Want to earn $100,000 a year — on top of a $45,000 signing bonus? Just apply to be an officer at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to a rumor spreading online in July 2025.
Posts on Instagram, Facebook, Reddit and Threads claimed the agency, under President Donald Trump, was offering the hefty salary and/or bonus to new employees — an amount, many posts alleged, far exceeding what some teachers in the United States receive.
"ICE is offering a $45,000 SIGNING BONUS plus $100,000 starting salary," said one widely circulated Threads post. "I make $55,000 as a teacher in my 8th year with a Masters. It was never true that wE dOn'T hAvE eNoUgH mOnEy to pay teachers more."
These posts were somewhat accurate. ICE indeed offered a large sign-on bonus and salary to potential hires in July 2025, but only to former officers, not new employees. Furthermore, while some of these former workers hired by ICE could potentially receive a $100,000 salary, the actual salary ranged more widely and came with a sign-on bonus of up to $50,000. The full bonus, however, was available only until Aug. 1, 2025, and the agency listed the positions as temporary, with a possible chance of extension.
While the listed salaries for returning ICE agents appeared to far exceed an average American teacher's salary, they were comparable to the most-experienced teachers, on average. The salary for new, not returning, ICE deportation officers started at $49,739 and went up to $89,528 a year as of July 2025, comparable to what a teacher might receive.
ICE did not immediately return an emailed inquiry about whether the agency provides sign-on bonuses to new agents.
Thus, we rate this claim a mixture of truth, falsehood and unknown information.
ICE's attempt to entice former officers back to
On July 18, multiple news outlets, including The New York Times, reported that ICE was offering financial incentives to bring back former employees and retirees. According to these outlets, numerous former agents received an email asking them to return to the agency.
These reports matched with an undated website (archived) published by ICE appealing to former agents and calling on them to "RETURN TO MISSION."
"You served the United States of America with distinction and honor. Now, your country is calling upon you to serve once more," the website read. Below the appeal was a request to "CHOOSE YOUR MISSION," alongside job openings for "Deportation Officer" and "Criminal Investigator."
The job opening's page, as of this writing, listed the available salary for returning deportation officers as $88,621 to $144,031 per year, with opportunities in 26 different locations (archived). The posting for criminal investigators offered $105,383 to $171,268 per year, with options in 30 locations (archived).
Both pages cautioned that only applicants who retired on or before the opening date of the announcement could apply, as long as they retired no more than five years before the hiring announcement. The pages listed the opening date for the open positions as July 17, 2025, with a closing date of Aug. 18, 2025.
"Term appointments are for a period of more than 1 year but not more than 4 years. ICE may extend appointments made for more than 1 year but less than 4 years up to the 4-year limit in increments determined by the mission need," the advertising website said (emphasis theirs).
While the pages did not list any sign-on bonus, a LinkedIn post by Robert Hammer, deputy executive associate director at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, advertised (archived) "up to a $50k signing bonus ON TOP OF rehired annuitant pay (pension + paycheck)" to retired ICE workers. In other words, the bonus would come on top of the listed salary and regular payments from the government in the form of a pension for retired employees, even though the ICE agents would technically be coming out of retirement.
"Submit your application by Aug 1 to be eligible for the full recruitment incentives package," the post said (archived).
Trump's 2025 budget bill also allocated funding ICE could use for sign-on, retention and performance bonuses. Newsweek reported (archived) on July 14 that the bill, which was signed into law July 4, included funding for up to $45,000 in sign-on bonuses per agent hired, but the bill's text did not appear to include this language (see Section 100052). Newsweek's reporter on the story did not immediately return an inquiry about where the $45,000 number came from.
Comparing ICE pay to teachers' salaries
According to a 2025 review by the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers' union, on average, teachers received an annual salary of $72,030 in the 2023-24 school year, with a projected increase to $74,177 in the 2024-25 school year (see Page 5 of this report).
As such, the salaries for returning ICE agents far outpace average salaries for teachers. However, a more direct comparison would be the average maximum salary for a teacher, as many retired ICE employees would presumably have already reached the top of the pay scale before retiring.
According to the NEA, the top of the teacher pay scale was, on average, $84,272 in the 2023-24 school year. While that's closer to the returning ICE worker salary, it still did not match the amounts offered to ICE retirees — and "reaching that level usually requires a PhD or 15 to 30 graduate credit hours beyond a master's degree," the NEA noted.
Comparing starting ICE officer salaries with those of the average teacher starting out also showed that early-career ICE workers received a bit more money than teachers: The average starting salary for a teacher, according to the NEA, was $46,526 in the 2023-24 school year, and as of July 2025, ICE officials started out at $49,739 a year and topped out at $89,528 a year.
However, it is also worth noting that different states offered a wide range of salaries for teachers. For example, California had the highest average starting teacher salary at $58,409, and the highest average overall at $101,084, during the 2023-24 school year. In contrast, Mississippi had the lowest average overall salary among the states, at $53,704. ICE agents also receive pay adjustments based on the cost of living in their location.
According to the NEA, 20.7% of school districts also offered a maximum teacher salary of over $100,000 in 2023 to 2024.
In sum …
Within a narrow window of time, returning ICE agents could receive a salary between about $89,000 to $144,000 under the second Trump administration, alongside a sign-on bonus of up to $50,000. While that exceeded the amount the average teacher made in the 2023-24 school year, it was largely comparable to the salary of an experienced teacher. Starting teacher salaries, on average, also appeared similar to those of early-career ICE agents.