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WASHINGTON – President Trump says he wants to hire 10,000 new US immigrant and customs enforcement officers and 3,000 new Border Patrol agents, but the history of employment for experts and law enforcement suggests that the process can lead to challenging, long and perhaps problematic jobs.
The massive funding law signed this month with Trump listening to around $170 billion for border and immigration enforcement, including hundreds of billions of people for new deportees and other staff. In a statement in The Times, Deputy Director of the Department of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin said the agency will implement the president’s employment order.
“In June, the 2025 Career Expo recruited 3,000 candidates and generated 1,000 interim job openings, almost twice as much as 564 in 2023,” she wrote. “Our recruitment strategy includes targeted outreach, thorough review and partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies.”
During his first term, a July 2017 report by Homeland Security Inspectors discovered a significant setback when Trump called for collectively hire 15,000 people to seek ice and customs and border security in the United States.
“While DHS has set up plans and launched actions to launch a proactive employment surge, in recent years, the department and its components have faced significant challenges related to long employment hours, proper staff allocation and human resource supply,” the report states.
The independent Watchdog concluded that ICE would require more than 500,000 applicants to meet the goals of 10,000 new immigration officers. CBP needs 750,000 applicants to hire 5,000 new agents.
Neither goal appears to be met. In 2017, ICE hired 371 deportation officers from over 11,000 applications, and took an average of 173 days to complete the recruitment, news outlet government officials reported. And Cronkite’s news reported that when Trump resigned in 2021, the Border Patrol was reduced by more than 1,000 agents.
“A mere mechanism of employment that makes many people challenging and time-consuming,” says John Pfaf, a law professor at Fordham University, studying the challenges of ice face recruitment.
When the first version of the funding bill passed the House, it set targets for at least 10,000 ICE personnel, agents and support staff, designating a minimum of 2,500 in fiscal year 2025 and 1,875 from 2029 to 2029.
The law did not outline specific employment targets for Customs and Border Patrol, the parent company of the Border Patrol, but it said Homeland Security would also support the employment of 3,000 customs officials at ports of entry, in addition to 3,000 border patrol agents.
The Senate amended the bill and, in its final passage, the law removed employment details. This means that ICE can use funds for a variety of purposes. ICE has over 20,000 law enforcement and support personnel. CBP has 60,000 employees. This includes around 19,000 Border Patrol agents.
Research into accelerated employment efforts has shown that contracts are inadequate in some cases. Ten months after its 2018 contract with professional services company Accenture, CBP paid $13.6 million. The inspector discovered that only two people accepted the job offer.
Residents will confront ice agents and border patrol agents about their presence in Bell’s Atlantic Boulevard neighborhood on June 20th.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Hiring thousands of employees would be an even bigger lift today, PFAFF said.
He pointed out the fact that since 2020, police departments across the country have also struggled to recruit and maintain officers. Immigration officers’ salaries are lower than new employees’ salaries at metropolitan law enforcement agencies such as the New York Police Department.
Deportation Officer Jobs offer a salary range of approximately $50,000-$90,000. PFAFF compared it to the NYPD. In the NYPD, executive salaries have risen to just over $60,000, up over $125,000 within six years.
Another recruitment push has sparked a wave of famous corruption cases.
During Border Patrol employment between 2006 and 2009, employment and training standards were reduced, bringing in around 8,000 agents. The Associated Press reported that the number of employees arrested for fraudulent activities such as civil rights violations and fraudulent crimes such as domestic violence increased annually between 2007 and 2012, reaching an increase of 336, or 44%. More than 100 employees have been arrested or charged with corruption.
A 2015 report from an internal audit by the CBP Advisory Board said: “Arrests for corruption of CBP officials are far greater on the basis of such arrests in other federal law enforcement agencies.”
Josiah Hayman, anthropology professor who directs the University of Texas’s Inter-American and Border Research Center at El Paso, studied employment in the mid-2000s. He said smuggling organizations, like security measures, have only been more refined since. So it’s more valuable for smugglers to “buy someone” rather than bringing people or drugs undetected.
Beyond corruption, Heyman said he was worried about his willingness to rapidly increase homeland security staffing.
“I’ll get 10,000 [new employees] It basically means hiring people walking the door because you are about to hit your quota.
The issue of recruitment in the Border Patrol has led to reforms, including the 2010 Border Corruption Act, including the forced polygraph test for job seekers (though the requirements have not been implemented for ice applicants). Polygraph tests revealed that some applicants had backgrounds, including those believed to have links to organized crime.
Additionally, two-thirds of Border Patrol applicants began to fail polygraph tests by 2017, so reforms delayed employment, the Associated Press reported.
If the government fails to meet its employment targets, it may help Trump carry out aggressive crackdowns on immigrants in order to rely on contractors, the US military and local law enforcement agencies. 287(g) It is likely to continue expanding the programme, representing local law enforcement agencies to act as deportation agents. Homeland Security said the new budget would fully fund the 287(g) program.
PFAFF said that using local police to arrest immigrants could be useful in the short term, but many major cities and states, including California, have already banned agreements or limited cooperation with ICE. Still, Propublica reported that over 500 law enforcement agencies have signed 287(g) contracts since January.
Jason Hauser, ICE’s chief of staff under ICE’s Biden administration, said training for newcomers takes about a year, and the class usually closes with 50 students.
Houser said another short-term workaround for permanent staff could be the use of contractors.
Most immigrant detainees are held in facilities run by private prison companies, including Florida-based GEO Group and Tennessee-based Corecivic.
However, these businesses have limited inventory of detention space. CBP can also use the funds to build softside temporary facilities at military bases within 100 miles of the US boundary where CBP is authorized to carry out immigration checkpoints and other enhanced enforcement activities.
Houser said the temporary facilities could be installed by October and could be deployed alongside the National Guard or US military personnel in the roles of management, nursing, food and sanitation.
Federal law generally prohibits the military from arresting civilians. But Homeland Security officials say military personnel have the authority to temporarily detain anyone attacking immigration agents until law enforcement can arrest them.
However, I am worried that placing young service members who are not trained to carry out civil detention for these facilities will lead to injuries to people. He also worries that if other countries do not agree to accept more deportees, the number of migrants detained for months could quickly swell.
As of June 29, approximately 58,000 migrants were in custody, according to TRAC, a non-partisan data research agency. That’s well beyond the 41,500 detention beds approved by Congress this fiscal year.
“This is 9/11 style money,” Hauser said. “Think about counter-terrorism money from 9/11 onwards. It will turn the entire device towards this goal. Everything about the government will turn into a place where money is. It’s a scary piece for me.”
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