A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) whistleblower accused the agency of lying about shortchanging its training, including legal training over whether they are permitted to use deadly force, amid a hiring surge of new officers.
Ryan Schwank, a former lawyer for ICE, said training for new officers has been pared down to the point where it is “deficient, defective and broken” during a forum organized by congressional Democrats about “constitutional violations and abuses” within ICE policies. He accused ICE leaders of shielding training shortcuts from the public.
Schwank countered administration claims that it has maintained training standards even as it has condensed some aspects of its program.
“For the last five months, I watched ICE dismantle the training program, cutting 240 hours of vital classes from a 584 hour program, classes that teach the Constitution, our legal system, firearms training, the use of force, lawful arrests, proper detention and the limits of officers’ authority,” said Schwank, who recently trained cadets at the ICE academy in Georgia.
“They ceased all of the legal instructions regarding use of force. 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. Our jobs as instructors are to teach them so well that they can make split second decisions about what they can and cannot do in life or death situations,” he added.
“Yet, 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, all to satisfy an administration demanding they train thousands of new officers before the end of the year.”
It’s the first public appearance from Schwank, whose comments surrounding the use of force come as Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers have been implicated in multiple deadly shootings, including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
DHS received $170 billion under the Big Beautiful Bill, funding that came with a mandate to surge hiring of ICE agents to deliver on President Trump’s pledge to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in history.
ICE has maintained it has not cut its training program, though in a press release DHS said training had been streamlined.
“Despite false claims from the media and sanctuary politicians, no training hours have been cut. Our officers receive extensive firearm training, are taught de-escalation tactics, and receive Fourth and Fifth Amendment comprehensive instruction,” DHS spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in a statement.
“The training does not stop after graduation from the academy—Recruits are put on a rigorous on-the-job training program that is tracked and monitored.”
Schwank, however, argued that new officers receive little on the ground training before being place in high pressure situations.
“DHS assures the public these cadets can get the job training to compensate for anything missing at the academy. This is a lie. Many graduates go to their home office just long enough to get their gun, their badge and their body armor before deploying to places like Minneapolis and other ICE operations with minimal supervision,” he said.
“It’s shocking that anyone would think this is safe or responsible.”
He also said trainees are receiving inaccurate information about the lawful limits of their authority, including that they may enter homes without a judicial warrant.
DHS has said that some officers have entered homes with an “administrative warrant” issued within the department. The process has sparked an outcry from critics who say they are defying the separation of powers by sidestepping judicial review.
“On my first day at the Academy, I was instructed to read and return a memo in my supervisor’s presence which claimed ICE officers could enter homes without a judicial warrant. The Acting ICE Director authorized the very conduct the DHS in its own 2025 legal training materials had called the ‘chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed’ – that is physical entry of the hall without consent or proper warrant,” Schwank said.
“Never in my career had I ever received such a blatantly unlawful order, nor one conveyed in such a troubling manner. Incredibly, I was being shown this memo in secret by my supervisor who made sure that I understood that disobedience could cost me my job. ICE is teaching cadets to violate the Constitution, and they were attempting to cloak it in secrecy by demanding that I lie about it.”
DHS on Monday described the shifts in training as addressing redundancies.
“DHS has streamlined training to cut redundancy and incorporate technology advancements, without sacrificing basic subject matter content. Under these new improvements, candidates still learn the same elements and meet the same high standards ICE has always required. No subject matter has been cut,” the department said in a release.
“ICE officers receive structured and comprehensive instruction on the Fourth and Fifth Amendments as an integral component of their basic training…Every ICE officer has been repeatedly trained, tested, and held to clear standards that require consistent respect for constitutional rights in all enforcement activities.”
ICE leaders defended their training standards earlier this month, with Director Todd Lyons saying the curriculum was the same.
“The meat of the training was never removed. The timeline was we took training from five days a week, eight hours a day, to six days a week, 12 hours a day. In addition to that, training is different in the fact that before officers even go to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Academy, there’s pre-employment training, which we never had before,” he said in response to questions from House Homeland Security Committee Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.).
