A resolution recognizing January 2026 as "National Mentoring Month". (02/05/2026)

A concurrent resolution recognizing the 15th anniversary of the January 8, 2011, Tucson, Arizona, shooting and honoring the survivors and victims, including former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, a gun violence survivor and one of the most influential voices of courage in the United States in the fight to end gun violence. (02/05/2026)

(02/05/2026)

(02/05/2026)

(02/05/2026)

(02/05/2026)

(02/05/2026)

(02/05/2026)

A resolution designating the week beginning February 2, 2026, as "National Tribal Colleges and Universities Week". (02/05/2026)

Q: Is it true that ICE agents are financially rewarded for the number of people taken into custody?

A: The Department of Homeland Security has said there is no such policy, and an immigration think tank told us it is unaware of any payments per arrest. The Wall Street Journal reported that agents “are rewarded for making arrests“ but didn’t say how they are rewarded. Immigration and Customs Enforcement quickly scrapped a proposed program to pay bonuses to speed up deportations.

FULL ANSWER

We’ve received several questions from readers about whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents get a bonus for each person they arrest. One reader asked if agents are paid $1,500 for each immigrant they arrest. Versions of this claim have circulated on social media, with some posts pointing to a Wall Street Journal article that said ICE officers were “under pressure” to meet a daily nationwide arrest goal and were “rewarded for making arrests.” Some have interpreted this to mean a financial bonus.

Federal agents arrest a man after stopping and questioning him in the street in Minneapolis on Jan. 14. Photo by Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images.

The Department of Homeland Security and ICE didn’t respond to our multiple inquiries asking whether agents receive a bonus payment for each arrest. However, a DHS spokesperson told Snopes, which wrote about these claims, that “this policy has never and never was in effect.”

The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, also told us it wasn’t aware of any per-arrest bonus structure. Michelle Mittelstadt, MPI’s director of communications and public affairs, said, “We do not believe these claims regarding bonuses for arrests are accurate. ICE and its parent agency, DHS, have never indicated that they would set up a bonus payment structure rewarding personnel per arrest.”

In August, the New York Times reported on an ICE proposal to pay bonuses for quicker deportations — but it was canceled before it started and didn’t pertain to arrests. According to the Times, an internal ICE email proposed “cash bonuses to agents for deporting people quickly, an incentive meant to motivate the staff to speed up President Trump’s mass deportation campaign. Less than four hours later, the agency abruptly canceled what was supposed to be a 30-day pilot program.”

The Times reported that documents it reviewed called for $100 and $200 bonuses for each immigrant deported within one or two weeks of arrest. But a subsequent email to ICE field offices from Liana J. Castano, an ICE field operations official, told staff to “PLEASE DISREGARD” the program, the newspaper reported. 

As we said, some social media posts about arrest bonuses have pointed to a Jan. 17 Wall Street Journal article. The article about immigration enforcement in Minneapolis said that “officers here and elsewhere are under pressure from daily arrest quotas that leadership has set at 3,000 a day across the country—the number it would take to reach one million arrests in a year, according to ICE officials familiar with the matter. Though ICE has never come close to meeting that daily goal, officers are rewarded for making arrests, even if the immigrants they take in are later released.”

The administration has publicly acknowledged the 3,000 arrest goal. In May, senior White House adviser Stephen Miller said on Fox News that the administration was “looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day and President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day.”

It’s unclear from the Wall Street Journal article how officers are “rewarded for making arrests”; the story says nothing about financial payments and doesn’t offer any more explanation about these rewards. We reached out to the Journal reporters for clarification, but we did not receive a response.

We also didn’t get a response from DHS or ICE when we asked for comment on the Journal’s article.

Some, including Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, posted that ICE was “rewarding” agents, an accurate summary of that article. Others interpreted this as a “bonus.” For instance, David J. Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, posted part of the article on X and said, “ICE agents get bonuses when they make wrongful arrests of US citizens.” Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego, of Arizona, shared Bier’s post and said, “Mistakenly arrest a US citizen? You get a big fat bonus.”

