Federal agents detain an individual as he exits immigration court in New York.Michael Nigro/Sipa/AP
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is apparently so desperate for staff that they are abolishing the agency’s age restrictions to allow any adult to apply to join the force.
On Wednesday, ICE announced that it would do away with its prior requirements that job applicants be at least 21 years old, no older than 37 to be considered for a criminal investigator role, and no older than 40 to be eligible to be a deportation officer, with few exceptions.
“In the wake of Biden’s open borders disaster, our country needs dedicated Americans to join ICE to remove the worst of the worst out of our country,” the agency’s announcement reads, under an Uncle Sam recruitment photo. In a social media post touting the change, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wrote: “We’re taking father/son bonding to a whole new level,” alongside an illustration of both a younger and older man in camouflage tactical gear.
Recruits will still need to be at least 18 and go through medical and drug tests, and complete a physical fitness test. The Wednesday announcement also reiterated a slate of perks available to new ICE employees, including a signing bonus of up to $50,000, student loan repayment and forgiveness options, and “enhanced retirement benefits” after the passage of Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill. The legislation allocated funding to hire 10,000 new ICE agents to join the 20,000 currently on staff to help meet the agency’s deportation goals.
The move to eliminate the age restriction comes as the Trump administration scrambles to fulfill his campaign promise to carry out mass deportations—specifically, a goal of one million deportations per year, according to an April report in the Washington Post. So far, the administration appears to have fallen far below that goal: Since February, the administration has deported an average of about 14,700 people per month, according to an NBC News report published last month. The administration’s efforts to bolster those numbers have included reviving old cases focused on immigrants who have since become citizens or died.
But reports suggest the sky-high deportation quota, coupled with the administration’s general inhumanity when it comes to the treatment of immigrants, has left morale within the agency plummeting. And while DHS Secretary Kristi Noem boasts about a recent surge in applications, related moves within ICE, including the agency reportedly forcibly poaching employees from across the federal government and other law enforcement agencies, appear to contradict those claims. The American Prospect reported on Wednesday, for example, that probationary Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees—those with under a year of service—were being reassigned to ICE or threatened with losing their jobs if they did not accept. A DHS spokesperson told the Prospect that the FEMA employees were being temporarily moved to work with ICE for 90 days, “to assist with hiring and vetting,” and claimed that the moves “will NOT disrupt FEMA’s critical operations.”
So will the elimination of the age limit make any difference? Time will tell, though Trump’s prior promises of a massive hiring spree for ICE and Border Patrol agents during his first term did not come to fruition. So far, though, the change has led to at least one new recruit: 59-year-old former Superman actor Dean Cain.