ICE teaches cadets to 'violate the Constitution,' ex-DHS attorney testifies
USA TODAY
The former U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement attorney's testimony before members of Congress comes as ICE is in the middle of a historic hiring surge.
Supervisors in ICE are teaching "new cadets to violate the Constitution" amid President Donald Trump's promise of mass deportations, a former agency lawyer testified to members of Congress on Feb. 23.
"The ICE academy is deficient, defective, and broken," former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney Ryan Schwank told members of Congress on Monday. Schwank, who joined ICE in 2021, resigned Feb. 13 after being assigned to teach cadets at the agency’s academy in Georgia. "On my first day, I received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant."
Schwank said he resigned in order to speak before Congress on Monday. He spoke at a forum chaired by Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Rep. Robert Garcia of California. The session was the latest in a series of forums the Democratic lawmakers have held to highlight DHS misconduct.
Schwank highlighted the agency’s stance that it does not need warrants to enter homes, significantly cut down training time for recruits and eliminated use of force training even as Homeland Security faces pushback for fatally shooting two U.S. citizens in Minnesota.
Homeland Security in a statement Monday defended how ICE has retooled its academy, saying new recruits "receive the same hours of training officers have always received" only under a more compressed timeframe. The homeland security department denied Schwank’s testimony that the agency does not teach cadets the constitution or proper use of force.
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