Inside the ICE Forum Where Agents Complain About Their Jobs

On a forum with more than 5,000 members claiming to be current and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, users are expressing their frustrations and concerns with the agency, which has become the focus of public anger.

“I’m all for eliminating illegals, but snatching the lawnmower guys in Cali and leaving the truck and equipment there? Surely doesn’t work any smarter,” one user wrote.

The forum contains posts dating back more than a decade and describes itself as an “unofficial forum for current eviction officers, potential applicants, and retired eviction officers to have a platform for discussion.” In posts seen by WIRED, users complain about long work hours, limited overtime pay, incompetent leadership and poorly trained new hires.

Forum users do not need to prove employment to register, and the platform does not appear to be heavily moderated. WIRED has not confirmed the individual identities of these posters, although the forum is one of several related forums where people working in different parts of DHS share their experiences and discuss specific details of the work of deportation officers that would likely only be known to those in the position, including discussions about the inner workings of the job, the hiring and training process, and job swapping. Some forum members are newcomers, while others have been members for over a decade.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE did not respond to requests for comment.

As public attention and outrage followed the violent immigration raids in Minneapolis as part of DHS’s Operation Metro Surge, particularly in the wake of federal agents shooting and killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti, forum users did not hesitate to post.

On January 19, five days before Pretti’s assassination, a user started a thread titled “Ready to quit, I have enough stress.”

“I have 2.3 years left to fully retire in a special category… but I don’t know if I’ll make it. Tired of this agency. Employees are severely mistreated. TDYs mandated with less than 24 hours notice,” read the first post from a user who has been a member of the forum since September 2015. TDY is short for “temporary duty,” which involves drawing agents from around the country to cities like Minneapolis for large-scale operations. scale.

“No more weekends off, more work than ever before in 18 years. No more union. No more downtime,” the post continued. “This is not what any of us envisioned for our later years in our 50s.” (In 2022, thousands of ICE employees lost the union representation that many other public employees have, including overtime pay protections. The chair of the council that represented ICE agents in the American Federation of Government Employees alleged that the union had become “far left.”)

Other forum users have joined in to echo the original author’s complaints and express their concerns about the agency’s direction. “Led by some of the worst leaders I have ever seen, from the local level to the national stage, this agency has managed to turn a righteous mission into a complete clown show,” added another user who joined the forum in October 2015.

Several users also complained about the image problem created for ICE, as CBP has taken a larger role in controlling immigration in U.S. cities. “There was absolutely no foresight and our management just let BP take over. HUGE mistake, when the nuance of truly targeted enforcement is needed,” added another user who has been a member of the forum since May 2017.