Beyond these interpretations of the Journal’s article, we were unable to find evidence regarding claims about per-arrest bonuses. Bier told us the Journal story was the only information he had. Gallego’s office hasn’t responded to our inquiry.

Snopes reported that some of its readers appeared to misconstrue the daily 3,000 arrest goal with a “$3,000 bonus for each arrest,” as some readers asked about.

According to DHS press releases, there is a signing bonus of up to $50,000 for new ICE hires. But that’s a recruitment and retention incentive, and there’s no indication it is tied to the number of arrests, or deportations for that matter, that an agent performs.

The Republicans’ 2025 budget bill, called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, provided $858 million for the signing bonuses, which, the legislation says, would be for new agents, officers or attorneys who agree to serve for five years or those already working for ICE who agree to stay with the agency for two more years.

Last year, DHS announced incentive funding to state and local law enforcement agencies that partner with ICE to arrest immigrants living in the country illegally. Beginning Oct. 1, DHS said that participating agencies would receive reimbursement for trained officers’ salaries and benefits along with quarterly performance-based bonuses. These monetary awards range from $500 to $1,000 per “eligible task force officer,” depending on “the successful location of illegal aliens provided by ICE and overall assistance to further ICE’s mission to Defend the Homeland.”

But that quarterly bonus program is for state and local police that cooperate with ICE, not a payment per arrest for ICE officers.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102. 

The post ICE Officers and Bonuses appeared first on FactCheck.org.

The claim vastly overstates preliminary research into whether the high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet might help people with the disorder, experts said.

A political reporter at The Washington Post, she also wrote “Long Time Passing,” about the Vietnam War’s social, political and psychological aftereffects.

The New York mayor is opening the roof of the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building to the public, but has plenty of work ahead to make the city below more affordable and accessible.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson continues to dismay.

Which Democrats may immediately fumble away.

Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott told "The Charlie Kirk Show" on Thursday that Senate Republicans are going to pass the SAVE Act to mandate voter ID and verification of citizenship to register to vote, and if Democrats want to stop it, they'll have to do a talking filibuster.

The two Democratic leaders have at times seemed like they're working together. At other times, they've seemed like they're working against each other.

President Donald Trump won’t be representing the U.S. at the opening ceremony of the Italian Olympic Games in Milan’s famous San Siro Stadium. But his shadow will surely loom over the two-week-long sporting spectacle, which kicks off Friday.

The president’s repeated jabs at longtime partners, his inconsistent tariff policy and repeated plays for Greenland have shown just how much he's shifted the traditional world order. The resulting international “rupture,” as described by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in Davos last month, has turned beating the Americans in Italy from a crowning sporting achievement to an even greater moral imperative for the president's rivals.

“This is life and death,” said Charlie Angus, a former member of Parliament in Canada with the New Democratic Party and prominent Trump critic. “If it’s the semifinals and we’re playing against the United States, it’s no longer a game. And that’s profound.”

The Trump administration has big plans for these Olympics, according to a State Department memo viewed by POLITICO. It hopes to “promote the United States as a global leader in international sports” and build momentum for what the White House sees as a “Decade of Sport in America,” which will see the country host the Summer Olympics and Paralympics in 2028 and the Winter Olympics and Paralympics in 2034, as well as the FIFA World Cup this summer.

But a combative administration may well complicate matters.

He’s sending Vice President JD Vance, a longtime critic of Europe’s leaders, to lead the presidential delegation in Milan. Then there’s ICE. News that American federal immigration agents would be on the ground providing security during the games sparked widespread fury throughout the country.

Trump has also clashed with many of the countries vying to top the leaderboards in Milan. Since returning to the White House in January, he’s antagonized Norway, which took home the most medals in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, over a perceived Nobel Peace Prize snub and clashed repeatedly with Canada, which finished fourth.

“We’re looking at the world in a very different light,” Angus said. “And we’re looking at a next-door neighbor who makes increasingly unhinged threats towards us. So to go to international games and pretend that we’re all one happy family, well, that’s gone.”

