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.

Schwank’s testimony at the forum, co-hosted by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., comes on the heels of mounting public criticism of ICE as its officers have aggressively worked to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. An ICE officer killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, in Minneapolis last month, using tactics that law enforcement experts broadly criticized. (Agents from the Border Patrol, a separate agency, killed Alex Pretti, also a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, in Minneapolis shortly after.)

Two ICE officers are also under criminal investigation about whether they lied under oath about the shooting of a migrant in Minneapolis last month, as MS NOW previously reported.

The agency has made sweeping changes to its recruitment processes after the Trump-backed so-called One Big Beautiful Bill allocated funding for ICE to hire 10,000 new agents on top of the 20,000 it already employed. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem eliminated prior age restrictions for new officers and offered signing bonuses of up to $50,000.

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.

Spokespeople for ICE did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s questions Monday about the documents.

At the hearing, Schwank took aim at these changes.

“Deficient training can and will get people killed,” he said. “It can and will lead to unlawful arrests, violations of constitutional rights, and a fundamental loss of public trust in law enforcement.”

Schwank claimed that nearly 16 hours of classes on firearms training intended “to teach them how to use their weapons correctly and safely” were eliminated, as well as other courses on the constitutional requirements and limits of their roles. That included a 2-hour course about the rights of protesters, which was reduced to 10 minutes, Schwank said.

He added that while agency leadership “assures the public these cadets can get on-the-job training” for anything they miss 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,” Schwank said. “It’s shocking that anyone would think this is safe or responsible.”

Schwank resigned Feb. 13. His testimony Monday marked his first time speaking publicly, according to Blumenthal’s office. In Schwank’s most recent role at the agency, which he assumed last year, he was an instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center outside Brunswick, Georgia, where he taught the legal curriculum.

He also served as the onsite legal advisor to the family detention center in Dilley, Texas — a facility that has recently made headlines for warehousing children, including Liam Ramos, the 5-year-old wearing a bunny hat who was detained with his father in Minneapolis last month. (Liam and his father have since been released.)

Schwank was hired by ICE in 2021 as assistant chief counsel for the office of the principal legal advisor, a role in which he represented ICE in proceedings before the Executive Office for Immigration Review, an office at the Justice Department that conducts immigration court proceedings and hearings. Prior to working for ICE, he worked as an attorney and supervised analyses of criminal justice operations in Denver, according to biographical information provided by Blumenthal’s office.

Also testifying Monday were Teyana Gibson Brown, a Minneapolis resident and U.S. citizen whose door was broken down by armed ICE agents who entered her home without a judicial warrant, and Stevan Bunnell, former general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security.

In a statement, Blumenthal said the witnesses “are coming to Congress because we have the responsibility to not only bear witness to these crimes, but to do something to make sure they don’t happen again,” and urged other would-be whistleblowers to come forward.