Bwick News has disturbing report on resigned FLETC instructor who says ICE agent training is designed to be inadequate
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Former ICE trainer at FLETC blasts training techniques for new recruits
THE MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE mh...@thebrunswicknews.com
The training Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are getting at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick is “deficient” and the agency is “broken,” a former lawyer and trainer at the center told a Democratic congressional group on Monday.
A FLETC Glynco spokesperson said Tuesday ICE agents are receiving the training they need.
Ryan Schwank, after resigning on Feb. 13 as a lawyer and instructor for the ICE academy at FLETC, testified at a forum convened by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, and Rep. Robert Garcia, D-California, and said the American people are being lied to about the training ICE officers are receiving.
“(The Department of Homeland Security) told the public the new cadets receive all the training they need to perform their duties, that no critical material or standards have been cut,” Schwank said. “This is a lie. ICE made the program shorter, and they removed so many essential parts that what remains is a dangerous husk.”
Schwank told the forum, which was not attended by any Republican members of Congress, that the Trump administration’s order to train thousands of new ICE officers before the end of the year cut the training too short for new cadets with no law enforcement experience to meet minimum standards. Constitutional applications to law enforcement, firearms training, proper detention techniques and laws, and constitutional limits on law enforcement officers have all been slashed, he said.
The cuts ceased all legal instruction on the use of force, he said.
“This means the cadets are not taught how to be objectively reasonably,” Schwank said.
His comments come after two American citizens were shot and killed by ICE officers during protests against an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis and Minnesota and widespread criticism of the agency’s tactics.
ICE deportation officers carrying out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda have come under intense scrutiny in the weeks following the deaths.
The Department of Homeland Security, DHS, which runs ICE, denied the allegations on Monday and has said all of its officers have followed federal law throughout all deportation escalation operations.
Schwank said he was given secretive orders early in his tenure as a trainer to teach cadets to circumvent the Fourth Amendment.
“On my first day, I received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant,” he said.
New officers, some as young as 18 years old, are not being taught to the minimum standards that every other law enforcement agency is required to meet, Schwank said.
“New cadets are graduating from the academy despite widespread concerns among training staff that even in the final days of training the cadets cannot demonstrate a solid grasp of the tactics, or the law required to perform their jobs,” he said.
“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 who do not have the training to recognize an unlawful order. That should scare everyone.”
The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center at Glynco is actively supporting the ICE training surge, a spokesperson told The News. There is no standard length for training courses at FLETC and each agency determines the training requirements and course length.
The training is based on the knowledge, skills and abilities law enforcement personnel need to perform in the field, the spokesperson said.
The DHS said in a statement Monday that ICE recruits receive 56 days of training and an average of 28 days of on-the-job training and mentorship.
“No training requirements have been removed,” the statement said.
ICE recruits are training six days a week for 12 hours a day, the statement said.
“We have ensured our law enforcement officers get the best of the best training to arrest and remove murderers, rapists, pedophiles, terrorists and gang members from our communities,” Deputy Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said. “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.
“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.”
The “streamlined” training was created to cut redundancy and incorporate technology advancements “without sacrificing basic subject matter content,” the statement said.
The DHS claims the training courses include arrest techniques, defensive tactics, conflict management and de-escalation techniques, extensive firearms and marksmanship training and multiple classes dedicated to use of force policy and the proper use of force.
Schwank claimed most ICE new recruits receive little to no mentorship and report to their posts only to receive their service weapons.
A memo from Minority Staff of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations lays out internal ICE records showing that new recruits are receiving significantly less training than previous officers.
Two weeks ago, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons told Congress that while the overall training days had declined, new officers were being asked to work longer days.
But the records in the memo suggest ICE trainees are still working “nine-hour days.” Furthermore, they are taking fewer exams. One exam cut by staff includes a practice on “Judgment Pistol Shooting,” according to the memo.
Also testifying on Monday was Minneapolis resident Teyana Gibson Brown, who was photographed as ICE burst into her home in mid-January.
Gibson Brown, a pediatric nurse, said ICE officers arrived outside her home and pounded on the door, terrifying her 9-year-old daughter and her daughter’s cousin.
Her husband, Garrison, asked for a warrant, which was never produced. After agents fired chemical agents at a growing crowd of neighbors and protesters, they started to ram her house.
“I heard the door pop and realized we were no longer protected,” Gibson Brown said.
Officers entered with guns pointed at the family. In a video, Brown is heard calling to officers to produce a warrant and that “there’s nobody in here but my babies.”
Eventually, officers detained her husband. Four days later, a federal judge ordered him released, citing violations of the Fourth Amendment.
Steve Bunnell, a former general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, said the treatment of Gibson Brown’s husband was akin to a SWAT team surrounding a violent criminal. Instead, it was someone who had been adhering to civil conditions for 17 years.
Garrison Brown fled civil war in Liberia as a child; he was ordered deported for a 2008 drug conviction that was later dismissed by the courts.
“These are not the worst of the worst. They have civil rights,” Bunnell said.