Supervisors in ICE are teaching "new cadetsto violate the Constitution" amid PresidentDonald Trump's promise ofmass deportations, a former agency lawyer testified to members of Congress on Feb. 23.
"The ICE academy is deficient, defective, and broken," former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney Ryan Schwank told members of Congress on Monday. Schwank, who joined ICE in 2021, resigned Feb. 13 after being assigned to teach cadets at the agency's academy in Georgia. "On my first day, I received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant."
Schwank said he resigned in order to speak before Congress on Monday. He spoke at a forum chaired by Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Rep. Robert Garcia of California. The session was the latest in aseriesof forums the Democratic lawmakers have held to highlight DHS misconduct.
Schwank highlighted the agency's stance that itdoes not need warrantsto enter homes, significantly cut down training time for recruits and eliminated use of force training even as Homeland Security faces pushback for fatally shooting two U.S. citizens in Minnesota.
Homeland Security in a statement Monday defended how ICE has retooled its academy, saying new recruits "receive the same hours of training officers have always received" only under a more compressed timeframe. The homeland security department denied Schwank's testimony that the agency does not teach cadets the constitution or proper use of force.
"We have ensured our law enforcement officers get the best of the best training to arrest and remove murderers, rapists, pedophiles, terrorist, and gang members from our communities," agency spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement.
Testimony from the former assistant chief counsel within the Department of Homeland Security comes as ICE is in the midst of a historic hiring drive. According to DHS, the agency hired12,000officers and agents during the first year of Trump's second term.
New hires are being funded through a budget lift the agency received under the president'sOne Big Beautiful Bill Act. The $73 billion the agency received under the lawTrumpsigned in July is equal to roughly six times what the agency was initially due for fiscal year 2026.
The new funding is due to last until the end of Trump's term, meaning the agency can continue its deportation campaign even as other DHS agencies areat risk of shutting downwhile lawmakers can't agree to deliver the department funding.
A secret memo
The former ICE attorney said he was most troubled by an agency memo signed by Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons that asserted federal officers can forcibly enter a homewithout a judicial warrant— a move constitutional scholars, immigration experts and a federal judge say is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. The memo dates back to May 2025 and was made public in a late Januarywhistleblower complaintreviewed by USA TODAY.
"Never in my career had I ever received such a blatantly unlawful order, nor one conveyed in such a troubling manner," Schwank said. "Incredibly, I was being shown this memo in secret by my supervisor, who made sure that I understood that disobedience could cost me my job."
Federal authorities have downplayed constitutional concerns.
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"We don't break into anybody's homes," Marcos Charles, the executive associate director of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, said at a recent news conference. "We make entry either in a hot pursuit with a criminal arrest warrant or an administrative arrest warrant. The thing to remember is these administrative arrest warrants have been deemed justified by courts in immigration purposes."
An administrative warrant is not the same thing as a judicial warrant; administrative warrants are not reviewed by a judge and are signed by an ICE official— potentially the agent conducting the arrest.
'I watched ICE dismantle the training program'
Schwank said that over the past five months he "watched ICE dismantle the training program" for new agents and officers.
According to the former ICE attorney, the agency cut about a third of its training hours. Among the 240 hours of cut training, he said, were classes on the Constitution, use of force and limits of officer authority.
The attorney's criticism of the training program comes as federal judges have slammed ICE and Border Patrol agents for usingchemical agents on protesters, barring detaineesaccess to legal counseland makingunlawful arrests.
"In the name of churning out an endless stream of officers, DHS leadership has dismantled the academic and practical tests that we need to know if cadets can safely and lawfully perform their job," Schwank said. "ICE made the program shorter and they
removed so many essential parts that what remains is a dangerous husk."
The former agency attorney warned: "Without reform, ICE will graduate thousands of new officers who do not know their constitutional duty, do not know the limits of their authority, and who do not have the training to recognize an unlawful order."
How does ICE say training has changed?
In a statement, Homeland Security spokesperson Bis said training had changed but that cadets still received training in use of force and the constitution.
Cadets, she said, still receive the same number of hours of training: "New ICE recruits receive 56 days of training and an average of 28 days of on-the-job training. No training requirements have been removed. Training increased from five days a week, eight hours a day to six days a week, twelve hours per day. It is the same hours of training officers have always received."
Bis added: "The training does not stop after graduation from the academy—Recruits are put on a rigorous on-the-job training program that is tracked and monitored."
Contributing by Chris Cann
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:ICE is teaching cadets to 'violate the Constitution': Former DHS attorney testifies
