Only a yr into his second time period, Donald Trump’s new, militarized immigration pressure is on full show.
Brokers in masks and plate carriers are seemingly in every single place, first in Chicago final yr and now in Minneapolis, the place they’ve killed two US residents and terrorized uncounted extra.
A few of that’s due to a change in how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does its work; as my colleague Christian Paz has reported, below the second Trump administration, the company has shifted from conducting comparatively few direct arrests to making an attempt to arrest as many individuals as attainable, as quick as attainable.
And a few of it is because of the truth that there are merely many extra brokers now: The Trump administration has prioritized hiring for each ICE and Customs and Border Safety (CBP), which incorporates Border Patrol. Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of employees for coverage and de facto immigration czar, has reportedly demanded each day updates on ICE’s recruitment numbers.
This hiring blitz has been facilitated by an enormous inflow of latest cash from final yr’s Trump-backed reconciliation package deal (what he branded as his “One Large Stunning Invoice”).
Right here’s what that funding infusion seems like, in billions of {dollars}.
ICE and CBP are each a part of the Division of Homeland Safety, however for context, the annual price range of the US Division of Justice, which homes many different federal legislation enforcement businesses, can be included. (The DOJ consists of not solely the FBI, but in addition the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Collectively, they obtain far much less funding yearly than both ICE or CBP did by way of the reconciliation package deal.)
Partially, that cash has gone towards a $100 million recruitment marketing campaign to usher in new ICE officers, which the company has described internally as “wartime recruitment,” in response to the Washington Put up.
It has additionally meant new advantages for present and potential ICE and CPB workers: As much as $50,000 in bonuses for brand spanking new ICE brokers and $60,000 for CBP, in addition to attainable pupil mortgage forgiveness.
ICE’s spending is working, seemingly. The company has added hundreds of latest workers up to now yr, pushing its workforce to nearly 27,000 folks as of November 2025, in response to knowledge from the Workplace of Personnel Administration (OPM).
ICE’s true workforce could also be even bigger, nevertheless, although there are caveats. Whereas we don’t have newer OPM numbers, DHS stated in an early January press launch that it had efficiently employed “10,000 new officers and brokers,” after receiving greater than 220,000 purposes. (These numbers ought to be taken with a grain of salt till backed up by OPM, given DHS’s serial dishonesty round ICE and its operations.)
Because the Atlantic’s Nick Miroff reported this week, it could take time for all of these new hires to achieve the sphere, as many are nonetheless in coaching. However within the drive for uncooked numbers, coaching and recruiting requirements have reportedly additionally fallen precipitously: The coaching course for brand spanking new ICE recruits is now solely 42 days, down from 5 months, and the company is all however pulling folks off the road.
One journalist, Laura Jedeed, pursued a possible job with ICE as a reporting mission; regardless of abandoning the method halfway by means of, she writes for Slate that she was marked as having accepted a job supply with the company with out finishing any of the requisite paperwork or a background examine (she finally rejected the job).
Jedeed’s expertise is perhaps the proper encapsulation of the place ICE now finds itself: Flush with cash, it’s dashing to fulfill lofty hiring objectives and draconian deportation quotas.
Because the chaos in Minnesota proves, it’s doing each badly.