More than one-third of recruits at ICE’s training academy in Georgia have failed the agency’s basic fitness test, slowing efforts to hire and deploy 10,000 new deportation officers by January, according to a new report in The Atlantic.
The test requires just 15 push-ups, 32 sit-ups and a 1.5-mile run completed in under 14 minutes. The revelation that so many recruits have failed was widely mocked on social media.
One current official told The Atlantic’s Nick Miroff that the agency had already lowered its training standards to attract more recruits, even though the current requirements are considered bare minimum for the job.
“He and others, none of whom were authorized to speak with reporters, told me that agency veterans are concerned about the quality of the new recruits being fast-tracked onto the street to meet Trump’s hiring goals,” according to the report. “An email from ICE headquarters to the agency’s top officials on October 5 lamented that ‘a considerable amount of athletically allergic candidates’ had been showing up to the academy; they had “misrepresented” their physical condition on application forms.”
“We all know the self-certification method has failed,” one ICE official wrote in an email.
Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, told The Atlantic the numbers reflected only “a subset” of recruits and that most new hires will come from other law enforcement agencies and will not have to pass the academy’s new fitness test.
Since taking office, President Donald Trump’s administration has made the expansion of the ICE workforce and detention capacity a central feature of its immigration agenda. Congress recently approved roughly $75 billion in new funding for ICE, enabling plans to hire about 10,000 new officers.
To speed up hiring, ICE is offering substantial signing bonuses under a streamlined process that critics, immigration policy experts and former officials were already warning risked weakening background checks and other vetting standards.
The agency’s most recent data shows almost 60,000 people currently held in immigration detention. Immigrant rights groups have warned that this rapid expansion raises serious concerns about human rights and due process protections for detainees.
