ICE hiring is moving so fast even DHS can’t keep the story straight
The Renée Good case renewed scrutiny of shortened training and minimal vetting.
Criticism is building on the federal government because of the rush job conducted to hire new immigration agents. After the shooting death of Renée Good in Minneapolis, there has been renewed scrutiny into how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is handling its hiring process. Some ICE agents are being hired so quickly that they haven’t even done a background check. Here is why that matters and what dangers this poses for people in the United States.
ICE agents are being hired and trained faster than before
According to several reports, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are getting trained at an alarmingly accelerated timeline. Instead of the months-long training timeline, ICE agents are now trained in just 6 to 8 weeks. The shooting death of Renée Good sparked national outrage and has brought renewed criticism to the sudden reduction in ICE training.
The Atlantic was the first to report on the accelerated ICE training timeline, stating that it is 47 days long. According to the reporting, new ICE agents no longer train for 5 months before entering the field. One way DHS was able to make the change was by eliminating the Spanish-language requirement for becoming an ICE agent.
People reported that when asked to clarify, a DHS representative said, “False. Training to become an Enforcement and Removal Operations officer is 8 weeks long.” The statement oddly reaffirms The Atlantic’s original reporting.
An Anti-ICE journalist reported on her surprisingly fast hiring process
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Laura Jedeed, a journalist with Slate, recently shared her experience of being hired as an ICE agent. Jedeed told TMZ that she was not hiding anything about herself, and she describes herself as an anti-ICE journalist with her own page on Antifa Watch.
“I’m not a great candidate for ICE,” Jedeed told TMZ. “I’m pretty vocal about how I feel about them and how I feel about the Trump administration.”
She continued to say, “But I am also a veteran. I went to Afghanistan twice with the 82nd Airborne Division, and a skills-based résumé, at first, seems plausible. So, I took a skills-based résumé to this hiring event. I handed it in. I did an interview. [It] took all of six minutes. They didn’t ask me very much.”
That was the beginning of a wild, too-quick hiring process to become an ICE agent. According to Jedeed, she heard back but missed a tentative job offer email that required her to respond within 48 hours and send in some paperwork. Despite doing none of the paperwork, she received an email from Lab Corps saying that ICE was requiring her to take a drug test.
After more than a week, Jedeed logged into the ICE hiring portal to check the status of her application, only to learn that she had been hired. She learned that she had an onboarding day just three days later.
The federal government wants to flood the streets with ICE
For almost a year, people in major cities in the US have witnessed ICE agents flooding their neighborhoods. The rapid increase in ICE operations nationwide required the federal government to hire quickly. This sense of urgency to carry out a promised mass deportation operation meant that things got sloppy.
There are currently 2,000 immigration agents in Minneapolis, and another 1,000 federal agents are heading there. The entire Minneapolis Police Department is about 600 sworn officers. The overwhelming number of federal agents carrying out operations in Minneapolis is the result of negligent hiring practices to show force.
Jedeed told The Independent that the agency is focused solely on getting people off the streets. She expressed her desire for a desk job, and she claims the person she was talking to changed. According to Jedeed, the representative said that the agency is really only focused on getting more “guns and badges” on the streets.
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