ICE officer training is ‘deficient’ and ‘broken,’ former agency lawyer tells congressional forum
By Associated Press
Updated Feb 24, 2026
ICE whistleblower Ryan Schwank …
AP —
A former US Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyer who was responsible for training new deportation officers warned Monday that the agency’s training program for new recruits is “deficient, defective and broken.”
Ryan Schwank’s comments during a forum held by congressional Democrats come at a time of intense scrutiny of the officers tasked with carrying out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. Critics, including rights groups and Democratic politicians, have accused deportation officers of using excessive force when arresting immigrants, attacking bystanders who record their conduct and failing to follow constitutional protections of people’s rights.
Arming ICE:
Fear as senator discovers staggering true amount Trump spent on arming ICE
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) officers stand guard in Minneapolis, Minnesota. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu
A report produced by the office of Sen. Adam Schiff reveals that federal immigration enforcement agencies amassed a gigantic weapons stockpile during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term.
In total, the report released by Schiff (D-Calif.) finds that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) committed to spending over $144 million on weapons and ammunition over the last year, a massive increase over these agencies’ spending on weapons in years past.
“In just one year, ICE’s spending commitments on weapons, ammunition, and accessories surged fourfold—an increase of over 360 percent—when compared to ICE’s contracts in 2024,” states the report. “In 2025, CBP’s contracts for weapons, ammunition, and accessories doubled when compared to CBP’s 2024 contract totals.”
Hostorical Database errors and failures:
American Citizens in the Deportation Database: When Surveillance Goes Wrong
How algorithmic bias and database errors put U.S. citizens at risk of detention and deportation
Thousands of U.S. citizens have been wrongly detained or deported by ICE
Database errors and algorithmic bias disproportionately affect communities of color
Surveillance systems cannot reliably distinguish citizens from non-citizens
Constitutional rights are routinely violated through automated enforcement
Mixed-status families face ongoing harassment from flawed targeting systems
⚠️ Constitutional Crisis
Between 2007 and 2015, ICE detained or removed at least 2,840 U.S. citizens. The real number is likely much higher due to inadequate record-keeping and ongoing cases.
The Scale of the Problem
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) rely heavily on algorithmic systems and databases to identify deportation targets. These systems, designed to process millions of records quickly, routinely misidentify U.S. citizens as deportable immigrants, leading to wrongful detention, deportation, and constitutional violations.
The problem is systemic, not exceptional. Surveillance databases used for immigration enforcement are plagued by errors, outdated information, and algorithmic bias that disproportionately affects citizens of color, particularly those with Latino surnames or mixed-status family situations.
A view of the site where Mexican Army troops killed Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as El Mencho, during an operation in Guadalajara, Mexico, on Feb. 22, 2026. Photo: Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images
A new player in the U.S. military’s decadeslong war on drugs announced itself to the world on Sunday, providing intelligence that supported a Mexican military operation that killed the head of the infamous Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
Though details continue to emerge from the operation, which set off a spasm of violence that left at least 70 people dead, some of the information that led Mexican security forces to Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes was delivered by a new Joint Interagency Task Force called Counter Cartel, based out of Southern Arizona.
The outfit operates out of Fort Huachuca, a military intelligence hub nestled in a rugged mountain chain 15 miles north of the U.S.–Mexico border. According to media reports, the task force, staffed by a combination of some 300 military and civilian employees, provided its Mexican counterparts with a “detailed target package” in the run-up to Sunday’s operation. The CIA also provided key support for the mission.
Existence of the task force was first revealed in a little-noticed ceremony at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, last month. Its online footprint is slight. The information that is publicly available, however, confirms deepening ties between President Donald Trump’s domestic homeland security agenda and his lethal drug war operations abroad.
Known internally as JIATF-CC, the task force is part of the U.S. Military’s Northern Command, once considered a backwater that today enjoys renewed prominence under Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. In the past year, Trump and Hegseth have used the Southern Command, NORTHCOM’s counterpart in the Western Hemisphere, as well the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command, to conduct the kinds of targeted killing missions long associated with the war on terror against targets in Latin America.
After the Mexican military killed drug cartel kingpin Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, widely known as El Mencho, officials detailed the weapons recovered in the firefights. The stockpile included a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, 10 long arms, handguns, and grenades, officials said.
Mexico Defense Minister Ricardo Trevilla Trejo said that, as with other Mexican crime scenes, about 80% of the recovered weapons were bought in the United States and smuggled into Mexico. The details were shared in a Feb. 23 news conference, a day after the killing of El Mencho.
Gun ownership in Mexico is tightly restricted. There is only one military-run gun store in the country, in Mexico City, where weapons sales are strictly regulated. But easy access to guns in the United States has created an “iron river” of firearms flooding Mexico’s black market.
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
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