The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has announced plans to hire 5,000 additional personnel to support its immigration enforcement operations. These new agents are expected to begin their roles by the end of the year, according to The New York Times. The hiring would increase ICE’s workforce by about 17% and allow the agency to benefit from new funding approved by Congress. Most of these new recruits will be agents responsible for deporting undocumented individuals. In July 2025, ICE became the best-funded federal agency in U.S. history. Since the return of the American president to the White House, the agency has already increased its workforce by approximately 8,000 people, reaching 29,000 employees in July. ICE offices now intend to assign more agents to immigration law enforcement. In recent months, ICE has significantly intensified its immigration enforcement operations, conducting an aggressive arrest campaign supported by over $100 billion (€88 billion) in funding from Congress. Last year, a recruitment campaign with the same goal was initiated. It had drawn criticism due to its scale and speed: agents were hired without prior background checks or with insufficient checks. As early as spring, hundreds of these new recruits had already been dismissed. For this new campaign, a source close to the matter stated that ICE intends to apply stricter hiring criteria. "Properly verifying the backgrounds of candidates takes time," said Deborah Fleischaker, former acting chief of staff of ICE under the Biden administration. "It is more important to do things correctly than to do them quickly." In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security indicated that the recent hires had no connection to the departures that occurred during the previous recruitment wave. "Federal agencies responsible for law enforcement have always had difficulty quickly filling vacant positions without hiring individuals with problematic pasts," acknowledged Daniel Altman, former customs official. "Over time, we generally observe an increase in excessive use of force and other types of professional misconduct, which can occur when hiring someone unfit for the position." The United States has massively spied on left-wing activists and anti-ICE protesters. Today, the agency still struggles to catch up with the significant backlog in background checks for agents hired last year. Thus, nearly 7,500 people are still waiting for the required checks for their positions and can work only limitedly in the meantime. Two anonymous sources stated that the number of people waiting for checks is much higher than normal. Last year, the agency hired recruits without completing a full security form, without taking fingerprints or administering a polygraph test. A senior official who oversaw preliminary checks in August 2025 has also filed a complaint expressing concerns about these practices. According to him, the Trump administration made final job offers without preliminary checks, thereby violating the law and exposing the agency to "serious national security risks." While in January the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by ICE agents shocked Americans, it seems that Washington now intends to strengthen its immigration police. But at what cost?