Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to hire 5,000 employees before year’s end to bolster President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign, even as thousands of earlier recruits await background checks.
The expansion, according to The New York Times, would boost ICE’s manpower by about 17%, with most recruits expected to become deportation officers tasked with field arrests, detentions and managing deportation cases.
During Trump’s second term, the agency has already grown by about 8,000 employees to reach a total of 29,000 people, according to federal data published in July. The latest recruitment drive comes as ICE arrests hit record highs last month.
Republicans in Congress have infused the agency with more than $100 billion via a pair of multi-year budget reconciliation packages. Between those funding spikes and intense political pressure from the Trump administration to meet strict arrest quotas, ICE’s rushed hiring efforts have already drawn criticism.
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Earlier this year, new personnel were approved for work with little to no vetting, according to reports, and hundreds were subsequently fired or quit. In one case, an investigative journalist said she was able to secure a job offer from ICE after a six-minute interview and a passing drug test.
This time, Homeland Security said it will vet candidates more thoroughly, the Times reported, but it’s unclear how the agency can fulfill its massive hiring goal in just three months without running into similar problems.
“Adequately vetting people takes time,” Deborah Fleischaker, a former ICE chief of staff under the Biden administration, told the Times. “It’s more important to get it right than do it fast.”
DHS officials said the hiring growth is the result of new funding and is “unrelated to attrition from the previous surge in hires,” according to the article.
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