Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s questionable hiring practices for ICE agents are again under renewed scrutiny after an agent shot and killed a man in Maine.
ICE agent David Brouillette, 37, opened fire on Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a Colombian-born father, in Biddeford, Maine, last week. Guerrero, 26, was living and working in the U.S. legally and was not the target of the immigration operation that resulted in his death.
The agency claims on its website that it conducts a background check on employees’ “character, conduct, trustworthiness, integrity, and loyalty to the United States.”
But since Guerrero’s killing at the hands of Brouillette, ex-wives and extended family have spoken out about what they call a history of mental health problems and violence.
“If you were to ask me whether I believe David Brouillette is capable of this level of extreme violence, my answer is unequivocally yes,” Lucinda Brouillette, David’s second ex-wife, told the Washington Post. “That belief is not based on speculation, but on my own lived experiences over many years.”
Ashley Brouillette, his first wife, said that on the day he was hired at ICE, he left her a voicemail calling her a “disgusting, fat” expletive and said her throat should be slit.
These stunning statements have only renewed scrutiny of Noem’s tumultuous tenure leading the department, as she aimed to ramp up hiring at ICE while DHS sought to hire more than 10,000 additional officers. The administration has also pushed for officers to find 3,000 people per day to deport.
Upon hiring, new officers receive just a short training course, and those with previous law enforcement training, like Brouillette, who worked in several local police agencies prior, are offered an even more accelerated timeline.
Training to be an ICE officer had been 72 days until last August, when it was reduced to 47 days, a number that President Donald Trump is obsessed with, as he is the 47th president.
By the time Brouillette took the role, his ex-wife, Ashley, said that training had been reduced to only 42 days.
At the beginning of this year, more than 900 officers had gone through the short version of the already basic training.
Former ICE instructor Ryan Schwank testified to Congress earlier this year that the training for recruits has been so reduced that “even in the final days of training, the cadets cannot demonstrate a solid grasp of the tactics or the law required to perform their jobs.”
After Trump fired Noem in March and installed current Secretary Markwayne Mullin to lead homeland security, Mullin reversed Noem’s changes to accelerated training.
Still, the comments from Brouillette’s ex-wives raise questions about Noem’s process. In addition to their comments about violence and abuse, Ashley told The Portland Press Herald that she had alerted authorities about his behavior.
She explained that she had concerns about his mental health. He is a U.S. Army veteran who had been receiving disability from the Department of Veterans Affairs, court records show. Ashley told the Press Herald that she had gone to David’s superiors with her concerns.
DHS did not immediately respond to request for comment on his hiring and training.
Some extended family told the Associated Press that Brouillette had mental health issues since childhood, asserting that he was unfit to work in Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They explained that his disabilities were made worse by his service in Afghanistan.
“Afghanistan destroyed him—trained him to be a killing monster, a machine,“ an immediate relative said. ”They took someone who was extremely mentally ill and turned him into a killing machine.”
