ICE scrutinised over hiring surge – so how easy is it to join?
The Trump Administration has pumped millions into advertisements for ICE jobs – offering recruitment bonuses of up to $50,000 and student loan assistance to entice Americans.
And it’s working. The hiring spree has added some 10,000 new employees, according to the Department of Homeland Security, as ‘brave’ Americans look to speed up deportations.
But they aren’t done there – a $100 million advertising drive was announced earlier this year, according to the Washington Post, in hopes of getting more deportation officers, criminal investigators and more.
ICE Director Todd Lyons said: ‘ICE was established in the wake of 9/11, and it’s inspiring to witness so many dedicated individuals step forward to protect our homeland.’
Deputy Director Madison D. Sheahan added: ‘We continue to call on American patriots to serve the homeland because we know that there’s still more work to do — and we will not stop until every community in this nation is safe.’
Even with a historic hiring spree and more positions left to fill, questions have been raised about exactly who is being hired to become immigration officers – and the vetting procedures in place.
A signing bonus of up to $50,000 is enticing – and so are the high salaries and student loan repayment options to new hires.
A new investigation from NBC News found that an artificial intelligence error in application processes sent many recruits to work without training.
The AI tool was intended to scan applications for those who had law enforcement experience, then fast-track them into the agency’s ‘Law Enforcement Officer programme’, which requires just four weeks of training, compared to the eight weeks for those without experience.
A government official told NBC: ‘They were using AI to scan résumés and found out a bunch of the people who were LEOs weren’t LEOs.’
After the mistake was discovered, ICE took steps to fix the situation and began manually reviewing the CVs of new hires, but it has put the backgrounds of many ICE officers under intense scrutiny.
The murder of Renee Good by an ICE officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has sparked a level of distrust among many Americans when it comes to ICE officers.
One reporter, Laura Jedeed, from Slate, applied on a whim at a career expo in Texas to see what happened.
After speaking with agents for a while about her background, she left and was told she’d be contacted. She was offered a position within days, and despite not accepting, they emailed her again with a message reading: ‘Thank you for confirming that you wish to continue with the hiring process.’
She was then asked to complete a drug test, which she did, despite having consuming cannabis days before (it’s legal where she lives).
After sending off her urine for the job’s drug test, days later, she was still cleared to work – and she didn’t submit a background check, domestic violence affidavit, or identification information.
Within days, Laura had been given the job of a deportation officer. She observed: ‘But if they missed the fact that I was an anti-ICE journalist who didn’t fill out her paperwork, what else might they be missing?
‘How many convicted domestic abusers are being given guns and sent into other people’s homes? How many people with ties to white supremacist organisations are indiscriminately targeting minorities on principle, regardless of immigration status?
‘How many rapists and paedophiles are working in ICE detention centres with direct and unsupervised access to a population that will be neither believed nor missed? How are we to trust ICE’s allegedly thorough investigations of the people they detain and deport when they can’t even keep their HR paperwork straight?’
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