Noem touts 200,000 ICE agent applications as agency ramps up deportation of illegal migrants

FIRST ON FOX: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that more than 200,000 Americans have applied to be U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as the agency continues its hiring campaign.

The surge in applications comes despite a substantial 8000% increase in death threats toward the agents, as first reported by Fox News.

"ICE has received more than 200,000 applications from patriotic Americans who want to defend the homeland by removing the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens from the U.S.," DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "Americans are answering their country's call to serve and help remove murderers, pedophiles, rapists, terrorists, and gang members from our country."

In August, Noem cited a more than 1000% increase in assaults on immigration law enforcement officers - an uptick she noted came amid anti-ICE protests across the country and Democratic rhetoric surrounding ICE's mission.

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Agents have been busy around the country seeking out illegal migrants who have committed crimes in the U.S. and abroad, recently taking to the streets of New York City to make arrests on the city's infamous Canal Street partially known for selling counterfeit luxury and designer products.

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani sent a message to ICE agents during a speech in Queens the morning after his election victory.

"My message to ICE agents and to everyone across this city is that everyone will be held to the same standard of the law," Mamdani told the crowd. "And there is, sadly, a sense that is growing across this country that certain people are allowed to violate that law, whether they be the president or whether they be the agents themselves."

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New York's newly-elected mayor isn't the only Democrat to criticize the administration's deportation efforts. In late October, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said that agents were intentionally targeting "Brown and Black" individuals.

"They are literally targeting people who are Brown and Black, whether you are undocumented or not," Pritzker told reporters in River City, Ill. "They're indiscriminately grabbing people who don't look like the ICE agents typically and holding them or mistreating them."

Despite the criticism, agents have carried out mostly successful arrests of illegal migrants, many of whom have committed serious crimes, as part of President Donald Trump's pledge to deport the estimated millions of individuals who crossed the border illegally under President Joe Biden.

DHS and Secretary Noem's hiring blitz utilized social media platforms to promote the open positions, implementing a strategy of traditional American imagery to garner interest in the role.

The agency's various social media outlets even outpaced viewership and impressions from media giants CNN and MSNBC over the summer, as first reported by Fox News Digital.

Sources at DHS told Fox News Digital on Friday that the agency has deported more than 550,000 illegal migrants since Trump took office.