Help People, Stay Broke. Hurt People, Get Paid.

DHS is recruiting ICE agents with attractive incentives including sign-on bonuses, student loan forgiveness, and more.

That’s the American incentive system in 2025.

Teach a child and you’ll wait a decade—or more—for your loans to be forgiven. Run into a burning building, and you’ll likely do it for free. Support vulnerable families in crisis, and you’ll drown in debt on a modest nonprofit salary.

But deport a family under federal law enforcement, and you’ll get a $50,000 bonus, full benefits, and up to $60,000 in student loan forgiveness after just three years.

This isn’t just economic policy. It’s a moral blueprint, and we’re building it backwards.

These Are Not Abstractions. They’re People

These aren’t hypotheticals. They’re real people making real sacrifices and getting very different returns.

Sean Delaney: Volunteer Firefighter, New Milford, CT

For 20 years, Sean Delaney has run toward burning buildings. He’s answered over 1,000 emergency calls a year with his volunteer fire department. In return, he receives a small pension and a property tax abatement. What he does not get is a salary, loan forgiveness, or federal perks.

He risks his life for a community that thanks him with paperwork.

Philip Belcastro: Public School Teacher, Florida

Philip teaches English at St. Petersburg High School. Or at least he did until his rent grew to more than half his monthly salary. He packed up everything he owned and moved it into a 10x10 storage unit.

“This is my entire life in a 10x10 storage unit,” he told WLRN.

Now he and his girlfriend, who is also a teacher, are planning their escape from Florida entirely. It isn’t just because of the pay, but also because of the politics. The system no longer supports them.

ICE Recruit: Federal Law Enforcement Agent

However, if you join ICE today, you’ll receive:

• A $50,000 signing bonus

• Up to $60,000 in student loan forgiveness

• Full federal health, retirement, and overtime benefits

• No age limit

• Only a three-year commitment

All for enforcing immigration policy that often includes community raids, detentions, and family separations.

The Math of Morality

One runs into fires. One teaches in a classroom until the state pushes him out. One enforces deportations with a check waiting on the other end.

If how a nation spends its money explains what it values, the calculus is damning.

---

“The Only Qualification That Matters Is Patriotism”

That’s what Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said when announcing the federal government’s latest move eliminating all age limits for ICE agents.

You read that right. There’s no longer an upper age cap. You can now sign up to conduct immigration raids at 18 or 68. All you need is a clean background and a deep belief in the mission.

And what’s that mission? To enforce. To detain. To remove. For that, the government is offering some of the most generous incentives in public service.

ICE agents typically start with base salaries between $50,000 and $90,000, depending on grade and location. Add in overtime, availability pay, and locality boosts, and many quickly clear $100,000+ annually, all before factoring in the new $50,000 signing bonus, student loan forgiveness, and enhanced retirement benefits.

But it doesn’t stop there.

The government is now actively wooing former ICE agents back into service, offering:

• Return bonuses totaling $50,000

• Annual performance incentives of up to $10,000

• Total salaries reaching $171,000

• Waivers allowing them to keep their pensions while earning full-time pay

All of this is part of a federally funded campaign to supercharge ICE’s capacity, backed by Congress’s latest immigration enforcement package, commonly called the “Big Beautiful Bill.” While the budget for DHS and immigration enforcement ballooned under this bill, at the same time, public service loan forgiveness was crippled, with new limits on what can be borrowed for advanced education and new thirty-year payment rules for forgiveness.

See our most recent reporting here:

The Ladder Pulled Up: How the Supreme Court and Trump’s Budget Gut Public Education and Entrench Inequality

Meanwhile, teachers like Philip Belcastro are packing their lives into storage units. Firefighters are serving their towns for free. Librarians with master’s degrees are working without benefits.

ICE agents, meanwhile, are being handed paychecks, forgiveness, and a badge, all in the name of "patriotism."

---

Degrees of Separation: When Education Doesn’t Pay

You’d think that earning a master’s degree in America would mean some measure of financial stability. That it would guarantee a salary, a pension, maybe a path out of student debt. You’d think that dedicating yourself to a life of service, such as educating children, building literacy, and counseling families, would be rewarded.

However, in the public sector, those degrees often feel like debt traps dressed as diplomas.

Educators

Teachers, for example, are almost universally required to hold a bachelor’s degree, and in many states, a master’s is either mandated for full certification or heavily incentivized. They take on that debt for the privilege of earning, on average, about $66,000 a year—26% less than other professionals with the same level of education. Some start at less than $50,000. That’s before buying their own supplies or picking up a second job over the summer just to stay afloat. Significantly, starting pay can vary widely between rural and metropolitan areas.

You might assume that teachers, at least, have it easier. That they “get summers off” or only work from 8 to 3. However, that’s not the reality. Most teachers work 50+ hours a week. They spend their summers in professional development, curriculum redesign, or picking up second jobs. Some spend their evenings grading or counseling students well into the night. Over 60% now report working through the summer.

This isn’t a part-time gig. It’s a full-life commitment that requires degrees, certifications, unpaid labor, and emotional bandwidth that most people couldn’t sustain. Factor in pressure from politicians over curriculum, bureaucratic obstacles, and increasingly dangerous work environments, and you have a recipe for collapse.

