U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will nearly double the length of its core training program for new immigration enforcement officers, scrapping a 42-day academy process that drew sharp criticism from a former instructor, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, and former agency officials. An internal memo obtained by CBS News shows ICE will extend the program to roughly 71 days, with the longer curriculum set to begin in July for new classes at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia.
Officers who already completed the shorter course won't be grandfathered in and forgotten. The memo directs them to participate in additional "follow-on" instruction called the Advanced Field Officer Training Program. How long or intensive that supplemental training will be remains unclear.
The move amounts to a quiet admission that the accelerated hiring pipeline, built to meet the administration's ambitious goal of onboarding 10,000 new deportation agents, cut corners that couldn't stay cut. That the correction comes now, after months of warnings and two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens during an enforcement operation, tells you something about the cost of ignoring the people who know the job best.
The problems with the shortened academy were not a secret. In February, former ICE instructor Ryan Schwank delivered a whistleblower complaint to Congress describing the agency's training process as "deficient, defective, and broken." Schwank warned that the administration risked onboarding thousands of officers who would not be able to carry out immigration enforcement in a lawful way.
That is not the language of a bureaucratic turf fight. It is the language of a professional who watched standards collapse and put his name on the record.
Democratic lawmakers, advocates, and former ICE officials had raised similar concerns for months about the length and quality of training undergone by federal immigration agents at the forefront of President Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration. The shortened 42-day course was adopted during the tenure of now-ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, as the administration moved quickly to staff up for large-scale enforcement operations.
The urgency behind the training overhaul gained a grim dimension earlier this year when federal immigration agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, during an operation in Minneapolis. The Trump administration scaled back that operation after bipartisan backlash.
No responsible observer blames every field incident on a training gap. But when a whistleblower tells Congress that officers are being sent into the field unprepared, and then agents kill two American citizens during an enforcement action, the sequence demands a serious institutional response, not spin.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin previewed the training revamp during testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 2. His framing was measured, perhaps too measured for the gravity of the situation.
"The training policy is going to change a little bit, because we're going to be doing crowd control and fit today's needs. But all training always is willing to change, back and forth."
"A little bit" is one way to describe nearly doubling the length of an academy course. The administration clearly decided a larger correction was needed than Mullin's testimony suggested.
The Department of Homeland Security, in a statement to CBS News, framed the expanded training as a response to escalating dangers facing officers in the field. DHS pointed to what it called "coordinated campaigns of violence" against agents, including riots outside ICE facilities, sniper attacks, and what the department described as more than a 1,300 percent increase in assaults against officers.
"As our officers continue to face coordinated campaigns of violence against them including riots outside ICE facilities, sniper attacks, and more than a 1,300% increase in assaults against them, ICE is instituting additional training including, crowd control measures, additional training for high-risk vehicle stops, a live-fire cover course for officer safety, and medical training."
DHS said the added training will be "tracked online and monitored closely." The department also stated that new hires take what they learn at FLETC and apply it to real-life scenarios while on duty, calling ICE "one of the most elite law enforcement agencies not only in the U.S., but the entire world."
That is the kind of language you expect from an agency defending its brand. The real test is whether the longer academy and the follow-on program produce officers who can enforce the law without creating the kind of incidents that hand ammunition to the administration's opponents.
The training controversy unfolded against a protracted battle over ICE funding. Congressional Democrats refused for months this year to fully fund ICE and Border Patrol unless the administration agreed to reforms. Republicans bypassed that blockade, moving forward with funding through the end of President Trump's term using the reconciliation process.
ICE received a $75 billion infusion through the "One Big Beautiful Bill" last summer, fueling the hiring blitz that created the training bottleneck in the first place. Both chambers passed a separate $70 billion funding package over the past week, and the president signed it into law Wednesday morning.
That legislation ensures ICE and Border Patrol have the resources to operate through the remainder of the current term. The Senate's overnight marathon vote to approve the package underscored how fiercely Republicans fought to keep the enforcement pipeline funded, and how fiercely Democrats tried to attach strings.
Money, though, was never the only problem. You can fund 10,000 new agents and still end up with a workforce that isn't ready for the street if you compress the training to six weeks. The administration learned that lesson the hard way.
The shift from 42 to roughly 71 days brings ICE's academy closer to the norms expected of a federal law enforcement agency operating in high-stakes environments. The addition of crowd control, high-risk vehicle stop training, live-fire courses, and medical instruction addresses specific gaps that the current threat environment demands.
Secretary Mullin's broader enforcement posture, including DHS warnings about halting travel processing at sanctuary city airports, signals that the administration has no intention of easing up on immigration enforcement. The training overhaul, in that context, looks less like a retreat and more like an effort to harden the force before the next confrontation.
But open questions remain. The memo does not specify how long the Advanced Field Officer Training Program will last or what it will cover in detail. It is unclear how many officers completed the 42-day course and now need remedial instruction. And the agency has not said whether any operational restrictions will apply to those officers while they complete the follow-on training.
Ryan Schwank put his career on the line in February to warn Congress that a shortcut was being taken. The agency's own memo now confirms the shortcut has been abandoned. Whether the correction came fast enough, and whether the supplemental training for officers already in the field will be rigorous enough, are questions the administration still owes the public.
Enforcing immigration law is a mission that demands well-trained officers, not warm bodies rushed through a six-week course. The administration deserves credit for correcting the mistake. It does not deserve a pass for making it.