Inside the ICE Hiring Blitz

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Journal.

Episode Title: Inside the ICE Hiring Blitz
Date: September 2, 2025
Hosts: Ryan Knutson (not present in this episode), Jessica Mendoza
Reporter: Michelle Hackman
Producer: The Wall Street Journal & Spotify Studios

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Overview

This episode explores the unprecedented hiring surge within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) amid President Trump’s second-term push for mass deportations. Reporter Michelle Hackman takes listeners inside ICE’s intensive training academy in Georgia and investigates how the agency is dramatically expanding its workforce, the challenges and risks posed by rapid recruiting, and the larger implications for immigrants and American communities.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Inside ICE’s Training Academy

• Setting the Scene:
  Michelle Hackman visits ICE’s Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Brunswick, Georgia, where all ICE officers are trained.

  “We had this six hour tour where they showed us all sorts of different bells and whistles of all the types of classes and training that these deportation officers go through.” (Michelle Hackman, 00:25)

• High-Intensity Demonstrations:
  Reporters witness a dramatic raid simulation in a 30-acre mock neighborhood, designed to showcase the high-stakes, action-oriented side of ICE’s work.

  “An armored vehicle pulls up ... and 12 guys loaded out, they ran at the house, they pounded on the door...” (Michelle Hackman, 01:20)

  This demonstration is emblematic of the agency’s marketing to new recruits, emphasizing excitement and danger.

2. The Numbers Behind the Blitz

• Trump’s Mass Deportation Promise:
  The administration set out to deport 1 million undocumented immigrants in the first year of Trump’s second term but is currently projected to reach less than half that.

  “Right now they're not even close to that.” (Michelle Hackman, 04:29)

• Historic Hiring Goals:
  ICE is seeking to nearly triple its deportation officer core—from around 6,000 officers to 16,000—by the year's end, an “unprecedented” ramp-up in federal law enforcement hiring.

  “It’s suddenly the best funded law enforcement agency in the country—more than the FBI, more than the Secret Service.” (Michelle Hackman, 05:07)

3. Aggressive Recruitment Tactics

• New Incentives:
  To attract recruits, ICE is offering unprecedented signing bonuses ($50,000) and loosening traditional requirements, now accepting applicants as young as 18 and as old as in their 60s.

  “They're offering people a $50,000 signing bonus. That's so much more money than you can make in local law enforcement or even in other federal law enforcement jobs.” (Michelle Hackman, 05:45)

• Wartime Imagery and Celebrity Endorsements:
  Using WWII-style posters (“America Needs You”) and enlisting “Superman” actor Dean Cain, ICE is framing the work as both heroic and urgent.

  “ICE is arresting the worst of the worst and removing them from America's streets. ... We need your help to protect our homeland.” (Dean Cain ad, 06:37)

• Political Motivation:
  Many applicants are drawn by the agency’s mission as much as the pay and benefits; the political aspect is substantial.

4. Evolving Training: Faster, Leaner, Riskier?

• Shortened Training:
  ICE has halved on-campus training from 16 to 8 weeks, supplementing with online modules and post-field placement lessons.

  “Standard deportation officer training was about 16 weeks. Now it’s about eight.” (Michelle Hackman, 12:02)

• Cutting Spanish Language Instruction:
  The prior five-week Spanish course is now replaced with translation apps, which ICE claims is more efficient—but many inside and outside the agency voice concerns.

  “They’ve replaced it with an app on people’s phones that access translation software.” (Michelle Hackman, 13:06)

• Concerns About Preparedness:
  Former ICE officials and immigration experts worry that rapid, lighter training could repeat mistakes seen after the post–9/11 Border Patrol hiring boom, when undertrained agents led to higher rates of misconduct.

  “Those agents who were hired were much likelier themselves to either get arrested, have civil rights violations filed against them.” (Michelle Hackman, 14:23)

• ICE’s Defense:
  Acting Director Todd Lyons maintains that training has been “streamlined” but not “watered down,” insisting that standards remain.

