A former lawyer for Immigration and Customs Enforcement who helped train new agents said the agency’s training academy is deficient and broken. Ryan Schwank became a whistleblower after he resigned earlier this month. He then went public during a forum held by congressional Democrats on Monday.
Schwank began working in a trainer role on a temporary basis in September. He said he was brought in because they needed more staff to handle the influx of recruits. The Department of Homeland Security rapidly scaled up the number of deportation officers and offered $50,000 sign-on bonuses.
In Schwank’s first interview with local news in Minnesota, he told MPR News that he was concerned about policies from day one, when he was shown a memo that instructs ICE officers to enter a home without a judicial warrant.
“A supervisor who made it very clear … that not teaching the memo or opposing the memo could cost me my job,” said Schwank.
Additionally, Schwank noticed use-of-force training was paired down into one lecture that focused mostly on policy; and that the number of days of training were cut down from 70 days to 42 days. DHS said in a statement that it “streamlined training to cut redundancy and incorporate technology advancements, without sacrificing basic subject matter content.”
Schwank believes that ICE isn’t changing its training in a way that justifies a drop in training hours.
In his testimony to congress, Schwank said he witnessed a training scenario where they had a...
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