What are the specific ICE physical fitness standards and how do they vary by role?
Executive summary
ICE requires pre‑employment physical fitness testing for many law‑enforcement roles and applies different rules and enforcement practices depending on the hiring pathway; the commonly reported battery for deportation officers and HSI Special Agent selectees is three events—push‑ups, sit‑ups, and a timed 1.5‑mile run—with failure of any event constituting failure of the whole PFT [1] [2]. Reporting and internal emails also show variation in who must actually perform the test (new recruits versus prior‑service hires and retirees) and how strictly numerical cutoffs are enforced in practice [3] [4].
1. What the official ICE materials require for HSI/Special Agent candidates
ICE’s HSI guidance and career pages make clear that Special Agent selectees must take and pass a pre‑employment Physical Fitness Test (PFT) before entering on duty and again to graduate the academy, and that the test’s purpose is to predict ability to meet academy and job physical demands; failing to meet the minimum on any event fails the entire PFT and unsuccessful candidates get one retest within 45 days before removal from the hiring process [1].
2. The three‑event battery reported across ICE materials and press
The PFT used in selection is consistently described as including push‑ups, sit‑ups, and a timed 1.5‑mile run in ICE materials and contemporary reporting, and HSI specifically recommends candidates train to those standards before testing [1] [5]. Detailed numeric thresholds widely cited in reporting for frontline deportation‑officer classes are 15 push‑ups, 32 sit‑ups, and a 1.5‑mile run in 14 minutes; those figures appear in press summaries of internal agency data and news reporting rather than as a single published ICE numeric table in the provided documents [6] [5].
3. How standards vary by hiring pathway and role
Internal reporting and recent press indicate three candidate pools: brand‑new recruits with no prior law‑enforcement experience who must complete the PFT, current law‑enforcement officers and recently retired ICE officers who—according to The Atlantic reporting—have been allowed to “self‑certify” without live testing, and prior‑service hires who in DHS statements are said to undergo “streamlined validation” but remain subject to medical and fitness checks [3] [4]. That discrepancy between independent reporting and DHS public statements is a central tension: journalists found that new recruits bore the brunt of the live PFT, while the agency says prior service hires still meet fitness standards through validation [3] [4].
4. Consequences and operational impacts tied to the PFT
ICE documents and reporting show the PFT is a gatekeeper: selectees who fail the PFT are removed from that hiring sequence unless they pass a retest, and widespread failures among new classes have slowed recruitment and prompted field‑level screening adjustments—ICE offices have been directed to run preliminary fitness exams and consider administrative placements for candidates who misrepresented fitness [2] [3]. DHS publicly disputed some media figures, saying the cited failure rates reflected a subset of candidates and emphasizing that standards were not being lowered, only that fitness checks were being moved earlier [4].
5. Older guidance, role‑specific handbooks, and gaps in public detail
ICE maintains role‑specific handbooks and decades‑old revised PFT documents (for example 2007 revisions and HSI handbooks) that outline test administration and intent, but the exact, up‑to‑date numeric standards for every ICE sub‑role are not consolidated in the provided sources; the HSI career page and the FOIA handbook make clear the existence of job‑related standards and repeated testing, while media reporting supplies the specific numeric thresholds being used in many recent academy classes [7] [2] [1] [5]. Where reporting and agency statements diverge—particularly over exemption or “self‑certify” practices for prior officers—those differences are documented in the sources rather than reconciled [3] [4].
6. Bottom line and reporting caveats
The practical standard candidates are being measured against in recent reporting is 15 push‑ups, 32 sit‑ups, and a 1.5‑mile run in 14 minutes, with failure of any event ending the PFT and one retest allowed; however, who must take that test and whether some hires are validated instead of tested differs by hiring pathway and is disputed between investigative reporting and DHS statements, and the official ICE career and HSI files emphasize the general events and pass/fail retest rules without publishing a single definitive public table for every ICE role in the provided documents [6] [5] [1] [3] [4].