When ICE offers job opportunities in small towns

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🗓️ 20 October 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

The Trump administration's push to expand immigration enforcement -- as part of its deportation efforts -- has created job opportunities in small towns and cities.

We head to one of them -- Folkston, Georgia, a community of about 2,800 residents..

That number will soon swell as immigrant detainees fill up a growing ICE detention center at the edge of town.

The center is in a old prison run by the private prison corporation, the GEO Group, and is set to become the nation’s largest detention facility.We hear about the hopes and fears of the town's residents.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The main obstacles to President Trump's mass deportation effort haven't been legal or political.
0:07.0	They've been logistical, limits created by a lack of available detention beds or immigration agents to make arrests.
0:14.0	That's why Republicans included a huge increase in immigration enforcement funding in their tax and spending bill this summer.
0:19.8	So this bill will also be the single most important piece of border legislation ever to cross the
0:25.7	floor of Congress. We will hire 3,000 new Border Patrol officers and 10,000 new ICE agents.
0:31.9	Now, that is a lot of people to recruit and vet and on board. An NPR immigration Jimenez-Bustillo recently went to see how it's going
0:40.1	at a career expo for the Department of Homeland Security last month in Provo, Utah,
0:44.6	where a lot of folks were applying for one job in particular.
0:48.8	A deportation officer with ICE.
0:50.8	Ice deportation officer.
0:52.2	I don't think I'd qualify for a whole lot else. Deportation officer. When you think about the role of deportation officer. I don't think I'd qualify for a whole lot else.
0:54.9	A deportation officer.
0:56.3	When you think about the role of deportation officer, what do you hope you get to do in that
1:00.3	position?
1:02.3	Deport, you know.
1:03.8	Johnny from Oregon, Josh from Idaho, and Peter from Arkansas each asked NPR not to use
1:09.7	their last names because of fear of reprisal from the agency.
1:13.3	They were undeterred by the small group of protesters shouting outside.
1:17.4	Don't do it.
1:18.2	Many applicants told Hima that they supported Trump and his goal of mass deportations of people in the U.S. without legal status.
1:27.8	Or at least they weren't conflicted about the role of ICE.
1:31.9	Here's veteran Alan Richardson.
	...

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