What to know about ICE’s record number of firings and resignations

President Donald Trump promised the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. To do so, his administration funneled tens of millions of dollars amount to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, making it the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency.

In mere months, ICE more than doubled its number of agents after it received over 200,000 applications.

Agency officials touted this expansion as it deployed the agents to U.S. communities. But what was not advertised were the challenges that came with properly vetting and training officers on that scale.

Just as there was a record number of hires, there was also a record number of people who left the agency, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal workforce data. Here’s what we learned.

Between January 2025 and June 2026, the Trump administration hired nearly 12,000 full-time ICE workers. That is more than the entire previous decade, according to our analysis of Office of Personnel Management data. The surge peaked in the fall of 2025 after ICE cashed in on the funding from the president's signature One Big Beautiful Bill legislation. But almost as quickly as agents were being recruited, many were leaving.

In the first half of 2026, just over 2,900 workers left.

Original source: https://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/