In a recent group email, a friend and respected colleague argued that ICE officers are “a bunch of well-armed, ill-trained thugs recruited from places like dive bars, Klan meetings, and gun shows and with the mission of intimidating the American people.”
I was shocked by this inflammatory and reckless language. But, in today’s world, increasingly infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), even highly experienced professionals are guzzling down this left-wing Kool-Aid.
The well-worn canard, echoed by left-wing ideologues and propagandists, that ICE officers are poorly trained racist “thugs” terrorizing Americans, is widespread and increasingly dangerous.
And not particularly accurate — even if it is obvious the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would try to recruit right-leaning conservatives strongly opposed to illegal immigration, like me, rather than namby-pamby moderates, liberals, or leftists.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers (as well as Customs and Border Protection — CBP — agents) have traditionally been trained to similar standards as other federal officers. Depending on their roles, many are better educated and trained than most local and state cops.
New CBP officers and agents train at their own Border Patrol Academy in New Mexico for around 19 weeks, focusing on law, tactics, firearms, and Spanish. This is followed by training at the Field Operations Academy (FOA) at FLETC for an additional 89 days, covering technical skills, physical fitness, firearms, and vehicle operation.
Their training remains unchanged.
Critics note that, as part of President Trump’s ICE expansion, standards and requirements have been reduced. And this is partly true for some ICE officers, though specifics are still fuzzy. But it is not as serious as they argue.
Here is an Obama administration DHS official:
Like most other other federal law enforcement, ICE officers and agents train at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Glynco, Georgia, where I too received some training when I was with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
Most recruits are former military and/or local/state/federal law enforcement. They are now offered big bonuses and benefits to transfer from other police agencies. Clearly, those who served as prior law enforcement officers already possess regular policing skills, as well as experience, training, and knowledge.
All ICE candidates must still pass rigorous background checks, drug tests, and physical assessments, usually far tougher than local or state police agencies.
There is also a distinction between ICE Enforcement and Removal Officers (ERO) and ICE Homeland Security Investigators (HSI), special agents, which are often seen together during ICE raids and operations.
HSI agents still have the exact same college and age requirement, as well as training they always had, 12 weeks (three months) for basic investigator training, followed by 13 weeks of Special Agent training, both at FLETC, for a total of six months.
The reported changes to requirements and training apparently only relate to EROs.
Until recently, EROs typically required a bachelor’s degree, preferably in criminal justice, homeland security, or related fields, in addition to experience in law enforcement or criminal investigations.
However, the college requirement for EROs is no longer listed by ICE and can be considered a lowering of standards. The age limits have also been lowered from 21 to 18, with the 37-year-old top limit dropped entirely.
However, many, if not most, police departments in the U.S. don’t have a college requirement and hire persons as young as 18.
Basic ERO officer training previously was four to six months long (training five days a week), depending on experience. As part of Trump’s ICE expansion, new ERO hires now get a shorter two months of training, in part by dropping five full weeks of Spanish language training.
The language training has been largely replaced by translation technology services.
Training has also gone from five days a week to six days, completing more training per week, with critics often comparing apples to oranges when describing weeks and/or days of training. Still, basic training appears to have been reduced considerably.
DHS says the streamlined training still covers essential skills, including arrest techniques, defensive tactics, firearms training, and use-of-force policies, and aims to maintain high standards.
On top of that, new officers are getting more on-the-job training at field offices after being assigned.
The ERO newbies will usually be teamed up with seasoned agents, just as new police recruits on probation are teamed up with a training officer on patrol.
Yes, it can be argued that all of the above are reductions in some training and requirements, but they in no way make new ICE officers poorly or ill-trained.
And while the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) hiring boom has added several thousand new officers, we don’t know how many are EROs and how many are HSIs.
Meanwhile, seasoned agents are still the norm. Jonathan Ross, the ICE officer who shot and killed ICE-Watch vigilante Renee Good as she used her vehicle to flee arrest and hit him in the process, is a perfect example of a seasoned ICE officer.
Ross is a 43-year-old college-educated, Iraq war veteran, husband, and father, with two decades of experience with both Border Patrol and ICE.
The Christian family man has served as a deportation officer with ICE since 2015. He was seriously injured last summer when he was dragged 100 yards by the racing vehicle of a fleeing suspect whom he shot with a stun gun.
He deployed to Iraq from 2004 to 2005 with the Indiana National Guard as a machine gunner as part of a combat patrol team.
He joined the Border Patrol in 2007 in Texas and worked there until 2015, serving as a field intelligence agent gathering and analyzing information on cartels and drug and human smuggling.
Since he joined ICE in 2015, Ross has been a deportation officer in Minnesota. He is assigned to fugitive operations, seeking to arrest “higher value targets.”
He is also a team leader with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. “So, I develop the targets, create a target package, surveillance, and then develop a plan to execute the arrest warrant,” he told reporters.
Ross has also been a firearms instructor, an active shooter instructor, and a member of the SWAT team. He attended the Border Patrol’s language academy in New Mexico, where he learned to speak Spanish.
This agent’s background doesn’t describe an ill-trained racist thug — instead, like so many others like him, it shows a highly-trained and experienced officer serving his country.
Still, a big issue is that neither ICE nor CBP officers have ever needed to be trained in crowd control or policing of confrontational civilian anti-ICE vigilantes, since local law enforcement would usually provide personnel to cover that role. And thanks to Democrats in blue cities, local police are not doing this now.
Instead, they are being told to stand down when federal immigration operations are going on in their communities. In both Chicago and Minneapolis Democrat officials outrageously went so far as to tell local police not to respond to ICE officers’ calls for local police assistance to hold back a dangerous mob.
To me, this is the biggest factor impacting violent confrontations and shootings during ICE operations, not a lessening of training. While federal agencies tend to have higher barriers to entry and better specialized training, they are not better at handling the rapid-response, high-stress, unpredictable situations that local officers face daily.
When local or assigned police officers are forced to step back, that leaves federal agents (like ICE) unprotected and forced to step into duties they were not trained for, and spreads their numbers far thinner during operations.
As to ICE and CBP agents being white supremacists or racists, this is also detached from reality.
Border Patrol and ICE agents have high percentages of Hispanic personnel, with roughly 50% of Border Patrol agents being Hispanic. Latinos make up nearly 30% of ICE employees. While overall DHS has a workforce that is roughly 58% White and 20% Hispanic, these two enforcement agencies (CBP and ICE) are among the most racially diverse.
ICE also has one of the most racially diverse senior executive service workforces among DHS components. Meanwhile, Hispanic agents represent a significant portion of the rank-and-file ICE workforce, particularly in Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), the guys and gals you generally see on TV.
The truth is, most ICE and CBP officers are decent, well-trained, well-educated, ethnically diverse professionals, often with police and military backgrounds, risking their lives to protect the homeland.
Smearing them as “ill-trained racist thugs” isn’t just untrue, it threatens their lives, and the lives of those who feel justified in confronting them.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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It is obvious that the MSM continue to support the democratic party’s ideology and lie to the public and dramatize all things ICE or Trump. They are the squawking, cackling, lying, corrupt party that is trying to tear down the Constitution and America we love. And the complacent republicans sit around and pontificate about it and DO NOTHING. So Congress and all that support our legislative branch SUCK. POTUS and his Cabinet and the military are left to fight the corrupt government we have had for the last 100 years. We, the people, are going to have to figure out how to help win our country back. Form our own protest groups. or something.
Thank you for this detailed explanation re: the training of our ICE, CBP, & HSI officers! Hopefully, many fair minded people will read this.