ICE is quietly firing new hires. For one recruit, it was devastating.
Joseph Moore killed himself after learning ICE was going to fire him. Investigators had identified issues in his past that ex-officials say should have blocked his hiring.
September 15, 2026 at 5:00 a.m. EDTToday at 5:00 a.m. EDT
17 min
By Alex Horton, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Maria Sacchetti and Ted Hesson
Joseph Moore had dreamed of a life in law enforcement since he was a teenager. “Policing is in my blood,” he wrote a Pennsylvania town’s supervisors in 2020. “There is no other career for me.”
But the Marine reservist struggled to advance his career, according to employment records included in federal court filings. Two law enforcement agencies fired him, and others rejected him altogether before he landed a policing job in a small city with little room to move up.
Then U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement went on a hiring binge last year to help carry out the Trump administration’s promise of mass deportations. The agency offered $50,000 signing bonuses, similar to what Moore had previously earned in salary in a year. He was hired in the fall as a deportation officer — one of 12,000 recruits offered jobs.
The hiring happened so quickly that many new officers were put on the streets before being adequately vetted, multiple former officials said. An ICE whistleblower urged officials to halt the massive expansion, saying in a memo to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General in August 2025 that the “overwhelmed” agency had hired officers without checking their fingerprints or their identities.
In recent months, the agency has begun quietly firing some of the recruits, according to three former DHS officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters shared with them privately. They said ICE has cited red flags that should have been identified earlier, or poor performance. Concerns about vetting exploded into public view this summer, after relatives and court records described the volatile history of a different recruit alleged to have been involved in the fatal shooting of an immigrant in Maine.
ICE notified Moore in late August that he was going to be fired and instructed him to come to the agency’s Philadelphia office, according to two federal officials who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters. ICE had identified issues in his past, the officials said, including being fired from other law enforcement agencies.
The 38-year-old father of two had fought for his job when supervisors wanted to fire him in the past.
This time, he parked his car in a lot outside the office, and he had his gun. Law enforcement officers tried to stop him, but Moore eventually shot and killed himself, according to the Philadelphia Police Department.
The death initially received little attention outside the ICE field office in Philadelphia. The city medical examiner’s office said a man named Joseph Moore died on Aug. 28 by suicide, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. ICE informed all deportation officers of his death in an email on Friday, following inquiries from The Washington Post, and a spokesperson said the incident was under investigation. read more