  “...having gone through it myself, I know exactly what we need. Caleb’s done a great job of not necessarily shorting it, but streamlining it.” (Todd Lyons, 14:56)

5. Adapting to Political and Tactical Realities

• Adapting for Protest Risks:
  Training has been updated based on recent violent encounters, such as LA protests. All new officers receive helmets and gas masks, with more time devoted to crowd control and riot scenarios.

  “Now every new ICE officer is being issued a helmet and a gas mask.” (Michelle Hackman, 15:40)

• Special Response Teams (SRTs):
  ICE’s elite squads, trained similarly to the FBI, are being expanded and showcased as the force’s cutting edge in high-risk raids and protest response.

6. Impact and Public Perception

• Visibility in Communities:
  With more agents and a shift toward “at-large” street and workplace arrests, ICE’s presence is increasingly tangible in major cities.

  “ICE has now switched its strategy to primarily performing what they call at-large arrests ... people being arrested at their workplace, at their home, outside a school. ... There is a perception that ICE is everywhere now.” (Michelle Hackman, 17:21)

• Intended Effect:
  ICE hopes that highly visible enforcement will encourage self-deportations—a psychological as well as practical tactic.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Motivation Behind the Blitz:

  “They are doing literally everything in their power, like so much more creativity than I could have even imagined to try to make this promise of a mass deportation possible.” (Michelle Hackman, 18:08)

• On the New Training Approach:

  “They told us that it’s because they thought the Spanish training wasn’t that good to begin with and ... pointed out this translation software can do more than Spanish. It can do Creole. It can do really any language that they need.” (Michelle Hackman, 13:33)

• Historical Parallels and Warnings:

  “They found those agents who were hired [after 9/11] were much likelier themselves to either get arrested, you know, have civil rights violations filed against them.” (Michelle Hackman, 14:23)

• Personal Observations:

  “I see them. Yes. I see them out my window.” (Michelle Hackman, on the more visible presence of ICE, 17:13)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:05: Arrival at ICE Training Facility (Brunswick, GA)
• 01:05: Live Simulation of High-Risk Raid Demonstration
• 04:29: Current Deportation Numbers vs. Administration Goals
• 05:07: ICE’s Surging Budget and Expanded Force
• 05:45: Recruitment Incentives ($50,000 Bonus, Lowered Requirements)
• 06:18: Marketing, Wartime Imagery, and Dean Cain Ad
• 08:07: ICE Training Curriculum vs. Local Law Enforcement
• 09:17: Firearms and Obstacle Course Training
• 12:02: Training Cuts (Duration, Spanish Language)
• 13:54: Risks and Comparison to Post-9/11 Border Patrol Boom
• 14:56: ICE Leadership Defends Shortened Training
• 15:40: Adaptations for Protest Response (Helmets, Gas Masks)
• 16:22: Expansion of Special Response Teams
• 17:21: Community Impact of At-Large Arrests
• 18:08: Reporter’s Takeaway and Reflection

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Summary Takeaway

ICE’s hiring blitz is fundamentally reshaping both the agency itself and the communities it targets. Driven by a massive federal investment and an unprecedented political mandate, ICE is racing to recruit, train, and deploy a new generation of officers—sometimes at the expense of established standards and practices. The episode paints a vivid picture of how this rapid expansion is changing not just law enforcement, but the everyday experience of immigrants and the broader public.

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Transcript

[Michelle Hackman]

We are in Brunswick, Georgia, which is sort of the southeast corner of Georgia, at the Federal Law Enforcement Training center where all the ICE officers get trained.

[Jessica Mendoza]

A couple of weeks ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ice, invited a handful of reporters to one of its training academies. One of those reporters was our colleague, Michelle Hackman.

[Michelle Hackman]

And we had this six hour tour where they showed us, like, all sorts of different bells and whistles of all the types of classes and training that these deportation officers go through.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And was there sort of a demonstration or a session that stuck with you?

