An anonymous Immigration and Customs Enforcement official in charge of evaluating new recruits has warned that the Trump administration’s fast-tracked hiring process exposed the U.S. to “grave national security risks.” The whistleblower complaint, obtained by The New York Times, follows other urgent warnings from current and former officials who feared that the Trump administration’s hiring surge put thousands of officers on the streets without proper guidance or training. The complaint, filed by a 17-year ICE veteran, alleges the agency was relying on an “unprecedented lowering of standards” to onboard “improperly vetted” candidates who were receiving job offers before they passed any background checks, according to The Times. The official, who directly oversaw more than 100 employees and evaluated thousands of ICE applicants, was so alarmed by the process that he filed a complaint with the Office of Inspector General in the Department of Homeland Security, which the newspaper obtained through a public records request.
He resigned earlier this year. In his complaint and testimony to Congress, Schwank alleged ICE relied on a “deficient, defective and broken” set of training courses and gave new recruits a “blatantly unlawful order” to forcibly enter homes without a warrant. The academy is “teaching cadets to violate the Constitution, and they were attempting to cloak it in secrecy,” he said.
Both reports were filed last summer in the thick of ICE’s efforts to rapidly hire and train new recruits after Congress approved President Donald Trump’s massive spending package to boost immigration arrests in a campaign to forcibly remove tens of thousands of people from the country. ICE’s training practices came under intense scrutiny in the wake of several lethal incidents involving federal agents, including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January, as well as the killings of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, one week apart in July. Two ex-wives of ICE agent David Brouillette, who fatally shot Guerrero in Maine, have accused him in interviews and court filings of having a violent past, including a history of abuse towards them and his daughters.
Brouillette, a military veteran and former Veterans Affairs police officer, was among the surge of new recruits hired by ICE last year. His ex-wives have accused ICE of failing to interview them about his behavior before he was put on the streets. Last year, ICE brought on roughly 12,000 fresh hires by dropping its standards — including lowering a minimum age from 21 to 18 and no longer requiring a college degree, among others — in addition to the accelerated hiring process.
Those efforts more than doubled its workforce, drawn in by generous signing bonuses and other financial incentives. The whistleblower report obtained by The Times alleges dangerous shortcuts in the hiring process, including unconfirmed fingerprints and incomplete background checks before officials made any job offers, leaving out any time for red flags to emerge — including whether applicants appeared on law enforcement databases for criminal violations. That process, which typically takes seven to 10 days, was upended last summer.
Officials were told to make hiring decisions without a full security form, fingerprints or polygraph testing, according to the whistleblower report. That incomplete vetting process meant recruits were heading into training without having their criminal histories or other basic information verified. The Independent has requested comment from a representative for the whistleblower.
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