What % of ICE is non-white?
Executive summary
Available public reporting does not provide a single, authoritative, recent figure for the percent of ICE employees who are non‑white; however, contemporary estimates and component breakouts suggest that roughly four in ten ICE personnel are non‑white, with important uncertainty and conflicting data across sources [1] [2] [3].
1. Why the question is messier than it looks
The agencies and datasets that could answer “what percent of ICE is non‑white” publish different slices and vintages of data: ICE and DHS sometimes release EEO‑1 category breakouts but those are not consistently aggregated in the sources provided here [4], third‑party recruiters/aggregators produce estimates using public profiles [5] [1], and news or academic accounts rely on older Freedom of Information disclosures or selective internal records [2] [6], so any headline percentage must be treated as an estimate rather than a definitive census.
2. What the available numbers say if one uses immigration‑officer proxies
A Zippia breakdown for “immigration officers” reports white as the largest single ethnic group at 59.6 percent, which implies a non‑white share of roughly 40.4 percent for that occupational category [1]; if ICE’s overall workforce has a similar ethnic composition to that occupational sample, that would place ICE’s non‑white share near 40 percent, though Zippia’s methodology is an estimate drawn from profile databases rather than ICE’s official EEO filings [5] [1].
3. What older internal disclosures and reporting indicate about Latinx representation
Reporting based on a 2017 Univision disclosure and subsequent coverage by Latino Rebels puts Latino representation among ICE agents near 30 percent [2], and academic reporting emphasizes that Latinx employees are overrepresented in certain DHS law‑enforcement components relative to federal averages [6]; those figures mean non‑white representation is at least that large, but they are not a full accounting of Black, Asian, Native American, multiracial, or other groups, nor do they reflect hiring changes since 2017 [2] [6].
4. Broader DHS context and the limits of extrapolation
DHS‑level reporting in the FY2018 inclusive diversity annual report highlighted DHS’s relatively high Hispanic share—22 percent—versus the federal workforce overall, and noted that large law‑enforcement components (TSA, CBP, ICE, USCIS) typically have above‑average Hispanic representation [3]; this supports the view that ICE’s non‑white share is meaningfully above some federal averages, but DHS‑wide percentages cannot be substituted for component‑specific EEO‑1 tables without qualification [3].
5. Conflicting signals and why precise arithmetic is risky
Some commentary and scholarly work emphasize Latino overrepresentation in ICE and DHS law enforcement [6], while other reporting and aggregators yield different white/non‑white splits [1] [2]. ICE states it publishes EEO‑1 submissions and related metrics [4], which would be the authoritative source—yet those specific ICE EEO numbers are not reproduced in the supplied materials, so reconciling claims would require consulting ICE’s actual EEO‑1 filing or an updated DHS component report [4].
6. Bottom line estimate and recommended next step
Based on the supplied sources, a defensible estimate is that roughly 40 percent of ICE personnel are non‑white (derived from a 59.6 percent white share for “immigration officers” from Zippia), with at least ~30 percent Latino representation reported in older internal disclosures, implying significant non‑white presence but also real uncertainty across sources and years [1] [2]. To move from estimate to certainty requires the most recent ICE EEO‑1 or DHS component diversity report (ICE states it publishes EEO‑1 data) rather than third‑party extrapolations [4].