ICE is on a hiring spree with the tsunami of new cash from President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill — and some top recruits are getting $50,000 signing bonuses and six-figure salaries as the agency ramps up its mass deportation effort.
The most lucrative payouts are going to retired agents — who are returning to work in droves to take advantage of the new incentives, many of them tell The Post.
New recruits can expect to make a fair bit less — between $50,000 to $90,000 per year in base salary.
The agency is looking to hire 10,000 new agents with the flood of $75 billion in extra funding to carry out Trump’s mass deportation effort.
“They’re begging to come back because they believe in securing America, protecting kids, and supporting an undermanned force stretched thin by the prior administration’s border chaos,” said Scott Mechkowski, the former assistant ICE chief for New York.
One retired agent, who requested anonymity due to his pending application to return to ICE, told The Post he knows “about four or five” other ex-feds “that put in” for the opportunity to return to the force with salaries over $100,000 per year.
Homeland Security agents — especially with Border Patrol — quit en mass during the Biden administration because they were so fed up with policies that allowed illegal migrants to pour into the US. Now, many are coming back to work.
“It’s a great opportunity to get back into the mix and because a lot of us ended our career and we still felt like we had a lot more left,” the ex-agent said.
ICE is offering a signing bonus of $10,000 upon returning to service; another $10,000 bonus for those who apply by Aug. 1; and annual $10,000 bonuses, for up to three years, for those who take part in Operation Return to Service.
The agency has also said it will offer “dual compensation waivers,” allowing former feds to retain pension payments and benefits if they come out of retirement.
The surge of new officers and agents will help the agents meet the administration’s ambitious 3,000-per-day arrest quota has filled detention centers to the brim.
“If you hire enough people to get back, then you can have people to do the investigations. Because right now you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul by taking everybody off their own investigations,” said the retired agent.
“My biggest concern about the whole immigration push and using all the agencies and having everybody doing work in six days a week is you’re going to have burnout,” he added.
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