Do We Really Need More ICE Agents? Or More Correctional Officers?

The Bureau of Prisons recently posted the photos displayed in the above TikTok link on their Facebook page, showing federal prison officers doubling as ICE agents in the field.

According to all available data, there’s a nationwide shortage of correctional officers in the federal prison system.

Shouldn’t we be seeing ICE agents working in the federal prisons right now? They could easily sit in some bureaucrat’s office, managing rec yards to get inmates out of lockdown and into FSA eligible programming.

What’s worse is we can expect correctional officers who have experience with ICE to come back with an unnecessary bias against undocumented inmates in federal prison. The justice system already has a structure in place for these inmates – there’s no functional need for the bias that these correctional officers will undoubtedly bring back with them.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that ICE agents were earning an additional $40,000 – $50,000 as a signing bonus. Are BOP officers getting that kind of pay bump as well?

If so, they should be giving that kind of money to corrections officers as a signing bonus as well. This would encourage more people to consider the field of corrections, and alleviate inmates of the widespread lockdowns caused by staffing shortages.

What do you think about all this? Sound off in the comments.