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Fact check: What benefits do ICE agents receive during a shutdown, aside from salary?
Executive Summary
During the 2025 government shutdown, most ICE agents have continued to perform duties and have been treated as essential/excepted employees, which in practice has meant continued work and expectations of pay and benefits, though experiences vary across offices and time [1] [2] [3]. Agency-level funding measures and routine federal personnel rules mean core benefits—health insurance, life insurance, retirement—generally persist during a lapse in appropriations, but pay timing, morale, and operational impacts differ by classification and local practice [4] [2] [5].
1. Why ICE mostly kept working — the legal and practical explanation that matters to pay and benefits
Federal personnel rules classify certain roles as excepted or exempt, which requires employees to keep working during a lapse because their duties protect life or property; ICE’s law-enforcement mission placed most agents in that group, and agencies reported retaining roughly 96% of staff to continue deportations and enforcement even during the shutdown [1] [2]. This classification means agencies can obligate work and expect eventual backpay for excepted employees, while furloughed staff do not work and are later compensated; the legal framework explains why ICE operations continued even as routine administrative processing slowed [2] [1].
2. What “benefits” continue — the standard federal package that does not disappear with a shutdown
ICE employees remain enrolled in health insurance, life insurance, and retirement plans during a shutdown because those benefits are administered outside the immediate appropriations for day-to-day operations; guidance indicates those coverages continue, though some administrative processing (for example, retirement applications) can be delayed [4] [2]. Beyond statutory benefits, ICE employees also have access to employee assistance programs, peer support, suicide prevention, and worklife resources, which are departmental programs that in practice remain available even amid funding disruptions [4].
3. Why pay timing and morale diverge — reports from the field show a mixed reality
National-level rules promise backpay for excepted employees, but local experiences diverge: some agents reported being paid as expected, while others in specific offices described not receiving pay during the shutdown, producing considerable stress and reduced morale among federal workers [1] [3]. Retired agents recalling prior shutdowns described the “disheartening” experience of working without immediate pay, and contemporary reporting notes that morale was already strained by prior cuts and uncertainty, which amplifies the real-world gap between policy and employee experience [5] [3].
4. How emergency or ad hoc funding can alter the picture — the role of bills and agency allocations
Legislative actions such as appropriation riders or omnibus measures can allocate funds specifically to border and immigration agencies, and one account notes the One Big Beautiful Bill Act included funding for ICE and CBP to minimize shutdown impacts on operations [1]. When Congress or the executive uses targeted funding, ICE can continue hiring, training, and deployment with fewer interruptions; policy decisions thus materially affect whether staff experience administrative friction or uninterrupted operations, making political choices central to how benefits and pay are actually delivered [1].
5. The nuance between “paid” and “paid on time” — a practical distinction that mattered to agents
Administrative guidance and law make a distinction between the entitlement to pay (which excepted employees generally have) and the practical reality of on-time disbursement. Even when backpay is guaranteed, delayed payroll processing or interim cashflow issues can leave individual agents temporarily unpaid, producing financial strain despite formal protections [2] [3]. This distinction explains why statements that “ICE agents will be paid” coexist with frontline reports of colleagues working without immediate compensation [1] [3].
6. What’s omitted or uncertain in public accounts — gaps readers should notice
Available reporting tends to emphasize high-level retention percentages and statutory benefits, but it often omits granular data on how many agents were temporarily unpaid, by which offices, and for how long, as well as the administrative backlogs for benefit processing that can persist after a shutdown ends [1] [3] [5]. These omissions matter because they shape whether formal protections translate into lived security for employees; without local payroll audits and timelines, public statements can overstate the immediacy of protections [2].
7. Bottom line for readers: what benefits actually mean for agents during a shutdown
Formally, ICE agents keep core benefits (health, life, retirement) and most continue working under excepted status with entitlement to pay, while legislative funding can further shield operations; practically, pay timing and morale vary by locality, and prior shutdown experience shows real financial and emotional costs even when benefits legally continue [4] [2] [5] [1]. Readers should interpret blanket statements about uninterrupted compensation cautiously and look for local payroll outcomes and legislative developments to see how protections materialize.