Reuters: Under President Donald Trump, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has become the driving force of his sweeping crackdown on migrants, bolstered by record funding and new latitude to conduct raids, but staff are contending with long hours and growing public outrage over the arrests.
Those internal pressures are taking a toll. Two current and nine former ICE officials told Reuters the agency is grappling with burnout and frustration among personnel as agents struggle to keep pace with the administration’s aggressive enforcement agenda.
The agency has launched a recruitment drive to relieve the stress by hiring thousands of new officers as quickly as possible, but that process will likely take months or years to play out.
All of those interviewed by Reuters backed immigration enforcement in principle. But they criticized the Trump administration’s push for high daily arrest quotas that have led to the detention of thousands of individuals with no criminal record, as well as long-term green card holders, others with legal visas, and even some US citizens.
Most of the current and former ICE officials requested anonymity due to concerns about retaliation against themselves or former colleagues.
Americans have been inundated with images on social media of often masked agents in tactical gear handcuffing people on neighborhood streets, at worksites, outside schools, churches, and courthouses, and in their driveways. Videos of some arrests have gone viral, fueling public anger over the tactics.
Under Trump, average daily arrests by the 21,000-strong agency have soared, up over 250 percent in June compared to a year earlier, although daily arrest rates dropped in July.
Trump has said he wants to deport “the worst of the worst,” but ICE figures show a rise in non-criminals being picked up.
ICE arrests of people with no other charges or convictions beyond immigration violations during Trump’s first six months in office rose to 221 people per day, from 80 people per day during the same period under former President Joe Biden last year, according to agency data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.
Some 69 percent of immigration arrests under Trump were of people with a criminal conviction or pending charge, the figures show.
Some ICE investigators are frustrated that hundreds of specialized ICE investigative agents, who normally focus on serious crimes such as human trafficking and transnational gangs, have been reassigned to routine immigration enforcement, two current and two former officials said.
