ICE is quietly re-examining hundreds of officers recruited during Kristi Noem’s calamitous hiring blitz in a bid to purge “bad actors” from its ranks, PunchUp has revealed in a new report.
The review comes after a string of shocking security breaches involving newly hired agents, which were first detailed by the Daily Beast’s sister investigations Substack on Monday.
PunchUp says one recruit in Georgia was caught using Meta’s smart glasses to snap photos of classified operational details that later appeared online.
In Minneapolis, Minnesota, a second new hire finished his shift in February, then walked outside and joined protesters rallying against the same operation he had just helped execute.
A third, in Kentucky, plotted to spring detainees from ICE transport vehicles, reports the outlet.
All three were terminated, with senior administration officials telling PunchUp that ICE Director Todd Lyons, 52, “ensured any misconduct was handled swiftly and decisively.”
These episodes represent the toxic legacy of “ICE Barbie” Noem’s recruitment binge, which promised massive signing bonuses to draw 10,000 fresh agents and hit the White House target of one million annual deportations.
The program has been widely panned as a disaster, with senior Department of Homeland Security officials admitting to PunchUp that corners were cut during the scramble.
The misconduct wave has also forced ICE to abandon Noem’s expedited training model and return to its standard full-academy requirements, PunchUp reports.
PunchUp’s report supports a Beast report from last November, in which insiders described the effort as a “s--tshow. A Daily Mail investigation weeks later quoted a young recruit as calling the chaos a “circus.”
Critics have slammed the program for bringing aboard agents who were physically unfit, failed drug screenings, or maintained ties to extremist groups and criminal organizations.
New DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, 48—who took over after Noem’s March exit—and Lyons, who will leave his post at the end of May, have ordered a comprehensive review of every hire made during her 14-month tenure.
The agency is hunting what sources call “sleepers”—individuals who joined with malicious intent or compromising backgrounds—as well as recruits who are simply unqualified.
Beyond the individual vetting reviews, the department is also working to restore Homeland Security Investigations—ICE’s criminal investigations division—to its original mission, the outlet says.
Under Noem’s leadership, HSI agents were reassigned from their core work on cartel disruption, child exploitation investigations, fentanyl trafficking, and national security cases involving foreign nationals.
Instead, they were deployed to juice President Donald Trump’s deportation statistics, creating what officials describe as dangerous gaps in critical investigations.
“HSI does have an immigration component to its investigative work, but there are actual criminal immigration issues they should be focused on,” one official told PunchUp.
“Especially now with the threats from China in the cyber realm, the national security implications around Iranian students who overstayed, the cartel connections, drug sales, child pornography, sex trafficking—there’s a whole range of things HSI needs to be doing.”
The broader course correction follows Mullin’s widely mocked performance at his Senate confirmation hearing in March, where he struggled to explain HSI’s basic functions.
However, a senior official told PunchUp that Mullin has since privately acknowledged the need for change.
The Daily Beast contacted DHS and ICE for comment. Neither responded.
