ICE whistleblower says training was cut 250 hours and agents taught to enter homes without warrants

RSRyan Schwank was hired by ICE in 2021 as assistant chief counsel for the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor — a role in which he represented ICE in immigration court. He became a legal instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers in Glynco, 🍑Georgia, in 2025, where he taught the legal curriculum to incoming ICE recruits. He resigned Feb. 13, 2026, in protest.

Internal documents Schwank and a second unnamed whistleblower provided to Congress included a July 2025 ICE training syllabus and a revised February 2026 syllabus. The comparison shows training dropped from 584 hours over 72 days to approximately 336 hours over 42 days — roughly 248 fewer hours. Democratic Senate staff described the reduction as nearly 250 fewer hours of training than previous cohorts.

Specific courses removed from the required curriculum between July 2025 and February 2026 included: Use of Force Simulation Training, Judgment Pistol Shooting, modules on constitutional law, handling the property of detainees, filling out immigration paperwork, a victim-centered approach to enforcement, and integrity awareness training. The number of required practical exams dropped from 25 to nine.

Schwank testified that a memo dated May 12, 2025, signed by Acting ICE Director TLTodd Lyons, instructed agents they could forcibly enter private homes without a judicial warrant when targeting someone who had a deportation order. ICE had historically trained officers that such entries were unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, describing warrantless home entry as the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.

When Schwank raised legal concerns about the Lyons memo, his supervisor warned him that two prior ICE instructors had been dismissed for questioning senior ICE management about the same memo. Schwank said the memo lacked the standard markings and handling associated with official internal policy guidance.

ICE has been on a major hiring surge authorized by Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which provided $75 billion over four years for immigration enforcement. ICE said it had already hired more than 12,000 new officers and agents as of February 2026, more than doubling its previous force of approximately 10,000. SMStephen Miller had previously stated ICE should carry out a minimum of 3,000 arrests per day.

DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary LBLauren Bis issued a statement on Feb. 23 flatly denying the testimony. No training hours have been cut, Bis said, describing claims to the contrary as false claims from the media and sanctuary politicians. She said ICE agents receive comprehensive instruction in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Acting ICE Director TLTodd Lyons had testified to Congress earlier in February that while training days were reduced from 75 to 42, the schedule was adjusted to preserve the amount of training.

The congressional forum was the third event in a series titled Our Values at Stake, hosted by Blumenthal and Garcia. Earlier forums had featured the brothers of RGRenee Good — a U.S. citizen killed by federal agents in Minneapolis in January 2026 — and a Minneapolis resident dragged from her car during an ICE operation. Those incidents were among the events triggering Democrats' refusal to fund DHS and the ongoing shutdown.