ICE whistleblower testifies to Congress about minimal training
A whistleblower from Immigration and Customs Enforcement testified at a congressional forum Monday that the agency is “lying to Congress and the American people” about its training of new recruits.
Ryan Schwank — an ICE academy instructor for new recruits before he resigned this month — testified that the agency’s training program “is now deficient, defective, and broken.”
“Without reform, ICE will graduate thousands of new officers who do not know their constitutional duty, do not know the limits of their authority, and do not have the training to recognize an unlawful order,” he said.
New documents
provided by Blumenthal’s office by an unidentified whistleblower provide more insight into how, exactly, the training protocol has changed. (Blumenthal’s staff could not confirm whether it was Schwank or another anonymous whistleblower who reached out to their office last month that provided the images of the syllabus.)
The documents — which appear to be images of the syllabus for the agency’s basic immigration enforcement training program — suggest that more than a dozen practical exams have been eliminated for enforcement removal operations officers, including exams in “judgment pistol shooting” and “criminal encounters.”
The agency also appears to have cut courses in “use of force simulation training” and legal trainings on “criminal vs. removal proceedings,” among other topics, from the training curriculum, the documents indicate. And they suggest that, contrary to acting ICE Director Todd Lyons’
testimony to Congress earlier this month, new ICE officers receive 250 fewer hours of training compared to prior recruits.
Ryan Schwank, a former ICE academy instructor, is expected to testify that ICE “is lying to Congress and the American people” about its training program.
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After what we have all witnessed on videos this has an undeniable ring of truth to it. Not only has the lack of training lead to an inability to "
recognize an unlawful order," it apparently has left federal agents without the training to recognize lawful orders as well.
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