What specific GS grades and pay tables did ICE USAJOBS listings show for Deportation Officer positions in 2025 by city?
Executive summary
ICE’s 2025 USAJOBS listings for Deportation Officer roles primarily used the federal General Schedule (GS) or ICE’s GL-equivalent grades, showing entry-level GL-5 and GL-7 career-ladder postings for Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) with higher supervisory vacancies at GS-12 and GS-14 in separate announcements; one consolidated posting listed a salary band of $51,632–$84,277 that maps to GL‑5 through GL‑7 before locality or law‑enforcement differentials [1] [2] [3] [4]. The public job pages and USAJOBS emphasize that base pay is set by grade and adjusted by duty‑location locality pay and, where applicable, law‑enforcement pay additives—however, the provided reporting does not include a city-by-city breakdown of the locality pay tables for 2025 [5] [6] [4].
1. How ICE framed grades for Deportation Officer listings in 2025
ICE’s own vacancy announcements treated Deportation Officer positions as GL/GS‑graded roles, with qualifications and minimum years of experience stated for GL‑5 and GL‑7 levels in the ERO announcement—applicants qualified for GL‑5 with three years of general experience (one at least at GS‑4 equivalent) and for GL‑7 with one year of specialized experience equivalent to GS‑5 duties [1]. Separate or higher‑level hiring actions used standard GS numbering: supervisory or specialized positions were posted at GS‑12 and GS‑14 grades in other ICE USAJOBS listings, reflecting promotion ladders and distinct hiring streams [2] [3]. ICE’s career FAQ reiterates that deportation officers have promotion potential into GS‑12 and up through GS‑15 and SES, underscoring that multiple grade levels are connected to career progression rather than a single fixed salary for the title [7].
2. What pay figures the job postings themselves displayed
At least one third‑party compilation of USAJOBS postings cited a specific pay band for a Deportation Officer announcement in the 2025–2026 cycle: $51,632 to $84,277, corresponding to GL‑5 through GL‑7 base ranges before locality and potential law‑enforcement add‑ons [4]. ICE’s public career page repeats the principle that salary corresponds to grade as listed on USAJOBS, directing candidates to posted vacancy announcements for the quoted salary for each grade [8]. The postings and explanatory pages therefore present base pay by grade while pointing applicants toward USAJOBS and OPM tables for precise locality‑adjusted numbers [8] [5].
3. Locality pay, LEAP and other adjustments that affect city‑level pay
ICE and USAJOBS material repeatedly point out that most federal jobs use the GS pay scale and that duty location determines locality adjustments; ICE listings instruct applicants to check OPM/USAJOBS pay tables to see how a grade converts to wages in a particular city [5] [6]. Independent reporting summarized that actual ICE officer take‑home can vary because locality pay and possible law‑enforcement special pay (LEAP or other add‑ons) can inflate totals—this reporting specifically advised checking OPM special rate tables and whether a position qualifies for a 25% LEAP investigator differential, though LEAP eligibility depends on job series and announcement language, not universally applied to all Deportation Officer posts [4]. The sources provided do not publish a city-by-city matrix for 2025 within the supplied material, so precise city pay tables cannot be extracted from these documents alone [5] [6].
4. Where reporting and postings diverge, and the limits of available public data
Public ICE vacancy pages and USAJOBS give grade and base pay ranges and instruct applicants to reference OPM locality tables, but the assembled reporting and archived postings in this dataset stop short of producing a consolidated, city‑by‑city 2025 pay table for Deportation Officer roles; the only explicit numeric band found in the available reporting was the $51,632–$84,277 range attributed to GL‑5 through GL‑7 in one posting summary [4] [8]. Therefore, a definitive city‑level list for 2025 —e.g., Seattle: $X; Atlanta: $Y—cannot be produced from the provided sources; constructing that requires pulling the specific 2025 OPM locality tables and matching them to each USAJOBS vacancy’s grade and step, information ICE and USAJOBS direct applicants to consult [5] [6] [8].