ICE Recalls Retired Federal Workers To Bolster Its Ranks
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.5 • 24.9K Ratings
🗓️ 7 August 2025
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, immigration policy correspondent Ximena Bustillo, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. |
| 0:05.4 | RWJF is a national philanthropy, working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right. |
| 0:12.1 | Learn more at RWJF.org. |
| 0:15.5 | Hi, this is Jana, recording from the Flat Top's Wilderness Area in Colorado, where I am enjoying the company of the birds. |
| 0:24.6 | This podcast was recorded at... |
| 0:27.3 | 106 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, August 7th, 2025. |
| 0:32.4 | Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will still be enjoying the songs of the many birds, |
| 0:38.6 | including the Western Wood Peewee. |
| 0:41.8 | Enjoy the show. |
| 0:46.5 | Ooh, identified a bird. |
| 0:48.1 | That's a skill. |
| 0:48.8 | That is just, it's so relaxing. |
| 0:51.2 | It sounds like such a nice place to get away to. |
| 0:54.0 | I wish I was there. Me too. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Hima Bustillo, and I cover immigration policy. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the show we're talking about challenges immigration and customs enforcement or ICE is facing as it tries to |
| 1:13.0 | hire more people, 10,000 more people, to be precise. Hemanah, you've been doing some reporting on this. |
| 1:18.9 | Like, what jobs is ICE hiring for right now? So first, it's important to understand what makes up |
| 1:25.1 | ice. Sure. So ice isn't necessarily just the boots on the ground visuals that everyone has been seeing across their social medias and TVs. |
| 1:34.5 | There's three parts to ice. |
| 1:35.9 | There's that, which is enforcement removal operations. |
| 1:39.8 | There's Homeland Security investigations, which usually does like drug trafficking, money laundering investigations, not necessarily related to immigration, but these days a lot of those people have been reworked to do immigration work. And then lawyers, you know, people who go into immigration court and sit down at a table and litigate, you know, people's deportation |
| 2:02.9 | cases. ISIS hiring for all those positions. And they're casting a really wide net to find people |
| 2:09.7 | to do these jobs. They are the smallest immigration enforcement agency branch out of the Department |
... |
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