Under President Donald Trump, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has become the centerpiece of his sweeping immigration crackdown — empowered with record funding and broader authority to conduct raids. But while the agency has grown in power, insiders say the relentless pace, arrest quotas, and public backlash are taking a heavy toll on personnel.
Interviews with two current and nine former ICE officials revealed widespread burnout and frustration among agents as they scramble to meet the administration’s push for thousands of daily arrests. Many complained that the White House’s quotas — demanding as many as 3,000 arrests a day, 10 times last year’s rate under Joe Biden — are unrealistic, unsafe, and forcing officers into situations that erode morale.
While Trump insists his goal is to remove “the worst of the worst,” ICE data shows a significant rise in detentions of non-criminals, including long-term residents, visa holders, and even some U.S. citizens. Arrests of people with no charges beyond immigration violations have surged from 80 per day under Biden to 221 per day in Trump’s first six months.
The crackdown has played out publicly in viral videos showing masked agents detaining people outside schools, churches, workplaces, and neighborhoods — fueling outrage and anxiety in immigrant communities. Some raids have even targeted the wrong addresses after relying on faulty artificial intelligence leads, raising risks for both agents and civilians.
Inside ICE, the strain is compounded by leadership churn and reassignment of specialized investigators — normally tasked with tackling human trafficking and organized crime — to routine immigration sweeps. “The demands they placed on us were unrealistic,” said one current official. “It was not done in a safe manner.”
Despite the pressure, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan has defended the approach, citing Trump’s declaration of a “national emergency” on immigration. He acknowledged the long hours but argued morale would improve as a hiring spree ramps up.
Congress has approved US$75 billion in new funding for ICE over the next four years, one of the largest allocations for any federal law enforcement agency, including money to detain at least 100,000 migrants at a time and hire 10,000 new officers. ICE has responded with a wartime-style recruitment campaign, rolling out ads across YouTube and Instagram with slogans like “America Needs You.” Homeland Security says more than 115,000 people have applied.
Critics, however, warn the rapid buildup risks repeating past mistakes, when rushed Border Patrol hiring in the 2000s led to misconduct and corruption. Homan insists new hires will still undergo full vetting and academy training, promising “quality over quantity.”
Meanwhile, public support for Trump’s handling of immigration has slipped. A Reuters/Ipsos poll this month showed approval at 43 per cent, down from 50 per cent in March, as Americans react to increasingly heavy-handed tactics — from parents detained while dropping off children at school to workers pulled from cars or bus stops.
For some ICE agents, the initial sense of empowerment under Trump has faded. “At the beginning, they were happy the cuffs were off,” said one former official. “But now, they’re overwhelmed. They’d prefer to go back to focused targeting, where they could say: ‘We are arresting criminals.’”