U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has more than 22,000 law enforcement officers and agents on its rolls following a 2025 hiring push that the Department of Homeland Security described as a 120-percent increase in manpower, driven by the addition of roughly 12,000 new officers and agents.1Department of Homeland Security. ICE Announces Historic 120% Manpower Increase The agency’s fiscal year 2026 budget requested funding for 21,757 full-time equivalent positions across every division, a figure that includes deportation officers, criminal investigators, attorneys, intelligence analysts, and support staff.2Department of Homeland Security. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Budget Overview Fiscal Year 2026 Congressional Justification So “how many ICE agents” depends on what you count: badge-carrying law enforcement officers, everyone on the payroll, or the wider network of deputized local police who work alongside them.
The pre-surge baseline is worth noting because it explains why numbers you see online vary so much. For years the agency’s own website described its workforce as roughly 20,000 people.3U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. About ICE The 2025 campaign focused on law enforcement roles rather than administrative hiring, so the sworn officer count grew faster than the total headcount. Congress controls the final numbers through annual appropriations, and ICE’s FY2026 request came in around $10.9 billion in discretionary funding.4Congress.gov. Understanding the FY2026 DHS Budget Request
Deportation Officers in Enforcement and Removal Operations
Enforcement and Removal Operations is the division most people picture when they hear “ICE agent.” Before the 2025 surge, ERO employed more than 8,500 people, including more than 6,100 deportation officers and over 750 enforcement and removal assistants.5U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Career Frequently Asked Questions These are the officers who locate, arrest, detain, and remove people without legal status or with final removal orders. The division operates through 25 field offices spread across the country.6U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Enforcement and Removal Operations
ERO officers also run the detention system. As of early 2025, ICE had contractual capacity for roughly 62,900 detainees across 181 authorized facilities, including government-run centers, privately operated facilities, and local jails under intergovernmental agreements. Housing, transporting, and processing tens of thousands of detained people at any given time absorbs a large share of ERO personnel. The agency has not yet published divisional breakdowns reflecting the post-surge headcount, so the current ERO officer total is higher than 6,100 but not publicly specified.
Special Agents in Homeland Security Investigations
Homeland Security Investigations is ICE’s criminal investigative arm, and its work extends well beyond immigration. HSI’s workforce exceeds 10,400 employees, including more than 7,100 special agents assigned to 220 cities in the United States and 80 overseas locations in 53 countries.7U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Criminal Investigator HSI agents are classified in the GS-1811 federal criminal investigator series, the same job classification used by the FBI and DEA.
Their casework covers human trafficking, narcotics smuggling, money laundering, child exploitation, cybercrime, and trade fraud. HSI runs undercover operations, builds cases for federal prosecutors, and coordinates with foreign law enforcement. The Border Enforcement Security Task Forces alone bring together more than 1,200 members from federal, state, local, and foreign agencies targeting cross-border criminal organizations.8U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. BEST HSI special agents work out of approximately 235 domestic offices and sub-offices.9U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Our Offices
Attorneys, Analysts, and Support Staff
Not everyone on ICE’s payroll carries a badge. The Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, DHS’s largest legal program, employs more than 1,700 attorneys and nearly 300 support personnel.10U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Office of the Principal Legal Advisor OPLA attorneys represent the government in removal proceedings before immigration judges, handling everything from routine status violations to terrorism cases.
Beyond the lawyers, ICE employs intelligence analysts (HSI alone has about 700), IT specialists who maintain databases and surveillance tools, budget analysts, human resources staff, and mission-support specialists embedded in field offices. These positions count toward the 21,757 FTE total but are not “agents” in the operational sense. If you subtract legal and civilian professional staff from the total workforce, the sworn law enforcement portion is what DHS put above 22,000 after the 2025 surge.1Department of Homeland Security. ICE Announces Historic 120% Manpower Increase
Deputized Local Officers Under 287(g)
ICE’s direct headcount understates its operational reach because the agency deputizes state and local law enforcement officers to perform immigration functions through the 287(g) program. As of March 2026, ICE had signed 1,579 agreements with agencies across 39 states and two U.S. territories.11U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Delegation of Immigration Authority Section 287(g) The agreements come in three types:
- Jail Enforcement Model: 158 agencies in 30 states, where local officers screen people already in jail for immigration violations.
- Warrant Service Officer: 479 agencies in 34 states, where local officers serve ICE administrative warrants inside their facilities.
- Task Force Model: 942 agencies in 32 states, where deputized local officers work alongside ICE agents on community enforcement operations.
Those 1,579 agreements mean thousands of local officers can identify removable individuals and initiate the process that leads to ICE custody. They are not ICE employees and don’t appear in the agency’s headcount, but they multiply the effective size of the enforcement workforce.
How ICE’s Size Compares to Other Federal Agencies
ICE is one of the largest federal law enforcement agencies but not the largest. Bureau of Justice Statistics data from 2020 ranked the biggest agencies by sworn officers:12Bureau of Justice Statistics. Federal Law Enforcement Officers, 2020 – Statistical Tables
- Customs and Border Protection: 46,993 officers
- Federal Bureau of Prisons: 17,110
- FBI: 13,575
- ICE: 12,989
- Secret Service: 5,210
- DEA: 4,380
- U.S. Marshals Service: 3,747
Those figures predate the 2025 hiring surge. ICE’s sworn law enforcement headcount is now substantially larger than the 2020 number of 12,989, sitting above 22,000 by DHS’s January 2026 announcement. That puts ICE well ahead of the FBI and second among Department of Homeland Security law enforcement components, behind CBP.