Trump has also sparred with Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, (the 13th-place finisher in Beijing) and threatened a military incursion in pushing Denmark (a Scandinavian country which curiously hasn’t medaled in the Winter Olympics since 1998) to cede Greenland.

All while seeming to placate Russia, whose athletes competed under a neutral flag in 2022 due to doping sanctions and secured the second-most medals in the Beijing games, which ended just days before President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.

The Olympics have long collided with geopolitics, from Russia’s ban in response to its war in Ukraine to South Africa’s 32-year-long exclusion as punishment for apartheid. And Beijing’s time in the limelight was marred by a U.S. diplomatic boycott over China’s treatment of its Uyghur population.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said Trump’s political agenda of putting America First is paying off.

“Fairer trade deals are leveling the playing field for our farmers and workers, NATO allies are taking greater responsibility for their own defense, and drugs and criminals are no longer entering our country,” she said. “Instead of taking bizarre vendettas against American athletes, foreign leaders should follow the President’s lead by ending unfettered migration, halting Green New Scam policies, and promoting peace through strength.”

When reached for comment, the State Department deferred to the White House about the political ramifications of the games. A State Department spokesperson also highlighted the role that its Diplomatic Security Service would serve as the security lead for Americans throughout Olympic and Paralympic competition.

Hockey, arguably one of the winter Olympic Games’ highest-profile sports, has already been roiled by Trump’s global agenda. Just look at last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off, which pitted the U.S. and Canada against each other in preliminary play and then again in the final.

Canadian fans booed the American national anthem mercilessly when the two sides faced off in Montreal. Trump called the U.S. locker room on the morning of the final and showered the Great North with incessant 51st state gibes, and then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded boisterously when Canada won the championship in overtime.

“You can’t take our country — and you can’t take our game,” he wrote.

The American men’s team will play Denmark in Milan — fittingly — on Valentine’s Day, and could see the Canadians at the medal rounds.

“I'm sure they'll concentrate on the events they compete in rather than get involved in politics,” Anders Vistisen, a member of the European Parliament from Denmark, said of his compatriots in a statement. “Maybe Trump's antics will give them even more motivation? Who knows?”

Elsewhere in Italy, Americans Sean Doherty, Maxime Germain, Campbell Wright, and Paul Schommer will match up against 2022 champion Quentin Fillon Maillet from France in biathlon throughout the games. And Canadian short track speedskater and medal favorite William Dandjinou will look to hold off multiple Americans at the Milano Ice Skating Arena.

“With the current American president, no one knows what he will do or say tomorrow,” said legendary goaltender Dominik Hasek, a gold medalist with Czechia in the 1998 Nagano Games and a one-time rumored presidential candidate in his home nation. “If he doesn't make negative comments about athletes from other countries in the coming weeks, everything will be fine. But that could change very quickly after one of his frequent hateful attacks.”

Hasek, a frequent critic of Putin’s war in Ukraine, said Trump “has antagonized most of the people of the democratic world with his attitudes and actions.”

That doesn’t exactly scream “Faster, Higher, Stronger — Together,” the Olympic motto revamped by the IOC in 2021.

“It was personal,” Angus, the former Canadian lawmaker, said of the tense Canada-U.S. showdown in the 4 Nations Face-Off last year. “This was deeply personal. We were at the moment of people brawling in the stands, and that was because of Donald Trump and the constant insults. He turned that game into war.”

But now at the Olympics, the U.S. is just one of more than 90 nations competing. And Trump’s international critics say they’re determined to not let their anger with Trump ruin the games — if just not to give him the satisfaction.

“People are done with Donald Trump’s flagrant attempts to goad us and poke at us and insult us,” Angus said. “It’s like water off our back. We’re a much tougher people than we were last year.”

Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.

The ad is part of a multimillion dollar effort by a Republican-aligned group to help Ms. Collins, who is seen as one of the party’s most vulnerable incumbents.