Whistleblower: ICE weakening training programs

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A former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement instructor testified that the agency has scaled back its training, leaving recruits unprepared.

To meet demand for recruits for enforcement surges, ICE has stopped failing trainees on practical exams and shifted closed-book multiple-choice exams to open-book, according to Ryan Schwank, who taught at the agency’s academy in Georgia until he resigned earlier this month.

“ICE made the program shorter, and they removed so many essential parts that what remains is a dangerous husk,” Schwank told a congressional hearing Monday organized by Democrats....

The agency has hired 12,000 new ICE officers and agents in the past year, more than double the existing number, as part of President Trump’s promise of the largest deportation of illegal immigrants in American history.

Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Lauren Bis said the agency has streamlined training to cut redundancy and incorporate new technology but subject matter hadn’t been cut and new recruits still meet the same high standards ICE has always required.

Schwank told Congress that ICE recruits who made glaring mistakes in their final training exercises were still allowed to graduate, including trainees who accidentally drew their firearms on each other, pulled guns on detainees without justification, and pepper-sprayed bystanders without cause during simulated exercises.

“No matter how badly a cadet does at those practical exams, no matter how many mistakes they make, no matter how egregiously they violate the law during a practical, we graduate them,” Schwank said....

The former trainer claimed ICE has cut 240 hours of lessons from a 584-hour program, which he said meant dispensing with classes about firearm safety, lawful arrests, proper detention and the limits to officers’ authority.

“They ceased all of the legal instructions regarding use of force,” he said. “This means that cadets are not taught what it means to be objectively reasonable, the very standard which the law requires them to meet when deciding whether or not to use deadly force.”

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