The current scale and speed of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hiring surge raise a series of predictable challenges that have repeatedly surfaced in other law enforcement hiring waves. When an agency attempts to add thousands of new officers in a compressed timeframe under intense political pressure, the result is almost always a combination of lowered standards, training bottlenecks, cultural distortion and long-term legitimacy problems. The experience of the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) offers a vivid example of how these dynamics unfold when hiring, oversight and culture fall out of balance.
One immediate risk is the erosion of hiring standards. Under pressure to fill vacancies quickly, agencies often rush background checks, shorten psychological screenings, and overlook red flags that would normally disqualify candidates. The consequences are well documented: higher rates of misconduct, increased use of force incidents and greater liability. The Border Patrol’s post-9/11 hiring surge is particularly relevant. As the agency doubled in size, corruption cases spiked, including bribery, smuggling and cartel infiltration. Many of these cases were traced back to individuals who would not have passed a more deliberate vetting process. ICE’s plan to hire roughly 14,000 new employees in a single year, combined with on-the-spot job offers, mirrors the conditions that produced those earlier failures.
Baltimore’s experience reinforces this pattern. BPD repeatedly expanded its force during periods of crisis without strengthening its vetting or oversight systems, accumulating officers with troubling disciplinary histories, weak training or poor supervision. These vulnerabilities contributed to notorious scandals, including the Gun Trace Task Force corruption case, in which officers engaged in robbery, extortion and falsifying evidence. The federal consent decree imposed on Baltimore in 2017 explicitly cited failures in hiring, training and internal accountability as root causes of systemic misconduct. When an agency grows faster than its oversight mechanisms, misconduct becomes not an aberration but an inevitability.
A second issue is the type of applicant such recruitment campaigns attract. ICE’s “wartime recruitment” messaging, targeting audiences steeped in militaristic, hyper-masculine or ideologically charged content, risks drawing individuals more interested in confrontation than constitutional enforcement. Police departments using “warrior cop” style recruitment ads have consistently drawn applicants who are more aggressive, less inclined to de-escalate and more likely to view the public as adversaries. The Border Patrol experienced a similar shift during its hiring surge, attracting individuals with strong anti-immigrant views or a desire for quasi-military action.
Baltimore provides a cautionary parallel. For years, BPD’s culture rewarded aggressive, numbers-driven policing over community engagement or constitutional restraint. This culture attracted and retained officers who thrived in high-conflict environments while driving out those who valued de-escalation or procedural justice. ICE’s current messaging risks cultivating a similar applicant pool, one drawn to the adrenaline and authority of enforcement rather than the discipline and restraint required for lawful policing.
Training capacity is another predictable failure point. When police departments expand too quickly, academies become overcrowded, instructor-to-trainee ratios worsen, and field training officers are stretched thin. The result is a generation of officers who are less prepared, less supervised and more prone to early career mistakes. Border Patrol training quality dropped sharply during its surge, with some recruits failing basic competency tests but being pushed through anyway. Baltimore’s consent decree similarly identified major deficiencies in training, including outdated curricula, inconsistent instruction, and inadequate field supervision. ICE’s training infrastructure is not designed to absorb thousands of new agents at once, and instruction quality will inevitably decline under the strain.
Oversight systems will also be overwhelmed. Baltimore’s internal affairs unit struggled for years with backlogs, inconsistent discipline and allegations of internal corruption. These failures resulted from structural overload: too many complaints, too few investigators and a culture resistant to accountability. ICE already faces scrutiny over detention conditions and enforcement practices. Adding thousands of inexperienced agents, many hired quickly and trained under pressure, will likely increase complaint volumes while simultaneously reducing the agency’s capacity to address them.
Finally, the agency’s long-term legitimacy may be undermined. Baltimore’s policing crisis eroded public trust for years, making reform more difficult and recruitment more challenging. Border Patrol’s reputation similarly deteriorated during and after its expansion. ICE’s recruitment strategy, which casts immigrants as threats and emphasizes militaristic imagery, risks deepening public distrust and reinforcing perceptions of the agency as an unaccountable force rather than a professional law enforcement body.
The problems ICE is likely to encounter — lowered standards, problematic applicant pools, training bottlenecks, oversight failures and legitimacy crises — are not speculative. They are consistent, well-documented outcomes of similar hiring surges in police departments, the Border Patrol and the Baltimore Police Department.
Karl W. Bickel ([email protected]) is retired from the U.S. Department of Justice, was previously second in command of the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office and is a former assistant professor of criminal justice. He started his career as a Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department officer.
