law creates an operational pilot that blends employee mental-health support with animal-adoption goals and therefore forces trade-offs between workplace accommodation, animal care, and national-security protocols; how CBP implements those trade-offs will set practical precedent for similar federal workplace wellness experiments.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The statute gives CBP a narrow, administrative directive: adopt shelter dogs and bring them into the agency’s existing Support Canine Program after training. That simple command translates into a set of immediate implementation tasks that CBP must resolve—partner selection, medical and behavioral screening, training curricula, and internal policies for dog presence in facilities and during shifts.
Because the bill supplies no funding or technical standards, CBP will have to decide whether to reallocate existing resources, use existing canine-training capacity, or contract with outside trainers and veterinary providers.
On the personnel side, the agency will need to reconcile animal presence with operational security, workplace safety, and reasonable-accommodation rules. CBP’s operational footprint includes ports of entry, secure inspection areas, and public-facing facilities where biosecurity, contamination risks, and badge-access restrictions complicate animal access.
CBP will therefore need cross-office protocols—between human resources, legal, occupational health, canine program managers, and frontline supervisors—about when and where support dogs may be present and which employees can interact with or be accompanied by those dogs.For shelters and trainers, the pilot is effectively a procurement and partnership exercise. Shelters will need to meet CBP’s screening criteria (behavioral, health, vaccination) and coordinate logistics for transfer and initial veterinary care.
Because the statute focuses on adoption from “local animal shelters,” agencies will have to draft selection and liability agreements, including who pays for routine and emergency veterinary treatment and what happens if a dog is unsuitable after adoption.Finally, program evaluation and sunset planning matter: the statute ends the pilot after a set period, so CBP must collect usable data on outcomes—employee wellbeing metrics, retention or sick-leave changes, animal health and retention rates, costs, and any security incidents—to justify continuation or expansion. The bill does not describe required reporting, so designing meaningful metrics will fall to the agency and any internal or congressional oversight requests.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The Secretary of Homeland Security must establish the pilot within 60 days after the bill’s enactment.
The pilot automatically terminates three years after its establishment.
All dogs must be adopted from local animal shelters (the statute does not authorize other acquisition sources).
The Secretary must act through the Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection—implementation authority sits inside CBP rather than at a broader DHS level.
The statute contains no appropriation, no prescribed training standards, and no explicit guidance on veterinary care, workplace access rules, or data/reporting requirements.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Short title
This short section only names the Act the “Providing Emotional Assistance with Relief and Love Act” or the “PEARL Act.” That matters chiefly for citation and any follow-on references; it creates no operational requirements beyond the program language that follows.
Establishment of CBP support-dog pilot
This subsection commands the Secretary of Homeland Security—acting through the CBP Commissioner—to establish a pilot program in CBP that adopts dogs from local animal shelters and trains them as support dogs for CBP’s Support Canine Program. Practically, this places program design and execution squarely within CBP’s chain of command. CBP must define intake standards, training regimens, partnerships with shelters and trainers, and internal rules for how support dogs interact with staff and the public, but the statute does not tell CBP how to do any of those things.
Three-year sunset for the pilot
This subsection sets a three-year lifespan measured from establishment, which creates a finite evaluation window. The limited duration increases pressure to launch quickly and to assemble data early. It also means that any durable policy change—permanent placement of support dogs across CBP—will require additional statutory or administrative action after the pilot ends.
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Explore Government in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- CBP employees dealing with stress, trauma, or work-related mental-health needs—access to trained support dogs can provide on-site emotional assistance and potentially reduce absenteeism or burnout when integrated with clinical support.
- Local animal shelters—shelters can place dogs into federal programs, increasing adoption rates and providing a pathway for animals that might otherwise struggle in traditional home environments.
- Canine trainers and veterinary providers—private trainers and clinics could secure contracts for behavior assessment, training, and ongoing medical care if CBP outsources services, creating new federal procurement opportunities.
Who Bears the Cost
- U.S. Customs and Border Protection—CBP will incur administrative, veterinary, training, and logistics costs; absent an appropriation in the statute, CBP must absorb these costs within existing budgets or seek separate funding.
- Local shelters—shelters will need to meet CBP’s behavioral and medical vetting requirements and handle transfer logistics, which may require extra staff time or investment in health records and transport.
- CBP operational units and security personnel—units responsible for ports, inspection stations, and secure areas will face additional procedural burdens to ensure animals do not create security or biosecurity risks and to manage workplace accommodations for colleagues with allergies or phobias.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central tension is between advancing employee mental-health support via an expedient, low-cost adoption program and protecting CBP’s operational and security missions: the law pushes for rapid, humane deployment of support dogs but gives CBP little guidance or money to reconcile animal welfare, workplace accommodation, and the strict security and biosecurity controls that define much of the agency’s work.
The statute is short and directive but leaves core implementation choices unaddressed. The absence of an appropriation forces CBP to decide whether to fund the pilot from existing resources or to request new funds from Congress; each choice affects scale and speed.
Similarly, the bill provides no training standards or certification requirements, so CBP must choose between using its existing narcotics/detection canine expertise (which focuses on detection, not emotional-support behavior) or contracting with civilian trainers whose methodologies vary. That choice affects cost, program fidelity, and public perception.
Security and access present acute operational tensions. CBP facilities include controlled areas where drugs, human remains, and biohazards are encountered; the statute authorizes support dogs but does not define their access levels, supervision requirements, or decontamination protocols.
The law also does not clarify whether these animals are to be treated as service animals, emotional-support animals, or agency-owned working dogs—each classification carries different legal obligations (e.g., under the ADA and federal workplace rules), different liability exposures, and different expectations for handler training and public access. Finally, because the pilot ends after a fixed term and the statute does not mandate reporting, CBP must proactively design evaluation metrics if it wants usable evidence to support continuation or a broader rollout.
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