The Secret Service is aiming to boost its ranks by thousands of officers over the next two years, part of a still swelling recruiting push across federal law enforcement agencies.

The Secret Service is aiming to hire 4,000 new employees by 2028, an agency spokesman confirmed. That would bring the Secret Service’s ranks to 6,800 law enforcement personnel and 10,000 total employees.

The Secret Service currently employs about 8,300 staff, according to agency budget figures. That includes 3,200 special agents and 1,300 uniformed division officers, per the Secret Service website.

“Last year, the agency launched a dynamic recruitment strategy aimed at both reducing inefficiencies in the hiring process and increasing the visibility of agency jobs to audiences with the requisite knowledge, skills and abilities to perform the mission,” the  Secret Service spokesman said. “We are focusing on targeting our recruitment efforts to individuals with a demonstrated track record of excellence, teamwork and trustworthiness — this includes former military, law enforcement, and top university graduates.”

The agency is also aiming to retain retirement-eligible agents, the spokesman added. Group retention incentives are being offered to special agents, uniformed division officers, cybersecurity professionals and specialty teams.

The Secret Service has long struggled with morale and attrition issues. A 2021 National Academy of Public Administration study found the agency’s mission demands have grown, while staffing levels have not kept up, requiring agents and officers to work longer hours.

But the Secret Service has been unsuccessful in previous attempts to grow its ranks to 10,000 employees.

The agency is now focused on streamlining the hiring process, including through new Accelerated Candidate events. The Secret Service says the events reduce the time to job offer by up to 120 days. The current average from application to entry-on-duty is 326 days for special agents and 256 days for the uniformed division.

The Washington Post first reported on the details of the Secret Service’s hiring goals.

The Secret Service’s recruiting drive comes amid a governmentwide law enforcement hiring push. The Trump administration is giving higher pay raises to federal law enforcement officers compared to most other government employees. 

In a post on X Tuesday, FBI Director Kash Patel said 2025 was a “huge year” for recruiting.

Patel didn’t cite how many employees the FBI hired. But he said the agency received 45,000 special agent applications and 30,000 professional staff applications in fiscal 2025.

He also said the FBI expanded the Reserve Service Program for retired FBI special agents to work as criminal investigators in field offices.

“These RSP-Special Agents will fill critical field office needs with experienced investigators – the first group will begin their assignments in January 2026,” Patel wrote.

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security this week announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has already hired more than 12,000 officers and agents over the last 11 months. The recruiting drive, backed by billions in funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, has spiked ICE ranks from 10,000 to 22,000 law enforcement personnel, DHS said.

Though the Trump administration’s original goal was to hire roughly 10,000 new ICE agents, DHS said this week that ICE is continuing to accept job applications.

Customs and Border Protection is also on a recruiting drive, aiming to hire 5,000 customs officers and 3,000 border patrol agents through 2029. Both CBP and ICE are offering massive recruitment and retention incentive packages.

The widespread recruiting push across federal law enforcement agencies is expected to put a strain on classes at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers. FLETC itself announced in September it was hiring 100 new instructors to support the “onboarding of thousands of new law enforcement officers nationwide.”

The post Secret Service touts hiring goals amid major law enforcement recruiting push first appeared on Federal News Network.

Interview transcript:

Terry Gerton You’ve done an interesting report recently. You revealed that senior officials at the FBI were granted waivers for polygraph exams. Let’s start at the beginning. Really, is this normal? And if it’s not, what is normal?

William Turton It’s not normal. You know, the people we spoke to who’ve worked at the highest levels of the FBI have told us that to grant waivers for people like the deputy director, Dan Bongino, the congressional liaison, Marshall Yates and the executive assistant to the director Kash Patel — a woman named Nicole Rucker — granting them polygraph waivers is unprecedented. We spoke to one person who said that they can only recall one waiver being granted, to an outside expert, and that was the only one they knew of in about a seven-year period.

Terry Gerton Are senior leaders at the FBI normally required to pass a polygraph exam?

William Turton All FBI employees are required to pass a polygraph exam. And that’s been the case since 1994. So just to become an FBI employee, you must pass a polygraph. And then as you gain more clearances or access to more sensitive information, some employees have to pass multiple polygraphs.

Terry Gerton And what does a waiver, then, of the polygraph signify?

William Turton We would love to know more about why they were granted waivers. When you take a polygraph at the bureau, based on the people that we spoke to, you get asked all sorts of questions ranging from illegal drug use to foreign contacts. Anything in the spectrum there can potentially cause issues with your employment. We didn’t report any details as to why these people were granted waivers, but we’d love to know more.

Terry Gerton So who has the authority then to grant the waiver?

William Turton We reported that Kath Patel, the director of the FBI, granted the waivers to all three of the employees that I mentioned earlier.

