Joseph Moore had dreamed of a life in law enforcement since he was a teenager. "Policing is in my blood," he wrote a Pennsylvania town's supervisors in 2020. "There is no other career for me."
But the Marine reservist struggled to advance his career, according to employment records included in federal court filings. Two law enforcement agencies fired him, and others rejected him altogether before he landed a policing job in a small city with little room to move up.
Then U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement went on a hiring binge last year to help carry out the Trump administration's promise of mass deportations. The agency offered $50,000 signing bonuses, similar to what Moore had previously earned in salary in a year. He was hired in the fall as a deportation officer -- one of 12,000 recruits offered jobs.
The hiring happened so quickly that many new officers were put on the streets before being adequately vetted, multiple former officials said. An ICE whistleblower urged officials to halt the massive expansion, saying in a memo to the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General in August 2025 that the "overwhelmed" agency had hired officers without checking their fingerprints or their identities.
In recent months, the agency has begun quietly firing some of the recruits, according to three former DHS officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters shared with them privately. They said ICE has cited red flags that should have been identified earlier, or poor performance. Concerns about vetting exploded into public view this summer, after relatives and court records described the volatile history of a different recruit accused of being involved in the fatal shooting of an immigrant in Maine.
ICE notified Moore in late August that he was going to be fired and instructed him to come to the agency's Philadelphia office, according to two federal officials who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters. ICE had identified issues in his past, the officials said, including being fired from other law enforcement agencies.
The 38-year-old father of two had fought for his job when supervisors wanted to fire him in the past.
This time, he parked his car in a lot outside the office, and he had his gun. Law enforcement officers tried to stop him, but Moore eventually shot and killed himself, according to the Philadelphia Police Department.
The death initially received little attention outside the ICE field office in Philadelphia. The city medical examiner's office said a man named Joseph Moore died on Aug. 28 by suicide, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. ICE informed all deportation officers of his death in an email, following inquiries from The Washington Post, and a spokesperson said the incident was under investigation.
"Anytime an individual takes their own life it's incredibly saddening," ICE said, adding that it provides counseling and other support to employees. "Our thoughts and prayers are with his family at this troubling time."
In a statement to The Post, Moore's family defended his record as a law enforcement officer and raised doubts that he died by suicide.
"Moore was on the phone with ICE officials during his final moments," the family said. "His interlocutor from ICE was seeking to resolve the situation peacefully and believed that Moore had been talked down when Moore's vehicle was subsequently surrounded by Philadelphia Police officers, with guns drawn."
A spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police Department said officials have concluded an investigation and none of its officers fired a weapon during the incident. "An ongoing internal review will assess their response and actions during the incident," the department said.
Two of Moore's colleagues at ICE's Philadelphia office said they believe that his death might have never happened if the agency had adequately vetted him. Both officers were hired around the same time as Moore and no longer work at the agency. They shared information about Moore on the condition of anonymity because they feared that speaking out could jeopardize their careers.
While it's unknown what drove Moore's actions, the officers said ICE put him in a poor position by hiring and then firing him, which can be highly damaging for someone in law enforcement. They said ICE should have reviewed his employment history and determined he wasn't qualified before offering him a job. Moore had grown fond of the position, they said, and he was eager to stay at the agency.
"Once you get fired from law enforcement, it's terribly hard, right or wrong, to get back into law enforcement," one of the officers said. "It's the death of a career, and the weight of this hits some officers hard enough where they take their own lives."
ICE launched its hiring push last year after President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill on the Fourth of July. The legislation set aside billions to double ICE's officer workforce from about 10,000 to 22,000. Officials hosted massive job fairs with World War II-like recruiting posters, slashed weeks off basic training or waived it entirely, and lifted the age cap of 40 to apply. Homeland Security said more than 220,000 applications poured in over a few months.
A former deportation officer who left the agency this summer told The Post that his ICE field office in the southern United States swelled to an unmanageable size from November to January. Hirings surged from one or two people to 60 at a time. There weren't enough bathrooms or desks.
"People were stacked on top of people and sharing two to three people per cubicle," said the former officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
After Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General, the agency watchdog, announced last year that it would audit ICE's hiring practices, an ICE unit chief sent the office a confidential memo reviewed by The Post that warned the agency was failing to vet applicants. The memo was first reported by The New York Times.
On its website, ICE says vetting is mandatory and includes interviews with the applicant and people who know them, criminal and background checks, and fingerprint and credit screenings.
A spokesperson said that the agency "diligently applies" proper vetting regulations and that applicants may be offered a "temporary status" to begin training pending a full background investigation.
But the whistleblower, who oversaw a staff of 100 in ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility, which manages background investigations for job applicants, said he had never seen the agency hire people so quickly. Human resources personnel made final job offers before preliminary vetting was complete. Applicants were cleared for duty "without fingerprints, identity verification, or credit checks," he wrote.
The official recommended that the hiring surge stop "until compliance with governing standards is restored." But hiring continued, and the whistleblower retired in July of this year. He declined an interview.
"They failed to engage in basic vetting requirements which led my client to be alarmed that they were putting agents on the street without knowing anything about their backgrounds," said Kevin Owen, the attorney representing the whistleblower. "The basic processes weren't even followed."
In a statement, ICE said the firings now taking place are "nothing new."
"ICE is hiring the best of the best to go after the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens including drug traffickers, murderers, and pedophiles," the agency said. "When individuals fall short of that standard -- personnel decisions are made. This is standard practice in almost every American workplace."
Moore was raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia. When he was 18, his mother reported to police that he had driven her car without permission, according to his testimony in a federal lawsuit he would file years later against