[Michelle Hackman]

There was one in particular that really stuck with me. It was sort of the elite ICE deportation officer unit that carries out some of the most high profile and dangerous raids. And what they did was they brought us on a little bus to this mock neighborhood. They told us it was a whole 30 acre pretend neighborhood with houses and fake shops and all that stuff.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Like a set.

[Michelle Hackman]

Like a set. Like a movie set. Exactly. And we parked in front of this house in a cul de sac, and they were like, okay, stand back. And this armored vehicle pulls up in front of the house.

[Training Instructor]

Residents of 842 Cypress Lane, this is the police. To warn.

[Law Enforcement Officer]

Open the door.

[Michelle Hackman]

And 12 guys loaded out, they ran at the house. They, like, pounded on the door really loud and shouted, you know, we're police. Open up. Open up.

[Training Instructor]

Police for the ward, open up.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Police for the ward, open up.

[Michelle Hackman]

And a few seconds later, they set off a flash bang. And then they sort of broke down the door, ran in and like, scattered. You know, basically, they were trying to show us what it's like for them to practice. So searching a house.

[Jessica Mendoza]

This kind of work is meant to appeal to new recruits. ICE is in the middle of a major hiring spree with the goal of enlisting 10,000 new deportation officers by the end of the year. It's an unprecedented hiring push, one that ICE says is key to pulling off President Trump's mass deportation agenda. Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica mendoza. It's Tuesday, September 2nd. Coming up on the show, inside the campaign to recruit thousands of ICE deportation officers.

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[Jessica Mendoza]

During Trump's reelection campaign, he talked a lot about carrying out mass deportations of immigrants in the country illegally. But Michelle says that since Trump started his second term, the White House's efforts have stalled.

[Michelle Hackman]

They've said we want to deport a million people in Trump's first year in office, and right now they're not even close to that. And so Trump and the White House have realized that in order to actually pull off what they're promising, they're going to need many, many, many more people helping out with the deportations.

[Jessica Mendoza]

According to Michelle's reporting, the Trump administration is on track to deport between 400 and 500,000 people by the end of the year, which is around half their goal. To grow those numbers, ICE is recruiting more agents and it's leaning on the increased funding that Congress gave it under the big GOP tax bill.

[Michelle Hackman]

ICE has tens of billions of dollars in cash. All of a sudden, because of the one big beautiful bill, it's suddenly the best funded law enforcement agency in the country, more than the FBI, more than the Secret Service. And they have a, roughly speaking, 6,000 deportation officers on staff that's basically been the size of ICE since it's been founded. And they're looking to almost triple that by the end of this year, which is really fast. Timeline to hire a bunch of new law enforcement.

[Jessica Mendoza]

What is ICE's pitch to get more recruits?

[Michelle Hackman]

Well, there are two things here. First of all, the administration is offering a lot of incentives for people to come. The most notable one is that they're offering people a $50,000 signing bonus. That's so much more money than you can make in local law enforcement or even in other federal law enforcement jobs that they are recruiting a lot of people who maybe wouldn't have thought about being an ICE officer before this. They're also recruiting a lot of people away from local police departments, from other agencies.

[Jessica Mendoza]

ICE has put out a bunch of ads on social media. Some of the images mimic vintage wartime posters, and the agency's website shows Uncle Sam with the phrase America needs you. And ICE also got Dean Cain involved, the actor who played Superman in the 90s, to drum up support for the recruitment effort.

[Advertisement Narrator]

So if you want to help save America, ICE is arresting the worst of the worst and removing them from America's streets. I like that. I voted for that. They need your help. We need your help to protect our homeland.

[Michelle Hackman]

The other thing is that people are generally often speaking politically motivated to work for ice. They really believe in the mission.

[Jessica Mendoza]

In the past, people applying to be a deportation officer had to be between 21 and 40 years old. ICE is now allowing folks in their 60s to join as long as they can still pass physical exams. At the same time, ICE is accepting applicants as young as 18 and people without a college degree or any kind of law enforcement experience. So do we know? Has there been an uptick in recruitment?

