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'What Could Possibly Go Wrong?': Trump's ICE Is Now Recruiting Teenagers
"ICE opening up recruiting to teenagers because they can't find enough adults willing to be their racist storm troopers is some real dystopian shit," said one critic.
Aug 06, 2025
"We're taking father/son bonding to a whole new level."
That's how the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday told social media users that it is lifting age limits for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) applicants—evidence, critics said, of the Trump administration's desperation to fill the ranks of federal agencies tasked with carrying out its cruel and illegal anti-immigrant policies.
In a move reminiscent of how the U.S. military attempted to stem flagging enlistment during the George W. Bush administration's so-called War on Terror by lowering recruitment standards to welcome felons, gang members, white supremacists, and high school dropouts, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Wednesday that "we are ENDING the age cap for ICE law enforcement."
Approved applicants will be joining an agency rife with human rights and legal abuses as it scrambles to satisfy alleged ICE arrest quotas and President Donald Trump's desire to carry out the biggest mass deportation campaign in the nation's history—a campaign of kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment and expulsion of innocent people, family separation, concentration camps, terrorization of American communities, alleged torture and sexual crimes, and many other outrages.
Noem told Fox & Friends Wednesday that in addition to lifting the 40-year-old age cap, ICE applicants can now be as young as 18.
"What could possibly go wrong?" independent journalist Tina Vasquez quipped on Bluesky.
Author Patrick S. Tomlinson wrote on X that "ICE opening up recruiting to teenagers because they can't find enough adults willing to be their racist storm troopers is some real dystopian shit."
Wednesday's announcement is the latest Trump administration effort to lure 10,000 new recruits, including by offering $50,000 sign-up bonuses and student loan repayment assistance—policies that can be paid for thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's historic funding for ICE.
Some critics pointed to a similar move to increase recruitment at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, where lower hiring standards resulted in increased reports of sexual misconduct and corruption among Border Patrol recruits.
"If they start waiving requirements there like they did for Border Patrol, you're going to have an exponential increase in officers that are shown the door after three years because there's some issue," former senior ICE official Jason Houser told The Associated Press last week.
Sunrise Movement, the youth-led climate campaign, offered some friendly advice for those considering working for ICE: "Instead of joining the Gestapo, perhaps find a unionized workplace that's not involved in kidnapping instead."
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New York Times Reveals 'More Targeted Version' of Trump Family Separation Policy
"The family separation policies of the first Trump administration were disastrous, and their resurgence cannot be tolerated," said one critic.
Aug 05, 2025
U.S. immigration authorities are once again separating children from their undocumented parents in "what appears to be a more targeted version of one of the most explosive policies" of President Donald Trump's first term, The New York Times revealed on Tuesday.
The Times "uncovered at least nine cases in which parents have been separated from their children after they refused to comply with deportation orders, according to internal government documents, case files, and interviews," wrote exposé author Hamed Aleaziz.
The practice is not as widespread as it was under the first Trump administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policy, when the ACLU estimated that approximately 5,500 children—including some with physical and mental disabilities—were torn from their families.
"But the new cases suggest that the administration has decided to use family separation as a tool, at least in some instances, to persuade families to leave and to create a powerful deterrent for those who might come to the United States illegally," Aleaziz wrote.
The cruelty is the point. None of these #children will ever recover www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/u... #immigration #refugees
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— Regina Rae Weiss (@reginagroks.bsky.social) August 5, 2025 at 6:58 AM
Aleaziz highlighted the case of Evgeny and Evgeniia, who fled Russia with their 8-year-old son Maksim to seek political asylum in the United States.
Evgeniia said via an interpreter while in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody that her family traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border seeking an appointment through a Biden-era program that allowed people to enter the United States at a port of entry if they registered using the glitch-plagued CBP One app.
However, Trump canceled that program on his first day of office, and the couple decided to present at a port of entry and request asylum. They were immediately detained. Then they were given a choice: leave the United States and return to Russia as a family, or remain in ICE custody while they pursued their asylum claim, but Maksim would be taken from them and placed in a shelter.
Fearing for their future in Russia, Evegeny and Evgeniia chose separation.
"A few days, right?" Maksim begged as he was taken away. "A few days?"
Evgeny replied, "Yes, yes, it will be just a few days."
That was on May 15.
Authorities later determined that risks faced by Evgeny and Evgeniia in Russia precluded their deportation. However, they remain in ICE detention—and Maksim in a foster home—pending the outcome of their asylum case.
"It's terrible, that's what I can say," Evgeniia told Aleaziz. "I wouldn't wish it even to an enemy. It's a constant grief and longing."
Responding to Aleaziz's article, Sarah Pierce, director of policy at the centrist think tank Third Way, wrote on the social media site Bluesky that "this administration is picking right back up where it left off with family separation—giving parents a 'binary choice' between imminent danger or surrendering their children."
The New York Immigration Coalition asserted on X that "the family separation policies of the first Trump administration were disastrous, and their resurgence cannot be tolerated."
U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the Times that ICE "does not separate families," despite copious evidence to the contrary—including testimonials in Aleaziz's article and elsewhere.
"The parents had the right and the ability to depart the country as a family and willfully choose to not comply," McLaughlin said of Evgeny and Evgeniia.
However, there have been many cases in which no such choice was offered. Last week, Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America and Diana Flórez of the Women's Refugee Commission said that "the extent of involuntary family separation is far greater than we expected," including "hundreds" of U.S. citizen children who have been separated from undocumented parents after their arrest.
