Dubbed “The Green Monster” by some DHS officials, Border Patrol has a reputation as more aggressive and unpredictable than ICE. Its recruiting experience reflected the militaristic culture of the green-suited agency.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) held a two-day recruitment expo this week at the St. Petersburg Carillon Park Hilton hotel. Creative Loafing Tampa Bay sent this reporter to the event as a registered attendee to get an inside look at CBP’s recruitment tactics.
DHS’ opaque media strategy, the fact that the event is open to any member of the public who registers, and the importance of bringing DHS’ recruitment tactics to light contributed to this reporter’s decision to register and attend without openly advertising press status. At no point during registration or attendance was I asked if I was press, though I would have answered truthfully if asked. I did not provide any false information at any point.
The event page advertised a $60,000 recruitment bonus “for select Border Patrol and CBP positions,” which flyers at the event clarified were for “most difficult-to-fill locations” and are only paid out after several years on the job.
There were five tables inside the room where the event was held. The first, near the entrance, was for Border Patrol. There were also tables for boat and plane interceptors, customs officers who work at ports of entry, internal investigators, and general information. No U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recruiters were present.
The event was widely circulated among left-leaning social media circles as an ICE recruitment, despite ICE’s lack of attendance. Many recent newsworthy incidents attributed to ICE are often actually done by Border Patrol: Greg Bovino’s sweeps of New Orleans and Chicago, agents rappelling down from helicopters into residential apartment complexes, and agents jumping out of the back of a U-Haul truck to detain suspects at a Home Depot.
Border Patrol is often tasked with suppressing resistance to ICE, including the recent deployment of 800 agents to Minneapolis to quell protests over the killing of Reneé Good by an ICE agent. ICE’s recent hiring surge and a recent reorganization that placed Border Patrol personnel at top ICE positions may affect the organization’s culture and bring it closer to Border Patrol in both tactics and function.
Border Patrol
My experience with Border Patrol felt like a military recruitment: it was an organized, systematic routine that took people in to process them and move on. By never saying “no,” I was corralled from standing near the recruitment table to having a completed application submitted on my behalf, and I was told to expect a tentative job offer within weeks.
I spoke with a man who identified himself as a full-time recruiter from Border Patrol. When asked if a prospective employee would be able to work in the Tampa Bay area, he said that Border Patrol tends to work “where people try to sneak in,” so they’re mostly at land borders. He did not mention the recent deployment of Border Patrol agents to Minneapolis or the sweeps of New Orleans and Chicago.
The Border Patrol recruiter began to recommend ICE as a career path for those interested in staying local, but he stopped himself. “ICE isn’t really here because they don’t need to be here,” he said. He did not expand on this statement, but Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri has previously said that he believes local law enforcement’s participation in 287(g) agreements with ICE have kept the agency from targeting Florida cities.
“How old are you?” the recruiter asked. When I responded, he said, “You’re going to retire at 49.” He told me I would be able to start at a higher pay grade because I had three years of full-time employment. I told him I had no law enforcement experience, and he said it didn’t matter. “Walmart, Walgreens,” the recruiter said. Anywhere that I had full-time employment meant I was qualified. He advertised a training period of “just 115 days” for Border Patrol agents.
Qualified immunity: “You’ve got the entire federal government behind you”
When asked about personal liability insurance, the Border Patrol recruiter immediately explained that I likely wouldn’t need it as I would have “qualified immunity.” He told me that as long as I act in pursuit of doing my job, I would not be held liable for any consequences of my actions. “You’ve got the entire federal government behind you—not in front of you,” the recruiter said.
Qualified immunity—so-called because it is immunity with a few limitations, or “qualifiers”—is a legal principle that allows law enforcement to act without full understanding of, or compliance with, the law. If an agent mistakenly violates someone’s statutory or constitutional rights while on-duty, they are immune from prosecution and damages unless it can be proven that a “reasonable person” would have known better.
In theory, qualified immunity allows law enforcement to do their job without having to let criminals go out of fear of personal liability if they make a small procedural error. In practice, the ACLU says it often allows police brutality and civil rights violations to go unchecked, as officers know they are not likely to be punished for any violations they commit.
Local law enforcement
When asked how a job with Border Patrol differs from a job with local law enforcement, the recruiter said that if a prospective employee wanted to “just ride around in Clearwater or whatever,” Border Patrol probably wasn’t for them. He recommended that anyone pursuing law enforcement should pursue a federal job over local for the benefits and status. “If you want to go big, go federal.”
Corralled into applying
I did not ask to apply for a job. After attempting to get his tablet to work for several minutes, blaming his technical difficulties on another recruiter, the recruiter at the Border Patrol table told me to fill out a short digital form. I asked if I would be required to apply for a job just because I filled out this form, and he said no. “We’re not the military,” the recruiter joked.
