How do ICE workforce demographics compare to other federal law enforcement agencies like CBP, FBI, and Border Patrol?
Executive summary
ICE’s workforce has expanded rapidly since 2025, with agency statements and reporting describing a roughly 120% manpower increase driven by a concentrated recruitment campaign, placing ICE’s headcount in the tens of thousands and shifting the balance of interior immigration enforcement [1] [2] [3]. Comparing demographics across ICE, CBP (including Border Patrol) and the FBI is difficult because public reporting focuses more on size, mission and hiring surges than consistent, comparable breakdowns by race, ethnicity, gender, age or disability status; available sources show some partial statistics and clear differences in mission and recruitment that shape who the agencies hire [4] [5] [6].
1. Workforce size and recent hiring shocks: ICE expanded fast, altering simple comparisons
ICE told the public it hired more than 12,000 officers and agents during a single national campaign, a boost the department framed as a 120% increase in manpower that far outpaced prior norms and will reshape interior enforcement capacity [1] [2]. Independent reporting and government summaries place ICE’s total workforce in the “over 20,000” range in recent years, meaning the new hires are a material portion of the agency’s staffing and complicate apples‑to‑apples comparisons with CBP and the FBI unless using a fixed date [3] [2].
2. Mission differences drive demographic and occupational mixes
CBP and its Border Patrol component are oriented to border and port security, relying heavily on uniformed officers who operate at ports of entry and along front‑line patrols; ICE’s workforce is mission‑diverse, split among Enforcement and Removal Operations, Homeland Security Investigations, and support functions, leading to a mix of detention officers, agents, and investigators with different hiring profiles than CBP’s primarily border‑facing roles [4] [3]. The FBI, by contrast, is a Justice Department investigative agency with different occupational categories (special agents, intelligence analysts, professional staff) and recruiting pipelines, so any demographic differences reflect fundamentally different job families and hiring authorities; available sources emphasize these structural distinctions more than precise demographic parity numbers [3].
3. Partial demographic snapshots — what the studies and reports say (and don’t say)
Scholarly reporting cited in public sources offers isolated percentages but rarely presents a comprehensive, contemporaneous demographic table for each agency; one law‑school paper excerpts percentages—5.5%, 13%, and 19.6%—attached to USBP, ICE and CBP respectively, but the snippet does not define the metric (for example, whether those figures measure female representation, Hispanic/Latino share, or another subgroup), so that finding signals meaningful differences but cannot be taken as a complete demographic profile without the full study context [7]. ICE’s own recruitment messaging stresses equal‑opportunity hiring and outreach to diverse applicants, but agency PR is not a substitute for consistent, third‑party demographic tabulations [6].
4. Operational posture affects who gets hired and where they serve
The recent surge in ICE hiring is explicitly tied to interior enforcement priorities and congressional funding changes, and analysts such as the CBO predict that increases in ICE personnel will translate directly into more arrests — a projection that underscores how demographic composition will be shaped by mission‑driven recruitment rather than neutral labor market dynamics [8]. CBP and Border Patrol staffing and tactics—such as the 100‑mile operating zone and port operations—result in different on‑the‑ground profiles, which helps explain why CBP historically has had different representational metrics than ICE or the FBI [5] [9].
5. Conflicting narratives, transparency gaps and why comparisons remain tentative
Departmental press releases and agency FAQs highlight size, mission and recruitment wins [1] [6], while watchdog reporting documents enforcement impacts and personnel actions [10] [11]; however, neither set of sources supplies a standardized demographic matrix across ICE, CBP, Border Patrol and the FBI for a single recent year, so definitive statements about racial, ethnic, gender, or disability representation across agencies cannot be made strictly from the cited materials without additional data releases or FOIA disclosures [10] [3] [7].
6. Bottom line: meaningful differences exist but precise demographic gaps require better data
The agencies differ in size, function and recent hiring trajectories — ICE’s dramatic 2025–26 hiring surge changed its headcount and likely its internal composition in ways that are not yet fully documented in public demographic breakdowns, while CBP/Border Patrol and the FBI remain shaped by their distinct operational roles — but a credible, numerically precise comparison of race/ethnicity/gender across all four agencies cannot be completed from the available sources without clearer, standardized demographic reporting [1] [2] [3] [7].