In their recent analysis, Isacson and Flórez pointed to the new ICE's new Detained Parents Directive that they said "substantially weakens ICE's obligation to help parents facilitate reunification with their children before removal, which raises grave concerns that these involuntary separations are going to increase."
According to Isacson and Flórez:
In some cases, parents report to service providers that they are being removed without even getting a chance to communicate with their families at all. "They want to punish them for entering the United States, and they do it by targeting what they love the most—separating them from their families. It's not a coincidence; it's something that's been well-planned," said a social worker who works with deported families.
"It's a lie that they're giving them the choice to bring kids back with them," one social worker told the authors. "Every day, women arrive crying, but what can we do? I don't know how to help."
While several previous administrations used family separation for a variety of reasons including child endangerment, public safety, and national security, Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former ICE official who has served in Republican and Democratic administrations, told the Times, "I'm not aware of ICE previously using family separation as a consequence for failure to comply."
ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said his organization is once again investigating the legality of Trump's policy.
"That the Trump administration has found a new form of family separation is hardly surprising given they have yet to acknowledge the horrific harm caused by the original policy and are now blatantly breaching provisions of the settlement designed to provide relief to those abused families, many of whom to this day still remain separated," Gelernt told the Times.
Despite the creation of a Family Reunification Task Force during the Biden administration, a December 2024 report published by Human Rights Watch, the Texas Civil Rights Project, and the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School found that as many as 1,360 separated children had still not been reunited with their families.
On his first day in office, Trump canceled the task force. Tom Homan, Trump's "border czar" who oversaw family separation during the president's first term, has followed through on his vow to resume family separation.
Homan also said the Trump administration would "need to construct family facilities"—a euphemism for what critics call concentration camps, which have been used to imprison and even kill off officially undesired populations throughout U.S. history.
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12 House Democrats Sue Trump for Illegally Blocking ICE Oversight
"The need for real-time, on-the-ground oversight has never been more urgent," said the advocacy group Democracy Forward.
Jul 30, 2025
A dozen congressional Democrats who have recently been barred from conducting oversight at federal immigration detention facilities said the Trump administration is "clearly violating the law" with a new policy limiting their ability to visit facilities, as they filed a lawsuit against top immigration officials on Wednesday.
Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) led lawmakers in filing the lawsuit a week after he and Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) were turned away from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in Chantilly, Virginia. They had learned that the office was "holding, and routinely held" undocumented immigrants.
Under federal laws including Section 527 of the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, members of Congress are permitted to conduct "robust and effective oversight" of immigration detention facilities, the lawsuit reads, including in-person visits for which DHS and ICE do not need to be given prior notice.
In June, ICE announced new rules restricting visits by members of Congress—requiring them to give a week's notice before conducting an oversight visit and exempting ICE field offices from the oversight law.
Democracy Forward, which is representing the 12 lawmakers, noted that the restrictions were imposed "at a time when the administration is detaining more individuals than ever before—over 58,000 people—and reports of mistreatment, overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and the detention of U.S. citizens are growing."
"The need for real-time, on-the-ground oversight has never been more urgent," said the group, emphasizing that at least 11 people have died in U.S. immigration custody since President Donald Trump took office.
Neguse, Thompson, and Raskin had heard reports of "poor conditions and overcrowding" at the field office in Chantilly—similar to reports Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) heard about a field office in Los Angeles that he tried to visit several times, only to be told by ICE officials that the office is "not a detention facility" and is therefore not subject to congressional oversight laws.
As Common Dreams reported last week, Human Rights Watch uncovered "abusive practices" at three immigration detention facilities in Florida, where detainees reported overcrowding, being shackled for long periods of time without access to food or water, being forced to sleep on cold concrete floors, and being denied access to basic hygiene and healthcare.
"No child should be sleeping on concrete, and no sick person should be denied care, yet that's exactly what we keep hearing is happening inside Trump's detention centers, including the one in my own district that set off national outrage and protests across the country," said Gomez. "I've tried repeatedly to get inside and conduct oversight, only to be turned away. When ICE and DHS block members of Congress, they're not just slamming the door on U.S. representatives, they're slamming it on the American people's right to know how their government is treating human beings with their tax dollars."
"This lawsuit is our message: We as members of Congress will do our job, and we will not let these agencies operate in the shadows," added Gomez.
Reps. Norma Torres and Raul Ruiz, both Democrats from California, tried to visit an ICE processing center in Adelanto, California, on July 11, only to be told by "an individual whom they believe to be an employee of the GEO Group (the private prison company that contracts with ICE to manage the Adelanto facility)" that they were "not approved for a visit."
Torres had made arrangements with ICE and had provided the agency with notice of the oversight visit the previous week, according to the lawsuit—suggesting that the Trump administration is not even adhering to the restrictions it has imposed.
"Donald Trump's extreme immigration agenda—attacking birthright citizenship and pushing for cruel, chaotic mass deportations—is dragging this country down a dark and dangerous path. We've already seen the consequences: so many reports of overcrowded, unsanitary ICE detention facilities where human dignity is treated as optional," said Torres. "I will continue to press for full access to these facilities and demand accountability from those responsible for their operation. No one is above the law—not even ICE."
Democratic politicians including Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) and Newark, New Jersey Mayor Ras Baraka have been arrested following their attempts to conduct oversight at ICE facilities. McIver pleaded not guilty to several charges stemming from an incident in which she tried to intervene in Baraka's arrest. She has said her indictment is part of the Trump administration's campaign of "political intimidation."
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