ICE Makes Major Change for New Recruits

Newsweek

4 hours ago

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) no longer requires new recruits to take a five-week Spanish-language training program, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
"ICE simply replaced the five-week in-person Spanish course with a more robust translation service for all officers regardless of when they entered on duty," DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement to Newsweek.
The Intercept first reported the policy change.
DHS did not provide details of the translation service. However, Axon, a company with a $5.1 million contract to provide Homeland Security with body-worn cameras, advertises that its latest body camera includes real-time "push-to-talk voice translation" in more than 50 languages.
A deportation officer with Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducts a brief before an operation in the Bronx borough of New York on December 17, 2024.
A deportation officer with Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducts a brief before an operation in the Bronx borough of New York on December 17, 2024.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
Why It Matters
President Donald Trump's hard-line immigration agenda has pushed ICE into the center of the national conversation surrounding immigration enforcement. Since the beginning of Trump's second term, thousands of suspected undocumented migrants have been arrested.
Last month, Republicans passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which increased funding for ICE—allocating $45 billion to expand detention capacity to almost 100,000 beds, $14 billion for transportation and deportation operations, $8 billion to hire 10,000 additional deportation officers, and additional funding for technology upgrades.
ICE is expected to experience a hiring boom after the passage of the key legislation. DHS has said that more than 100,000 people have already applied to join the nation's top immigration enforcement agency. The legislation is expected to support the administration's efforts to accelerate deportations as Trump seeks to fulfill his pledge of widespread mass deportations.
What To Know
The decision reflects both the federal government's increasing reliance on translation technology and a broader trend under the Trump administration toward scaling back non-English services.
Speaking of the new service, McLaughlin said, "This translation service allows our officers to communicate with individuals with all dialects and dozens of different languages."
Earlier this year, after Trump issued an executive order designating English as the official language of the United States, several agencies reduced multilingual assistance—despite the order stating that it did not require changes to agency services. DHS, for example, will no longer provide translation help for callers seeking information about employment status or benefits.
Given that the vast majority of those arrested by ICE are from predominantly Spanish-speaking Latin American countries, the removal of formal Spanish training for officers is a significant operational shift.
ICE's Spanish-language requirement dates back to its predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service's Office of Detention and Removal Operations, which maintained the policy until March 2003, when the office was absorbed into ICE under the newly created DHS. ICE reinstated the program in 2007.
In 2010, the Government Accountability Office—Congress' nonpartisan research agency—warned that DHS's failure to adequately assess its language needs posed operational risks.
"According to DHS officials, foreign language skills are an integral part of the department's operations," the report said, adding, "These officials told us that while Spanish language proficiency may be identified as an existing capability, it may not always be available and generally the levels of proficiencies vary."
In a 2007 memo, ICE described its Spanish-language training program as a five-week course to strengthen listening, speaking, reading and writing skills, with an emphasis on the first two. By 2016, the curriculum shifted to focus on grammar and the ability to perform arrests and complete related documentation.
In addition to dropping the Spanish-language training, DHS announced in August that ICE would lower the minimum applicant age from 21 to 18 and remove the previous maximum age limit, which barred applicants over the age of 37 or 40.
What People Are Saying
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement to Newsweek: "We are using technology not only to save U.S. taxpayer dollars but to also broaden our ability to communicate with illegal aliens we regularly encounter from countries across the globe."