ICE recruits must pass a physical fitness test. There

President donald trumpthe plan of double the size of ICE Hiring and deploying 10,000 new agents by January has lost some steam because many of the new recruits who show up at the ICE training academy in Georgia don’t appear to pass its physical fitness test. The Atlantic reports.

The test requires recruits to do 15 push-ups, 32 sit-ups and run 1.5 miles in 14 minutes or less, but more than a third of them failed, officials said.

“It’s pathetic,” a career ICE official told The Atlantic, noting that the academy’s standards have already been relaxed to boost recruitment..

The Atlantic also reported that earlier this month, ICE headquarters sent an email to senior officials complaining about “a significant number of athletically allergic candidates” who had “misrepresented” their physical condition on application forms.

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Recruits who fail the fitness test are also not thrown off the field like a kid who just got hit with dodged balls. Instead, those who don’t qualify for other jobs are assigned administrative duties while they wait for ICE human resources to prepare their pink slips, and this appears to be causing quite a stir in field offices.

A senior official told The Atlantic that because recruits are not fully trained, they are not as useful in administrative roles. Additionally, there are not enough parking spaces, cubicles or bathrooms to accommodate the influx of, essentially, glorified interns.

“It’s a disaster,” a senior ICE official told the outlet.

A Department of Homeland Security representative told The Atlantic that physically unfit recruits are only “a subset of candidates in the initial basic academy classes,” and that DHS still expects to fill 85% of its quota elsewhere.

Essentially, DHS plans to supplement ICE’s ranks by hiring current law enforcement officers and recently retired ICE officials, all of whom can continue to collect their pensions. besides to a salary. These employees can bypass the fitness test, but “will still be subject to medical, fitness and background requirements,” the DHS representative said.