US offers up to $50k bonus for would-be ICE deportation officers

The application of American immigrants and customs, or ICE, offers recruitment bonuses of up to $ 50,000 (£ 37,700) and assistance to the student “courageous and heroic” Americans interested in helping the deportation dynamics of the Trump administration.

The agency specifically hopes to recruit deportation agents, as well as lawyers, criminal investigators, referees of student visas and other roles.

In total, ICE hopes to add 10,000 new staff members, doubling the agency’s workforce when it increases deportations across the country.

The funding for the recruitment campaign comes from around $ 165 billion allocated to the Ministry of Homeland Security (DHS) in the Donald Trump tax and scan expenses.

As part of a new recruitment campaign announced on July 29, the DHS unveiled recruitment posters similar to those used during the Second World War, with the words “America needs you” and “defend the Fatherland” with images of Uncle Sam, President Trump, the Secretary of Internal Security Kristi Noem and other officials.

“Your country calls you to serve at ICE,” said Noem in a statement. “It is a decisive moment in the history of our nation.”

In addition to the signature and reimbursement bonus of student loans and forgiveness of up to $ 60,000, the ice is potentially promising of overtime for deportation agents and “improved retirement services”.

The loan offer to students occurs while millions of people registered with a Biden Age Payment Payment Plan will begin to see the interests accumulated on their accounts from Friday.

Deportation agents, who would be responsible for helping to understand and treat undocumented migrants for the withdrawal of the United States, receive wages between $ 49,739 and $ 89,528 per year, according to experience and education.

An image accompanying the description of the role of the role includes armed officers leading to an armored vehicle.

Ice currently has 20,000 officers and support staff, spread across the country in 400 offices.

The recruitment campaign comes only a few weeks after President Trump signed the tax on tax and expenses “One, Big, Beautiful”.

The bill included more than $ 76 billion allocated to ice – almost 10 times what he had received before – and by making the Federal Application for the Funded Law.

President Trump, Secretary Noem and other administration officials have promised to increase the pace of deportations to one million per year.

About 150,000 people were expelled in the first six months of the Trump administration, according to data obtained by CBS, the partner of American BBC.

If this rate – about 800 per day – continues, the ice will have made more than 300,000 deportations during the first year of Trump, well below the self -imposed objective of the administration.

In an interview with the Associated Press, the former chief staff of the ICE, Jason Houser, said that even if the agency has long needed more staff, it fears that standards will fall in the middle of the expulsion campaign, comparing it to the widening of customs and border protection (CBP) in the early 2000s.

“If they are starting to give it up the requirements as they did to border Patrol, you will have an exponential increase in officers who are shown by the door after three years because there is a problem,” he said.

We do not know how many people have so far applied for newly announced jobs with ice.

The BBC contacted ICE and DHS to comment.