Donald Trump is looking to hire 10,000 officers to help carry out his administration’s widespread detention and deportation of migrants with tens of billions of dollars in funds from his “Big Beautiful Bill.”
Job postings show that in 25 cities from coast to coast, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is hiring deportation officers who will arrest, detain, and deport migrants, and manage migrants’ cases. The listings give insight into where ICE may be ramping up operations.
ICE has already been carrying out broad arrests, including at workplaces and courthouses. Agents have been wearing masks and lacking identifying information as they snatch immigrants, sometimes breaking their car windows to drag them out faster.
“Are you ready to defend the homeland?” the job posting reads. “Launch a dynamic and rewarding career as a Deportation Officer with Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO) at ICE! Join a dedicated team safeguarding U.S. borders and upholding immigration laws, playing a key role in defending our nation.”
At a time when the U.S. job market is slowing down and prices remain high, ICE is offering $50,000 signing bonuses and $60,000 in student loan repayment with a salary of about $50,000 to $90,000.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has already issued 1,000 tentative job offers, the Associated Press reported Friday. A spokesperson for DHS said many of the people offered jobs were “ICE officers who retired under President Biden because they were frustrated that they were not allowed to do their jobs.” These retired officers are being offered $88,000 to $144,000 along with a $50,000 bonus.
An image of Uncle Sam, the ultimate recruitment propaganda, appears on the DHS website with the words “RETURN TO MISSION.”
“Your country is calling you to serve at ICE. In the wake of the Biden administration’s failed immigration policies, your country needs dedicated men and women of ICE to get the worst of the worst criminals out of our country,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said earlier this week. “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.”
ICE is hiring in Los Angeles, where Trump deployed the National Guard and Marines to lead a militarized crackdown on protests against his immigration raids.
Major cities where ICE is hiring include Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. The agency is hiring in several large cities with large Latino populations including Dallas, Houston, Miami Beach, Phoenix, San Antonio, and San Diego. ICE is also hiring in Baltimore, New Orleans, Newark, Saint Paul, and Salt Lake City.
The agency is hiring in El Paso, a city on the Texas.-Mexico border where detentions are reportedly increasing. They are also looking to hire in Detroit and Buffalo, which are on the U.S.-Canada border.
ICE is looking to hire in Harlingen, a Texas border city. The deportation flights taking migrants to an El Salvador torture prison and war-torn South Sudan, both in defiance of judicial orders in cases that went to the Supreme Court, took off from Harlingen.
DHS is hiring new criminal investigators, or special agents, at salaries of $63,000 to $102,000 with a bonus $50,000. Returning criminal investigators are being offered $105,000 to $171,000 per year, plus the $50,000 bonus. The department is hiring attorneys all over, at field locations in 90 cities.
The jobs are being funded with tens of billions of dollars included in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” the president’s first major agenda legislation. The bill also slashes taxes for the wealthy and will force millions of Americans off Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income and disabled people.
“The funding from President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill will play a key role in fulfilling his promise to the American people to deport criminal illegal aliens,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement, Politico reported.
“Getting 10,000 [new employees] means basically hiring the people who walk in the door because you’re trying to hit your quota,” Josiah Heyman, an anthropology professor who directs the University of Texas at El Paso’s Center of Inter-American and Border Studies, told The Los Angeles Times. “Rapid, mass-hiring lends itself to mistakes and cutting corners.”
The Trump administration is also looking at increasing their use of the military in domestic immigration enforcement, The New Republic reported Saturday. A memo from Philip Hegseth, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s younger brother, calls on military leadership to “feel — for the first time — the urgency of the homeland defense mission” and work together with ICE and Customs and Border Patrol agents.
“The memo is alarming, because it speaks to the intent to use the military within the United States at a level not seen since Japanese internment,” Carrie Lee, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, told The New Republic. “The military is the most powerful, coercive tool our country has. We don’t want the military doing law enforcement. It absolutely undermines the rule of law.”
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