[Michelle Hackman]

So it's hard to say because we don't have old recruitment numbers. But, yeah, the administration is out there boasting that they have more than 120,000 applicants, enough that they've told us we can afford to be picky.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The training facility Michelle got to tour last month is called fletc, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. It's in Brunswick, a small town along the coast of Southern Georgia that's dotted with swamps and live oak trees. Recruits go there to learn how to work for ice. What are ICE agents supposed to know how to do? Right? Like, what is the goal of this training, and how is it different from, say, a local police officer?

[Michelle Hackman]

The really big thing is that ICE officers, they have a very specific set of laws that they're enforcing, immigration laws. And so they've got to understand all these scenarios of, when is it okay for me to suspect that someone's in the country illegally and actually arrest them. And so a lot of the time is just really boring classroom instruction in the law.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Uh huh. But that was not the focus of the tour of the facility that you went on.

[Michelle Hackman]

They really were leaning in and emphasizing on our tour, at least emphasizing the sort of, for lack of a better way to say it, like the bang, bang aspects of being in law enforcement almost in some ways what makes it cool to people to be a deportation officer. You know, you get to carry a big gun and you get to drive a car really fast.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Over the course of about six hours, Michelle and other reporters were bussed from one building to the next throughout the vast training campus. Michelle sat in a police car as the siren blared. And an instructor showcased how recruits are trained to drive at high speeds and maneuver winding roads.

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[Training Instructor]

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[Jessica Mendoza]

1410 reporters also saw dozens of students line up in a large indoor firing range. Instructors talked over loudspeakers as students shot at paper targets.

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[Jessica Mendoza]

And the tour featured a timed obstacle course that recruits have to complete as part of their physical training.

[Michelle Hackman]

He's about to. Oh wow, he's about to start. She's climbing a six foot wall. He just swung himself over. Now he's crawling through this like underpass space thing. And what he's about to do is he has to like jump through a window and he's.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The demonstrations Michelle saw focused on the most dramatic parts of training ICE agents, the stuff that could get new recruits excited to join the agency. Now, as ICE's deadline of 1 million deportations by the end of Trump's first year is approaching, the agency is aiming to get new hires out in the field as quickly as possible. And that's meant scaling back how much training students get. Michelle talked to some former ICE officials who say that could be a risk, potentially deploying new agents who are under qualified and under trained. That's after the break.

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[Jessica Mendoza]

Beyond hiring thousands of new agents by the end of the year, ICE also wants to deploy new recruits throughout the country asap. So the agency is shortening its training program. It's cutting back on classroom and firearms instruction. Overall, the in person training required to join ICE has been slashed in half.

[Michelle Hackman]

Standard deportation officer training was about 16 weeks. Now it's about eight on campus. And Todd Lyons, the acting director who was with us on the tour, told us that, you know, what they've done partially is they've added some more training remotely before people arrive and after they are placed in their offices. But I think it remains to be seen whether that amount of training is enough.

[Jessica Mendoza]

ICE's head of training, Caleb Vitello, brought up another way they're scaling back. Here he is. During the tour of the training facility.

[Training Instructor]

One of the big cuts we made was the Spanish program. We got a lot of questions about that. That was a five week program.

[Michelle Hackman]

They're getting rid of Spanish training. You know, before in order to become a deportation officer, you had to take a five week full time Spanish proficiency course. And they've decided that's not necessary anymore. They've replaced it with an app on people's phones that access translation software. So as deportation officers are making a live arrest, they can use a translation app.

[Training Instructor]

We purchased the translation service right now that's available for everybody in the field that will hit all those languages. So in that like a, it looks like we cut out five weeks, but we didn't really because we replaced it with something else in the field that is actually so much more efficient.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Why did they say they chose that, the Spanish language training in particular? Why take that out of the curriculum, especially considering that's something that might be useful if you're apprehending people who are only Spanish speakers.

