More than 100,o00 Americans have applied for 10,000 positions with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after the agency put out a call for hiring late last month, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
ICE removed certain restrictions on who can be an ICE agent as well as offering incentives to those hired, including options like a signing bonus of up to $50,000 and student loan forgiveness.
Only two weeks after beginning the recruitment effort, more than 100,000 applications have been received.
"Our country is calling you to serve at ICE. In the wake of the Biden administration’s failed immigration policies, your country needs dedicated men and women of ICE to get the worst of the worst criminals out of our country," DHS Secretary Kristi Noem told Fox News Digital in a statement. "This is a defining moment in our nation’s history. Your skills, your experience, and your courage have never been more essential. Together, we must defend the homeland."
Applicants must pass medical screening, drug screening, and a physical fitness test to be hired, the agency said.
In addition to field agent positions as deportation officers and criminal investigators, ICE is seeking some general attorneys, positions that may carry lower risks than field agent positions.
The ICE website describes the danger of these jobs as follows:
ICE law enforcement officers should expect a certain level of risk when performing their duties; however, they are expertly trained and every precaution is taken by ICE when it comes to protecting its officers' well-being.
The number of assaults on ICE agents has spiked 1000%, or more than 10 times what it was, due to recent immigration protests across the country.
Republicans in Congress recently allocated $30 billion in funding to hire the new agents; that works out to $300,000 per agent in salary, training costs, benefits, and other costs.
Time Magazine cautioned that it could take a significant amount of time to hire, train, relocate, and deploy that number of new agents, however.
"You’re talking three years before you see a significant increase of ICE agents on the street, which is the end of the administration,” predicted Obama-era ICE Director John Sandweg.
The hirings will be necessary to keep pace with a Trump goal to deport 3,000 illegal immigrants per day and 1 million in his first year in office.
Internal ICE data reported by NBC News suggested that deportations are far below those numbers, at about 15 to 17,000 per month in June and July.
Dean Cain, who played Superman in a previous TV series, signed up as an honorary ICE agent to support hte effort.
