A journalist has claimed she was offered a job with ICE after an interview that lasted less than six minutes and without her having to write “a single signature on agency paperwork.”
Slate reporter Laura Jedeed recounts her visit to an ICE Career Expo event at the ESports Stadium Arlington near Dallas in Texas last August, which was offering on-the-spot hiring for deportation officers.
Jedeed joined the Army after graduating from high school and been deployed to Afghanistan twice with the 82nd Airborne Division, subsequently working as a civilian analyst.
But the 38 year-old is a Trump critic and describes herself as “anti-ICE”, something she assumed would rule her out of contention for a role when picked up vetting.
However, after booking an appointment with a recruiting officer and joining a short line, she claims the interviewer asked only her name, date of birth and age, whether she had any law enforcement or military experience, and about the circumstances in which she left the service.
Jedeed says she was subsequently told by the officer: “They are prioritizing current law enforcement first. They’re going to adjudicate your resume.” She was told to look out for an email advising her of next steps.
Speaking to a working deportation officer before departing, she was told that, if she were hired, she would be unlikely to “hit the streets right away.”
When Jedeed suggested she might be more comfortable with a desk job anyway, she claims to have noticed an “attitude shift” from the officer, who she says told her: “Just to be upfront, the goal is to put as many guns and badges out in the field as possible.”
The journalist says she received the promised email on September 3, which suggested she was being made a “tentative offer” and instructed her to sign into a jobs website and return a number of attached forms, which sought information about her driver’s license and any prior domestic violence convictions, as well as consent for a background check to be carried out.
Jadeed says she completed none of the steps required but nevertheless received a follow-up email three weeks later thanking her for proceeding and asking her to submit a drug test.
She did so and, nine days later, logged into the jobs website.
“Somehow, despite never submitting any of the paperwork they sent me – not the background check or identification info, not the domestic violence affidavit, none of it – ICE had apparently offered me a job,” she claimed.
The site claimed she had accepted a final offer and, as of September 30, been entered on duty, assigned to her home state of New York.
“By all appearances, I was a deportation officer,” Jadeed writes. “Without a single signature on agency paperwork, ICE had officially hired me.”
She claims that the site also listed her as having passed a fitness test and a background check on October 6, despite its being only October 3 at the time. She ultimately declined the position.
The Independent has reached out to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
Jadeed concludes by cautioning those opposed to the federal agency against taking comfort from the idea that its recruitment process is “sloppy.”
“The truth, my experience suggests, is perhaps even scarier,” she writes. “ICE’s recruitment push is so sloppy that the administration effectively has no idea who’s joining the agency’s ranks.
“We’re all, collectively, in the dark about whom the state is arming, tasking with the most sensitive of law enforcement work, and then sending into America’s streets.”
Before President Donald Trump took office a year ago, ICE had roughly 10,000 agents by its own count.
It added another 12,000 in 2025 as a result of its hiring spree, which, as Jadeed points out, means it now has more new recruits than old hands, enough to oversee a major cultural shift within its running.
