WASHINGTON — New whistleblower documents detail substantial cuts by the Trump administration to the training requirements for new immigration officers.
Among the cuts are the elimination of practical exams, use of force and legal training courses, and an overall reduction in training time, contrary to an official’s testimony to Congress earlier this month.
The documents, provided to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) by whistleblowers from the Department of Homeland Security, were publicly revealed ahead of a forum Monday with congressional Democrats — the third in recent weeks probing what the members view as abusive and illegal tactics used by federal agents.
Lauren Bis, deputy assistant public affairs secretary at Homeland Security, said no training hours have been cut.
“Our officers receive extensive firearm training, are taught de-escalation tactics, and receive 4th and 5th Amendment comprehensive instruction,” she said. “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.”
Earlier this month, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons testified to Congress that while the agency had reduced the number of training days to 42 from 75, “We went from five days a week to six days a week. Five days a week was five eight-hour days and we’ve gone to six 12-hour days.”
But the documents appear to contradict Lyons’ testimony.
“The schedules reflected on these documents indicate that current ICE recruits receive nearly 250 fewer hours of training than previous cohorts of recruits,” according to a 90-page memorandum from minority staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Blumenthal is the top Democrat on that committee.
Blumenthal’s office also disclosed the identity of one whistleblower: Ryan Schwank, an attorney who most recently served as an instructor for new Immigration and Customs Enforcement recruits at the ICE Academy within the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia.
Schwank, who resigned Feb. 13, is one of two whistleblowers who made a confidential disclosure to Blumenthal’s office last month regarding an ICE policy allowing agents to forcefully enter people’s homes without a judicial warrant.
In his testimony Monday, Schwank said that for the last five months, he watched ICE leadership dismantle its training program. What remains, he said, is a “dangerous husk.”
Schwank said the assertion by Homeland Security leaders that cadets receive the same training in a shorter time frame “is a lie.”
“This means that cadets are not taught what it means to be objectively reasonable, the very standard which the law requires them to meet when deciding whether or not to use deadly force,” he said. “Our jobs as instructors are to teach them so well they can make split-second decisions about what they can and cannot do in life-or-death situations. Yet in the name of churning out an endless stream of officers, DHS leadership has dismantled the academic and practical tests that we need to know if cadets can safely and lawfully perform their job.”
Schwank said he was shown the secret memo authorizing forceful home entry on his first day as a training instructor. He was told to teach its contents but not to take notes on it or discuss its existence.
“Never in my career had I ever received such a blatant unlawful order, nor one conveyed in such a troubling manner,” he said. “Incredibly, I was being shown this memo in secret by my supervisor, who made sure that I understood that disobedience would cost me my job.”
“So in effect, you were told, as an instructor on the law, that you were to train ICE agents how to break the law,” Blumenthal told Schwank.
Schwank told Blumenthal that the reason he received the training position was because the lawyer in the position before him had been forced to resign on their refusal to teach the contents of the memo.
Another witness at the forum was Teyana Gibson Brown, whose husband, Garrison Gibson, was arrested in Minneapolis last month after agents burst through their door with guns drawn. She said she and her husband repeatedly asked to see a warrant but were ignored.
“I heard the door pop and I realized we were no longer protected,” she said. “Ten officers that were all armed were standing in front of me and my family. Words can never be sufficient for me to portray what sorts of horror we felt in this moment.”
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) said the notion that “ICE wants to write its own permission slip, without a judge, to break down your door and to violate your rights” should terrify all Americans. Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, led the forum with Blumenthal.
Blumenthal’s office did not confirm whether Schwank or the other whistleblower, who is still anonymous, provided the documents that were released Monday and included in the 90-page memo.
The documents show ICE has eliminated more than a dozen practical exams that ICE officers previously needed to graduate. In July 2021, a cadet needed to pass 25 practical exams to graduate. Now, nine are required.
Eliminated exams include “Judgment pistol shooting,” “Criminal encounters,” and “Determine removability.”
“All of these are now instead evaluated, if at all, mainly by open-book, multiple-choice written exams and without any graded practical examinations,” the memo states.
During the hearing, Blumenthal raised a poster showing the two lists of exam topics. The longer list, Schwank told him, was a vital lesson on things like “how to use their firearms safely, how to encounter an individual they intended to detain, much like Mrs. Gibson Brown’s husband.”
Tests that used to be closed-book became open-book, he said. As a result, he watched cadets graduate despite using excessive force in practical exercises.
Comparisons between the program’s syllabus table of contents and general information sections from July 2025 — before the surge in hiring — and this month show that ICE appears to have cut whole courses, such as use of force simulation training, U.S. government structure, criminal versus removal proceedings, and use of force.
In a statement, Homeland Security said no training requirements have been removed and that new recruits get 56 days of training and an average of 28 days of on-the-job training. The agency said training was streamlined to cut redundancy and incorporate technological advancements without cutting subject matter content.
Candidates still learn the same elements always required, the agency said, including multiple classes on use-of-force policy, as well as safe arrest techniques and de-escalation.
The training reductions come as ICE plans to bring up more than 4,000 new Enforcement and Removal Operations officers this fiscal year, which ends in September. One of the documents notes that ICE had graduated 803 new officers in 2026 as of Jan. 29 and projected 3,204 more graduates by the end of the fiscal year.
In its statement, Homeland Security said the agency is prepared to train 12,000 new hires this year, and that the majority of new hires are experienced law enforcement officers who have already gone through a police academy.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada) asked Schwank about the new officers ICE has hired.
“Are they police officers that already have this training, so they don’t have to worry about it?” she asked. “Is it individuals that don’t have any law enforcement background?”
Schwank said the cadets he met genuinely wanted to learn and to do their jobs correctly but didn’t arrive with a law enforcement background.
“I’ve had cadets who are 18 years old,” he said. “I had a cadet who celebrated her 19th birthday in her classes. We have cadets who don’t have college degrees. We have cadets for whom English is not their primary language.”
