Immigration and Customs Enforcement deployed an unknown number of undertrained law enforcement officers into the field because the agency’s artificial intelligence system for hiring wasn’t functioning as intended, according to NBC News.
Since even before taking office, President Trump vowed an unprecedented immigration crackdown. That included a hiring blitz at ICE, with a mandate to hire 10,000 new recruits by the end of 2025, thanks to the $75 billion over four years allocated to the agency via the Big Beautiful Bill.
To speed up hiring, ICE began using an AI tool to categorize the resumes that were submitted. The applicants were separated into two groups: those with previous experience as a law enforcement officer were sent into an “LEO (Law Enforcement Officer) program” where they only had to go through four weeks of online training. Applicants with no prior experience were sent to an eight-week in-person course at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia that included crucial instruction on things like immigration law and proper handling of a gun. Training used to be 20 weeks but was shortened recently to “cut redundancy and incorporate technology advancements,” per the Washington Post.
Now, an NBC News report reveals that the AI tool used to hire new agents misidentified applicants with no prior law enforcement experience and sent them to the shorter “LEO program” instead. The AI flagged anyone with the word “officer” in their resume as a law enforcement officer, including compliance officers or even applicants who mentioned their desire to become ICE officers.
Two unnamed law enforcement officials told NBC that they weren’t sure just how many officers were improperly trained and sent out to begin immigration arrests. But apparently, a majority of new applicants were flagged as law enforcement officers before the mistake was identified late last year.
There’s been significant backlash to the increasingly aggressive enforcement tactics used by ICE agents in their anti-immigrant crackdown that has targeted everyone—including immigrants both with and without documentation, and American citizens.
Scrutiny reached a new peak after the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. The agent who shot Good, according to NBC, had been with ICE for 10 years, so he would not have been subject to the AI screening.
Amid this hiring surge, ICE has also been incorporating technology into its enforcement mechanisms. The agency has a contract with controversial Israeli spyware maker Paragon, whose technology has been used to spy on journalists and migrant rights activists abroad. The agency uses an AI system for mass surveillance on social media, and agents have access to apps that scan irises and attempt to identify immigration status through facial recognition. Department of Homeland Security also has its own AI chatbot called DHSChat, which was developed after Department employees experimented with commercial AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude. And in November, it was revealed that at least one ICE agent had used ChatGPT to compile a use-of-force report riddled with inconsistencies. The agent based the report solely on limited information and had ChatGPT make up the rest.
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