What regions or field offices are priority placements for newly trained ICE agents this year?
Executive summary
Newly trained ICE agents this year are being prioritized for placement in several major metropolitan field offices—explicitly New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago and Boston—alongside a heavy recruitment push for the New Orleans field office that oversees multiple detention facilities, while thousands more have been deployed “nationwide” to fill ERO and HSI billets as DHS describes [1] [2]. Reporting and agency material also show a broader deployment strategy that sends many new hires into support roles, detention centers, and established field offices across the country rather than exclusively to the headline cities [3] [4].
1. Priority cities named in ICE’s recruitment plan
ICE’s internal recruitment documents and reporting name New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago and Boston as priority locations for recruitment, reflecting an explicit effort to source applicants in those metropolitan areas where the agency has been active and faced public pushback [1].
2. New Orleans as a singular local target tied to detention capacity
The New Orleans field office is singled out in reporting as the largest single local recruiting target—slated to recruit up to 1,000 removal officers—because it oversees nine detention facilities in Louisiana and therefore presents concentrated operational demand [1].
3. Nationwide surge and rapid deployments beyond headline offices
DHS and ICE statements emphasize that thousands of new officers have already been deployed nationwide to support arrests, investigations and removals, indicating the agency is placing recruits wherever operational need and detention capacity demand it, not only in the cities named in recruitment materials [2] [5].
4. Placement into field versus support roles — the reality on the ground
Contemporaneous reporting and first‑hand accounts describe that many new hires start in support or office positions—such as Criminal Alien Program offices or administrative roles—before being funneled into street‑level ERO assignments, meaning “placement” may initially be to local field offices’ support desks rather than immediate street teams [3].
5. The role of HSI and ERO infrastructure in placement decisions
ICE comprises Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), with both maintaining extensive domestic office networks and detention links; official ICE personnel pages and career outlines show placements commonly occur across dozens of field locations and detention sites tied to those divisions [4] [6].
6. Training, tempo and how that shapes placements
The speed of the hiring surge — more than 12,000 new hires in under a year and claims of a 120% manpower increase — together with shortened academy timelines, has allowed ICE to push officers into the field faster than in past cycles, which in turn pressures the agency to allocate newly trained staff to offices where the operational tempo and staffing gaps are largest [2] [7] [8].
7. Political and oversight context that colors placement priorities
The recruitment targeting of big‑city offices has political implications—those cities have seen intense ICE activity and large anti‑deportation protests—and the same campaign has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers and activists concerned about training standards and community relations, a factor likely to affect both where recruits are placed and how those placements are publicly framed [1] [5] [9].
8. Limits of available public reporting and unanswered specifics
ICE and DHS publicly confirm widespread deployment and name priority recruitment locations, but they have not published a definitive, line‑by‑line placement roster for 2026 or set a public hiring target for the year, so precise counts of how many new agents are assigned to each specific field office remain unavailable in the sources reviewed [7] [2].