How many people does ICE employ
Executive summary
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is currently staffed at roughly 21,700–22,000 positions, a figure reflected in the Department of Homeland Security’s FY2026 budget submission and matched by ICE’s own recruitment claims that pushed the agency to about 22,000 officers and agents after a large hiring surge in 2025 [1] [2] [3]. Public reporting and advocacy sources sometimes report different totals because some counts track authorized positions or “full‑time equivalents,” others count sworn officers and agents only, and still others conflate ICE with unrelated entities that share the acronym “ICE” [4] [5] [6].
1. The official budget number: roughly 21,786 FTEs and 21,808 positions
The clearest official line comes from DHS’s FY2026 congressional budget justification, which lists 21,808 authorized positions and 21,786 full‑time equivalents (FTE) for ICE — the accounting the department uses to justify funding and staffing levels to Congress [1]. Those figures represent the agency’s formal workforce capacity for 2026 and are the most reliable baseline for “how many people ICE employs” as measured for budget and personnel planning [1].
2. ICE’s recruitment narrative: a jump to about 22,000 officers and agents
In public statements and press releases, ICE and DHS trumpet a dramatic recruitment surge that “more than doubled” some parts of the workforce by adding roughly 12,000 officers and agents in under a year, taking certain operational components from about 10,000 to roughly 22,000 personnel on the ground [2] [3] [7]. Government Executive and news outlets have reported this same hiring surge and the agency’s claim of a 120% increase, language that mirrors DHS/ICE messaging [8] [7].
3. Different counts mean different answers — agents vs. full workforce vs. components
ICE is not monolithic: it includes Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, and numerous mission‑support and contractor roles, and ICE’s public “who we are” page lists component headcounts such as HSI’s workforce of more than 8,700 employees [5]. Budget FTEs, ICE’s count of sworn officers and agents, and component staffing numbers therefore produce different totals depending on whether contractors and support staff are included [5] [1].
4. Media repeat the agency’s figures and watchdogs raise caveats
National and local outlets repeated the DHS/ICE recruitment figures — for example NBC and Military.com reported more than 12,000 hires and the 220,000 applications ICE said it received — but oversight voices and Capitol Hill officials flagged training and readiness concerns as the agency expanded rapidly [9] [10]. That tension highlights an implicit agenda in the agency’s messaging: demonstrating operational reach to justify funding while critics emphasize whether speed undercuts training and oversight [8] [10].
5. Beware acronym confusion and secondary sources
Several widely seen sources are unrelated to the federal agency — Intercontinental Exchange (ticker ICE) reports roughly 12,920 corporate employees in 2024 and appears in search results that can be mistaken for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, underscoring how easily counts get conflated when shorthand like “ICE employs X people” circulates without attribution [6] [11] [12]. Secondary aggregators and crowd‑edited pages such as Wikipedia or employment sites often post different, sometimes outdated figures [13] [14], so best practice is to favor DHS/ICE budget and agency releases for the authoritative staffing number [1] [3].
6. Bottom line
The most authoritative, contemporaneous government figures put ICE’s authorized positions and FTE at about 21,800 (21,808 positions; 21,786 FTE) for FY2026, and ICE’s public recruitment tally and press statements place the fielded officers and agents at roughly 22,000 after the 2025 surge — a useful working answer is that the agency operates at roughly 21,700–22,000 personnel, with variation depending on whether contractors or specific component counts are included [1] [2] [3].