The MAGA administration’s headlong charge toward dramatically expanding its immigration enforcement workforce has left it wheezing under the sheer weight of recruits struggling to pass even the most basic fitness tests.
More than a third of prospective Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are failing to muster 15 push-ups, 32 sit-ups, and a mile-and-a-half run in under 14 minutes—standards described by insiders as “the minimum for any officer,” The Atlantic reports, given they’ve already been eased as part of the wider drive to recruit 10,000 new officers by the start of next year.
“It’s pathetic,” one official told the publication, which also cites an email from agency headquarters earlier this month lamenting “a considerable amount of athletically challenged candidates” turning up to train after having “misrepresented” their fitness level during the application process.
Those who fail apparently aren’t immediately booted off the course, with many being assigned administrative tasks while waiting for legal review on whether the Department of Homeland Security should revoke their job offers. “It’s a disaster,” as one ICE official put it.
The Daily Beast has reached out to DHS for comment. Spokesperson Trisha McLaughlin told The Atlantic the present rate of failure pertains to “a subset of candidates in initial basic academy classes.” She added the department still foresees 85 percent of deportation-officer positions being filled by experienced officials, themselves exempt from the ICE personal fitness test for new recruits but nevertheless still “subject to medical, fitness and background requirements.”
Under the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” earlier this year, the Trump administration has allotted $75 billion to DHS, largely to help buoy its recruitment drive and set up new, very often ostentatiously named detention centers like Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz,” Indiana’s “Speedway Slammer,” and Chicago’s “Deep Dish Deportation Depot.”
Axios separately revealed Tuesday that much of that cash infusion is in fact now being spent on new surveillance software, including contracts for facial recognition algorithms, biometric data systems, tools for remotely accessing smartphones, and access to real-time location tracking services.
The outlet notes that Democratic Senator Gary Peters, a top opposition member of the Homeland Security Committee, is increasingly alarmed by a lack of transparency from DHS over what exactly the purposes of these contracts may be.
“I don’t have the facts right now, and I like to operate based on facts,” he said. “The fact that I don’t have facts makes me very uncomfortable.”
The Daily Beast has similarly asked DHS for a response to those claims.
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