Thousands of new immigration agents are taking fewer exams and getting nearly 250 fewer hours of training than past agents before being deployed to carry out President Donald Trump’s campaign of mass deportations, according to documents from two administration whistleblowers made public Monday.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement stopped all legal instruction on use of force, a former ICE lawyer tasked with training the new agents said the same day. Instead, the lawyer said, agents are learning to violate the Constitution.
“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, which should scare everyone,” former ICE attorney Ryan Schwank said at a forum on immigration agent misconduct hosted by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California.
Instead of requiring new agents to memorize the material they learn during instruction, ICE is now allowing open-book, multiple-choice tests, Schwank said.
Schwank started working for ICE in 2021 as an assistant chief counsel for the ICE Office of the Principal Legal Advisor and in 2025, started teaching the legal curriculum to the recruits. He said he resigned from his post at ICE on Feb. 13.
Along with his testimony, Blumenthal released internal documents attributed to two whistleblowers revealing that ICE plans to train approximately 4,000 new enforcement officers this fiscal year, who will go through a shortened program than previous recruits.
The latest forum comes as negotiations between Democrats and the White House to fund the Department of Homeland Security have not progressed.
DHS defended the training, saying it was streamlined to cut redundancy.
“Despite false claims from the media and sanctuary politicians, no training hours have been cut,” DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “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 documents and Schwank’s remarks contradict testimony from ICE acting director Todd Lyons, Blumenthal said during the forum.
Lyons told lawmakers in the House Homeland Security Committee on Feb. 10 that the training curriculum remained the same as it had been: “The timeline was we took training from five days a week, eight hours a day to six days a week, 12 hours a day.”
Schedules of training that Blumenthal released Monday show recruits undergo eight hours of instruction with one hour for lunch.
Last month, Blumenthal also released a memo from Lyons claiming sweeping authority to enter people’s homes without a warrant signed by a judge, shared with the senator’s office by whistleblowers.
“The same head of ICE who contended incorrectly about officer training also testified about the memorandum in which he announced the administration’s new policy to invade American homes based on a permission slip signed by his own employees, in violation of the Constitution,” Blumenthal said Monday.
The Trump administration has defended the use of administrative warrants, which are signed by ICE employees, by saying that the immigrants have received due process in immigration court.
Schwank said he had been instructed by his boss to not even take notes on the memo regarding administrative warrants.
“Never in my career had I ever received such a blatant unlawful order, nor one conveyed in such a troubling manner,” Schwank said. “Incredibly, I was being shown this memo in secret by my supervisor, who made sure that I understood that disobedience would cost me my job.”
The Monday forum also included testimony from Teyana Gibson Brown, the Minneapolis woman whose front door federal immigration officers broke down with their weapons drawn and without a judicial warrant in search of Garrison Gibson, a Liberian man who was ordered removed from the U.S. in 2009 and complied with ICE check-ins over the years, according to The Washington Post.
“Words can never be sufficient for me to portray what sorts of horror we felt in this moment,” Gibson Brown told lawmakers. “I stood between the officers and Garrison, and I asked the officers, yet again, to show me the warrant. Despite all of this, they did not show me anything.”
This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS — a publication from the nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute — and NEWSWELL, home of Times of San Diego, Santa Barbara News-Press and Stocktonia.
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