On a forum with over 5,000 members claiming to be current and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, users vent their frustrations and concerns about the agency as it has become the center of public ire.
“I’m all for removing illegals, but snatching dudes off lawn mowers in Cali and leaving the truck and equipment just sitting there? Definitely not working smarter,” wrote one user.
The forum contains posts dating back over a decade and describes itself as an “unofficial forum for current Deportation Officers, prospective applicants and retired Deportation Officers to have a platform for discussion.” In posts viewed by WIRED, users complain of long working hours, limited overtime pay, incompetent leadership, and poorly trained new recruits.
Forum users do not need to show proof of their employment to join, and the platform does not appear to be heavily moderated. WIRED has not confirmed the individual identities of these posters, though the forum is one of several related forums where people working in different parts of DHS share experiences and discuss specific details of deportation officer work that would likely only be known to those in the job, including discussions about the inner workings of the job, the hiring and training process, and swapping duty placements. Some forum members are newcomers, and others have been members for over a decade.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE did not respond to requests for comment.
As scrutiny and public outrage have followed the violent immigration raids in Minneapolis for DHS’s Operation Metro Surge, particularly in the wake of federal agents shooting and killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti, users in the forum haven’t shied away from posting.
On January 19, five days before Pretti was killed, a user started a thread titled, “Ready to resign, had enough stress.”
“I have 2.3 years left for full special category retirement … but don’t know if I’ll make it. Tired of this Agency. Employees being abused badly. Mandated TDY’s with less than 24 hours notice,” the first post reads from a user who has been a member of the forum since September 2015. TDY is the shorthand for “temporary duty,” which involves pulling officers from across the country to cities like Minneapolis for large-scale operations.
“No more weekends off, more work than ever before in 18 years. No more union. No more down time,” the post continues. “This is not what any of us envisioned for our last years of career when we are in our 50’s.” (In 2022, thousands of ICE personnel lost union representation that many other government workers possess, including protections around overtime pay. The president of the council that represented ICE officers within the American Federation of Government Employees alleged that the union had become “far left.”)
Other forum users joined in to echo the original poster’s complaints and voice their concerns about the direction of the agency. “Led by some of the worst leadership I’ve ever witnessed, from the local level all the way up to the national stage, this agency has managed to turn a righteous mission into a complete clown show,” added another user who joined the forum in October 2015.
Several users have also complained about the image problem created for ICE as CBP has taken a greater role in immigration enforcement in US cities. “There was absolutely zero forethought and our Management just rolled over to let BP take over. HUGE mistake, when the nuance of actual targeted enforcement is needed,” a different user who has been a forum member since May 2017 added.
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