WASHINGTON — The agency responsible for carrying out President Donald Trump’s mass deportations is launching a recruiting campaign to entice “brave and heroic Americans†to serve as deportation officers, lawyers and investigators as the government gears up for a major expansion of immigration enforcement thanks to a recent infusion of money from Congress. The icing on the cake: a promise of up to $50,000 in signing bonuses.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement campaign, which rolled out late Tuesday, recalls recruiting posters from World War II with images of Uncle Sam and the words “AMERICA NEEDS YOU.†There also are photos of Trump and top homeland security officials with the words “DEFEND THE HOMELAND†across the images.
“Your country is calling you to serve at ICE,†said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in a news release. “This is a defining moment in our nation’s history. Your skills, your experience, and your courage have never been more essential. Together, we must defend the homeland.â€
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Federal agents stage at MacArthur Park on July 7 in Los Angeles.
In addition to appealing to prospective applicants’ patriotic fervor, Homeland Security is making a pocketbook pitch. The agency is promising up to $50,000 in signing bonuses, the potential for lots of overtime for deportation officers and other benefits such as loan repayment or forgiveness options.
All of this is made possible by a big infusion of money to ICE.
The package of tax breaks and spending cuts that Trump signed into law this month includes about $170 billion for border security and immigration enforcement, spread out over five years.
ICE is set to get $76.5 billion, nearly 10 times its current annual budget. Some $45 billion will go toward increasing detention capacity. Nearly $30 billion is for hiring 10,000 more staff so the agency can meet its goal of 1 million annual deportations.
New hires include deportation officers responsible for tracking down, arresting and removing people who the administration determines no longer have the right to remain in the United States.
Under the Republican president, those officers are high-profile roles — making arrests at immigration courts, in the streets and at businesses. They often are criticized by immigration activists and Democratic lawmakers for wearing masks while carrying out their duties.
On the recruitment webpage, the link to learn more about applying to be a deportation officer shows a photo of an armored vehicle rolling down a street with officers in military gear hanging onto the sides of the vehicle.
The government is also seeking criminal investigators and lawyers who will prosecute immigration cases.
The agency said it will advertise at college campuses, job fairs and law enforcement networks. ICE said Thursday that it has already made more than 1,000 tentative job offers.
But the recruiting drive has raised concerns about what happens if the agency grows too fast.
ICE staffing has long been an issue, said Jason Houser, a former agency chief of staff during the Biden administration.
At the beginning of the Trump administration there were roughly 6,000 officers within ICE tasked with monitoring noncitizens in the country, then finding and removing those not eligible to stay.
Those staffing numbers remained largely static over the years even as the caseload ballooned. During the Biden administration, when the number of people arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border skyrocketed, ICE workers were often pulled from their regular duties to go to the border.
“ICE does need more employees to handle the volume of what they’re handling,†Houser said.
But he is concerned about whether the rush to increase staffing could mean lower standards for recruits and training.
The Border Patrol’s rapid expansion during the early 2000s serves as a cautionary tale. To meet hiring goals, training and hiring standards were changed. Arrests for employee misconduct rose.
“If they start waiving requirements there like they did for Border Patrol, you’re going have an exponential increase in officers that are shown the door after three years because there’s some issue,†he said. At the same time, Houser noted the Department of Homeland Security has dismantled some of the key agencies that have provided some level of oversight over ICE and other DHS arms.
Houser estimated it would take three to four years to hire and train that number of new ICE staffers. In the meantime, he worries that ICE will rely on private contractors, National Guard troops and other federal law enforcement officers to meet the administration’s goal of 3,000 arrests a day.
Chuck Wexler is the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum which studies policing issues. He said police departments across the country have struggled to maintain staffing since the pandemic and the fallout from the death of George Floyd, and are often offering hiring bonuses as a result. He’s seen bonus offers ranging from $10,000 to as much as $60,000 or $70,000 for departments on the West Coast.
But he said the $50,000 topline bonus that DHS is offering is definitely on the high end, and Homeland Security’s hiring spree could end up having repercussions on police departments across the country if their officers try to get hired by ICE.
“The environment for hiring law enforcement has never been more competitive,†he said. “This could conceivably impact state and local agencies. You could have someone leaving a police department to get a $50,000 signing bonus with DHS.â€
As immigrant students flee in fear of ICE raids, teachers offer heartfelt gifts
As immigrant students flee in fear of ICE raids, teachers offer heartfelt gifts
A soccer ball covered in signatures from classmates. A handwritten letter telling a child of their worth. A T-shirt bearing a school emblem meant to remind a newcomer how much they were loved in a place they once called home.Ìý
These are among the items teachers have given their multilingual learners after hearing their families planned to leave rather than risk being detained by immigration agents.
"One of my students told me last week that their family had decided to go back to Brazil because they were afraid of deportation," said teacher Joanna Schwartz. "It was his last day here. I scrounged up a T-shirt with our school's logo on it and a permanent marker and my student had all of his friends and teachers sign it."
She said she taught the fifth grader for three years.Ìý
"It's nothing big, but it was a treasure to him to have the physical signatures of his dearest friends and teachers to take with him," she said.Ìý
Some immigrant students wrestling with the fear of deportation leave school with no warning, reports. They simply stop showing up and ignore the calls and emails that follow.Ìý
Other times, they give their teachers just a few hour's notice, often a single afternoon, to process and accept the loss of a relationship that might have lasted for years. A tight hug, a kind word and then … gone.ÌýÌý
Such scenes are unfolding throughout the country as the Trump administration and , striking terror in the hearts of the undocumented and their advocates.Ìý
Faced with the fallout, teachers who've spent their entire careers advocating for immigrant students—fighting battles even within their own districts to ensure they have a robust education—are left fumbling for the right words to say or gift to give a child under extreme stress.Ìý
Schwartz, who teaches multilingual learners in Philadelphia, uses her prior training as a therapist to help kids through these toughest of moments.Ìý
She said she often gives these children "transitional objects," something tangible, like the signed school T-shirt, to help them feel connected to their friends in the United States as they move back to their homelands.
