'The Response Has Been Overwhelming': Kristi Noem Reveals Number Of ICE Agent Applications After BBB

At a press briefing on Friday in Illinois, DHS Sec. Kristi Noem spoke about the ICE agent applications after the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill.

Transcript

00:00One more question.

00:01Rebecca?

00:02Secretary, you've mentioned that it's been harder to work with officials in Illinois because of the way the government functions,

00:09but you're also in a mission to hire thousands more ICE officers and detained folks who are in Illinois.

00:15So how are you doing that, hiring people within the state or people that are willing to work in the state, and where are those folks going?

00:23Yeah, you know, the response has been overwhelming.

00:25Part of the big, beautiful bill that President Trump advocated for allocated to us the resources to hire 10,000 new ICE officers.

00:35We have had that open for less than a week, and we have over 80,000 applicants for those jobs.

00:41So they're from all over the country.

00:42Some of them are retired ICE officers that want to come back now that they're going to be allowed to do their jobs,

00:47some retired CBP or other federal officers.

00:51And then we also have a huge amount of interest of people who just want to have their backs and work alongside them.

00:57So what we're doing then is to get them trained up as soon as possible is we'll be training them through our federal academy,

01:03but we're also going to stand up some pilot areas of where people can train closer to their homes.

01:09If we have a lot of officers that have signed up and have offers from the federal government,

01:14we may do a training right here closer to home so they're not away from their families for so long.

01:19So that's being worked out as we see where the final offers are coming from.

01:22Do you know how long that training will last?

01:23Because normally it was seen in about a year or so.

01:25How would you get those folks to be expedited?

01:28Yeah, it'll be within weeks because we're going to give them credit for what they already know.

01:32If they're former law enforcement, they already have training and certifications that we will honor and look at.

01:39They'll still go through testing.

01:40They'll still go through drug testing and physical tests and all of that.

01:43But we want to make sure that it's an expedited where we check the box.

01:46If they have the experience, then it helps us not keep them stalled out in an academy for weeks at a time.