Now that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget is larger than those for most of the world’s militaries, they’ve got plenty of money sloshing around to hire 10,000 new agents, which will surely allow them to ratchet up arrests of harmless day laborers at Home Depot. But how to find those 10,000 new hires? ICE seems to be starting by begging retirees to come back.
A recruitment page on ICE’s website features the obligatory scowling Uncle Sam. Retired ICE agents who return are eligible for up to $50,000 in bonuses and can still receive their basic federal retirement annuity. In other words, for these rehires, taxpayers will be paying:
- Their base salary, which starts at $105,000 for ICE criminal investigators and nearly $89,000 for deportation officers.
- Federal health care benefits.
- Base federal retirement annuity.
- A stratospheric hiring bonus of up to $50,000.
That may seem like a steep price, but hey, how else to ensure that migrant children are left alone when their mothers are deported, or that immigrants are mistakenly deported? How else to ensure that ICE has enough agents to arrest migrants at courthouses after federal immigration judges, in collusion with government attorneys, drop immigration cases so that the migrant can be immediately arrested when they leave the courtroom?
Past, present, and future ICE agents are the only federal workers the administration seems to care about. As Trump’s latest tax scam progressed through Congress, the Senate parliamentarian forced that chamber to strike the worst measures targeting federal workers, and yet it’s useful to see how Republicans propose to treat other federal workers.
In a previous draft of the legislation, the GOP had proposed that all newly hired federal employees agree to serve at the pleasure of the administration, rather than receiving civil service protections. If those potential employees didn’t agree to give up the protections they are entitled to, they would have been forced to pay an extra 5 percentage points into their federal retirement plans. There was also a measure that would have required federal employees to pay $350 to file an appeal of an adverse employment action to the Merit Systems Protection Board.
Obviously, the administration has been wildly successful in its main attack on federal workers, though, which is to fire thousands of them at a time, a move that has been blessed by the Supreme Court.
Surely, though, only the very best and brightest folks will respond to massive financial incentives to join what is rapidly turning into the Trump administration’s secret police force. No, it won’t be at all like the last big immigration-enforcement hiring spree, which began in 2006, when Customs and Border Protection almost doubled its workforce in six years. At that time, CBP slashed hiring requirements, cutting Spanish-language training, shortening time at the training academy, and shifting some training online.
Back then, roughly 20% of Border Patrol recruits failed to graduate from training, so sure, make it easier—great idea. This surge resulted in a surge of arrests of CBP employees for misconduct and an uptick in high-profile corruption cases, such as CBP agents working with drug cartels. Only the best people.
This is just another example of the Trump administration’s chaotic approach to federal staffing. It fired expert employees across the government, all while showering cash on potential employees they deem worthy. And there’s no one the administration considers more worthy than those who will help execute Trump’s illegal and violent immigration crackdown, so money is no object.