Schwartz wrote her departing student a letter in which she "reminded him of his many strengths and told him how much he will be missed," she said. She added drawings, stickers and her email address.Ìý
"I wish I could do more," she said.Ìý
Areli Rodriguez was devastated when, last winter, during her first year of teaching in Texas, one of her most promising and devoted young students left for another state: The boy's family was growing wary of and headed to Oklahoma, where they hoped they'd be safer.Ìý
"He was my first student who left for this reason," she said of the fifth grader who had arrived in the United States from Mexico less than a year earlier. "It was so gutting. It just broke my heart."Ìý
The family didn't know the Sooner State would impose some of the harshest in the nation. Those included state schools chief Ryan Walters saying he would comply with Trump's order allowing immigration enforcement in schools and a failed edict that Oklahoma when enrolling their kids in school. That proposal was rejected by the governor this week, who said children should not be used
Rodriguez is not sure where the child is today. As a parting gift, she gave him a soccer ball signed by all his classmates.
The boy, who was chosen as student of the week when he departed, led the class in a call-and-response chant by Rita F. Pierson just moments before he was gone from the district for good.ÌýÌý
I am somebody.
I was somebody when I came.
I'll be a better somebody when I leave.
I am powerful, and I am strong.
… I have things to do, people to impress, and places to go.
And, his teacher noted, she wasn't the only gift-giver that day: The boy left her one of his favorite toys, a Rubik's Cube.Ìý
In a diary entry, he wrote to Rodriguez and another beloved teacher: "To say goodbye to all of you, Ms. Rodriguez and Ms. [S], I want to tell you that you are my favorite teachers, and I'm sorry for any trouble I may have caused. Maybe I wasn't the best student, but I am proud of myself for learning so much."
Rodriguez didn't need the note to remember him.
"I think about him all the time," she said, adding that he embodies what she loves most about multilingual learners. "For him, school was a gift, an opportunity, a privilege. He just worked so hard. We had academic competitions. I coached him. He did creative writing in Spanish and he placed. His parents were so supportive—they looked at education as something they wanted to seize."
His classmates felt the loss, too, Rodriguez said.Ìý
"There would be times when I would sit there at recess and watch them play without him and you could tell there was an element missing," she said.Ìý
The Department of Homeland Security is urging undocumented people to This isn't the first time they've felt such pressure: Former President in a single term, double that of Trump's first four years in office. But many of those he turned away were newly arrived at the border. Unlike Trump, Biden shied away from .Ìý
The current president is targeting this population in other ways, too. Trump signed an executive order Feb. 19 aimed at . It's unclear how this might impact education: Schools receive federal money, particularly to help support low-income children, but they also cannot turn away students based on their immigration status, according to the 1982 Supreme Court decision .Ìý
That landmark ruling, however, , most recently in Tennessee where lawmakers this month introduced a bill saying schools can deny enrollment to undocumented students. The sponsors say it's their intention to challenge Plyler.
'We hugged long and hard'
In addition to the T-shirts, cards and other mementos, educators are preparing something else for withdrawing students, a far more practical gift meant to help them resume their education elsewhere—and quickly.Ìý
Genoveva Winkler, regional migrant education program coordinator housed in Idaho's Nampa School District, said she's given more than 100 families copies of their students' transcripts in English and Spanish.Ìý
"This school year, we are preparing 'packets' for the families with all that information," Winkler wrote in a Facebook message, adding her district also gave them textbooks supplied by the Mexican Consulate that parents can use to prepare their children academically and bolster their Spanish. "The students are not 100% bilingual. Parents are taking all steps necessary to make the transition easier for their children."
Indianapolis teacher Amy Halsall said four children from the same family, ranging in age from 7 to 12, left her school system right after Inauguration Day, headed back to Mexico.Ìý
"They didn't specifically say that it was immigration related but I would guess it was," Halsall said. "This is a family that we have had in our school since their sixth grader was in first grade. The kids were really upset that they had to leave."
The youngest and the eldest told Halsall they want to be ESL teachers when they grow up, she said. The two middle children hope to be mechanics and one day open their own shop. Halsall gave them a notebook full of letters written by fellow students and pictures of their classmates.
"I told the kids that they had learned a lot and always did their best," she said. "I told them that they worked hard and were on their way to being bilingual. We hugged long and hard. I told them if they ever came back to Indianapolis that they should call us or visit.
I told them if I was ever in Mexico, I would call them. I tried hard to keep things positive but it was hard for all of us. Everyone had tears in their eyes."
The anxiety continues, Halsall said. Just last week, another child, age 8, told her he worried that "La Migra"—ICE agents—would take his mother away while he was out.Ìý
"I told him that he was safe at school and if he got home and no one was there to call me," she said.Ìý
Another teacher, in Virginia, said she had two such students leave school so far this academic year. One hailed from Guatemala and the other from Mexico. Both were in their mid-teens and had impeccable attendance, she said.
The boy from Guatemala, a solid student who wanted to accelerate his path toward graduation, would often say how perplexing it was that some of his peers didn't show the same dedication to their studies that he did.Ìý
Both teens expressed concern to fellow students about possible immigration raids shortly before leaving school for good. Their teacher did not have a chance to say goodbye in either case. Their departure, she said, left her feeling "completely empty."
"I've loved watching them integrate in our school and seeing how they realized they can have this pathway if they choose," she said. "Watching that choice ripped away by fear is devastating."
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