How do ICE ERO pay and benefits (retirement, hazard pay, overtime) compare to state or local deportation/removal officer salaries in 2025?
Executive summary
In 2025, federal ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) deportation officers advertise base pay that generally runs from roughly $49,739 to $89,528 and can average around $68,700 in market aggregators, with substantial recruitment bonuses and advertised overtime and locality pay available [1] [2] [3]. ICE emphasizes a broad federal benefits package — including retirement plans and the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) — and recent recruitment incentives (signing/retention bonuses and multi-year small bonuses), but publicly available reporting does not offer a comprehensive, apples-to-apples national accounting of how those total compensation packages compare to the patchwork of state and local deportation or removal officer pay in 2025 [4] [5] [6] [2].
1. What federal ICE pay looks like on paper
ICE’s hiring notices and coverage describe deportation officer base pay advertised on USAJobs and reported by major outlets as roughly $49,739–$89,528 depending on grade, location and experience, and ICE recruitment pages and vacancy postings promise competitive salaries plus signing and retention bonuses of up to $50,000 for entry-level hires [1] [2] [5]. Private salary aggregators found higher median estimates—ZipRecruiter’s November 2025 snapshot put the average annual pay near $68,725 but showed wide geographic and percentile-driven dispersion, with some officers reporting six-figure total pay after locality and overtime [3]. ICE and DHS statements to press outlets also note temporary or targeted bonuses (including reported annual bonuses to some agents under recent funding changes) that can materially lift early-career earnings [2] [7].
2. Federal benefits and retirement: defined federal advantages
As a federal employer, ICE offers the standard federal benefits package — health, dental, vision, life and long-term care, plus participation in federal retirement systems and the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), which functions like a 401(k) for federal employees — and official ICE career material emphasizes retirement plans and paid federal holidays and leave [4] [8]. Those federal retirement arrangements typically provide greater portability and predictable vesting rules versus many municipal systems, a point underscored repeatedly in ICE recruitment copy [4]; however, precise dollar-value comparisons to specific state or local pension plans are not included in the cited reporting, so direct numerical comparisons are not available from these sources [4] [6].
3. Overtime, hazard pay and locality adjustments at ICE
ICE publicly notes that pay can be increased through overtime and location-dependent additions, and recent reporting about agency funding and hiring suggests overtime and targeted bonuses have been part of recruitment and retention strategies [2] [1]. News accounts describe agency-wide bonus programs tied to expanded funding, and USAJobs postings and ICE FAQs reference that overtime, detail pay, and locality pay are mechanisms for increasing total compensation [2] [6] [5]. Specific national-level formulas for hazard pay or how often overtime converts into sustained higher annual pay are not detailed in the provided sources, leaving the frequency and magnitude of those additions ambiguous in this reporting [2] [6].
4. State and local deportation/removal officer pay: patchwork and reporting gaps
The provided reporting does not include systematic, sourced national data for state or local deportation- or removal-equivalent officers to permit a direct, fully sourced comparison to ICE’s federal package; state and local pay scales are typically set by individual agencies and municipal budgets and are not summarized in these sources (no source). Without jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction data in the materials provided, one cannot reliably assert whether a given state or local removal officer will earn more or less than an ICE ERO officer — qualitative factors (local cost of living, union contracts, differing pension formulas) matter and are outside the scope of these reports (no source).
5. Tradeoffs, employer risk profiles and political context
Beyond base pay and benefits, recruitment incentives and high-profile funding decisions have political drivers: reporting highlights that large signing bonuses and expanded hiring pushes were tied to federal policy priorities and administration decisions, which can skew advertised compensation upward during recruitment surges but may not reflect long-term, fixed pay increases [7] [1] [2]. Anonymous employee reviews and labor-market aggregators also flag cultural, operational and workload differences that affect perceived value of compensation — Glassdoor reviews describe administrative burdens and workplace culture that factor into retention even when pay appears competitive on paper [9].
6. Bottom line
Based on the reporting available, ICE ERO deportation officers in 2025 generally receive federally defined retirement benefits, TSP access, and advertised base pay often between roughly $50k and $90k with supplemental overtime, locality pay and up to $50k signing/retention bonuses that can raise early-career earnings; however, a complete, sourced comparison to state and local removal officer compensation cannot be drawn from the supplied sources because comparable, jurisdictional salary and benefit data for state/local roles are not provided in the materials reviewed [1] [5] [4] [3] [2] [6]. Readers should treat headline federal recruitment incentives as context-specific and seek local agency contracts or municipal pay tables for any precise crosswalk to state or local equivalents.