“Today, U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) released a memorandum and previously undisclosed documents revealing new details about drastic cuts the Trump Administration is making to the training and testing of new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO) officers. The documents were produced to Blumenthal via a disclosure from two Department of Homeland Security whistleblowers who have requested that they not be identified. Specifically, these documents provide new evidence regarding: (1) the aggressive graduation targets that ICE aims to achieve for new ERO officers in fiscal 2026; (2) cuts of more than a dozen significant practical examinations which potential ICE ERO officers no longer must undergo; (3) numerous classes which appear to have been wholly cut from the training curriculum for ICE ERO officers; and (4) the drastic reduction in the hours of training for potential ICE ERO officers….These documents appear to directly contradict representations made under oath to Congress by Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons…”

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lawyer turned whistleblower, speaking publicly for the first time, said the agency is graduating thousands of new recruits after dangerously stripped-down training and teaching them they can legally enter private homes without consent or a warrant signed by a judge–in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Surging the number of ICE agents from about 10,000 to more than 22,000 to meet the Trump Administration’s aggressive deportation quotas has prompted drastic and dangerous cuts in training of new agents, WhistleblowerAid.org client and former ICE lawyer and legal instructor Ryan Schwank told a public forum chaired by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) and Representative Robert Garcia (D-California). ICE is lying to Congress and the American people about the steps it is taking to ensure its 12,000 new officers faithfully uphold the Constitution and perform their jobs,” Schwank said in a prepared statement. “Deficient training can and will get people killed,” he added. “It can and will lead to unlawful arrests, violations of constitutional rights, and a fundamental loss of public trust in law enforcement.” On his first day at the Georgia-based Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Schwank, an experienced immigration lawyer, said he “received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant. I was instructed to read and return a memo in my supervisor’s presence which claimed ICE officers could enter homes without a judicial warrant.” That memo, dated May 12, 2025, lacked any of the typical markings or handling associated with internal policy guidance. “Before I was shown this memo, my supervisor warned me that two previous ICE instructors had been dismissed because they questioned senior ICE management over the legality of the memo,” he said. “The Acting ICE Director authorized the very conduct that DHS [Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE] in 2025 legal training materials has called ‘the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed’—that is, ‘physical entry of the home’ without consent or a proper warrant,” Schwank said.

Schwank was one of two anonymous WhistleblowerAid.org clients who came forward to the U.S. Senate in January of 2026 with evidence that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has authorized–and even trained–ICE agents to forcibly enter homes without consent or a warrant issued by a judge. The whistleblowers assert that this is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment. “No court has ever found that any law enforcement has this type of authority to enter homes without a judicial warrant under such circumstances,” WhistleblowerAid.org Senior Vice President and Special Counsel David Kligerman said. He noted that, after whistleblower disclosures, six former DHS General Counsels signed an op-ed in The New York Times calling for the government to end forcible entries without judicial warrants. “Never in my career had I ever received such a blatantly unlawful order—nor one conveyed in such a troubling manner,” Schwank said. “I was being shown this memo in secret by a supervisor who made sure that I understood that disobedience could cost me my job. ICE is teaching cadets to violate the Constitution, and they were attempting to cloak it in secrecy.”…