How many ICE agents were employed at the start of 2024 and 2023 compared to 2025?

1. What the 2025 counts show — the official surge and totals

Multiple DHS and media accounts describe an unprecedented recruitment campaign that added roughly 11,700–12,000 officers, agents and mission support staff in under a year and resulted in ICE employing "more than 22,000" officers and agents by late 2025, a figure repeated in DHS and Government Executive coverage ^{[2] [3] [1]}. DHS’s summary framed the outcome as a roughly 120% manpower increase and said the campaign “shattered expectations,” while ICE’s own announcement quantified hires at 11,751 and DHS messaging rounded the surge to more than 12,000 hires ^{[2] [3] [4]}.

2. What the sources say about the baseline before the surge

Reporting repeatedly frames the 2025 numbers as a growth from a much smaller force: Government Executive states the agency grew to 22,000 “up from 10,000 when Trump took office last year,” a formulation that the articles use to contrast pre-surge and post-surge headcounts ^[1]. DHS messaging and federal press coverage emphasize that roughly a dozen thousand new hires were added in less than a year, which implies a pre-hire workforce in the neighborhood of 10,000 before the recruitment campaign began ^{[2] [4]}.

3. Conflicting figures and data gaps for 2024 and 2023

None of the provided sources supplies a clear, authoritative tally dated January 1, 2024 or January 1, 2023; the narrative is centered on the 2025 hiring campaign and the resulting total ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Secondary or partisan outlets and law firms publish divergent snapshots — for example, one legal blog cites roughly 7,500 special agents in 2025, a figure that may reflect only certain categories (special agents) rather than the broader “officers and agents” count DHS reports ^[5]. The public releases conflate hires, offers, and “officers and agents” totals in ways that make retroactive reconstruction of exact start-of-year counts for 2024 and 2023 unreliable from these documents alone ^{[2] [3] [6]}.

4. Reasonable inference and its limits — answering the core question

Using only the supplied reporting: by the end of the recruitment effort in 2025 ICE’s total officers and agents exceeded 22,000 ^{[1] [2]}. That same reporting states roughly 11,700–12,000 personnel were newly hired in under a year, which implies a pre-campaign workforce on the order of ~10,000 ^{[2] [3]}. However, the sources do not explicitly give confirmed counts for “the start of 2024” or “the start of 2023,” so any precise numbers for those dates would be an extrapolation beyond what the provided material documents — the only explicit baseline cited in the coverage is the roughly 10,000 figure described as the agency’s size prior to the 2025 surge ^[1].

5. Competing narratives and why they matter

DHS and ICE promote the scale and success of hiring ^{[2] [3]}, while other outlets and analysts raise questions about which job categories are being counted, training compressions, attrition and physical-fitness failure rates — all factors that complicate a headcount comparison across years ^{[7] [5]}. The materials point to political and operational agendas: DHS/ICE announcements emphasize achievements and scale ^{[2] [3]}, Government Executive frames the change as dramatic growth ^[1], and outside commentators highlight narrower metrics or concerns, producing divergent snapshots that should caution readers against single-number certainty for earlier years ^{[7] [5]}.

Conclusion (direct answer to the question)

Based on the provided reporting, ICE employed more than 22,000 officers and agents by the end of its 2025 recruitment surge ^{[1] [2]}. The same reporting documents roughly 11,700–12,000 hires that produced that total and indicates a pre-surge baseline of about 10,000, but it does not provide an authoritative, dated headcount specifically for January 1, 2024 or January 1, 2023; therefore precise start-of-year figures for those dates cannot be confirmed from these sources alone ^{[1] [2] [3] [5]}.