Under President Donald Trump, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has taken a central role in immigration enforcement, supported by record funding and expanded authority to conduct raids, while staff report long hours and increased public criticism of the arrests.
Those internal pressures are taking a toll. Two current and nine former ICE officials told Reuters the agency is grappling with burnout and frustration among personnel as agents work to keep pace with the administration’s expanded enforcement agenda.
The agency has launched a recruitment drive to relieve the stress by hiring thousands of new officers as quickly as possible, but that process will likely take months or years to play out.
All of those interviewed by Reuters backed immigration enforcement in principle. But they expressed concern about the Trump administration’s requirement for increased daily arrest quotas, which they said have resulted in the detention of thousands of people without criminal records, including long-term green card holders, people with legal visas, and some U.S. citizens.
Most of the current and former ICE officials requested anonymity due to concerns about retaliation against themselves or former colleagues.
Images and videos shared on social media show agents in tactical gear making arrests in various public and private settings, including streets, worksites, schools, churches, and courthouses. Some of these videos have drawn widespread attention and criticism.
Under Trump, average daily arrests by the 21,000-strong agency have soared, up over 250% in June compared to a year earlier, although daily arrest rates dropped in July.
Trump has said he wants to prioritize deporting serious offenders, while ICE figures indicate an increase in arrests of individuals without criminal records.
ICE arrests of people with no other charges or convictions beyond immigration violations during Trump’s first six months in office rose to 221 people per day, from 80 people per day during the same period under former President Joe Biden last year, according to agency data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.
Some 69% of immigration arrests under Trump were of people with a criminal conviction or pending charge, the figures show. According to two current and two former officials, some ICE investigators said they were concerned that hundreds of specialized agents, who normally focus on crimes such as human trafficking and transnational gangs, had been reassigned to immigration enforcement.
In an interview with Reuters, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, acknowledged that the long hours and reassignment of specialist agents had frustrated some ICE personnel but said Trump’s Jan. 20 declaration of a national emergency around illegal immigration warranted it.
“There’s some staff that would rather be doing other types of investigations, I get that, but the president declared a national emergency,” Homan said.
Homan, who spent three decades in immigration enforcement and joined ICE at its inception in 2003, said the long hours should lessen as hiring of new ICE staff speeds up.
“I think morale is good. I think morale will get even better as we bring more resources on,” he said. Another stress factor for more senior officials is the perpetual threat of being removed for failure to produce arrests, underscored by multiple changes of leadership at ICE since Trump took office in January, five of the ICE officials said.
In response to a request for comment, a senior official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, downplayed concerns about morale, saying officers were most bothered by being targeted in assaults, as well as criticism from Democrats.
The senior official said ICE personnel “are excited to be able to do their jobs again” after being subjected to limits under Biden.
At the center of the complaints, the current and former ICE officials said, was the demand by the White House for ICE to sharply increase immigration arrest numbers to about 3,000 a day, 10 times the daily arrest rate last year under Trump’s Democratic predecessor, former President Joe Biden.
In some cases, officials said that reliance on artificial intelligence in targeting addresses led to mistakes, which they believe increased the risk of detaining unintended people or endangering officers.
“The demands they placed on us were unrealistic. It was not done in a safe manner or the manner to make us most successful,” the current official said.
During recent raids in several U.S. cities, ICE agents wearing masks were met by residents who demanded identification and, in some cases, asked them to leave neighborhoods.
“In a lot of communities, they’re not looked upon favorably for the work they do. So I’m sure that’s stressful for them and their families,” said Kerry Doyle, a former top legal adviser at ICE.
ICE also faced opposition during Trump’s 2017–2021 presidency, when activists and some Democrats called for the agency’s dissolution, and its expanded enforcement in recent months has drawn additional public attention.
Trump’s public approval rating on immigration fell to 43% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll in August, compared with 50% in March.
News reports have highlighted incidents involving arrests in a variety of public settings, such as schools, sports practices, workplaces, and bus stops, as well as accounts of officers forcibly entering vehicles during enforcement operations.
One former ICE official said at the beginning of the administration, several former colleagues told him they were happy the “cuffs are off.”
But several months later, he said, they are “overwhelmed” by the arrest numbers the administration is demanding.
“They would prefer to go back to focused targeting,” he said. “They used to be able to say: ‘We are arresting criminals.'”
A Republican-backed spending package passed by the U.S. Congress in July gave ICE more money than nearly all other federal law enforcement agencies combined – $75 billion over a little more than four years – including funds to detain at least 100,000 migrants at any given time.
The Trump administration has launched a vigorous recruitment drive on the back of the new funding to meet its goal of hiring 10,000 ICE officers over the next four years.
Using wartime-style posters and slogans such as “America needs you,” ICE has launched a media blitz highly unusual for a government agency, running ads on social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube.
Homeland Security said more than 115,000 “patriotic Americans” had applied for jobs with ICE, although it did not say over what time period.
The ICE recruitment drive has been compared to a mid-2000s Border Patrol expansion, which critics at the time said contributed to higher risks of corruption and misconduct.
Asked about the risk of bringing in less qualified people in the rush to staff up, Homan said ICE should choose “quality over quantity.”
“Officers still need to go through background investigations, they still need to be vetted, they still need to make sure they go to the academy,” Homan said.
Reuters contributed to this report
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