Despite having close to two hundred new applicants, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is finding itself weighed down by unqualified candidates. Immigration officials have stated that ICE wants to recruit 10,000 agents in addition to its already 6,000-person force. ‘ICE has received more than 175,000 applications, for 10,000 roles,’ Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Axios.
Though the problem has not been with recruitment, it has been with how many of the applicants can pass a basic fitness test. ‘I mean, if you can’t run a mile and a half, you probably shouldn’t be a federal law enforcement officer,’ Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan told the outlet. The test: a 1.5-mile run, 32 sit-ups and 15 push-ups in 14 minutes or less.
Internally, the scope of the recruits’ failure has led to concern among ICE officials in charge of training. Even the department’s leadership has privately vented about ‘a considerable amount of athletically allergic candidates,’ according to internal emails reviewed by The Atlantic . At ICE’s Georgia-based training facility, failing recruits have been an increasingly common site. One out of three recruits fail the basic fitness test, four officials told the Atlantic.
‘It’s pathetic,’ one official said of the failing recruits. The high failure rate prompted ICE leadership to reportedly change the way they approach fitness screenings, prompting them to suggest fitness tests at field locations before recruits get sent to training camp. ‘We all know the self-certification method has failed,’ one ICE official reportedly lamented in an email with leadership.
To increase recruitment, ICE has offered generous incentives for recruits, like signing bonuses worth a full year’s salary – around $50,000. Recruits also spend much less time in training before being sent out to deal with migrants. The amount of time ICE agents spend at training in Georgia has roughly been cut in half under Trump, reportedly falling from around 16 weeks to just 8 weeks.
