Proper training and education for officers of the law should be mandatory for the safety of the public and our officers. However, ICE has made cuts to its required curriculum from an already short training program and failed to properly vet its officers.
Today, the quality of education and training received by people who want to make their way in the American workforce is expected to be as top tier in quality and as thorough as possible. This is true for doctors, firemen, lawyers and police officers, who are expected to responsibly carry firearms in public and deal with dangerous situations in a calm and capable manner on the regular.
Caroline Cook
But our federal government does not expect the same training and professionalism from agents of ICE.
ICE agents receive the least amount of training of any law enforcement group in the United States. As admitted on the Department of Homeland Security website, ICE agents receive a total of 12 weeks of training.
When broken down, “ICE recruits receive 56 days of training and an average of 28 days of on-the-job training.”
Compared to the minimum of six months of academy instruction and six months of on-the-job training most local police officers and domestic law enforcement receive, the amount of training ICE receives is absolutely inadequate to guarantee competency in its officers.
“ICE agents receive the least amount of training of any law enforcement group in the United States.”
In addition, there is no mention of officers receiving training on the legal process to enter the country or gain citizenship — seemingly important laws for those policing immigrants. Although the department emphasizes training in Fourth and Fifth amendment rights for ICE officers, no emphasis is placed on training their officers to uphold proper entry procedures into the U.S.
The Department of Homeland Security also claims the current level of training for its agents is the same as it always has been. However, a former lawyer and training instructor for ICE has gone on record to disprove that.
Ryan Schwank has confirmed that up to 240 hours of training time were cut from the required curriculum for ICE agents. This included cutting instruction on First Amendment protections, due process and the importance of judicial warrants. This concerned Schwank because “no one can tell you right now that these cadets are fully prepared to understand the difference between a lawful and an unlawful order because no test, no measurement exists for the new cadets of how they would apply it.”
Without proper training, officers have and will violate the law. If ICE is not concerned with upholding the law in its crusade to arrest “illegals,” that calls into question how concerned they are with upholding the law in any circumstance. ICE and its agents appear to believe they are above the law.
The current process for recruiting and vetting prospective agents also is lacking in thoroughness. Investigative journalist Laura Jedeed attended an ICE career expo in the Dallas area to see what the application process looked like, with no expectation that she would be accepted by ICE.
She had vocally and professionally written against ICE in the past, and she was confident an initial Google search would turn up those results and have her turned away. What happened instead was this: “They had offered me a final position as a deportation officer. My background check was listed as completed three days in the future from when I was looking at it. So, it seems like the answer to the question, ‘Who are they hiring?’ is they don’t know.”
She was accepted without any background check. This doesn’t just mean nosy journalists can get into ICE, but also people with criminal backgrounds, histories of violence, ties to hate groups or those with mental health concerns. We’ve seen this play out recently in ICE agent shootings of civilians.
So not only does ICE not give proper training to its officers, ICE doesn’t know who they’re training and putting on the street with access to weaponry.
Although some might argue the “urgency” of the problem of illegal immigration requires drastic measures, the vast majority of those taken into ICE custody in the Trump administration have abided by the law. During a study conducted between 2012 to 2018, arrest rates were compared between U.S. citizens, documented and undocumented immigrants. During this time, undocumented immigrants had the fewest convictions for violent crimes such as homicide, assault, sexual assault, robbery, burglary and theft. U.S. citizens had more than twice as many convictions for violent crimes as undocumented immigrants.
Many of the immigrants arrested by ICE were in the middle of acquiring citizenship legally.
For example, by turning up at the Dallas ICE office, Brian Ernesto Vilalta-Ramos was arrested, despite having no prior criminal charges and properly applying for asylum in the U.S. after emigrating from El-Salvador. He is part of more than 62% of ICE detainees in 2025 who were taken into custody without having been charged or convicted of any crime whatsoever.
If ICE is ignoring the system meant to facilitate legal entry into U.S. citizenship, then it is clear its directors don’t care about upholding the law and are making sure their officers are taught to obey that line of thinking above the law itself.
Caroline Cook is a student at Baylor University who is working with BNG this summer as a Clemons Fellow. She lives in Dallas.
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