What percentage of Ice agents are some type of law enforcement or used to be.

1. What the agency says about recruits’ backgrounds

ICE’s own hiring materials and career FAQs list multiple training equivalencies that presume prior law‑enforcement credentials—Border Patrol Academy graduates, former federal officers, and completion of various law‑enforcement training pipelines are explicitly recognized routes into ICE roles—signalling that the agency values and often hires people with policing or military experience ^{[1] [4]}.

2. The oft‑quoted “85%” figure and what it actually refers to

Media reporting cites an ICE/DHS expectation that as many as 85% of new recruits would have prior law‑enforcement experience, a figure used to explain why some academy failure rates appeared concentrated among non‑traditional applicants; reporting frames that number as an agency expectation for incoming classes rather than an audited headcount of the entire workforce ^[2].

3. Evidence that many recruits historically come from policing or the military

Career guides, law‑school commentary and recruiting materials repeatedly describe former police officers and military veterans as “highly qualified” and common among ICE candidates, and the agency’s pathway descriptions (special agent programs, ERO equivalency programs, and FLETC/Border Patrol training) further show institutional preference and structural channels for hiring from law enforcement ranks ^{[5] [6] [7] [4]}.

4. Recent hiring sprees that lowered the prior‑experience bar

Independent reporting and legal commentary document that, during rapid expansion efforts, ICE publicly recruited people with little or no prior law‑enforcement experience, offering short academy tracks and large signing bonuses and explicitly advertising entry for candidates without policing or military backgrounds—meaning the share of agents with prior law‑enforcement experience is likely in flux and context‑dependent ^{[3] [8]}.

5. Training and screening differences matter for interpreting “prior law enforcement”

Several sources note that applicants with prior law‑enforcement experience may bypass portions of basic programs and that recruits without such backgrounds undertake supplemental instruction (for example, differing FLETC sequences or an eight‑week course); this complicates any simple tally because counting “agents with law‑enforcement backgrounds” can depend on whether one treats recent recruits, legacy hires, or current active roster as the denominator ^{[1] [8] [9]}.

6. What trustworthy data is missing and why that matters

None of the provided sources gives a contemporaneous, agency‑verified percentage of all ICE employees who previously served in law enforcement; the best available figures are expectations or characterizations of cohorts (e.g., the 85% expectation for recruits), not audited workforce snapshots—therefore any definitive numerical claim about the whole ICE workforce would be unsupported by the supplied reporting ^{[2] [8]}.

7. Bottom line — a qualified answer

Based on ICE’s own descriptions of training pipelines and multiple media reports that cite an agency expectation that many new hires will come from policing backgrounds, it is reasonable to conclude that historically a large portion of recruits and many incumbent agents have law‑enforcement or military experience; however, recent rapid hiring drives explicitly recruited many without prior policing, and no source here provides a verified overall percentage of current ICE agents with prior law‑enforcement service, so a precise figure cannot be stated from the supplied material ^{[1] [2] [3] [8]}.