Terry Gerton Is there any requirement to give a justification for that, or was there any transparency around why those waivers were provided?

William Turton The Bureau didn’t disclose that the waivers were granted. The only reason we know that is because we spoke to sources with knowledge and we ended up reporting it. But there was no sort of disclosure or justification from the Bureau as to why the waivers were granted. When we went to the Bureau for comment, one of the things that they told us was that, well, these employees are Schedule C political appointees, so therefore they don’t have to take a polygraph. We spoke to four experts who specialize in security clearances and polygraphs who told us that’s not true. Being a Schedule C or political appointee doesn’t preclude you from having to take a polygraph. And for the record, I went and checked the Plum Book; only one of the three employees that I previously mentioned, Nicole Rucker, is listed as a political appointee.

Terry Gerton One of the reasons that you might expect an FBI official to take a polygraph is to make sure there isn’t any compromising information in their background. But one of the other reasons is to secure that top secret clearance. What kind of information might these folks be exposed to and what is the impact of not having a clear polygraph test and clearance?

William Turton As we reported in this story, the deputy director of the FBI receives some of the most closely guarded secrets that the American government has to offer. People have told us that the deputy director would routinely receive the president’s daily brief, which is a summary from all across the intelligence community of some of the most pressing threats to the country. They also get access to SCI, or special compartmented information, where people are read in and read out of various programs, where a very small amount of people have knowledge of that program. There’s also secure spaces within FBI headquarters. For example, on the seventh floor where the director of the FBI works, the entire director’s suite is what’s known as a SCIF, or secure compartmented information facility, meaning it’s designed to protect against electronic eavesdropping, you can’t bring personal devices inside and you need clearance that is granted, in part, by passing your polygraph to access those spaces.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with William Turton. He’s an investigative reporter with ProPublica. So what does all of this mean in terms of national security and public trust, if these folks don’t have the proper clearances or haven’t been properly vetted and have access to these important secret information?

William Turton I think one of the most immediate impacts that this has could be on the morale of other FBI employees. It’s important to note that Mr. Patel, the director of the FBI, has used the polygraph on his own workforce in order to see if negative comments have been made about him personally or if there have been leaks to the media. And so I think it presents a sort of immediate double standard that hasn’t really been explained by the Bureau, where top officials close to Patel don’t have to take a polygraph; at the same time Patel will use the polygraph to try and ferret out leaks or negative comments about his leadership.

Terry Gerton What’s happening in terms of oversight here? Has the Department of Justice said anything or the congressional oversight committees?

William Turton  Sen. Durbin, who is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is the main congressional oversight body of the FBI, raised this issue before Kash Patel when he testified before Congress. This actually happened before our story published, but Durbin mentioned senior members of Patel’s staff, and didn’t at that time explicitly name the deputy director. So this is on Congress’s radar, and when Kash Patel was asked about this, he didn’t engage in the question directly and deflected.

Terry Gerton So this feels a little bit like a tree falling in the forest. If no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Is this really a big deal? And if it is, what is going to happen in terms of broader implications, policy changes or even maybe a shakeup?

William Turton The former senior FBI officials and other government officials we spoke to thought it was a big deal. They thought it was a reflection of the fact that the FBI is being run by people who wouldn’t be able to, in their view, pass the minimum requirements to become an agent, much less the deputy director. So I think there’s a question of security, absolutely, people are concerned about. There’s a question about keeping information confidential and secure. And then there’s open questions about the motivations of the people running the Bureau. Officials that we spoke to wondered whether this was an example of prioritizing personal loyalty to the Trump administration and the director, rather than the kind of policies and procedures that are typically in place for FBI employees.

Terry Gerton Have you heard anything from Sen. Durbin or his staff or the committees about moving forward with additional hearings or additional oversight or possibly even future reforms of this process?

William Turton We haven’t, really. I think the story got lost in the news a little bit. There’s been a lot of news about the Bureau of late. I’m keeping my ears open; I think there’s a lot more to this story. And I have a feeling that it’s just scratching the surface.

Terry Gerton If it is eventually to generate some kind of reform, what do you think would be most likely? Would it be tightening clearance rules or codifying the polygraph requirements, as an example?

William Turton I’m not sure what avenues for reform there are, because as I understand it, the director and the president basically have unilateral authority to grant waivers for polygraphs or to grant, in some cases, clearances. So I think I don’t think anyone is eager to change that level of authority that rests with the president or the director of the FBI.

Terry Gerton Do you see any parallels between how the FBI has approached the polygraph and maybe what’s happening in the Department of Defense?

William Turton I think the most obvious parallel to me in writing the story —  I’m a little bit biased because I did some reporting on this earlier this year —  but what was happening at DHS, where employees were regularly being polygraphed for questions about media leaks or if employees had criticized leadership. It was kind of the exact same thing that we’ve been hearing at the FBI happening to rank-and-file staff.

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