ICE Tried to Pay Agents Cash Bonuses to Speed Up Deportations—Then Pulled the Plug Within Hours
ICE briefly offered cash bonuses for fast deportations, then canceled—highlighting intense pressure to meet Trump’s aggressive targets.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency briefly offered cash bonuses to agents who deported immigrants quickly but canceled the program less than four hours later.
On Tuesday morning, ICE sent an internal memo promising agents $200 bonuses for deportations within seven days and $100 for those within two weeks, aiming to clear backlogs and reduce detention costs. However, the agency abruptly withdrew the incentive hours after announcing it, with DHS confirming no such policy was ever officially authorized.
This fleeting bonus scheme highlights the intense pressure ICE faces under President Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda, fueled by a tripling of ICE’s budget to $28 billion and a drive to hire thousands of new agents. Stephen Miller, Trump’s top immigration adviser, has openly framed the effort as a patriotic cause, even offering $50k signing bonuses to new hires.
Critics warn that incentivizing fast deportations risks sacrificing immigrants’ due process rights. “You can’t incentivize government agents to short-circuit people’s procedural rights,” said former homeland security official Scott Shuchart. Still, deportations have surged, with ICE averaging nearly 1,300 daily removals in late July, up from fewer than 800 per day during the Biden era.
This episode, brief though it was, reveals how far ICE is willing to go—and how fast—to meet Trump’s deportation goals, even if it means pushing unvetted policies out the door and pulling them back under fire.
Source: New York Times