ICE Is Having Trouble Recruiting

But you should see who they’re encouraging to join.

There are strong indications that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is encountering difficulties in recruiting the agents it will need to carry out Trump’s plans for mass deportation, even as it doubles down on targeting white nationalist recruits to its ranks.

The “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed by the Republicans and signed into law by Trump calls for a massive increase in the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents—around 10,000 new officers over the next few years. That would represent a 50 percent rise in total personnel.

Much of the American public already views ICE as a gestapo-like organization that doesn’t just target criminals, as Trump had promised, but routinely terrorizes and detains ordinary, hardworking but undocumented immigrants. Because of the nature of their work and this widespread public disapproval, ICE agents typically wear facial coverings to hide their identities and avoid being doxxed.

This has not improved their image with the public. And that has made recruitment of new ICE officers a challenge.

So what does DHS have planned to entice new recruits? Let’s take a look at some of the eye-popping offerings and changes to policies recently announced by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Then we’ll explore the disturbing messaging it is deploying to hire a certain kind of officer to its ranks.

Sign-on bonuses, student debt relief, hefty overtime and generous benefits

To help new recruits decide that the stigma of being an ICE officer is worth it, DHS is now offering recruitment bonuses of up to $50,000 for new sign ups.

It’s also offering student loan forgiveness of up to $60,000 to help “brave and heroic” Americans who are interested in helping with mass deportations. This loan forgiveness is particularly ironic given how opposed the GOP has been to Biden’s loan forgiveness program. In a bitter coincidence, millions of student borrowers who had signed up for the Biden-era SAVE plan for loan relief recently saw interest accruing to their accounts again beginning August 1.

On top of the hefty sign-on bonuses and loan forgiveness opportunity, the agency is also offering generous overtime pay and “enhanced retirement benefits” on top of a base pay of up to $89,528 annually.

To promote this new program and these benefits, ICE ran online ads warning that “America has been invaded by criminals and predators,” with a World War II image of Uncle Sam saying “America Needs You” to “get them out.”

The notion that ICE is targeting only criminals and predators has been disproved. According to CBS News, as of June 23, or around five weeks ago, “A record 59,000 people were currently being held in ICE detention” with “nearly half of them with no criminal record.”

But ICE and the White House keep repeating the lie.

Eliminating the age cap

Sensing that the pool of available officers needs to be expanded, Homeland Security further announced on Wednesday that it was lifting the age caps on officers who can serve. It posted ads touting, “We’re taking father/son bonding to a whole new level” showing what appears to be an idealized version of an Aryan youth with his rugged father.

The details of how this program will work remain unclear, as the DHS website apparently still lists the old criteria and waiver processes for people over 40, those with prior law enforcement experience, and veterans.

But like the Russian army, which has had to begin admitting much older men to replace the hundreds of thousands of younger soldiers it has lost in its war with Ukraine, DHS is clearly facing a challenge in having enough warm bodies to fill Deportation Officer positions.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem even put out the call on the Fox Network.

Poaching from local law enforcement

There’s another indication that ICE is desperate to find new recruits: It has begun treating its local law enforcement partners as recruiting grounds.

NBC News reported that as ICE attempts to raise its ranks by 10,000 new agents, “the Trump Administration this week tried recruiting local law enforcement officers away from sheriff’s offices in multiple states, alienating some allies along the way.”

Specifically, “Sheriff’s offices in Georgia, Texas and Florida have all confirmed to NBC News that deputies within their departments received a recruiting email, which NBC News has obtained, from ICE on Tuesday.”

“ICE actively trying to use our partnership to recruit our personnel is wrong and we have expressed our concern to ICE leadership,” said the Pinellas County Sheriff, who remains a strong Trump supporter.

“We just shot ourselves in the foot,” one Florida police chief told NBC News, speaking anonymously to avoid possible White House retribution. He added that police departments already face hiring challenges, and that the ICE poaching of local officers will make those worse.

“Now you know why everybody’s so pissed,” he said.

White nationalist and fascist themes

Lately, the iconography of DHS has grown increasingly and expressly Nazi and white nationalist. A recent post made a direct references to the racist idea of “manifest destiny” while using two capital Hs in the caption—something Prof. Heather Cox Richardson noted is a reference to the words Heil Hilter.

I noted in a comment to her post that there’s another dog whistle in the caption, one consisting of 14 words once you include the title and the artist’s name. Alt-right and white supremacists often signal to each other by using 14 words in posts. As the Anti-Defamation League notes,

“14 Words” is a reference to the most popular white supremacist slogan in the world: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The slogan was coined by David Lane, a member of the white supremacist terrorist group known as The Order (Lane died in prison in 2007). The term reflects the primary white supremacist worldview in the late 20th and early 21st centuries: that unless immediate action is taken, the white race is doomed to extinction by an alleged ‘rising tide of color’ purportedly controlled and manipulated by Jews.

The choice of imagery, the HH capitalizations, and the 14 words are no coincidence.

DHS’s World War II fascist aesthetic is apparent in many of its recruitment advertisements. Here’s another example:

To those who wonder if this is a stretch or dismiss it as mere artistic license, consider another recent post by DHS that expressly conflates its mission to control immigration and the border with defending the “culture” of this country—all while emphasizing “no undergraduate degree required!”

Immigration is of course foundational to the very culture of America. But DHS views all “immigrants” as un-American and therefore a threat to our “culture.” And it is expressly recruiting agents who share a similar view.

The ranks of ICE are already filled with a disproportionate number of racist members who have expressed violent intentions against ethnic minorities. Customs and Border Protection officers regularly posted explicitly violent and racist comments in a secret Facebook group exposed back in 2019 during Trump’s first term. As the Congressional House Oversight Committee reported,

The Committee’s investigation focused on “I’m 10-15,” a private Facebook group of over 9,500 members that described itself as a place for members of the Border Patrol to post content that was “funny, serious and just work related.” “10-15” is a Border Patrol code for “aliens in custody.” CBP employees posted content about killing and harming migrants on “I’m 10-15.”

Recently, the Texas Observer broke a story that an ICE prosecutor, serving as assistant chief counsel to ICE in the Dallas area, was running a white supremacist social media account on the X platform.

While ICE agents usually hide their faces, their tattoos are often visible to cameras. One federal agent in Martha’s Vineyard was spotted with the white nationalist “Valknot” tattoo on his arm, stoking fears among residents.

These are just some of the white supremacists people were able to out or spot. By inviting new hires to “Defend your culture!,” DHS is now supercharging recruitment of white supremacists into the ranks of ICE. And it is doing so intentionally.

This is nothing short of the KKK being reconstituted within the government itself, being granted official permission to remain anonymous behind masks, and handed near boundless resources to continue a campaign of terror against immigrants and racial minorities.