Immigration and Customs Enforcement, flush with billions of dollars in new funding after the recent passing of the One Big Beautiful Bill, is courting retired federal law enforcement officials with up to $50,000 in incentives and regular salaries on top of their existing retirement benefits to aid the Trump administration in its immigration crackdown.

ICE’s ambitious recruitment drive, dubbed “Operation Return to Mission,” is targeting former federal law enforcement personnel with “laterally applicable” skill sets from other law enforcement agencies like the FBI and the DEA. Indeed, ICE’s Return to Mission poster features the iconic image of Uncle Sam, famously used to recruit soldiers in both world wars, this time imploring retired law enforcement agents to “serve once more.”

The incentives are “being offered to former federal law enforcement officer employees, who departed federal service in good standing, to make arrests in the field and help support the Title 8 priorities,” ICE’s deputy director, Madison D. Sheahan, writes in a recruitment email message reviewed by the Sun.

ICE is offering a $10,000 signing bonus to those who return to service and an additional $10,000 for those who submit an application by August 1. 

ICE is also offering a “$10,000 bonus paid annually on your service anniversary of up to three years for each year that your appointment is extended,” Ms. Sheahan writes in her email.

Retirees will be offered a “dual compensation waiver” that will allow them to simultaneously collect ICE salaries and existing federal retirement benefits like pension payments. 

The passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill” allocates nearly $170 billion for the Trump administration’s efforts to arrest and deport illegal immigrants. Nearly $30 billion of that funding is earmarked for ICE’s enforcement operations, which include hiring an additional 10,000 ICE officers over the next five years. 

Currently, ICE is looking for deportation officers, criminal investigators, and general attorneys.

“ICE is actively enhancing its recruitment strategies to attract new officers. With the funding provided by the [Big Beautiful Bill], we are launching a comprehensive, multi-pronged recruitment strategy. This strategy includes targeted outreach to retirees, Department of Defense veterans, state and local officers, and other individuals with the key experiences and education that ICE is seeking,” an ICE spokesman said in a statement to the Sun.

ICE claims it has already received “thousands” of applications, but some former federal law enforcement officials say the incentives are not enough to entice retirees back into the field at a time when ICE officers have faced increasing threats of violence. 

Since January 21, assaults against ICE officials have increased by 830 percent, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Coordinated attacks, like the July 4 ambush at Prairieland Detention Facility at Alvarado, Texas, in which a man fired an assault rifle at three law enforcement officers, striking one in the neck, could far outweigh whatever incentives they could receive.

President Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan, has blamed provocative anti-ICE rhetoric from leading Democrats, such as Senator Schiff, for the increasing threats and attacks being levied against ICE officers.

Retirees remain wary of ICE’s seemingly generous offer. “I have talked to solid people who have done complex investigative work and they want absolutely nothing to do with this,” a former chief of the Integrity Investigations Division at ICE,  Eric Balliet, tells the Sun. “I don’t know why anybody would want to go back to work in that environment, in those circumstances, regardless of the $50,000 in retention bonuses.”

While the promise of up to $50,000 in incentives is appealing, it is by no means guaranteed. Full-time appointments are for “a period of more than one year but not more than four years” as determined by “mission need,” according to ICE. 

“Is anybody going to see $50,000? I don’t know. These contracts are for one year at a time. They could be renewed, but no one’s getting a four-year contract,” a former financial investigator for the Department of Justice, Chris Barfield, now owner of an advisory firm that works with retired federal employees, Barfield Financial, tells the Sun. 

Some retired law enforcement officials are questioning what the positions will actually entail. For instance, among the responsibilities for the deportation officer position are executing arrests and “managing the detention and removal of non-citizens,” according to the job listing. Retired law enforcement officials may be reluctant to abandon the relative safety of retirement in favor of potentially dangerous jobs.

“If the announcement said, ‘You’ve been identified as having a mission critical skill set and we are in desperate need of this particular skill set for these set of reasons to target whatever transnational criminal organization,’ then I could see people really getting behind it. Right now, every indicator suggests that people are being called back to hunt down and process civil immigration cases,” Mr. Balliet tells the Sun. 

“Law enforcement’s got a shelf life, and for most people, when they’re done, they’re done,” Mr. Barfield tells the Sun.

“This would be, in my opinion, one of the least attractive things to go back into,” he added.