ICE agents have high rate of criminal records
Executive summary
There is no evidence in the provided reporting that ICE agents as a body have a “high rate of criminal records”; official hiring rules disqualify applicants with felony convictions and available sources document isolated criminal prosecutions of agents rather than widespread criminality within the workforce [1] [2] [3]. Reporting instead centers on the criminal history of people ICE detains—most of whom, according to multiple analyses, do not have prior convictions—creating a separate but related controversy about enforcement targets and agency conduct [4] [5] [6].
1. What the data actually show about who ICE detains, not who ICE hires
Multiple independent analyses and ICE’s own statistics emphasize that a large share of people booked into ICE custody lack criminal convictions: roughly 71–73 percent of detainees had no criminal conviction in 2025, with only about 5 percent having violent convictions in one analysis, and about 29 percent reported as convicted in another summary of ICE data [4] [5] [6]. Those detainee figures have driven public debate and media coverage, but they are about detainees’ records, not employment-screening outcomes for ICE agents themselves [4] [5].
2. Hiring rules and public claims about agent vetting
ICE’s documented hiring processes include comprehensive background investigations that generally disqualify applicants with criminal records—especially felony convictions—which is consistent across guidance about law‑enforcement recruitment and advising materials for prospective ICE agents [1]. PBS reported that agency leaders publicly defended vetting procedures amid an aggressive recruitment push, citing background checks and security clearances as safeguards even as critics worried about hiring and training changes during expansion [7] [1].
3. Documented instances of misconduct and criminal prosecutions of agents
Reporting also catalogs discrete, high‑profile cases where individual ICE employees were criminally charged or convicted, including a federal prosecution that produced a lengthy prison sentence for a deportation agent convicted of using his position to exploit vulnerable women—an example used by critics to argue the agency “fails to police its own ranks” [2] [3]. These episodes are cited widely in local and national reporting to illustrate accountability concerns, but the sources do not present them as evidence of a systemic, high prevalence of criminal records among all ICE agents [2] [3].
4. The narrative tension: enforcement targets vs. internal conduct
The dominant public dispute revealed in these sources is twofold: the administration and DHS prioritize removing dangerous criminal aliens and public announcements highlight arrests of violent offenders [8] [9], while independent data and watchdogs counter that most people taken into ICE custody lack criminal convictions and many arrests originate from local jails before court resolution [6] [10]. That tension drives criticism of ICE’s practices and fuels scrutiny of whether recruitment and oversight keep pace with an expanded enforcement mission [7] [10].
5. Limits of the reporting and what remains unanswered
None of the provided sources offers a comprehensive, agency‑wide statistic on the share of current ICE employees with criminal records, nor do they supply comparative baseline rates for other federal law‑enforcement bodies, so any definitive claim that “ICE agents have high rate of criminal records” cannot be substantiated from these items alone; the materials instead document vetting rules, isolated prosecutions, and the composition of detainee populations [1] [2] [4]. Where critics say internal oversight is weak, sources document specific failures and call for greater transparency, but they stop short of supplying a quantified prevalence of criminal records among agents [2] [7].
Conclusion: answer to the question
Based on the reporting provided, the claim that “ICE agents have high rate of criminal records” is not supported; hiring rules generally bar applicants with felony convictions and the documentation here points to individual misconduct cases rather than a reported, high prevalence of criminal records across ICE’s workforce, while the larger, well‑documented controversy concerns the criminal histories of people detained by ICE and the agency’s expansion and oversight [1] [2] [4].