CBP is offering $20,000 signing bonuses for hard‑to‑fill posts, while ICE has authorized $10,000 retention allowances that count toward retirement credit. Image: Matt Gush / Shutterstock.com
DHS’s effort to hire 4,500 immigration enforcement personnel across Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and related units stands in sharp contrast to federal workforce reductions of around 12 percent this year – made all the more stark as OMB threatens another wave of RIFs if funding lapses next week.
The expansion—one of the largest in DHS history—is backed by $170.7 billion in new enforcement funding, the removal of ICE’s maximum entry‑age limit and signing bonuses of up to $20,000 for hard‑to‑fill border posts.
Branded as the “Defend the Homeland” campaign, the push at DHS is reinforced by a presidential memorandum that federalized National Guard units and expanded the Department of Health and Human Services’ role in detainee care.
“Thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill, we now have funding to recruit and hire Americans who want to patriotically serve their country and protect American communities,” Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said, crediting recent appropriations wins.
DHS has paired its hiring goals with retention benchmarks, setting targets for how many of those new agents it expects to keep once they reach the field:
Each new position is tied to a specific funding stream: a signing bonus drawn from reconciliation dollars, a retention allowance authorized in appropriations or contingency funds triggered by migrant encounters. The surge in personnel is inseparable from the surge in spending, and central to the surge is how Congress and DHS are moving billions to make those numbers possible.
That link between hiring and dollars comes as Congress struggles to finalize the fiscal 2026 budget. The House has passed a short‑term continuing resolution to extend fiscal 2025 funding through Nov. 21, but the measure has stalled in the Senate, leaving DHS and other agencies under the threat of a shutdown at the end of September.
While stopgap funding remains uncertain, DHS is already drawing on reconciliation dollars. The tax and spending bill signed July 4 2025 —branded the One Big Beautiful Bill—embedded $2 billion for CBP retention and signing bonuses, $858 million for ICE incentives and billions more in flexible recruitment and training funds. Unlike traditional appropriations, reconciliation language carried few restrictions, giving DHS unusual latitude to reprogram money across accounts.
But while DHS enjoys unusual latitude to reprogram money, OMB has directed other agencies to prepare RIF notices if Congress fails to pass a new spending bill. Several agencies have already begun warning employees of potential furloughs or layoffs.
That funding flexibility now shifts the challenge from securing dollars to managing how they are spent.
Component‑level allocations illustrate the scale:
On top of that, DHS can tap the Southwest Border Contingency Fund—up to $4.7 billion—if migrant encounters exceed certain thresholds. This “surge valve” (a pre‑authorized pool of money that opens automatically when crossings spike) provides immediate cash flow without waiting for appropriators.
Bottlenecks
Yet money alone doesn’t put agents in the field; the hiring pipeline remains the choke point. ICE has received more than 150,000 applications and extended about 18,000 tentative job offers, but each candidate must still clear background checks, medical screenings and polygraph exams before entering training. Those steps are labor‑intensive and already backlogged, creating a lag between when incentives are paid and when recruits actually reach the field.
The backlog has created a gap: appropriations are flowing out the door in the form of bonuses, leases and procurement contracts, while the actual deployment of agents lags behind. GAO has cautioned that compressing DHS’s vetting processes to accelerate hiring could compromise readiness and accountability, noting in a June 2024 report that the department failed to meet time‑to‑hire targets for most of its priority law enforcement positions.
The training pipeline is now the bottleneck. FLETC’s expanded capacity of 6,000 trainees a year cannot absorb the surge all at once, and DHS is leaning on both compressed training and incentives to keep the pipeline moving:
The money is already appropriated; the challenge is throughput, not funding. Oversight bodies are now reviewing whether compressed schedules and loosened entry standards compromise readiness.
The DHS Inspector General flagged those issues in August 2025 inspection reports, and internal memos confirm that instructor reassignments have delayed unrelated training programs for other agencies—a point FLETC acknowledged in a late‑August statement.
While DHS can lean on reconciliation and contingency funds to expand its pipeline, agencies dependent on annual appropriations are warning of furloughs or even permanent layoffs if Congress fails to act. OPM’s most recent count is that nearly 300,000 federal positions will be eliminated by the end of this year—about an eighth of the workforce at the start of 2025. That total includes about 275,000 departures through attrition, deferred resignations and incentives such as buyouts or early retirements. Another 21,000 are expected to be lost through RIFs and layoffs of probationary employees.
Surge Continues
Even as DHS stretches its training system to the limit, it is also leaning on incentives and relaxed hiring rules to keep the pipeline filled and moving.
That advantage is showing up in cash bonuses, relaxed entry standards and targeted recruitment programs across DHS components.
CBP is offering $20,000 signing bonuses for hard‑to‑fill posts, while ICE has authorized $10,000 retention allowances that count toward retirement credit. HSI is offering $7,500 recruitment bonuses, and USCIS fraud detection officers are eligible for $5,000 incentives. ICE has also removed its maximum entry‑age limit, adjusted fitness thresholds and expanded veteran recruitment.
Those incentives may help fill the ranks, but DHS will ultimately be judged on how many of those new hires it can retain and how effectively they perform once deployed.
The department has set retention benchmarks of 85% overall, with ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations targeting 88% and HSI aiming for 90%. Performance will be tracked through coverage rates, case closures, seizures and fraud resolution. Federal employee unions warn that burnout, relocation demands and job mismatch remain the very pressures most likely to undercut those goals.
Those benchmarks underscore that the surge is not only about how many agents DHS can hire, but how the broader federal workforce absorbs the consequences—with other agencies still bracing for furloughs or even permanent layoffs if Congress fails to act.
As Congress weighs appropriations and agencies brace for RIFs, DHS’s surge is already redrawing the contours of the federal workforce. The department’s ability to hire, train and retain agents will determine not only its own readiness, but the shape of government in the years ahead. For DHS, the money is locked in; for much of government, the clock is ticking.
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