[Michelle Hackman]

You know, they told us that it's because they thought the Spanish training wasn't that good to begin with and people were graduating and they were still not really good Spanish speakers. And, you know, they pointed out this translation software can do more than Spanish. It can do Creole. It can do really any language that they need.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Has anyone raised concerns about this shortened Training?

[Michelle Hackman]

Oh, many people, I think, especially former ICE officials who feel like, you know, they've really carefully crafted this training and now it's being sort of in some ways chopped up and shortened.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Michelle says former officials and immigration experts have pointed to another time when the government tried this kind of massive recruitment push. That was after 9 11, when Border Patrol hired thousands of new agents to increase recruitment numbers. Border Patrol lowered its standards around who qualified for the job.

[Michelle Hackman]

And as a result, there have been lots of studies done on this, including government reports. And they found those agents who were hired were much likelier themselves to either get arrested, you know, have civil rights violations filed against them. And so, you know, people have that in mind when they're thinking about how is ICE going to pull this off without a repeat of that incident.

[Jessica Mendoza]

ICE said throughout the tour that they were not compromising on the standard of training. Here's Acting Director Todd Lyons.

[Training Instructor]

I think on that one of my things that I really held my ground on, the fact that I was going to water down training, right. Like I said, having gone through it myself, I know exactly what we need. Caleb's done a great job of not necessarily shorting it, but streamlining it, right.

[Michelle Hackman]

He was like, you know, our guys still have to meet the same physical standard. They still have to pass all the same exams. Sure, we've made the training a little bit shorter. But he feels that it's not really a compromise on the quality of the training.

[Jessica Mendoza]

ICE says that to keep up with recruitment, the agency is aiming to more than double the number of instructors at the FLETC Academy. And recruits are also undergoing new training exercises inspired by recent violent encounters during protests.

[Michelle Hackman]

So they told us that they're actually changing training constantly to respond to what they say is sort of an increased threat level in the field. So they brought up the LA protests when people started throwing rocks or using tear gas or things like that at ICE officers. And they said, now every new ICE officer is being issued a helmet and a gas mask. They've told us that there are more instances of people's cars getting rammed. And so they've built that scenario, for example, into officer driving training, things like that.

[Jessica Mendoza]

As the agency is thinking more about anti ICE protests, it's leaning into training for those elite agents you heard earlier, the ones that carry out those high stakes raids. They're called special response teams.

[Michelle Hackman]

They're trained a little bit more like FBI agents to do sort of high risk, high profile type raids. They have extra training. You know, they, they know how to do the thing where they break down a door and set off a flashbang. And, you know, there are some real instances. I mean, they were sent to deal with the LA protests. When the protests did start to get violent, that was the special response team that got sent in.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And is there a sense that we're going to see more of that?

[Michelle Hackman]

I definitely think so. I mean, there is a reason they showed it to us and they refuse to give us numbers, but I think there's definitely a sense that they want to increase the numbers of people on that team.

[Jessica Mendoza]

This is really remarkable because we've already started to see a growing number of ICE agents deployed to major cities in the us, including here in dc, where you and I live and work.

[Michelle Hackman]

That's right. I see them. Yes. I see them out my window.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Yeah. I mean, have you talked to people about how they've been experiencing that?

[Michelle Hackman]

Yeah. There is a perception that ICE is everywhere now. And it's not entirely unfounded because ICE has now has switched its strategy to primarily performing what they call at large, arrests. So, you know, a street arrest, people being arrested at their workplace, at their home, outside a school. And so that means it's a lot more visible. And ultimately their goal is to get people to self deport. And so the fact that they are out there making very public arrests is not an image that they're shying away from.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Michelle, you've been covering immigration and immigration policy for years. At this point, what is your takeaway from seeing all the changes that ICE is making?

[Michelle Hackman]

I guess my big takeaway is that they are doing literally everything in their power, like so much more creativity than I could have even imagined to try to make this promise of a mass deportation possible. And it makes me think that maybe, really eventually they will actually do something resembling a mass deportation.

[Jessica Mendoza]

That's all for today. Tuesday, September 2nd. The Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.