Federal agencies have deployed nearly 33,000 employees to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement in its efforts to dramatically ramp up detention and deportation of undocumented individuals, according to a new report, significantly multiplying the number of employees working on enforcement efforts.
About 20,000 of those employees came from outside ICE, the Cato Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank, found, including some agencies that have sent significant portions of their workforces to the deportation effort. ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations, which is responsible for investigating transnational crimes including drug and human trafficking, has sent more than 12,000 employees to the agency’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division. HSI as of the most recent data on ICE’s website had “more than 10,000 employees,” meaning it has both grown and sent nearly its entire workforce to assist with immigration enforcement.
ERO itself has around 6,000 officers on staff.
Many of the other employees detailed to ICE come from the Justice Department, including the Bureau of Prisons, Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI, U.S. Marshal Service and Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The State Department has sent nearly 300 Diplomatic Security staff to ERO to aid in deportation efforts, while the Internal Revenue Service has around more than 1,700 employees assisting ICE. That marks a significant ramp up from June, when Government Executive reported IRS had 250 of its agents detailed to the Homeland Security Department.
Other DHS components are also contributing to ICE’s immigration enforcement crackdown: Customs and Border Protection has detailed more than 5,000 employees toward the effort, while U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has sent more than 4,000. Government Executive previously reported USCIS staff working on refugee operations in the Refugee, Asylum and International Operations Directorate were pushed by their leadership to accept details to ICE to demonstrate their “adaptability” and to “justify our continued employment.” About one-quarter of the refugee office was detailed to ICE as of June.
The responsibilities of the detailees have varied. IRS agents have been authorized to make arrests for civil violations of immigration law, while USCIS employees were largely working on administrative matters like verifying an immigrant’s status or correcting information for ICE.
Some employees temporarily assigned to ICE are serving for limited periods, such as 60 days or six months, while others, such as those from CBP, are working for the enforcement agency indefinitely.
DEA has assigned nearly 40% of its total employees to ICE, according to Cato’s data, while the ATF has sent nearly 30% and USMS around 20%.
The figures showed the deployments to ICE’s enforcement office between Aug. 5 and Aug. 28. ICE has also received assistance from more than 9,000 partners at the state and local level, according to Cato’s data.
Trump recently signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which provided funding for ICE to hire 10,000 new employees and CBP to hire 8,500 new staff. The administration is rescheduling training for most other federal law enforcement to prioritize its massive onboarding effort for ICE.
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