One ICE officer hired prior to this administration said “mistakes are made because [officers are] overworked” on top of “pressure” from leadership “to get [new recruits] guns and badges quick.”

“We’re being pushed to a breaking point. I don’t know where it will go, but it’s nowhere good,” another officer said.

The second ICE officer, who had more than a decade of experience in his role, said this administration had managed to upset some agency employees who celebrated Trump’s 2024 electoral win.

“Many on the right will think this is an attack on Trump,” he said. “I voted for Trump this time around. I believe in immigration enforcement. But man, it’s so disorganized and chaotic. I’ve talked to many officers who said that at least [former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas] showed appreciation by giving us admin leave.”

The first officer said requests for time off were regularly refused or canceled after initially being approved.

“No one is happy. If you hear Tom Homan saying, ‘Morale’s stronger than ever,’ I say, ‘No, it’s not. No, it’s not.’ I see it. I’ve been out in the field. I see it. I’ve seen senior officers quit,’” the first officer said.

Tensions boil over

Outside of the president, no one in Washington has more input in crafting ICE’s strategy than White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, White House border czar Tom Homan, and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin. Miller demanded 3,000 arrests per day during a heated meeting with top ICE leaders in Washington in May 2025.

The Trump administration has touted roughly 900,000 arrests in Trump’s second term, roughly 1,600 arrests per day — still the highest rate seen under any administration. Recently, the White House touted 10,000 arrests of illegal immigrants in five days.

Over the past two weeks, ICE officers have conducted two separate traffic stops that resulted in the shooting deaths of individuals not subject to active immigration enforcement in both Maine and Texas. A third individual was killed after being struck by a tractor-trailer in Florida while fleeing ICE and other immigration enforcement personnel. These deaths follow two deadly shootings in Minnesota earlier this year, where immigration enforcement officers killed American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Mullin announced earlier this week, in an apparent response to the Maine and Texas incidents, that the department would pause the use of traffic stops during all immigration enforcement proceedings. Just one day later, however, Trump announced on social media that ICE would not pause using traffic stops as a law enforcement tool. Both White House and DHS officials have declined to elaborate beyond the president’s proclamation.

The burnout

ICE has approximately 6,000 officers tasked with immigration enforcement inside the United States, as well as 10,000 new employees moving through the recruitment pipeline.

Getting weekends or single days off has become the exception, according to current officers and former senior officials. That grind, week after week, month after month, is affecting the workforce.

“They constantly call us into work on our days off. They constantly get on our case about working only eight hours a day after your eight hours are finished and you want to go home,” one immigration enforcement officer told the Washington Examiner.

The exhaustion, all agreed, was a leading reason for low morale across the field.

One officer based in Texas said the office he works out of frequently has no working restroom in the building.

“We would have to walk to a nearby business establishment to use the restroom, sometimes having to walk past protesters,” said the same officer. “The media and the public typically demonizes ICE. Meanwhile, our employees are also being treated like crap from management and from this administration.”

Although the border crisis during the Biden administration brought a heavy workload for ICE taking illegal immigrants from Border Patrol custody and either releasing them into the U.S. or removing them from the country, they still had specific teams across regional field offices to focus on national security cases and fugitive operations.

Now, those specialty team officers and those stationed at detention centers are being pulled and sent to help arrest illegal immigrants, leaving few behind to focus on the very worst of the worst, they said.

One person suggested that DHS and the White House should draw down their expectations to ease the pressure on officers, provide more training to recruits, and “tone down the rhetoric.”

“Do you think that the ASMR posts on the official DHS Instagram help officers on the streets when they’re trying to make an arrest and have the social justice warriors filming them? Of course not,” the officer said. “Posts like that only promote hatred toward the agency that only us grunts witness. But I don’t think they care.”

ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight 🔊 pic.twitter.com/O6L1iYt9b4

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 18, 2025

James Hamilton, a security consultant and former FBI supervisory special agent, said complaints from ICE were not unusual and part of the job.