Librarians

Librarians are in a similar bind. Over 80% of full-time library positions require a Master’s in Library Science. These are highly trained information professionals, often acting as educators, archivists, social workers, and tech support for their communities, all rolled into one. And yet, many rural and nonprofit libraries pay them salaries that barely crack $30,000, often without benefits.

Those who work in small or rural libraries often wear multiple hats, but receive none of the pay. Many must balance their basic duties with programming, fundraising, advertising, and administrative tasks. Increasingly, they are also providing social services that they were never trained for, and as mandated reporters, find themselves repeatedly witnessing uncomfortable domestic dramas unfolding in areas with inadequate safety nets and supports.

Now, with growing politicization, many must also worry about potential legal challenges, arrest for doing their jobs, threats to funding streams, and increased demand colliding with plummeting support.

Social Workers

Social workers carry some of the heaviest emotional labor in our society, often needing a Master of Social Work (MSW) to practice in clinical or school settings. They navigate trauma, poverty, addiction, and bureaucratic cruelty on a daily basis. Most make around $60,000. Many have student debt that outlives their clients.

Like teachers and librarians, they bring their work home with them, often working late into the night to keep up on paperwork and “other duties as assigned”. Some are on call to respond to emergency situations, waking at odd hours to assist in addressing domestic abuse, crisis, and neglect while facing combative clients, insufficient resources, and the tragic reminder that there is a very good chance this will all repeat in a few months as courts reunite troubled families.

Firefighters

And we haven’t even mentioned firefighters, the people who literally run into burning buildings. Roughly 70% of firefighters in the U.S. are volunteers. They earn no salary, no student loan forgiveness, and no signing bonus. They get a pager, a uniform, and a deep sense of duty.

Some larger metropolitan areas do pay their firefighters. However, what amount of pay is sufficient for long shifts, dangerous conditions, and unimaginable trauma? In 2024 alone, 72 firefighters died in the line of duty, with the single largest cause being sudden cardiac events from the physical and environmental toll of the job.

In some areas, firefighters also moonlight as EMTs, search and rescue, and specialized crisis response. While some may receive grants or pay to earn these credentials, many must foot the bill themselves. Particularly in volunteer firefighting, many take on additional roles including fundraising, administrative, and education duties.

ICE

And then there’s ICE.

ICE agents are not required to hold a college degree. They are not required to understand child development, trauma response, pedagogy, or information management. They are required to pass a background check, complete agency training, and declare their willingness to carry out deportation orders.

We are sending a clear message:
Educate the public? Survive.
Enforce the state? Thrive.

---

What We Incentivize Is What We Become

A government’s budget is a moral document. Its incentives are declarations of value.

Right now, the federal government is declaring, in unmistakable terms, that it values punishment over care, force over service, and enforcement over education. It’s paying people to separate families, while forcing teachers to live out of storage units. It’s cutting checks to deportation agents, while librarians with master’s degrees burn out in part-time roles without benefits. It’s offering quick relief for ICE agents and decades of debt for everyone else.

This is not a coincidence. It’s a choice.

However, choices can be changed.

If we want to build a country where public service is honored—not exploited—then we need to stop rewarding the agents of cruelty and start investing in the people who keep our communities alive.

That means:

• Making student loan forgiveness automatic and fast-tracked for all public service workers, not just those in federal law enforcement.

• Funding schools, libraries, and social programs at levels that reflect their actual impact, not their political convenience.

• Resisting propaganda that frames teachers as liabilities and immigration raids as patriotism.

We are not short on resources. We are short on will. Silence only helps the side with money and weapons.

We don’t change this system by hoping it fixes itself. We change it by exposing it and demanding better.

Bibliography:

• Santiago, Rebecca. “Homeland Security Removes Age Limits for ICE Recruits to Boost Hiring for Trump Deportations.” Associated Press, August 6, 2025.

• Department of Homeland Security. “Secretary Noem Unveils No Age Limit for Patriotic Americans to Join ICE Law Enforcement to Help Remove Worst of the Worst from U.S.” DHS.gov, August 6, 2025.

• “Trump Administration Makes It Easier to Join ICE.” Politico, August 6, 2025.

• “ICE Barbie Gets MAGA’s Favorite Superman as a Sidekick.” The Daily Beast, August 6, 2025.

• National Volunteer Fire Council. “Volunteer Fire Service Fact Sheet.” NVFC, December 2022.

• U.S. Fire Administration. “Resources for the Volunteer Fire Service.” USFA, FEMA.

• FEMA/U.S. Fire Administration. “Annual Report on Firefighter Fatalities in the United States.” USFA, 2024 data.

• National Fire Protection Association. “Fatal Firefighter Injuries in the U.S. Report Shows 62 On‑Duty Deaths in 2024.” NFPA, June 11, 2025.

• Nancy Guan, “Teachers Say They Can’t Live and Work in Florida Anymore,” WUSF (NPR‑affiliated), November 30, 2023.

• National Education Association. “2023–2024 Teacher Salary Benchmark Report.” April 2025.

• National Education Association. “Educator Pay and Student Spending: How Does Your State Rank?” NEA.org.

• “State of the Educator Workforce 2024.” NEA Today.

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Librarians and Library Media Specialists.” Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2024.

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Social Workers.” Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2024.

• “What Are the Highest Paying Social Work Jobs?” BestColleges.com, March 2025.