AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants to hire 10,000 more people. The agency is offering bonuses, benefits and even getting celebrity spokespeople.
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DEAN CAIN: This country was built on patriots stepping up, whether it was popular or not, and doing the right thing.
CHANG: That is actor Dean Cain, who played Superman on "Lois & Clark," speaking to Fox News. He will be sworn in soon as an honorary ICE officer. NPR's Ximena Bustillo has been covering this latest recruitment campaign and is here to tell us more. Hi, Ximena.
XIMENA BUSTILLO, BYLINE: Hi, Ailsa.
CHANG: OK, so that is a lot of jobs that they are hoping to fill at ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement. How exactly is the agency staffed currently?
BUSTILLO: ICE is currently the smallest of the immigration-related agencies at the Homeland Security Department. At the start of the year, they had a little over 20,000 people. That was just about as many as the first Trump administration ended with. But it's important to know that only 6,000 of those people do what's called enforcement removal operations, which is what most people think of when they think of ICE. The other part of ICE includes Homeland Security investigations, which primarily does drug, human trafficking and fraud investigations not necessarily tied to immigration. And the third part is ICE lawyers. These are ICE attorneys who go to immigration court and essentially prosecute in immigration cases.
CHANG: Wait, so DHS wants to hire for all of those positions you just described?
BUSTILLO: Yes. In the last two weeks, they've launched a big recruiting campaign after receiving about $76 billion from Congress to bring on more staff and work.
CHANG: Wow. OK, so where are they hoping to recruit them from?
BUSTILLO: So they sent emails out to former federal employees, including those who worked at other departments, like the Agriculture Department, to ask them to, quote, "return to mission." The department is also offering $50,000 bonuses that would be paid out over the course of several years, and they removed the age caps on applicants. DHS is now saying people can sign up as young as 18 with no ceiling on the age. And they sent out emails to local law enforcement forces who have been helping with immigration enforcement.
Now, I spoke with Doris Meissner of the Migration Policy Institute, and she said that the pressures on officers to increase arrests and what DHS has also themselves called an increase in threats could also pose challenges in this recruitment.
DORIS MEISSNER: Recruiting people into jobs like that, that are, at the present time, very stressful, extreme pressure politically, those are all considerations for people deciding whether or not they want to do this kind of work.
BUSTILLO: DHS says they've gotten 80,000 applications in the last week...
CHANG: Wow.
BUSTILLO: ...Though it's not clear how that compares to past application periods, and it's likely those applicants still have a ways to go before their first day on the job.
CHANG: OK. So what are some of the hurdles to getting someone started at ICE?
BUSTILLO: There are several. I spoke with RJ Hauman from the conservative Heritage Foundation, and he says it can take 12 to 14 months for a job that's posted to be onboarded. A part of that is because he said there are many steps that can't be skipped, like polygraphs, background checks, security clearances and also people to actually do the hiring.
RJ HAUMAN: You need people to process, do the background checks, have multiple training classes at these places. I mean, it's a big thing to overcome.
BUSTILLO: And expanding the size of training centers.
CHANG: Do you think that they're on track to get all of this done soon?
BUSTILLO: Well, there are still several logistical challenges to scaling up the workforce, and the agency consistently ranks close to last on federal workplace satisfaction surveys. And federal law enforcement agencies have a hard time bulking up quickly, just across the board. So there are just a lot of obstacles.
CHANG: Yeah. That is NPR's Ximena Bustillo. Thank you, Ximena.
BUSTILLO: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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