Desperate to meet ridiculously high quotas for deportations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has ridiculously low standards for recruits. Even basic research is lacking. Slate reporter Laura Jedeed has offered herself up as proof of the lack of basic research in a recent article for that publication.
Laura Jedeed might have gotten serious consideration for ICE recruitment during President Biden’s presidency. Though she doesn’t have law enforcement experience, she does have military experience, including combat experience in Afghanistan. So presumably she could meet the minimum physical and mental requirements for ICE during President Biden’s presidency.
But she doesn’t have the mindset that is expected for ICE now that Hitler fanboy Donald Trump has the title of U. S. president again. For one thing, she has a profile on Antifa Watch, which is the closest you can get to being a member of Antifa (an organization that does not actually exist).
A simple Google search for Laura Jedeed even before Slate published her exposé would have revealed some salient data points suggesting that maybe she wouldn’t be a culture fit for ICE currently. Our own Mark Sumner uploaded this screenshot of an old tweet of hers.
Laura Jedeed went to an ICE recruitment event last year, thinking she wouldn’t get very far in the hiring process.
The plan, when I went to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Career Expo in Texas last August, was to learn what it was like to apply to be an ICE agent. Who wouldn’t be curious? The event promised on-the-spot hiring for would-be deportation officers: Walk in unemployed, walk out with a sweet $50k signing bonus, a retirement account, and a license to brutalize the country’s most vulnerable residents without consequence—all while wrapped in the warm glow of patriotism.
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In short, I figured—at least back then—that my military background would be enough to get me in the door for a good look around ICE’s application process, and then even the most cursory background check would get me shown that same door with great haste.
The event venue had room for 2,500, but Jedeed estimated the attendance when she went in at 150. She did have to wait a few minutes to talk to recruiters, but she got farther along than she expected.
ICE’s recruitment push is so sloppy that the administration effectively has no idea who’s joining the agency’s ranks. We’re all, collectively, in the dark about whom the state is arming, tasking with the most sensitive of law enforcement work, and then sending into America’s streets.
That’s as far as Slate will let me read without a Slate Plus subscription. So I haven’t read the part of the article where she explains how far she ultimately got. Did she get an offer letter? Did she get a signing bonus? The Department of Homeland Security of course denies her entire account. She replied to that denial on Twitter.
She’s also on BlueSky. Looks like she hasn’t posted the proof of her hiring there, but she has posted a few quotes of the concern trolling she’s gotten.
Laura Jedeed is a proven patriot, first with her service in the U. S. Army and now with her service as a journalist.
ADDENDUM: Thanks to Rhode Island Aspie and Elena Carlena, I’ve been able to read the whole article. I strongly recommend reading the whole thing.
Soon after the point where I initially stopped reading, Jedeed gives a breakdown of the other applicants she saw at the event.
The aspiring officers fall broadly into three categories: thick-necked law enforcement types who look like they do steroids but don’t know how to work out, bearded spec-ops wannabes who look like they take steroids and do know how to work out, and dorks. Pencil-necked misfits. I couldn’t tell whether there were more white or Hispanic people waiting for their email, but it was close. A few Black applicants rounded out the overwhelmingly male group.
Jedeed kept an eye out for an e-mail from ICE for the next few days but then understandably forgot about the whole thing. So she missed the e-mail when it finally came, and failed to take the outlined steps within the given deadline. When she got around to reading that e-mail, she thought her lack of diligence had been interpreted as that she implicitly declined the tentative job offer.
And that might have been where this all ended—an unread message sinking to the bottom of my inbox—if not for an email LabCorp sent three weeks later. “Thank you for confirming that you wish to continue with the hiring process,” it read. (To be clear, I had confirmed no such thing.) “Please complete your required pre-employment drug test.”
A commenter here mentioned that Jedeed had partaken of cannabis prior to the drug test.
Then again, I hadn’t smoked much; perhaps with hydration I could get to the next stage. Worst-case scenario, I’d waste a small piece of ICE’s gargantuan budget. I traveled to my local LabCorp, peed in a cup, and waited for a call telling me I’d failed.
Nine days later, impatience got the best of me. For the first time, I logged into USAJobs and checked my application to see if my drug test had come through. What I actually saw was so implausible, so impossible, that at first I did not understand what I was looking at.
Somehow, despite never submitting any of the paperwork they sent me—not the background check or identification info, not the domestic violence affidavit, none of it—ICE had apparently offered me a job.
After supposedly completing a physical fitness test she did not actually show up for, Jedeed decided this had gone far enough and declined the job offer on the USA Jobs website.
