Whom Is ICE Actually Recruiting?
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Politics
/ January 27, 2026
Whom Is ICE Actually Recruiting?
ICE has lowered standards to facilitate a massive hiring spree. Many of the new recruits are plainly unqualified. Are some also white supremacists or domestic terrorists?
Kali Holloway
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An ICE recruitment poster displayed in Arlington, Texas, amid a major recruitment event in that city.
(Ron Jenkins / Getty Images)
The Department of Homeland Security recently boasted that it has hired more than 12,000 ICE officers and agents in just four months—a feat that merely required lowering standards, fast-tracking barely vetted recruits, and turning availability into the primary eligibility requirement. That’s an exaggeration, but hardly. More than doubling ICE’s ranks has meant cutting training from 13 weeks to six, raising the maximum age cap from 40 to none at all, scrapping the college degree requirement, and adding a $50,000 signing bonus. Now pretty much anyone can become an ICE agent. And that’s not just because of those lax standards, but also because DHS is apparently doing a piss-poor job of ensuring even those are met.
A Slate journalist, for example, was offered an officer position despite their never submitting paperwork, taking the fitness test, passing drug screening, or undergoing a background check. Last week, it was revealed that ICE’s résumé-sorting AI tool mistakenly flagged many applicants as former law enforcement, accidentally putting them on an even shorter four-week, online-only training track. The ICE agent filmed fatally shooting Alex Pretti in the head, execution style, has been identified by the AP as an eight-year veteran with the Border Patrol. Renee Good was fatally, needlessly killed by an ICE agent who had been on the job for more than a decade, working in the Border Patrol prior to that. If seasoned ICE officers are killing civilians in the streets, DHS’s negligence in screening new hires should make us all concerned about whom the agency is allowing to be emboldened by impunity.
“Clearly, there’s a problem of compliance with use-of-force policies, even among people who are not Trump hires, who were hired under previous, more stringent standards in a more rigorous training academy,” Scott Shuchart, a senior policy adviser at ICE during the Biden administration, told me. “When you relax all that, it’s hard to see how you could expect a higher level of performance from new recruits.”
Related Article
White Nationalist Hate Is Infiltrating Our Police
Kali Holloway
Those ringing alarm bells over who is becoming ICE agents include Representative Jamie Raskin, who sent a letter this month to both Attorney General Pam Bondi …
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.
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Current Issue
Politics
/ January 27, 2026
Whom Is ICE Actually Recruiting?
ICE has lowered standards to facilitate a massive hiring spree. Many of the new recruits are plainly unqualified. Are some also white supremacists or domestic terrorists?
Kali Holloway
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Ad Policy
An ICE recruitment poster displayed in Arlington, Texas, amid a major recruitment event in that city.
(Ron Jenkins / Getty Images)
The Department of Homeland Security recently boasted that it has hired more than 12,000 ICE officers and agents in just four months—a feat that merely required lowering standards, fast-tracking barely vetted recruits, and turning availability into the primary eligibility requirement. That’s an exaggeration, but hardly. More than doubling ICE’s ranks has meant cutting training from 13 weeks to six, raising the maximum age cap from 40 to none at all, scrapping the college degree requirement, and adding a $50,000 signing bonus. Now pretty much anyone can become an ICE agent. And that’s not just because of those lax standards, but also because DHS is apparently doing a piss-poor job of ensuring even those are met.
A Slate journalist, for example, was offered an officer position despite their never submitting paperwork, taking the fitness test, passing drug screening, or undergoing a background check. Last week, it was revealed that ICE’s résumé-sorting AI tool mistakenly flagged many applicants as former law enforcement, accidentally putting them on an even shorter four-week, online-only training track. The ICE agent filmed fatally shooting Alex Pretti in the head, execution style, has been identified by the AP as an eight-year veteran with the Border Patrol. Renee Good was fatally, needlessly killed by an ICE agent who had been on the job for more than a decade, working in the Border Patrol prior to that. If seasoned ICE officers are killing civilians in the streets, DHS’s negligence in screening new hires should make us all concerned about whom the agency is allowing to be emboldened by impunity.
“Clearly, there’s a problem of compliance with use-of-force policies, even among people who are not Trump hires, who were hired under previous, more stringent standards in a more rigorous training academy,” Scott Shuchart, a senior policy adviser at ICE during the Biden administration, told me. “When you relax all that, it’s hard to see how you could expect a higher level of performance from new recruits.”
Related Article
White Nationalist Hate Is Infiltrating Our Police
Kali Holloway
Those ringing alarm bells over who is becoming ICE agents include Representative Jamie Raskin, who sent a letter this month to both Attorney General Pam Bondi …
Whom Is ICE Actually Recruiting?
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.
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Whom Is ICE Actually Recruiting?
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Current Issue
Politics
/ January 27, 2026
Whom Is ICE Actually Recruiting?
ICE has lowered standards to facilitate a massive hiring spree. Many of the new recruits are plainly unqualified. Are some also white supremacists or domestic terrorists?
Kali Holloway
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Ad Policy
An ICE recruitment poster displayed in Arlington, Texas, amid a major recruitment event in that city.
(Ron Jenkins / Getty Images)
The Department of Homeland Security recently boasted that it has hired more than 12,000 ICE officers and agents in just four months—a feat that merely required lowering standards, fast-tracking barely vetted recruits, and turning availability into the primary eligibility requirement. That’s an exaggeration, but hardly. More than doubling ICE’s ranks has meant cutting training from 13 weeks to six, raising the maximum age cap from 40 to none at all, scrapping the college degree requirement, and adding a $50,000 signing bonus. Now pretty much anyone can become an ICE agent. And that’s not just because of those lax standards, but also because DHS is apparently doing a piss-poor job of ensuring even those are met.
A Slate journalist, for example, was offered an officer position despite their never submitting paperwork, taking the fitness test, passing drug screening, or undergoing a background check. Last week, it was revealed that ICE’s résumé-sorting AI tool mistakenly flagged many applicants as former law enforcement, accidentally putting them on an even shorter four-week, online-only training track. The ICE agent filmed fatally shooting Alex Pretti in the head, execution style, has been identified by the AP as an eight-year veteran with the Border Patrol. Renee Good was fatally, needlessly killed by an ICE agent who had been on the job for more than a decade, working in the Border Patrol prior to that. If seasoned ICE officers are killing civilians in the streets, DHS’s negligence in screening new hires should make us all concerned about whom the agency is allowing to be emboldened by impunity.
“Clearly, there’s a problem of compliance with use-of-force policies, even among people who are not Trump hires, who were hired under previous, more stringent standards in a more rigorous training academy,” Scott Shuchart, a senior policy adviser at ICE during the Biden administration, told me. “When you relax all that, it’s hard to see how you could expect a higher level of performance from new recruits.”
Related Article
White Nationalist Hate Is Infiltrating Our Police
Kali Holloway
Those ringing alarm bells over who is becoming ICE agents include Representative Jamie Raskin, who sent a letter this month to both Attorney General Pam Bondi …
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