Why so many are being killed and injured
Brad Reed for Common Dreams
The New York Times reported on Thursday that the whistleblower, who has
worked at ICE for 17 years, filed a complaint in August 2025 with the Office of
Inspector General in the Department of Homeland Security that sounded alarms
about what he described as an “unprecedented lowering of standards” for hiring.
According to the complaint, applicants were offered jobs
before they even passed fingerprint and identity checks, which the
whistleblower said created “grave national security risks” for the agency.
This is at least the second whistleblower complaint to raise
concerns about the deterioration of standards at ICE.
In February, former ICE lawyer Ryan Schwank alleged in a complaint that he “received secretive
orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes
without a judicial warrant.”
Schwank also alleged that “the legally required training
program at the ICE academy is deficient, defective, and broken,” which he
warned “can and will get people killed.”
ICE’s hiring standards came under scrutiny this summer after
it was revealed that ICE agent David Brouillette, who fatally
shot a 25-year-old Colombian immigrant named Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero,
had a lengthy history of
allegedly abusive behavior.
As noted by the Times, Brouillette was even rejected for a job at the police department in Hallowell, Maine because he had “too many red flags.”
The ICE hiring surge came shortly after passage of the 2025
One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allocated more than $170 billion in funding
for immigration enforcement operations. ICE last year said it would use some of
the money to hire 10,000 additional agents, more than double the
number of agents who had previously worked at the department.
