U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement rushed to hire 12,000 new officers and special agents to double its workforce after Congress allocated $75 billion for the agency to execute the Trump administration's deportation agenda. The speed of that expansion has come with a cost: multiple employees with histories of financial trouble, failed police academy training, and misconduct allegations.
An investigation found that new ICE recruits included individuals with two bankruptcy filings, someone who cycled through six different law enforcement jobs in three years, and an officer credibly accused of fabricating charges against an innocent woman in a case that resulted in a $75,000 settlement. One hire had initially failed a police academy, lasted just three weeks in his only police job, and was previously accused of excessive force against a handcuffed inmate.
The agency's focus on speed over thoroughness created an environment where applicants with questionable backgrounds either slipped through vetting or were hired despite their histories. Unlike local law enforcement agencies, ICE shields employee identities to prevent harassment, making a complete accounting of the hiring campaign difficult to verify from the outside.
Investigators examined more than 40 officers who announced their ICE positions on LinkedIn and cross-referenced their backgrounds with public records. Most came from conventional law enforcement, military, or corrections backgrounds, but several carried histories of unpaid debts resulting in lawsuits, bankruptcy filings, and prior misconduct allegations.
Claire Trickler-McNulty, an ICE official under the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, warned that inadequate vetting creates liability risks for the agency. "If vetting is not done well and it's done too quickly, you have higher risk of increased liability to the agency because of bad actions, abuse of power and the lack of ability to properly carry out the mission because people don't know what they are doing," she said.
Financial instability is particularly concerning, she added, because it can make employees vulnerable to bribes or extortion, problems that have plagued ICE in the past.
ICE's acting director Todd Lyons said during a February congressional hearing that he was proud of the hiring campaign, which drew over 220,000 applications. He called the new workforce "well-trained and well-vetted." The agency also emphasized that most new hires are police and military veterans with conventional law enforcement experience.
Behind the scenes, however, the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged that some applicants received tentative job offers and began working on temporary status before completing full background checks. An internal memo showed ICE supervisors should flag newly hired employees with concerning conduct histories to an internal affairs unit for investigation.
One example is Carmine Gurliacci, 46, who joined ICE in Atlanta in December after resigning as a police officer in Georgia. Court records show he filed for bankruptcy twice: in 2013 in New York with $95,000 in liabilities, and again in 2022 in Georgia listing tens of thousands in unpaid loans, child support, and other debts. Between his 2022 bankruptcy approval and joining ICE, he worked for six different Georgia law enforcement agencies in three years, resigning from each before moving to the next.
Another recent hire, Andrew Penland, 29, joined ICE after resigning as a sheriff's deputy in Kansas. He had left his prior job after facing a lawsuit alleging he arrested a woman on false charges in 2022. The county settled the case for $75,000.
A third hire, Antonio Barrett, initially failed to graduate from a Colorado police academy in 2020. He only completed the program after a community college arranged special one-day remedial training for him. He then worked just three weeks as a police officer in La Junta before resigning, never returning to local law enforcement. Prior to that, he worked as a corrections officer and faced a lawsuit alleging excessive force for inflicting pain on a handcuffed inmate, though state officials disputed the claim and a court dismissed the case.
Marshall Jones, a police recruiting expert at the Florida Institute of Technology, said assessing ICE's hiring practices is difficult without full access to personnel files. He noted that while some "less than ideal candidates" who meet minimum qualifications inevitably get hired in large recruitment pushes, the real question is whether the rate of problematic hires suggests systemic vetting failures.
Former ICE academy instructor Ryan Schwank testified in February that agency leaders cut training on use of force, firearms safety, and protesters' rights. He said some new recruits are as young as 18, lack college degrees, and don't speak English as their primary language. "We're not giving them the training to know when they're being asked to do something that they're not supposed to do, something illegal or wrong," he said.
ICE said the agency completed 56 days of academy training and 28 days of on-the-job training for new hires, and denied removing any training requirements. The department also said vetting is an ongoing process, not a single checkpoint, and includes criminal history reviews, credit checks, and background investigations with interviews of prior employers and associates.
The investigation comes amid a wave of high-profile cases involving ICE agents using excessive force, raising questions about whether rapid hiring prioritized speed over careful screening.
Author James Rodriguez: "When an agency gets a blank check and a mandate to hire fast, corners get cut and the wrong people slip through. The question isn't whether bad hires happen in any large organization, it's whether ICE's speed was reckless."
Comments