This is another one of those stories like the execution of Renee Good on a Minneapolis street. It was only a question of when, not if. In this case, a reporter was hired by ICE, showing that vetting is a concept, not a practice with the agency. Naturally, when this was revealed, ICE went to great lengths to try to cover their tracks but to little avail. Daily Beast:
The Department of Homeland Security’s claim that it did not give a job with ICE to a reporter without proper vetting was contradicted by the agency’s own portal.
Afghan veteran-turned-reporter Laura Jedeed detailed in Slate this week how she tested Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s mass hiring campaign by submitting an application—and getting quickly pushed through the hiring process.
Immediately after the story was published, DHS rebuked Jedeed’s claim, arguing that she was “NEVER” offered a job with the agency. But screenshots and videos shared by Jedeed from the agency’s job portal contradict the agency’s claims and bolster other reports that ICE’s hiring methods lack oversight.
Jedeed’s plan in applying to become a deportation officer, as she wrote in the article which was published on Tuesday, was to see how far she could get before any basic vetting revealed that she is an outspoken anti-ICE, anti-Trump journalist
The former paratrooper, 38, describes traveling last year to an ICE career expo at a cavernous esports arena in Texas that could hold 2,500 people but was, she says, sparsely attended. After a brief wait, she was called to a table, where a recruiter asked a handful of questions.
They included her name, date of birth, age, military experience, and preferred posting, in an interview lasting about six minutes, but not, Jedeed says, any questions about her online presence, political activity, or years of stories attacking ICE.
Weeks later, an email arrived, headed “tentative offer,” telling Jedeed she had 48 hours to complete an online declaration for federal employment and to send forms including driver’s license details, a domestic-violence attestation, and consent for a background check. It stressed she should not resign from her current job.
Jedeed ignored it—but her journey did not end there.
Despite the radio silence, Jedeed was emailed to thank her for confirming her desire to continue in the process, and ordered to take a pre-employment drug test—despite her never confirming anything.
Living in New York, where cannabis is legal, she had smoked weed six days earlier but decided to go anyway. She wrote that her reasoning was that a failed test would at least waste a little of ICE’s budget.
But upon checking her application portal days later, Jedeed was stunned to see ICE had already sent—and she had supposedly accepted—a “final offer” for a deportation officer job in New York City.
The story goes on to reveal that Jedeed was declared “EOD” which is “Entered On Duty.” It also said that her medical tests were taken and her background check completed even though she had never submitted the background-check paperwork or fingerprints.
Naturally, ICE responded that this was a “lazy lie” and she never had been hired. Jedeed responded with the receipts.
You sure about that? https://t.co/EdNtjJ2KW9 pic.twitter.com/S7v8PUUkl0
— Laura Jedeed (@LauraJedeed) January 14, 2026
Busted. Jedeed argued in Slate that ICE’s hiring is now so chaotic that the Trump administration “has no idea who’s joining the agency’s ranks.” Her account is far from unique, and the story does on to say it follows other reports of a wider pattern inside ICE’s recruitment machine under Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. When is Trump going to get rid of Kristi Noem? Or Noem and Corey Lewandowski, who is allegedly a kind of shadow director of DHS while Noem does the PR work?
Of course, it would be most unlikely that their hiring policies and procedures would be any more competent than anything else they do.
The silver lining to all this inept malfeasance is that it will be very easy and entirely uncontroversial to close down the whole entity with a new administration incoming.
From your lips to God’s ears. Homeland Security has hit bottom. And it hits a new bottom weekly. The tragedy of that poor young man (only 21) who was blinded by ICE is this week’s bottom. Last week was the murder of Renee Good. I don’t want to know what next week holds. I think I’ll just pull the covers over my head and forget about looking at a newscast.