Under pressure from Donald Trump’s White House, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) gutted training programs for outside law enforcement agencies recruited to round up immigrants, according to internal emails reviewed by The Washington Post.
The administration reduced training for officers whose departments agreed to assist ICE from "four weeks of in-person education to 40 hours of virtual training" last year, as part of a broader effort to "expand the agency's footprint" across the country, the Post reported.
The watchdog group American Oversight obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request. They include an email sent last February from an ICE official, whose name is redacted, to David Venturella and Todd Lyons. Lyons was ICE's acting director at the time and resigned in May. Venturella was an adviser and now leads the agency.
The official wrote that lessons on immigrant classifications and removal charges would be "truncated" to meet the requests of "unnamed individuals" who wanted the course shortened. Instruction on real-world scenarios officers might face in the field was eliminated altogether. The official noted that ICE was first told to cut the four-week program to two weeks, then asked to "trim it to one."
"Some of the materials that were removed, the subject matter was seemingly designed to help the officers understand whether or not they have a lawful basis to act against someone in the first place," American Oversight's Chioma Chukwu told The Post. "So for example, who is actually a citizen, what is their immigration status, what grounds could possibly justify seeking their removal?"
The official listed 10 topics that remain in the 40-hour program, including use of force policy, liability and civil rights law, immigrant detention and "cross-cultural issues." Recruits would have "one test per training day." Five hours after the email was sent, Venturella replied with one word: "Thanks."
Police officers aren't the only ones whose training was shortened after Trump returned to office. The Post reported that instruction for new ICE officers at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia, was trimmed from 72 days to 42. ICE announced plans in May to scrap that shortened program.
