ICE Recruitment Process is a Hot Mess

NBC News is out with a report about ICE’s current training regime (or lack thereof) and it’s tough to figure out what part is worst!  How about the part where new recruits are starting training before DHS has finished vetting them, a thing that seems out of place for law enforcement jobs? How about the part where ICE only figures out mid-training that recruits have failed drug tests, have criminal backgrounds, or can’t meet the physical and academic requirements?  Or is it the part where recruits don’t submit their fingerprints for background checks even though ICE requires that as part of the hiring process?

the administration is doing everything it can to smooth the path forward for wannabe fascists, but how much more can they do? Training had been slashed from 13 weeks to eight, and is now down to six weeks. The fitness requirements are startlingly low-key for a job that ostensibly requires you to be able to chase people down, but more than a third of the new recruits couldn’t do the required 15 push-ups, 32 sit-ups, and run 1.5 miles in 14 minutes. 

Almost half of the new recruits who arrived for training in the last three months were sent home because they couldn’t pass an open-book written exam on the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Fourth Amendment! To be fair, it isn’t like the administration cares if any of these people follow the law, but presumably they have to go through this fiction.   

Also, no more pesky age limits! “Border czar” and bribe aficionado Tom Homan says age is only a number, so ICE is pulling out all the stops to woo back ICE and Border Patrol retirees with the promise of up to a $50,000 hiring bonus.  

The administration wants more agents because it is convinced that part of the bottleneck in hitting the 3,000/day arrest goal set by Chief White House Nazi Stephen Miller is a lack of staff.  Meanwhile, any federal law enforcement that isn’t about hurting immigrants is on hold, as the administration froze all other training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers, preventing dozens of other federal law enforcement agencies from training.