What does GAO’s review find about changes to ICE hiring criteria and their effects on training and performance?
Executive summary
The GAO has been asked by House Democrats to review how ICE changed hiring criteria during its unprecedented 2025 surge and how those changes affected training and on-the-job performance, but as of current reporting GAO has only acknowledged it is "working through" whether to take on the request—not yet issued findings [1]. Meanwhile multiple congressional letters, press reports and watchdogs allege ICE shortened and streamlined hiring and training (including direct-hire authority, lowered age caps, and abbreviated training pipelines), and independent oversight bodies including the DHS inspector general are separately probing whether those changes degraded preparedness or increased misconduct [2] [3] [4] [5].
1. What the GAO was asked to investigate and why
House Homeland Security Democrats formally asked GAO to examine a suite of questions about ICE’s surge: how hiring processes and eligibility requirements changed, how training was altered to onboard recruits faster, and how metrics for evaluating training and performance were adjusted amid the drive to hire roughly 11,000–12,000 new personnel in 2025 [1] [2]. The request frames the surge as “the most significant staffing increase in the agency’s history” and ties it to concerns about whether speed and scale prompted shortcuts or policy waivers that could affect operational readiness [1] [2].
2. The evidence reporters and lawmakers point to about changed hiring criteria
Reporting and congressional letters document multiple concrete procedural shifts: ICE obtained direct-hire authority to bypass some traditional competitive steps, expanded incentives such as $50,000 signing bonuses and student loan repayment, removed prior age caps and lowered minimum ages to 18, and relaxed some prior prerequisites like a Spanish-language requirement—changes designed to broaden and accelerate intake [4] [3] [5]. Senate and House Democrats explicitly cite these policy moves as evidence that eligibility and vetting thresholds were altered to meet numeric targets [6] [5].
3. The evidence reporters and watchdogs cite about training changes and outcomes
Multiple outlets and watchdogs report that ICE substantially shortened training timelines—media accounts contrast traditional multi-month programs with reported six-week or eight-week cycles for many trainees and cite FLETC adjustments to prioritize ICE cohorts—while some recruits failed basic fitness or academic standards during accelerated pipelines [4] [7] [8] [2]. Critics point to higher dropout rates tied to failed background checks, academic or fitness tests and flag a lack of transparency from ICE about criteria for who received abbreviated training [9] [8].
4. On performance, misconduct, and oversight—what’s documented and what’s speculative
Lawmakers warn that lowered hiring and training standards can increase the risk of misconduct and reduced operational effectiveness, invoking historical parallels and asking for details on whether metrics were weakened and whether any hires had disqualifying histories [5] [6]. Reports note the DHS inspector general has opened examinations of ICE hiring and training to determine if operational needs are being met, but there is not yet a public GAO or IG finding conclusively tying the surge to systemic declines in performance or quantified misconduct increases in the available reporting [4] [1].
5. ICE’s public stance, the GAO’s status, and the limits of current reporting
ICE and DHS officials have publicly pushed back—ICE training leadership has argued recruits still receive required instruction and that the agency can responsibly scale up, and ICE materials note use of OPM direct-hire authority for expedited recruitment [7] [3]. The GAO, per its spokeswoman, is following its process to determine whether to do the review requested by Congress and has not released findings; therefore definitive conclusions about causation between hiring-criteria changes and degraded training or performance must await GAO’s work or the DHS IG’s conclusions [1] [4]. Current reporting documents policy changes, reporting of shortened training windows, and political concern, but does not include a completed GAO report proving that those changes caused a measurable decline in operational performance [2] [8] [9].