Decent stepping stone, terrible career
Pros
Opportunities for training, task force work, and field law enforcement work (for some). High pay relative to qualifications. (No degree required)
Cons
The vast majority of the work ICE/ERO does is administrative office work with little to do with law enforcement (I.e. data entry type tasks). Primarily a custody management agency and the majority of the senior officers and leaders have little to no field law enforcement experience. Management is completely out of touch with their employees, society, and law enforcement partners. Field law enforcement work is carried out in a way which disregards the safety of officers instead favoring volume of arrests. As others stated, depending on where you are working, there are many toxic, discriminatory, and poorly run workplaces. Culture of finger pointing, hyper criticism, victimhood (always blaming politicians for agency failures), and really all around unpleasantness. Very strong “us vs them” culture between ICE and the rest of society, and the same mentality is applied between management and employees. Overall the agency has a reputation of incompetence and corruption.
