ICE warns of vetting delays amid rapid hiring surge under Trump | Trump administration
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is struggling to keep up with vetting new hires during its historic hiring drive and is preparing a process to deal with allegations of past misconduct among hires, the agency said in an internal email this week, underscoring concerns about ICE’s rapid expansion.
The email, sent to managers in ICE’s enforcement and removal operations (ERO) division and seen by Reuters, said “high volumes of new hires” and stalled background checks could create uncertainty for field offices when allegations arise about actions before joining the federal agency, and the allegations should be referred to the internal integrity investigations unit (IIU).
“If a Field Office receives disparaging information about a newly hired employee’s conduct prior to employment at ERO (e.g., termination or resignation rather than termination from another law enforcement agency for misconduct), please escalate the matter to IIU,” he said.
Donald Trump’s Republican administration hired thousands of ICE officers last year to support the US president’s mass deportation effort; This rapid pace has raised questions about the scrutiny and quality of hires.
Trump has publicly portrayed immigrants as criminals and a drain on U.S. society, and says the deportations are necessary after high levels of illegal immigration under his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.
But the largest group of people detained by ICE in the second Trump administration had no criminal record, the Guardian reported. Violating immigration law is not a crime per se, but a civil offense.
And public support for Trump’s approach to immigration has waned in recent months as federal officers arrested non-criminals, including families and children, and clashed with residents, killing two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.
DHS said in January that 12,000 ICE officers were hired in addition to the existing 10,000 officers, but the federal workforce database shows fewer hirings, creating a net gain of 6,200 when departures are taken into account.
DHS spokeswoman Lauren Bis denied that ICE had difficulty performing background checks and said the email was sent to inform supervisors of the resources available to them.
“This was not to highlight any investigation issues, but rather a reminder of the services and resources ICE provides to investigators,” he said. “All new hires undergo extensive background checks and ongoing screening upon hire, including criminal and financial checks.”
DHS said in late January that low hiring numbers in the federal database were due to a delay in federal reporting.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller pressed hard last year on conference calls for ICE to meet aggressive hiring goals before the end of the year, an administration official said.
“The president’s entire team worked to make sure his agenda was implemented,” a White House official said in response to a request for comment on Miller’s role.
Democrats and some former ICE officials have expressed concern that expedited hiring could lead to unqualified or dangerous candidates entering the ranks. In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last year, Dick Durbin, the second-highest-ranking U.S. Democratic senator, compared ICE’s hiring to a Border Patrol hiring effort in the 2000s that was followed by more allegations against agents.
Durbin said the increase in ICE “will likely lead to increased officer misconduct.”
Claire Trickler-McNulty, an ICE official in the Biden administration, said background checks help ensure officers have a history of complying with the law and identify prior actions that could leave them vulnerable to blackmail.
“Speeding up, shortening or limiting background checks or training puts the public and other law enforcement at risk,” he said.
Some recruits were flagged for problems after they were hired, one current and one former U.S. official told Reuters, requesting anonymity to share details about internal operations.
In one incident last year, two recruits were flagged as suspected members of the MS-13 gang because of their tattoos while attending a training academy in Georgia, the former official said. At least five other interns were fired when ICE learned they had active arrest warrants, the former official said.
“They were not completing background checks before coming to the academy,” the former official said.
The current official said a recruit was escorted out of an ICE office in February after a background check discovered a problem. ICE does not release data on the number of new hires it fires. NBC News reported in October 2025 that ICE had fired more than 200 people since the hiring surge began, citing internal data.
One-third of those hired at another office, including graduates of the training, were waiting for overdue background checks to be completed, the official said.
Meanwhile, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday found that most Americans share the Trump administration’s view that immigrants living in the United States illegally should be deported but generally disapprove of the Trump administration’s heavy-handed tactics, including masked agents in tactical gear clashing with U.S. citizens.
The six-day survey, which ended Monday, showed both the widespread appeal of Trump’s focus on immigration enforcement and the widespread disapproval of his tactics that could affect midterm congressional elections this November.
61 percent of respondents (92 percent of Republicans and 35 percent of Democrats) said they “support deporting unauthorized immigrants.”
Among the results, the survey found that nearly three-quarters of Black Americans and 72% of Hispanic respondents disapproved of the administration’s deportation tactics, compared to 51% of white respondents.
