Ex-ICE lawyer testifies to Congress
Says cadets trained to 'violate the Constitution'
By: Michael Loria
USA Today
..... ICE supervisors are teaching "new cadets to violate the constitution: amid President Donald Trump's promise of mass deportations, a former agency lawyer testified to members of Congress.
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"The ICE academy is deficient, defective and broken," former Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney Ryan Schwank told members of Congress on February 23. [2026] Schwank, who joined ICE in 2021, resigned February 13 [2026] 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. He spoke at a forum chaired, by Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Representative Robert Garcia of California. The session was the latest in a series of forums the Democratic lawmakers have held to highlight DHS misconduct.
..... Besides highlighting the agency's stance that it does not need warrants to enter homes, Schwank said ICE significantly cut down training time for recruits and eliminated use of force training even as Homeland Security faces push-back for fatally shotting two U.S. citizens in Minnesota.
..... Homeland Security in a statement February 23 [2026] defend how ICE has retooled tis academy, saying new recruits "receive the same hours of training officers have always received," only under a more compressed time frame. The homeland security department denied Schwank's testimony that the agency does not teach cadets the Constitution or proper sue of force.
..... "We have ensured our law enforcement officers get the est of the best training to arrest and remove murders, rapists, pedophiles, terrorist and gangs members form our communities," agency spokesperson Lauren bis said in a statement.
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Testimony from the former assistant chief counsel within the Department of Homeland Security comes amid a historic ICE hiring drive. According to DHS, the agency hired 12,000 offices and agents during the first year of Trump's second term. [2025]
..... New hires are being funded through a budget life the agency received under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The $73 billion the agency received under the law Trump signed in July [2025] 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 are at risk of shutting down while lawmakers can't agree to deliver the department funding.
..... 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 home without 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 January [2026] whistle-blower complaint reviewed 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 suer that I understood that disobedience could cost me my job."
..... Federal authorities have downplayed constitutional concerns.
..... "We don't break into anybody's homes," Marcos Charles, 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."
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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.
..... 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 using chemical agents on protesters, barring detainees access to legal counsel,and making unlawful 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 safety 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 there authority, and who do not have the training to recognize an unlawful order."
..... In a statement, Homeland Security spokesperson Lauren 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, to eight hours a day to six days a week, twelve hours per day. It is the same hours of training officers have always received.
..... "The training does not stop after graduation from the academy,: Bis added. "Recruits are put on a rigorous on-the-job training program that is tracked and monitored."
..... Contributing: Christopher Cann, USA Today