The message being promoted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement is that it is looking for patriotic Americans to join its ranks and that there are new benefits associated with doing so.
The organization carrying out President Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportations is offering prospective hires retirement benefits, up to $60,000 in federal student loan repayments, and signing incentives of up to $50,000 spread over three years. Actor Dean Cain, who portrayed Superman in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, announced on social media on Wednesday that he would be joining ICE as an honorary officer. ICE also announced this week that it is lifting the age restrictions.
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Cain stated, “I joined because I thought it was important to work with our first responders to help secure the safety of all Americans, not just talk about it.” He promoted the pay and benefits of being an officer with ICE, encouraging others to do the same.
Experts are worried about the potential financial gains and the celebrity endorsement. They worry that if the recruiting drive draws local police away from their communities, diverts key people from other vital responsibilities, or takes short cuts in the haste to hire, public safety may be jeopardized.
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According to recent data, many of the people apprehended by ICE during the Trump administration do not have criminal backgrounds, therefore immigration and law enforcement experts say the recruiting effort does not accurately reflect the threat posed by undocumented immigrants to public safety. The Cato Institute, a libertarian public policy think tank, analyzed fresh ICE data and found that one in five Latinos arrested by ICE in street arrests had no criminal records or removal orders.
Jason Houser, a former senior Homeland Security official in both the Obama and Biden administrations, told NBC News that this is a step further away from truly keeping people safe.
Requests for comment regarding worries about recent hiring initiatives and whether they might take precedence over other important duties were not immediately answered by DHS.
In order to fulfill Trump’s pledge of mass deportations, the administration has stated that it plans to increase the number of ICE agents by 10,000. The Republican-led Congress just passed a package that triples ICE’s budget by roughly $30 billion for its enforcement and deportation activities, providing an unparalleled boost to that endeavor.
In an effort to reach Trump’s target of deporting one million immigrants annually, DHS recently established a project dubbed Defend the Homeland, which aims to recruit patriots to join ICE law enforcement.
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In order to achieve that objective, the agency has since announced new incentives or waived earlier requirements.
You are being called to serve at ICE by your nation. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the initiative in a statement, saying, “Your country needs dedicated men and women of ICE to get the worst of the worst criminals out of our country in the wake of the Biden administration’s failed immigration policies.”
In order to allow even more patriots to help ICE in its mission, DHS announced on Wednesday that it was lifting the age restrictions for joining ICE.
In the past, new members had to be at least 21 years old. To be a criminal investigator, they had to be no older than 37, and to be a deportation officer, they had to be no older than 40. When asked if there will be any age restrictions, DHS sent NBC News a social media video of Noem stating that recruits could enroll as early as age 18.
Additionally, the agency is attempting to entice applicants with its financial incentives. Benefits like signing bonuses, reimbursement of federal student loans, and choices for increased overtime pay and retirement benefits will all be made possible by the substantial new cash provided by Congress.
Houser expressed skepticism about the assertion that improved public safety would be directly correlated with more ICE officers.
This fresh gorge of money is now owned by ICE. However, what is the threat to national security and public safety? Are they the people that ICE is now detaining? According to him, many of them do not have deportation orders and are not criminals.
According to ICE data, nearly half of the individuals detained by ICE have not been found guilty or charged with any crimes. Only a small percentage of the undocumented immigrants already known to ICE as having been convicted of sexual assault and homicide have been arrested and detained by the Trump administration, according to internal data obtained by NBC News in late June. This is despite six months of aggressive immigration enforcement and pledges to concentrate on deporting violent criminals.
Questions concerning the arrest rates of people with and without criminal records were not immediately answered by DHS.
“The current climate of limited resources simply means that there are fewer resources for prioritizing people who pose bigger threats when people who are not threats to public safety or national security are arrested,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst with the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute.
Shifting resources to immigration enforcement
DHS is recruiting people who are not new to law enforcement as part of its drive.
Additionally, the agency has recently come under fire for aggressively hiring new agents from some of its most reliable local partners.
In a prior interview, Jonathan Thompson, the executive director and CEO of the National Sheriffs Association, stated that the recruitment attempts aimed at local law enforcement were poor decisions and would erode a relationship that had been getting better recently.
“They need state and locals, so it will take leadership at DHS to really take stock,” Thompson stated.
According to an operation plan told to NBC News by three people with knowledge of the personnel allocations, the administration is also redeploying existing personnel, including up to 21,000 National Guard troops and over 5,000 personnel from various federal law enforcement agencies, to assist in the arrest of undocumented immigrants. These plans were not previously publicized.
According to the plan, which is now in progress, 3,000 ICE agents will be used, including 1,800 from Homeland Security Investigations, which mostly looks into transnational crimes and is not usually involved in making arrests of law-abiding immigrants. It also includes 500 employees from Customs and Border Protection and 2,000 Justice Department personnel from the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Additionally, the operation plan calls for 250 IRS agents, some of whom might be utilized to provide information on the whereabouts of immigrants using tax information, while others would have the power to make arrests.
According to Scott Shuchart, an ICE official under the Biden administration, “you have people whose job it is to go after fentanyl being forced to spend their time arresting grandmas on the streets of Los Angeles.” That is a large and strange trade-off for public safety.
In a recent statement, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson stated: One significant way President Trump is Making America Safe Again is by enforcing our immigration laws and expelling illegal aliens. However, the president is able to chew gum and walk simultaneously. Regardless of whether they are citizens of the United States or illegal aliens, we are holding all offenders accountable. Because of this, compared to the Biden Administration’s soft-on-crime policy, the number of murders in the country has drastically decreased, fugitives from the FBI’s most wanted list have been apprehended, and police officers are given the freedom to carry out their duties.
DHS said in a statement Thursday that the government is also moving some Federal Emergency Management Agency staff to support ICE during hurricane season.
The goal of DHS’s all-hands-on-deck approach is to hire 10,000 more ICE agents. According to DHS, certain FEMA staff members will be temporarily assigned to ICE for a period of ninety days in order to help with hiring and screening in support of this endeavor. Their deployment won’t interfere with FEMA’s vital functions. For Hurricane Season, FEMA is still ready.
On July 31, DHS said that it has reached a major milestone in its continuous hiring operations by issuing more than 1,000 provisional job offers since July 4. A number of retired officers received some of the offers.
Requests for comment regarding the agency’s efforts to hire local law enforcement and transfer other federal employees to ICE were not immediately answered.
According to Houser, it will be crucial to observe the criteria that will be applied to new personnel and whether or not they are receiving the appropriate training and screening.
It has historically been challenging to find such hires, according to Houser. ICE officers take about 12 to 18 months to come online, he said.
Shuchart said the Trump administration is not irrational for wishing they could make things quicker. The question is, are they making things quicker in ways that make sense, or are they taking shortcuts that are dangerous?
He said that prioritizing increasing the number of deportation officers could be exacerbating the problems.
If you actually wanted the immigration system to work, you would be hiring thousands of immigration judges, you would be funding prosecutors, you would be funding defense lawyers, he said. If what we wanted was a fair and fast system, it would be the complete opposite of this.
