Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to hire as many as 5,000 more agents amid President Trump’s ongoing crackdown on immigration, according to a report.
The agency has been a cornerstone of Trump’s second-term, massively expanding its operations with more than $100 billion provided by Congress
Now, sources familiar with the plans told The New York Times that the agency wants to grow its workforce by a further 17 percent. The majority of those hires will be deportation officers.
At the start of the year, the Department of Homeland Security stated that it had more than doubled the number of ICE officers and agents from 10,000 to 22,000, receiving more than 220,000 applications. The department confirmed at the time that thousands of those new recruits had already been deployed and were taking part in arrests and removals.
“The good news is that thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill that President Trump signed, we have an additional 12,000 ICE officers and agents on the ground across the country,” then-Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said at the time. “That’s a 120% increase in our workforce. And that’s in just about four months.”
The sources told The Times, however, that ICE is still tackling a huge vetting backlog from last year’s surge of hires, with nearly 7,500 recruits awaiting background checks. Those recruits still waiting for background checks are able to work only in a limited capacity.
Recruits can be in training or working before a full background check takes place, the sources say. Preliminary checks precede full background vetting, which can take months and is carried out by a third party. The results are reviewed by federal employees.
Government data provided to the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by The Associated Press stated that ICE made 49,571 arrests in July alone.
However, ICE agents continue to be involved in controversial incidents on the ground, including the shooting of a Venezuelan DoorDash driver by a recent recruit.
One official, a unit chief from ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility, has warned that many new officers had not received basic vetting and were violating federal rules.
“This unprecedented lowering of standards sacrifices proper risk mitigation for expediency, placing DHS at risk of infiltration and insider compromise,” the official wrote in an August 2025 memo sent to the DHS’ Office of Inspector General and obtained by The Associated Press.
A spokesperson for the DHS told The Times that the proposed 5,000 new hires have no relation to the previous recruitment effort and were connected to an “outgrowth” of new funding given to the DHS. It also insisted that it would maintain stringent standards.
Speaking to the newspaper, Deborah Fleischaker, former President Biden’s acting chief of staff at ICE, reiterated the importance of vetting.
“Adequately vetting people takes time,” she said. “It’s more important to get it right than do it fast.”
The Independent has contacted the DHS and ICE for comment.
