Former ICE instructor testifies that agency slashed training for new officers
Source: Washington Post
Updated February 23, 2026 at 6:30 p.m. EST
A former instructor for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Monday accused the agency of dramatically slashing training standards for new officers and lying to Congress about it as the Trump administration seeks to rapidly expand its mass deportation operation. Ryan Schwank, who resigned from his job at an ICE academy in Georgia last week, told congressional Democrats at a hearing that the agency eliminated 240 hours of “vital classes” from a mandatory 580-hour training program, including instruction about the legal boundaries for the use of force, how to safely handle firearms, and the proper way to detain and arrest immigrants.
“Law enforcement is a deadly serious business. It is not a place for shortcuts,” Schwank said. “Deficient training can and will get people killed. … ICE is lying to Congress and the American people about the steps it is taking to ensure that 12,000 officers can faithfully uphold the Constitution and perform their jobs.”
Ahead of the hearing, Schwank provided a joint panel of House and Senate Democrats copies of internal ICE documents that he said show the extent of the cuts. The documents indicated that the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers in Glynco, Georgia, shortened its training program from 72 days to 42 days.
Democratic lawmakers said that a side-by-side comparison of a table of contents for the ICE basic training program in July 2025 — before a tranche of new funding from Congress for the agency to hire thousands of officers — and February 2026 appears to show that “a number of courses have been wholly cut from ICE’s training program.”
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2026/02/23/former-ice-instructor-says-agency-slashed-training-new-officers/
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