A supervisor overseeing background checks warned last year that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was hiring many new officers who had not undergone basic vetting, violating federal rules and putting the agency at risk of misconduct, a newly released whistleblower complaint shows.
The official was a unit chief in ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility, where background checks were backlogged as ICE added thousands of new officers to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
ICE’s human resources division was making final job offers before preliminary vetting steps had been completed, including fingerprints, identity verification and credit checks, the official’s complaint warned.
“This unprecedented lowering of standards sacrifices proper risk mitigation for expediency, placing DHS at risk of infiltration and insider compromise,” the official wrote in a memo to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General dated August 2025.
The New York Times first reported on the whistleblower complaint Thursday. The Associated Press obtained the complaint and a related memo from the now-retired ICE official’s lawyer, Kevin Owens. The official’s identity was redacted from the complaint. The Times said the official was a 17-year-agency employee and longtime Republican who had voted for Trump in 2020 and 2024.
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