ICE Whistle-Blower Says Training Is ‘Broken,’ and OpenAI Faces Questions About Mass Shooter
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From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracey Mumford. Today's Tuesday, February 24th. Here's what we're covering.
For the last five months, I watched ICE dismantle the training program, cutting 240 hours of vital classes from 580... A former ICE official has come forward as a whistleblower, alleging that the training protocol for new agents is broken and deficient. Law enforcement is a deadly serious business. It is not a place for shortcuts.
Ryan Schwenk was hired by ICE in 2021 and started teaching legal courses at a federal law enforcement training academy last year. He shared his account yesterday in D.C. at a forum organized by congressional Democrats.
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.
Senate Democrats also released several dozen pages of internal ICE records that suggest the Trump administration has curtailed the basic training for agents, right as it's been staffing up. Under Trump, ICE has been on a massive hiring spree, bringing in over 12,000 new officers and agents, more than double what it had before. That surge has threatened to overwhelm the centers which train most federal agents. In response, ICE officials scaled back the regimen. The documents senators released include two different syllabi, one from July and one from this month, that appear to show a 40 percent decrease in training hours. Other documents suggest that courses like use of force simulation training have been cut, along with some on immigration law and ISIS legal authorities.
Taken together, the new disclosures underscore concerns about the conduct and preparedness of agents from the Department of Homeland Security, who have shot and killed at least three U.S. citizens this year. When pressed by Congress earlier this month about whether ICE had lowered its standards, the acting director of the agency said, quote, the meat of the training was never removed. And the DHS says that it's streamlined training without, quote, sacrificing basic subject matter content.
In Mexico, authorities are sharing new details about how they tracked down the country's most wanted cartel leader, known as El Mencho, who was killed by security forces on Sunday. Mexico's defense minister said authorities found the criminal kingpin, who'd been on the run for years, by tracking one of his romantic partners. Late last week, she traveled to meet him at a cabin in the mountains of the Jalisco state. After she left, authorities raided the cabin. El Mencho fled into the woods as a gun battle broke out between Mexican troops and his security team. Special forces then tracked him down. He was severely injured and later died while being transported to a medical facility. The defense minister said Mexican intelligence officers led the search, but that information from American authorities helped pinpoint the cartel leader's location.
Meanwhile, the mayhem that broke out across the country after El Mencho's death has now largely subsided. Cartel operatives had blocked highways and set fire to buildings and cars in a show of force. Authorities say at least 62 people were killed. A majority of them were suspected cartel members or members of the Mexican military. The violence rattled many cities, including some that are central to Mexico's tourism industry, which is a vital economic driver for the country.
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