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What are the physical fitness requirements for ICE agents in training?
Executive summary
Available reporting and official postings show ICE requires applicants to pass a pre‑employment physical fitness test (PFT)/Physical Abilities Assessment (PAA) and undergo regular fitness conditioning during academy training; current public job announcements and ICE materials repeatedly note a mandatory PFT and PAA before or during the Basic Immigration Enforcement Training Program (BIETP) [1] [2] [3]. Recent journalism about 2025–2025 recruitment drives describes the common PFT components reported — pushups, situps, and a 1.5‑mile run — and says the timed run has been the most common failing point for many recruits [4] [5].
1. What the official postings and ICE handbook say about fitness screening
ICE job announcements on USAJOBS explicitly state a mandatory pre‑employment physical fitness test will screen candidates required to attend the ICE Basic Immigration Enforcement Training Program (BIETP) or related transition programs; the job notices also reference a Physical Abilities Assessment (PAA) that all applicants must pass before FLETC graduation [1] [2]. The ICE academy handbook confirms trainees will participate in physical conditioning at FLETC and must furnish athletic gear for Physical Techniques, indicating routine physical training and assessments are integral to the academy experience [3].
2. What reporters and commentators describe as the PFT components
Multiple 2025 news items and commentary describe the ICE fitness test as including pushups, situps, and a 1.5‑mile run; reporters cite agency officials and applicants who took the test, and they single out the 1.5‑mile run as the most common challenge for recruits [4] [5]. Slate and The Atlantic both report that recruits are failing at appreciable rates during a large hiring push and that the run in particular has toppled many trainees [4] [5].
3. How rigorous the test seems in practice — and why that matters
Journalistic accounts from late 2025 frame the test as genuinely consequential: one story reports more than a third of recent recruits failed the fitness test while the agency pursues an aggressive hiring target, and officials describe applicants as “athletically allergic,” suggesting the standard is meaningful and enforced [4] [5]. That enforcement matters because ICE training is shortened in some accounts and because physical readiness ties directly to duties described by ICE and DHS, such as field arrests and custodial operations [4] [1].
4. Gaps and limits in public documentation
Official ICE/USAJOBS materials repeatedly state a mandatory PFT/PAA, but they do not publish a single, detailed, publicly available numeric standard (for example, exact pushup or sit‑up counts, or target run times) in the cited sources provided here; the concrete pass/fail thresholds aren’t included in the job posting snippets or the ICE handbook excerpt available in the search results [1] [2] [3]. Therefore, exact numeric cutoffs or age/sex‑adjusted standards are not found in current reporting (not found in current reporting).
5. Practical takeaways for applicants and concerns reported by journalists
Applicants should expect to be screened by a pre‑employment fitness test and to participate in ongoing physical conditioning at the academy [1] [3]. Journalists covering large 2025 recruitment pushes advise training specifically for the one‑and‑a‑half‑mile run and the core exercises (pushups/situps), because those elements have been the most commonly failed in recent cohorts [4] [5]. At the same time, the reporting signals tensions: a rapid hiring timeline, shorter academy schedules, and high failure rates may create operational and training strains that reporters highlight [4].
6. Competing perspectives and possible motives in the coverage
News outlets emphasize that the run is the main hurdle and report high failure rates, which supports the view that ICE maintains meaningful physical standards [4] [5]. Government postings stress the requirement formally [1] [2]. Political actors and DHS communications linked to recruitment goals (for example, statements about changing age limits or expansion) may aim to broaden applicant pools while still insisting on fitness screening—this creates an implicit tension between rapid hiring and maintaining standards [6] [1]. Note: some DHS communications frame recruitment changes as politically driven policy priorities; those motives are visible in the department’s public messaging [6].
7. How to get definitive, current standards
For exact numeric standards, age/sex adjustments, and current PFT/PAA protocols, applicants should consult the full ICE/USAJOBS job announcement text and the ICE training or FLETC materials linked from the official postings, since the excerpts here confirm the requirement but do not list the precise pass/fail values [1] [2] [3]. Available sources do not mention specific numeric cutoffs in the provided search results (not found in current reporting).
If you want, I can pull exact language from a specific USAJOBS announcement or the full ICE handbook (if you paste those texts or allow me to fetch further indexed pages) to search for numeric standards and age/sex tables.