Former ICE Head Cautions That Agency’s Fast-Tracked Recruiting Strategy Risks ‘Catastrophic’ Outcomes

The former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has warned that the agency's accelerated recruitment and training process could have serious consequences if insufficient vetting continues.

John Sandweg, who headed ICE from 2013 to 2014, told The Dispatch that recent messaging and hiring practices risk attracting people motivated by anti-immigrant sentiment rather than public service. The report focused on the fact that…he is the Department of Homeland Security increasingly uses memes taken from right-wing online culture to promote immigration enforcement and recruitment

“When you put it together [messaging] given that the screening and background checks seem really rushed and incredibly limited, the big concern is that you're getting people who have an agenda, who are just anti-migration,” Sandweg said.

DHS says it has received more than 200,000 applications and issued 18,000 preliminary job offers. The agency has lowered the minimum age to apply to 18 years.eliminated age restrictions and shortened the training period for new officers from four months to two, eliminating training in Spanish.

Sandweg said investing significant authority in poorly trained recruits is risky:

“The idea that you take people who don't have the right motives and who have a grudge against immigrants, you give them incredible power, but you don't give them proper training and you don't do proper background checks. It will simply lead to potentially disastrous results.”

IN another interview with POLITICO Sandweg said last month that recent enforcement patterns mark a break with past practice. “This is all unprecedented,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen a national effort like this to enforce immigration control.”

He compared the current large-scale sweep operations to earlier, more targeted efforts that targeted people with criminal histories, saying past efforts required “a lot of research and investigation” before making an arrest.

Sandweg also noted that the recent operations coincided with use-of-force incidents across the country, including shootings and fatal shootings, as well as allegations of misconduct, adding that such events reflect growing pressure to maximize the number of arrests. “This administration seems more interested in the number of arrests rather than the quality of arrests,” he said, adding that law enforcement is increasingly targeting people “who have been here a long time” and have “US citizen family members.”