A former ICE instructor delivered shocking testimony on Monday about training standards inside the agency, claiming that they had been dramatically reduced and that the agency’s top brass had been lying to Congress about it.
Ryan Schwank, who last week resigned from his job at an ICE academy in Georgia, told congressional Democrats that the agency had eliminated 240 hours of vital classes from its 580-hour training program, including classes on the legal boundaries of the use of force, how to conduct detentions and arrests, and firearm training.
“I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution when I joined ICE on August 1, 2021, as an assistant chief counsel,” Schwank told the joint panel of House and Senate Democrats. “I followed that oath for four and a half years working side-by-side with ICE officers, and I followed it when I resigned on February 13, 2026, a little over a week ago, so that I could speak to you today.”
“I am here because I am duty-bound to report the legally required training program at the ICE academy is deficient, defective, and broken.”
Schwank added that he had “received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution.”
“Law enforcement is a deadly serious business. It is not a place for shortcuts,” Schwank said. “Deficient training can and will get people killed.”
He went on to accuse the agency of lying about cuts to its training program, adding, “ICE is lying to Congress and the American people about the steps it is taking to ensure its 12,000 officers can faithfully uphold the Constitution and can perform their jobs.”
Schwank provided Democrats with copies of internal documents that he said illustrated the extent of the cuts; the documents show that the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers in Glynco, Georgia shortened its training program to 42 days, down from 72.
Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons previously testified to Congress that ICE had “reduce[d] the actual calendar days from 75 to 42,” claiming that this was achieved by going from five eight-hour days a week of training to six twelve-hour days.
The changes to the training program have come after the agency went on a recruitment blitz spearheaded by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem which included slashing standards, including removing age requirements, in a desperate bid to add 10,000 new agents. These changes resulted in the recruitment of prospective agents who struggled to pass basic fitness tests and bombed the agency’s open-book exams.
Democrats on the Senate Subcommittee on Homeland Security published some of the documents online, noting that despite Lyons’ testimony, the documents suggest that the agency has not increased its training hours to make up for the reduction in training days.
“We know about the Trump Admin’s secret policy to shred your Constitutional rights because of the brave Americans speaking out,” Sen. Richard Bluementhal wrote on X when sharing the documents. “They’re coming to Congress because we have the responsibility to not only bear witness to these crimes, but to ensure they don’t happen again.”
During Monday’s hearing, lawmakers said that a side-by-side comparison of a table of contents for ICE’s basic training program from July 2025 and February 2026 appeared to show that several courses had been “wholly cut,” according to The Washington Post.
Rep. James Walkinshaw said that the Department of Homeland Security “has knowingly jeopardized the safety of Americans by systematically dismantling the training designed to educate ICE officers on the legal limits of their authority.”
In response to a request for comment from the Daily Beast, the Department of Homeland Security sent a press release firmly denying the accusations.
The release claimed that new ICE recruits receive 56 days of training and an average of a further 28 days of on-the-job training, and repeated Lyons’ assertions about training hours remaining the same after shifting to a new schedule of six days a week, 12 hours a day.
Deputy Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis added, “We have ensured our law enforcement officers get the best of the best training to arrest and remove murderers, rapists, pedophiles, terrorist, and gang members from our communities.”
“Despite false claims from the media and sanctuary politicians, no training hours have been cut. Our officers receive extensive firearm training, are taught de-escalation tactics, and receive Fourth and Fifth Amendment comprehensive instruction. The training does not stop after graduation from the academy—Recruits are put on a rigorous on-the-job training program that is tracked and monitored.”
The statement added that DHS had “streamlined training to cut redundancy and incorporate technology advancements, without sacrificing basic subject matter content. Under these new improvements, candidates still learn the same elements and meet the same high standards ICE has always required. No subject matter has been cut.”
“The majority of new officers brought on during the hiring surge are experienced law enforcement officers who have already successfully completed a law enforcement academy,” the statement added. A December investigation by the Daily Mail found that while the majority of new ICE hires are retired law enforcement officers, they are receiving virtual training and being assigned to desk duty.
In an interview on CNN’s Laura Coates Live on Monday night, Schwank said that he believes the agency slashed training hours in order to “get as many people through the program as possible, with the fewest number of people failing out.”
“The goal was to have as many officers out there as they could get, and it didn‘t really matter what got cut on the way to doing that.”
Responding to Lyons’ assertions that the meat of the training had not been removed, Schwank said, “The meat of the training is left, but if there’s no bones to attach the meat to, then the meat is useless.”
ICE has faced increased scrutiny in the wake of a growing backlash to the Trump administration’s hardline immigration crackdown, particularly in cities like Minneapolis, and high-profile horrors like the detention of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and the killings of Minnesota residents Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good.
Democrats, feeling increased pressure from their constituents to do more to rein ICE in, have declined to approve funding for DHS until certain reforms are made, resulting in a partial government shutdown.