Once this was done, he told me to follow him to another room. “You’re here to apply for a job, let’s apply for a job, brother,” the recruiter said. I entered a large room that had about 78 workstations, each with a laptop open to an application page. Most seats were filled, and most of the applicants appeared to be either nonwhite Latino or Black men. The Border Patrol recruiter handed me off to a separate recruiter who was helping several people fill out their applications. I was instructed to create an account on usajobs.gov and wait for further assistance.
AI-generated resumes
After creating an account, the recruiter opened up an AI resume-generating website called livecareer.com. The previous applicant’s “work experience” page was still open; they used AI to generate a description for their nightclub bouncer job. I was directed to erase that and do the same with my own previous experience as a software engineer. “Make it sound as fancy as possible,” the recruiter said.
After entering my former job title, a menu appeared with about 65 suggested job responsibilities, like “Mentored junior developers, sharing knowledge and expertise to support their professional growth and development within team.” When I clicked one, a bullet point was added to a “job description” field containing that text. “Click everything,” the recruiter said.
I read each sentence, confirming that it was an actual part of the job that I completed, then I clicked it to add it to my job description. After I had added about five responsibilities, the recruiter reached over my shoulder to click all of them faster than either of us could read. “According to America, as a software engineer, you did all these things,” he told me. “You’re a rockstar.”
Once he had selected all of the responsibilities, he copied the output and pasted it into the government application website to create a resume. It was over 5,000 characters; too long. He erased a few bullet points from the end and continued, generating a sloppily-formatted resume that was little more than a single lengthy paragraph with a header. The result was so unreadable that I couldn’t imagine a human being would be personally reviewing it.
Hands-free application
Once I began the application, I reached the “merit hiring questions,” which are optional sub-200-word narrative questions that highlight an applicant’s character. The first question read: “How has your commitment to the Constitution and the founding principles of the United States inspired you to pursue this role within the Federal government? Provide a concrete example from professional, academic, or personal experience.”
In each response field, the recruiter instructed me to paste the words, “I’d prefer not to answer.”
From this point on, I mostly only touched the computer to type what was dictated to me into text fields. The recruiter, reaching over my shoulder, filled out the application on my behalf, answering some questions faster than I could read them without asking me for input.
I was asked a few questions regarding my past. Was I born in the U.S.? Have I ever had sex in jail? Am I willing to use lethal force? Have I ever smoked weed? “It’s OK if you have,” the recruiter assured me regarding drug use, “you just have to let me know.” He did not say whether or not the answers to other questions would disqualify me from getting the job.
Many of the questions were only briefly summarized by the recruiter, and I did not get the chance to read them until I left the event and was able to review (but not edit) my application. One question asked if I was willing to “encounter people experiencing extreme poverty and personal hardships, such as separation from family; witness drownings, vehicle accidents and other tragedies,” alongside a lengthy slew of risks associated with being a Border Patrol agent. The recruiter only asked me: “Do you acknowledge that this is a tough job?”
One question asks if an applicant would like to enter on-duty before their background investigation is completed, using a “provisional clear” status. The recruiter asked me if I wanted to do so to “get paid sooner.” When I declined, he asked if I was sure before he moved on.
The day after attending this event, reporter Laura Jedeed published an article about her experience being recruited for ICE. Her experience mirrors mine with CBP in many ways, except that she was presumably granted this provisional clear status that would have allowed her to work before her background check was approved. ICE also conducted on-site interviews, which did not happen for CBP recruitment.
I did not get a chance to read or answer the final question, which the recruiter answered on my behalf without requesting my input. The question read in-part: “I hereby certify to the best of my knowledge and belief, all of the information provided by me is true, correct, and complete and made in good faith. … False or fraudulent information provided herein is also criminally punishable pursuant to federal law, including 10 U.S.C.1001. By clicking ‘Yes’ below, I certify that the information I have provided is true to the best of my knowledge.”
I did not provide any false information in the recruitment or application process. However, had I been able to read the question, I would not have selected “yes,” and I would have ended my application process immediately.
After completing the application, the recruiter told me that I will either receive a job offer in my email or be told I am ineligible. If ineligible, he told me to fix whatever made me ineligible and reapply during the February recruitment cycle.
A flowchart provided to me showed the next steps: a medical exam, a fitness test, a polygraph test and a final interview. In Jedeen’s experience with ICE, these steps were not required before her “enter on-duty” date, though it’s unclear if that requirement would be similarly waived for the more militaristic Border Patrol. I left the event less than an hour after I entered with a CBP-branded bag full of flashlight pens, refrigerator magnets and flyers stating all of the benefits to which a CBP agent is entitled.
CBP did not respond to a request for comment on this article.
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This article appears in Jan. 15 – 21, 2026.