ICE Used AI to Process Applications, Sending Inexperienced Recruits Through Shorter Training: Report

To fulfill President Donald Trump's request for federal agencies to step up and speed up arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants, Immigration and Customs Enforcement turned to artificial intelligence for help.

But as noted in an exclusive report by NBC News, the results fell short of expectations, creating problems with how the tool processed applications.

The outlet explained that the AI tool used by ICE was tasked with identifying applicants with law enforcement experience for placement in the agency's LEO program, which is designed for recruits who are already law enforcement officers and requires four weeks of online training.

As the agency sought to add thousands of new officers as quickly as possible, the tool made significant errors and routed many recruits into field positions without proper training, according to two law enforcement officials familiar with the issue who spoke to NBC News.

According to officials familiar with the matter, the majority of new applicants were flagged as law enforcement officers despite lacking the appropriate background. The officials also said the AI tool routed applicants who had the word "officer" on their résumés into the shorter four-week online training program.

The errors were identified last fall, more than a month after ICE and other immigration agencies began ramping up recruitment. ICE did attempt to address the problem by adding manual reviews of new hire résumés, the outlet noted.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they were unsure how many officers were improperly trained or how many were sent into the field to carry out immigration enforcement duties.

Recruitment problems within ICE were also highlighted in another case this week, when journalist Laura Jedeed, a vocal Trump critic, said the agency offered her a job despite her political views and opposition to the administration's policies.

After completing the initial stages of the hiring process, she said she received an email from ICE extending a tentative offer, which she missed and chose not to pursue further.

Three weeks later, however, she received an email from LabCorp instructing her to complete a drug test, which she decided to take despite having used cannabis about six days prior to the scheduled test.

"Nine days later, impatience got the best of me. For the first time, I logged into USAJobs and checked my application to see if my drug test had come through. What I actually saw was so implausible, so impossible, that at first I did not understand what I was looking at," she wrote in an article for Slate.

Jedeed said ICE appeared to have formally offered her a job despite the fact that she never submitted the required paperwork, including a domestic violence affidavit, background check or identification documents. Her onboarding status was listed as "Entered on Duty."

According to Jedeed, she declined the offer and raised her concerns about ICE's hiring practices.

"But if they missed the fact that I was an anti ICE journalist who didn't fill out her paperwork, what else might they be missing? How many convicted domestic abusers are being given guns and sent into other people's homes? How many people with ties to white supremacist organizations are indiscriminately targeting minorities on principle, regardless of immigration status," she wrote.