A reporter has become embroiled in a public dispute with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after penning an article on how she was in effect offered a position with the organization following an interview that took less than six minutes and did not require her to complete “a single signature on agency paperwork”.
Her hiring, and latter claim about the hiring process, have both been challenged by the Department of Homeland Security and called a “lie”.
In an article published this week, the Slate journalist Laura Jedeed described how she attended an ICE Career Expo in August 2025 at the Esports Stadium Arlington outside Dallas, Texas, where recruiters were advertising immediate hiring opportunities for deportation officers. While she said her initial plan “was to learn what it was like to apply to be an ICE agent”, Jedeed ultimately shared a breakdown of how she somehow ended up getting hired by the organization.
“DHS probably has no idea whether ICE offered me a job, which is kind of the point of the article: they have no idea what they’re doing,” she told the Guardian.
After finishing high school, Jedeed enlisted in the US army and was deployed twice to Afghanistan with the 82nd airborne division before later working as a civilian analyst. Now 38, Jedeed is openly critical of Donald Trump and identifies as “anti-ICE”, something she wrote in her piece that she believed would disqualify her once her background was reviewed.
After scheduling an appointment with a recruiter and waiting briefly, her ICE interview consisted only of basic questions: her name, date of birth and age, whether she had military or law enforcement experience, and the reasons for her departure from the armed forces.
Jedeed claims in her piece that the recruiter then told her: “They are prioritizing current law enforcement first. They’re going to adjudicate your resume.” She was instructed to watch for an email outlining what to do next. Before leaving the event, she spoke with an active deportation officer who told her that, if hired, she would probably not “hit the streets right away”.
When Jedeed responded that she might actually prefer a desk-based role, she wrote that the officer’s demeanor changed, and that he replied: “Just to be upfront, the goal is to put as many guns and badges out in the field as possible.”
Jedeed said she received the anticipated email on 3 September, informing her she was being extended a “tentative offer” and directing her to log into a government jobs portal and complete several attached forms. These documents requested details about her driver’s license, any past domestic violence convictions and permission to conduct a background check.
She said she did not complete any of the required steps but still received another email three weeks later thanking her for moving forward and asking her to schedule a drug test. Despite having used cannabis roughly six days before the scheduled test, she chose to proceed.
“Nine days later, impatience got the best of me. For the first time, I logged into USAJobs and checked my application to see if my drug test had come through. What I actually saw was so implausible, so impossible, that at first I did not understand what I was looking at,” she wrote.
She discovered that ICE appeared to have formally offered her a job even though she had not submitted key documents, including a domestic violence affidavit, background check authorization, or identification details. Her onboarding status was shown as “Entered on Duty.”
Jedeed said she turned down the offer, acknowledging that it might have resulted from a technical error, but also suggesting “that ICE is running an extremely leaky ship when it comes to recruitment”.
“But if they missed the fact that I was an anti-ICE journalist who didn’t fill out her paperwork, what else might they be missing? How many convicted domestic abusers are being given guns and sent into other people’s homes? How many people with ties to white supremacist organizations are indiscriminately targeting minorities on principle, regardless of immigration status,” she wrote.
Jedeed told the Guardian that if she “were the DHS, I would probably be concerned about the security implications of the story rather than immediately dismissing the problem out of hand”.
“It’s another example of how little they care about the safety of the American people they are allegedly protecting,” she continued.
DHS denied the allegations, writing on X on 14 January in response to Jedeed’s social media post about her article: “This is such a lazy lie. This individual was NEVER offered a job at ICE. Applicants may receive a Tentative Selection Letter following their initial application and interview that is not a job offer. It just means they are invited to submit information for review, similar to any other applicant.”
Jedeed rejected this claim, writing in response: “You sure about that?” along with a video that appears to show that her application had already reached the final offer stage.
“The screengrab video I posted in response clearly shows a final offer and onboarding date, which I interpreted to mean a final offer and onboarding date. Maybe it has some other secret meaning, but I haven’t learned what it might be – ICE did not respond to a request for comment,” Jedeed said.
Slate’s spokesperson Katie Rayford told the Guardian that the publication responded to DHS by saying: “We stand by our reporting, which reveals minimal vetting in ICE’s hiring process. Evidence, including video documentation, shows the journalist who reported this story advanced through multiple hiring stages beyond the ‘tentative selection letter,’ including receiving a final offer letter and being given a start date.”
The incident has brought renewed attention to concerns about ICE’s questionable recruitment tactics and changes made under the Trump administration to hiring and training standards.
