Trump administration to hire 5,000 more Immigration and Enforcement agents, part of plan to hire 10,000 total through 2029

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration plans to hire 5,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents by the end of the year, as the president’s mass deportation campaign shows no signs of waning.

The Department of Homeland Security, in a statement to Newsday on Wednesday, confirmed the agency’s plans to add more immigration officers to its growing ranks, as first reported by The New York Times.

"The Trump Administration is utilizing all lawful options to carry out the largest deportation operation in history, just as President Trump promised," a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in an email.

The spokesperson did not answer how many of the new hires could potentially be directed to New York, but White House border czar Tom Homan has repeatedly said ICE is planning to surge the state after the Democrat-led state legislature passed a bill banning cooperation agreements between local law enforcement departments and ICE, including Nassau's existing agreement with the agency.

"You are going to see more ICE agents than you have ever seen in New York City," Homan said in a June appearance on Fox News. "It’s coming. I just reviewed an operational plan. I’m not going to tell you exactly when it’s going to happen, but it’s coming."

The funding to hire more ICE officers was approved last summer, under the Trump backed tax-and-spend bill passed by the Republican majority Congress. ICE was provided $30 billion in funding to scale up the agency for Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

The bill authorized the hiring of 10,000 new ICE officers through 2029, and while the Department of Homeland Security boasted this January that it had hired "more than 12,000 officers and agents in less than a year," a recent analysis by USA Today of federal employment data found that 2,900 ICE agents left the agency in the first 6 months of this year, and those that were terminated or quit left after 4 to 6 months on the job.

The Trump Administration has faced backlash over its vetting and training of new hires amid a series of shootings, some fatal, by ICE agents of immigrants stopped for questioning, and violent altercations between agents and observers filming such stops. In May, the agency announced it was abandoning an abbreviated 42-day training and reverting back to the standard 72 days.

A White House official, not authorized to speak publicly about this issue Wednesday, declined to answer questions about the potential impact of the hiring surge on New York. But when asked about the timing of the new hirings as border crossings are down and deportations are up, the official said in an email ICE “plans to fulfill the statutory mandate enacted by Congress” to hire more agents.

By Laura Figueroa Hernandez

laura.figueroa@newsday.com@Laura_Figueroa

Laura Figueroa Hernandez is the White House correspondent and previously covered New York City politics and government. She joined Newsday in 2012 after covering state and local politics for The Miami Herald.