Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offers up to $50,000 (£37,700) in recruitment bonuses, and student loans help “brave and heroic” Americans interested in helping the Trump administration’s driving force for deportation.
The agency particularly wants to recruit deportation officers, as well as lawyers, criminal investigators, student visa judges and other roles.
ICE Overall, ICE hopes to add 10,000 new staff and double the agency’s staff when deported nationwide.
The funds recruited for the drive came from Donald Trump’s comprehensive tax and expenditure bill, which had about $1.65 billion allocated funds for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
As part of a new recruitment campaign announced on July 29, the Department of Homeland Security announced a recruitment poster similar to those used during World War II, which included the terms “America needs you” and “Defend homeland,” including Uncle Sam, President Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other officials.
“Your country is calling on you to serve on the ice,” Noam said in a statement. “This is a decisive moment in the history of our country.”
In addition to signing bonuses and signing bonuses up to $60,000 and student loan repayment and forgiveness, ICE is expected to receive overtime salary for deportation officials and “enhanced pension benefits.”
The student loans are quoted as thousands signed up for Biden-era relief payment plans that will see interest on their accounts starting Friday.
The deportation officer is tasked with helping arrest and handling undocumented immigrants to remove them from the United States, with annual salary ranging from $49,739 to $89,528, based on experience and education.
The accompanying image of the role description includes armed personnel riding an armored vehicle.
ICE currently has 20,000 officers and support staff, distributed in 400 offices nationwide.
The hiring driver comes weeks after President Trump signed the “big, beautiful” tax and bill.
The bill includes more than $76 billion allocated to ICE, almost 10 times the amount it received before – and makes it the highest funded federal law enforcement agency.
President Trump, Secretary Norm and other administration officials have vowed to increase the pace of deportation to one million a year.
About 150,000 people were deported in the first six months of the Trump administration, according to data obtained by BBC’s U.S. news partner CBS.
If this speed (about 800 per day) continues, the ICE will assume more than 300,000 deportation in the first year of Trump’s tenure, far below the government’s self-implementation goal.
In an interview with the Associated Press, former ICE CEO Jason Houser said that while the agency long needed more staff, he was concerned that standards in deportation could drop, comparing it to the Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP) in the early 2000s.
“If they start to give up the demands like the Border Patrol, there will be an index of officials that will appear three years later, three years later,” he said.
It is not clear how many people have applied for the newly promoted ICE jobs.
The BBC has contacted ICE and DHS.
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