“That’s law enforcement. I mean, I worked my a** off as an FBI agent. So no one promised you 40-hour weeks,” said Hamilton. “What happened in the last four years as an ICE agent, in terms of the frequency and the rhythm, if you will, of work — it was nowhere near what it is today.”

“There’s no way that you’re not going to have people grumbling. No way, right? Because I can’t imagine, as an FBI agent, them saying, ‘Hey, don’t arrest bank robbers,’ right? But that’s what an ICE agent was asked to do four years ago. It’s demoralizing,” Hamilton said. “Now, you’ve got to not only arrest bank robbers but go get every single person who even looks at a bank — that’s where we’re at now. It’s a massive enforcement operation. It’s totally different.”

ICE used to have a union to represent employees through the American Federation of Government Employees. However, the AFGE legally separated from the ICE union in July 2022.

Lack of training and impossible expectations

Officers and supervisors hired prior to 2025 claimed that new recruits being put on the street are underqualified and, in some cases, have not completed mandatory federal government background checks or been issued security clearances.

“A supervisor with the fugitive operations unit expressed frustration at how many teams are filled with officers who haven’t even cleared background and don’t have a security clearance. It’s not safe,” said the first officer.

A retired official who speaks with current ICE leadership regularly said he had heard the same from several field office directors.

“Some backgrounds take 3-6 months, so the person could have graduated and be working at a field office before their full clearance gets granted or denied,” the official said.

Officers with significant experience are being “shielded” from going out and making arrests, according to one officer. Instead, ICE is pushing the new recruits into the street as opposed to desk work.

“That creates a lot of bad calls out in the field,” said the other officer.

Following two fatal officer-involved shootings during vehicle pursuits in Texas and Maine this month, the Washington Examiner asked ICE and DHS if the agency or department had a policy for how ICE should handle vehicle pursuits and traffic stops. DHS did not provide an answer.

The former senior ICE official said ICE does not have an approved traffic stop or vehicle pursuit policy.

“The officers in the field need training, not just on procedures and tactics but on their legal authorities and what constitutes their ability to legally make a traffic stop and question/detain persons,” the former senior ICE official wrote in a text message. “I have personally been told by officers that they are concerned because without sufficient policies and training they fear they could be held personally liable. The administration keeps telling them to take actions that they don’t have policies/procedures for and they aren’t trained on; and then they don’t put anything in writing and that becomes a big problem down the line.”

The demands from Washington are being pushed out to the field where field office directors who cannot hit arrest goals are being replaced. In order to meet the demands from Washington, field office directors “are pushing us to the breaking point,” said the second officer.

The high demands are being interpreted by some officers as “leeway to act in a more aggressive fashion” because they know “they’re going to be protected,” another one said.

Hamilton suggested that traffic stops are not encounters that federal police are naturally good at because they get so little exposure to them compared to local and state police.

“Look at the FBI and the Miami shootout in the ’80s, which was this watershed moment in the FBI. Two FBI agents were shot and killed. Why? Well, because they tried to do a car stop on bank robbers,” Hamilton said, adding that he did roughly 3,000 traffic stops as a sheriff’s deputy as opposed to one when he was a federal agent. “Federal agents are not good at car stops. Nothing has changed since the ’80s.”

Hamilton said the best course of action is to call local and state police to assist when it comes to attempting traffic stops.

However, the nature of ICE’s work has pushed away virtually all major cities from cooperating with ICE, leaving the federal agency largely on its own.

ICE SITS FROZEN AMID TRUMP-MULLIN TRAFFIC STOP DEBACLE

When asked about the plethora of officer complaints, a DHS spokesperson stated in an email Friday evening that “leave” for employees across the department was not being canceled and said the department believed morale was most affected by Democratic politicians smearing ICE.

“The worst thing for morale is sanctuary politicians’ constant smears against ICE including likening them to the gestapo, slave patrols, and secret police. This type of rhetoric is contributing to our officers facing coordinated campaigns of violence against them including a more than 1,300% increase in assaults against them, 3,300% increase in vehicle attacks, and an 8,000% increase in death threats,” the DHS spokesperson said. “President Trump and Secretary Mullin will always stand with our ICE law enforcement officers.”