Elie Honig: There’s a Very Quick Increase in ICE Agents’ Recruitment While Training Requirements Are Reduced

RUSH EXCERPT:

HONIG: “So, Brianna, this underscores the problems, I think, with the way ice has been recruiting, hiring, vetting and training its agents. Now, if you look at the data, ice has more than doubled the number of agents that it has in just the last year and a half, it was about 10,000 at the end of 2024. And now they‘re at over 22,000. So that‘s a massive and very quick increase. At the same time, ice has reduced its training requirements. Typically, law enforcement agents go through a 4 to 6 month training period. Ice has recently reduced their training period down to about 50 days. So really less than two months. And so this is exactly the type of allegation, even if not proven, just the allegation alone that ordinarily would raise red flags. I can tell you I hired dozens, if not hundreds of law enforcement agents, especially in my time with the New Jersey attorney general‘s office. If this report had come back to my desk, I would have said, absolutely not. We‘re not hiring this person. Way too risky.”