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Journalist Laura Jadid Tricked ICE into Hiring Her with No Background Check // Katie Halper
Katie Halper | Trusted Newsmaker
How a Journalist Slipped Through ICE’s Hiring Pipeline — and What It Reveals About a Dangerous Expansion
When journalist Laura Jadid applied for a job with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, she did not intend to be hired. Her plan was straightforward: attend an ICE recruitment event, submit a real résumé, document the process, and expose how aggressively the agency was expanding its ranks. What followed was far more alarming. ICE nearly hired her outright — without completing basic vetting steps — despite her public, well-documented opposition to the agency itself.
Her experience raises serious questions about how a rapidly expanding federal enforcement agency is recruiting, screening, and arming thousands of new agents at a time when ICE’s role in American life is growing more confrontational and lethal.
A Résumé That Should Have Raised Red Flags
Jadid did not fabricate her background. She submitted a skills-based résumé built from real experience, including prior military service in the 82nd Airborne and civilian analyst work. She deliberately omitted recent journalism to see whether ICE would conduct even minimal due diligence.
Her name is distinctive. A basic internet search immediately links her to years of reporting critical of ICE and the Trump administration. She assumed that would end the experiment.
Instead, ICE issued her a tentative job offer.
An Offer Without a Background Check
Jadid did not respond to the offer. She did not complete paperwork. She did not consent to a background investigation. Weeks later, she received an email instructing her to report for a drug test.
She complied — knowingly after using cannabis legally in New York — assuming the process would halt. It did not.
When she later logged into ICE’s hiring portal, she found something extraordinary. The system indicated she had accepted a final job offer. Her employment start date had already passed. The background check was listed as completed — with a completion date set three days in the future.
ICE, in effect, appeared to be hiring people before checking who they were.
“Anyone With a Pulse”
Jadid’s conclusion was blunt. If her case was not a unique clerical error, then ICE does not know who it is putting behind masks, badges, and firearms across American cities.
She warned that the risk extends far beyond ideological embarrassment. Without robust screening, agents with histories of domestic violence, extremist affiliations, or prior criminal conduct could be entering enforcement roles with extraordinary powers over detainees.
The concern is not hypothetical. ICE has more than doubled in size in a single year, expanding from roughly 10,000 agents to over 22,000. Rapid growth, former insiders say, often comes at the expense of training, discipline, and accountability.
A Culture Already Under Scrutiny
Jadid emphasized that the most dangerous aspect is not merely the new recruits, but the culture they are entering. ICE has long been criticized by civil rights groups for due process violations, abuse in detention centers, and aggressive enforcement tactics.
That culture, she argues, is now being flooded with undertrained and poorly vetted personnel. Videos circulating online show agents struggling with basic arrest procedures, mishandling detainees, and escalating encounters unnecessarily. Incompetence, combined with authority and weapons, creates volatility.
“It’s not just evil,” Jadid said. “It’s chaos.”
From Foreign Wars to Domestic Policing
Jadid’s critique is informed by her military experience. She joined the armed forces believing official narratives about democracy and security, only to have those beliefs dismantled during deployment in Afghanistan. She left the military with a deeper skepticism of institutions that normalize violence under bureaucratic language.
She sees ICE as part of a broader pattern. Veterans trained in counterinsurgency abroad often return home to law enforcement roles, carrying with them a mindset shaped by war. Scholars have described this phenomenon as “bringing the war home,” where tactics once reserved for foreign battlefields are redeployed against civilian populations.
ICE, Jadid argues, has become a domestic endpoint for that process.
The Recruitment Event That Wasn’t
The hiring event itself underscored the desperation. Held in a massive arena, it drew only about 150 attendees. There were no lines. No crowds. No rigorous screening. Recruitment materials played on loop, urging attendees to “defend the homeland,” while agents quietly processed applications.
The atmosphere, Jadid said, felt less like a competitive federal hiring process and more like an agency scrambling to fill uniforms.
Why This Matters Now
ICE is no longer operating quietly in the background. Its agents are increasingly visible in cities, protests, and high-tension enforcement actions. Recent incidents, including the killing of civilians during operations, have intensified scrutiny of the agency’s conduct.
If ICE is expanding rapidly while failing to verify who it is hiring, the implications extend beyond immigration enforcement. They touch the core question of whether a heavily armed federal force is being built without the safeguards necessary in a democratic society.
Jadid did not set out to expose a hiring scandal. She found one by accident. The unanswered question is how many others slipped through unnoticed — and what happens when an agency with sweeping powers stops asking who it is empowering.
