A signing bonus of up to $50,000, student loan deferrals and an endorsement from Superman?
The Department of Homeland Security is hoping that’s enough to attract 10,000 new employees to join ICE as it ramps up one of its largest recruitment drives in years.
ICE was given $76.5 billion – nearly 10 times its current annual budget – to help it reach its goal of a million deportations each year by the wide-ranging bill recently signed into law by President Trump on July 4. Nearly $30 billion of that new funding is earmarked for the hiring of new staff members as the agency plans to grow from 20,000 to 30,000 employees, according to the Associated Press.
Roles in demand include deportation officers like the masked agents seen arresting immigrants at New York City courthouses, criminal investigators and lawyers to prosecute immigration cases, as well as other supportive roles, such as nurses, auditors and field medical coordinators, the AP said.
Also Read: New ICE Directive Makes Millions of Immigrants Ineligible for Bond Hearings
On Wednesday, the DHS announced that it had eliminated age limits for recruits, allowing prospective hires as young as 18 and over age 40 to apply.
In a statement calling out for “patriots,” it outlined a “robust package of federal law enforcement incentives, including a maximum $50,000 signing bonus, student loan repayment and forgiveness, special overtime pay and “enhanced retirement benefits.”
The hiring spree has been dominated by patriotic rhetoric and imagery, including images of Uncle Sam paired with slogans such as “America Needs You” and “Defend the Homeland” that recall military recruitment posters from World War I and II.
A DHS video posted last week to X featured footage of towering mountains and redwoods, the Statue of Liberty and a female officer on horseback holding a giant American flag alongside the message: “The Promise of America is worth Protecting. The Future of our Homeland is worth Defending.”
On Tuesday, Dean Cain, the actor who played Clark Kent in ’90s TV series “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,” stepped into the Uncle Sam role himself, posting a video in which he called on viewers to join ICE and listed all the benefits.
“You also don’t need an undergraduate degree; you can get to work right away,” he said. “They need your help – we need your help – to protect our homeland for families… Join today if it’s something that tickles your fancy because we can use you.”
The DHS framed its recruitment campaign so far as successful, stating Wednesday that it had received more than 80,000 applications in less than a week.
Last week, ICE said that it had already made tentative job offers to more than 1,000 people. “Many of these offers were to ICE officers who retired under President Biden because they were frustrated that they were not allowed to do their jobs,” McLaughlin said.
But it could take three to four years to train and hire the necessary number of new ICE employees, the AP cited Jason Houser, a former agency chief of staff during the Biden administration, as saying.
This staffing bottleneck has led to controversial, temporary workarounds. DHS told FEMA staffers that they either had to accept a 90-day transfer to ICE or risk losing their jobs, diverting key resources away from the agency just ahead of hurricane season, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
Concern is growing that ICE may be expanding too much, too quickly, at the risk of weakening standards, oversight and even law enforcement at the state and local level, where agencies may lose officers to ICE’s higher offers and perks.
Correction August 8, 2025: Earlier Documented mistakenly noted that ICE was given $76.5 million to help reach its goal of a million deportations each year. The correct figure is $76.5 billion. We apologize for the error.
