Former ICE employee says training program is ‘broken’

A former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attorney told Congress on Monday the agency’s trainee program is providing deficient training to new agents in order to get them on the streets as quickly as possible.

Ryan Schwank, an ICE employee who was tasked with instructing new agents on proper use of force, resigned from his years-long career with the agency on Feb 13. Schwank told Congress he resigned because he was bound by the oath he took to report the ICE Academy is “deficient, defective and broken.”

“In the name of churning out an endless stream of officers, DHS leadership has dismantled the academic and practical tests that we need to know if cadets can safely and lawfully perform their job,” Schwank said Monday. “All to satisfy an administration demanding they train thousands of new officers before the end of the year.”

Documents disclosed to Congress show ICE is on track to graduate around 4,000 new agents from the training program by the end of September. The Trump administration has previously said it plans to hire 10,000 agents through funding allocated in the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

The hearing was organized by Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut). Congressional Democrats have refused to fund DHS until the Trump administration agrees to a number of reform measures, including prohibiting agents from wearing masks.

Schwank said that over the last five months he has watched ICE “dismantle” the training program, cutting over 240 hours of training related to the Constitution, firearms training, use of force, lawful arrests, proper detention and the limits of officer’s authority. 

“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,” he said.

A spokesperson with ICE did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.

Schwank’s testimony comes just over a month after two separate incidents where ICE agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, in Minnesota. DHS and White House officials have stood behind the ICE agents and their training.

When asked about a DHS statement claiming training has been “streamlined,” and that no subject matter has been cut, Schwank said the agency is lying.

"What was taken out was 16 hours of firearms training, classes that teach them how to use their weapons correctly and safely," he said. "What was taken out were classes on how the Constitution works. In fact, the class where we talk to the officers and teach them about the rights of protesters was cut from a two-hour program into about 10 minutes that got shoehorned into a lecture about what the concept of seizure is."

Schwank added that there are "widespread concerns” among training staff that recruits do not have a solid grasp on appropriate tactics or the law, even during their final days of training.

Schwank also told Congress that on his first day with the training academy, his direct supervisor instructed him to read and immediately return a physical memo that claimed ICE agents could enter homes without a judicial warrant, a direct contradiction to the Fourth Amendment.

“Never in my career had I ever received such a blatantly unlawful order, nor one conveyed in such a troubling manner,” he said. “ICE is teaching cadets to violate the Constitution, and they were attempting to cloak it in secrecy by demanding that I lie about it.”

Schwank’s words echoed early Thursday morning, when reports came out that ICE agents had lied about what they were doing in order to enter a Columbia University residential hall to arrest Elmina Aghayeva, an international student studying neuroscience and political science.

The university’s acting president Claire Shipman said in a statement the agents used "misrepresentations to gain entry to the building,” and said they were looking for a missing person.

Hours later, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a social media post that he had spoken with President Trump about Aghayeva and that she would be released from detainment “imminently.”

“Law enforcement is a deadly serious business. It is not a place for shortcuts. Deficient training can and will get people killed,” Schwank said, adding “ICE is lying to Congress and the American people about the steps it is taking to ensure its 12,000 new officers faithfully uphold the Constitution and can perform their jobs.”