Everything you guessed about the recruiting of ICE agents appears to be true. Immigration and Customs Enforcement isn’t properly vetting them. And in one case, a recruit had previously been charged with strong-arm robbery and battery. Others failed drug tests, and some have criminal backgrounds.
Via NBC News:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has placed new recruits into its training program before they have completed the agency’s vetting process, an unusual sequence of events as it rushes to hire federal immigration officers to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policy, a current and two former Homeland Security Department officials told NBC News.
ICE officials only later discovered that some of the recruits failed drug testing, had disqualifying criminal backgrounds, or didn’t meet the physical or academic requirements to serve, the sources said.
Staff members at ICE’s training academy in Brunswick, Georgia, recently discovered one recruit had previously been charged with strong-arm robbery and battery stemming from a domestic violence incident, the current DHS official said. They’ve also found, as recently as this month, that some recruits going through the six-week training course hadn’t submitted fingerprints for background checks, as ICE’s hiring process requires, the current and former DHS officials said.
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