Percentage of Ice agents that are white
Executive summary
There is no clear, authoritative figure in the provided reporting that states the current percentage of ICE agents who are white; the sources include recruitment announcements, general ICE statistics portals and third‑party demographic estimates, but none publish a direct, up‑to‑date racial breakdown of ICE employees that allows a definitive percentage to be reported from this dataset [1] [2] [3]. One frequently cited claim in commentary — that roughly 30 percent of ICE agents are Latino — appears in a 2020 Latino Rebels report but is not corroborated here by an official ICE or DHS demographic table in the documents supplied [4].
1. What the sources actually provide about ICE demographics
ICE’s public statistics and Enforcement and Removal Operations pages describe operational roles, arrest totals and program responsibilities but do not supply a simple “percent white” workforce statistic in the excerpts provided; the ICE statistics landing page focuses on arrests, operations and functions rather than an employee racial breakdown [1]. The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS) hosts immigration and enforcement data tables and dashboards and is the logical place DHS would publish workforce demographic tables, but the OHSS pages presented are descriptions of datasets rather than a published, explicit racial composition figure for ICE staff in the provided snippets [2] [5].
2. Third‑party estimates and historical claims: useful signals, not proof
Commentary and third‑party sites offer estimates that hint at diversity patterns inside immigration enforcement: Latino Rebels reported “nearly 30 percent” of ICE agents identifying as Latino and offered an estimated 50 percent Latino presence among Border Patrol officers as context for a sociological piece, but that is an independent outlet’s reporting and not an official DHS or ICE roster-based statistic displayed in these sources [4]. Employment‑data aggregators such as Zippia compile profiles and can produce demographic summaries from large databases — useful for directionally understanding diversity at ICE — but those are estimates derived from public profiles and are not presented here as an authoritative DHS breakdown [3].
3. Recent hiring surges complicate any static percentage
Large, rapid hiring drives described in the supplied reporting make any past percentage obsolete unless updated workforce demographics are published concurrently: a DHS press notice (in the material provided) claims ICE hired more than 12,000 officers and agents in a single recruitment surge, framed as a 120% workforce increase, which would materially change any racial composition measured before that campaign unless DHS published a new demographic snapshot to match [6]. Reporting on ICE’s planned “wartime recruitment” and targeted messaging to specific demographic cohorts signals an institutional recruitment strategy that could shift future composition, but the Guardian and DHS snippets do not include a post‑hire racial breakdown [7].
4. Why a direct answer isn’t supported by these documents
None of the supplied sources contain a single, explicit statement of “X percent of ICE agents are white”; the official ICE and DHS pages in the collection emphasize operational statistics and recruitment activity rather than an explicit current racial composition table accessible in the provided excerpts [1] [2]. Where independent outlets give percentages, those figures are not traceable to an ICE or DHS table within these search results and should therefore be treated as supplemental reporting, not primary confirmation [4] [3].
5. How to get a definitive figure and what to watch for
An authoritative answer requires either a DHS/ICE workforce demographic report or an OHSS/DHS table that explicitly lists racial categories for ICE employees; those are the places to check next and appear to be the institutional sources that would publish such a breakdown [2] [5]. Given the large hiring drives referenced, any percentage from before 2025–2026 could be outdated, so the most reliable route is to pull the latest ICE workforce demographics via DHS press releases, the OHSS public data portal, or ICE’s official fact sheets rather than extrapolating from third‑party estimates [1] [6].