Federal watchdogs have quietly launched a probe into ICE’s chaotic hiring spree in the wake of the officer-related shooting death of protester Renee Good that sent shockwaves through the country, the Daily Mail can reveal.
Independent investigators inside the DHS’s Office of Inspector General are now looking into whether the rush to hire 10,000 new agents as part of the agency’s unprecedented crackdown on illegal immigration has led to dangerous shortcuts in vetting and training.
The investigation began in August but has taken on new urgency after Good’s January 7 killing by ICE officer Jon Ross rattled national confidence in the agency.
Near-daily television news video showing agents roughing up protestors and a 21-year-old permanently losing his sight after an ICE agent fired a nonlethal round at close range during another demonstration in Santa Ana, California have added to public unease about the agency.
One poll showed 46% of people in the country want ICE to be completely abolished with another 12% being unsure.
A team of inspectors is set to make its first visit next week to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia – where sources say new recruits are being fast-tracked.
The audit, which was initially stalled by DHS officials who were slow to turn over information to investigators, could take months to complete.
It will result in a report to Congress, though ‘management alerts’ can be sent as needed to address more pressing concerns, insiders explained.
‘They’re offering $50,000 incentives for people to sign up, dropping their vetting and fitness standards, and then not training them well,’ one source told us about ICE’s new recruits. ‘This would appear to be a recipe for disaster.’
Another ICE insider told the Daily Mail that investigators are particularly interested in learning who made the decisions to lower training standards.
Watchdogs within the Department of Homeland Security are now investigating ICE’s hiring frenzy, questioning whether the rush to put 10,000 new agents on the street has come at a dangerous cost
ICE, which is overseen by the DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, doubled its workforce in 2025, amid its unprecedented crackdown on illegal immigration
‘They’re investigating why the academy is being cut shorter because the new agents are not getting the necessary training,’ they said.
‘One of the things they cut down on was firearms training and tactics,’ that second source added. ‘With everything that’s going on across the country, they need to increase the training, not scale back.’
The Department of Homeland Security oversees ICE.
A separate inspector general’s report released Friday, two days after Good’s killing, found a host of problems within the Department of Homeland Security, as a whole, including ‘fragmented hiring processes’ and ‘critical issues in screening and vetting’ new recruits. It doesn’t go into specifics about ICE’s recruitment campaign or its training
According to DHS officials, ICE doubled its workforce in 2025, now employing more than 22,000 officers and agents, up from 10,000 when President Donald Trump retook office last year.
The spike marks a 120 percent increase since July, when Congress passed Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act providing $8billion for ICE hiring.
An exclusive investigation by the Daily Mail in December revealed that the Trump administration’s hiring surge has spiraled into what insiders describe as a national embarrassment – with lax vetting and a signing bonus of up to $50,000 luring in a wave of misfit recruits.
That story detailed how ICE has lowered standards so dramatically that the new cohort now included recent high school graduates and applicants who can ‘barely read or write’ as well as those who lack basic physical fitness and even have pending criminal charges.
Renee Good was shot dead by ICE in Minneapolis last week
The ICE agent, whose identity was initially withheld, was later revealed to be Jon Ross
Videos show agents approaching Good’s stationary vehicle, asking her to exit the car
‘They’ve got some real duds and doofuses they’re fast-tracking right now,’ a longtime law enforcement training expert who consults with ICE told the Daily Mail.
‘Some of these guys have no business carrying loaded guns or even becoming federal officers in the first place.’
Most of the new hires in the $30billion initiative are retired law enforcement who are receiving virtual training and being repurposed for desk duty.
Meanwhile, rookies are being fast-tracked into the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, where instructors have been left astounded at the levels of incompetence.
Training at the center in Brunswick, Georgia, has been shortened from five months to about two-and-a-half months, largely because ICE has scrapped its requirement that new recruits learn Spanish – the language spoken by the majority of people they’re being asked to round up.
One insider called that move ‘estúpido’, meaning stupid.
The curtailed training teaches new ICE recruits when to – and when not to – use force, among other basic law enforcement standards and procedures.
It also instructs agents on how to de-escalate conflicts, a key skill as protests ramp up against the agency and monitors like Good and her wife, Rebecca Good, observe and record officers’ actions.
Training entails lectures, simulations and role-playing that help officers diffuse crisis situations.
ICE’s rush to hire 10,000 new recruits by the end of December devolved into chaos after the agency drastically lowered its standards to meet its goal, insiders told the Daily Mail
In August, DHS invited the media to tour the academy, a sprawling facility near the coast in Brunswick, Georgia. An instructor was seen demonstrating getting a 170lb dummy into a position to be handcuffed
One of our sources observed training at the center in Georgia in the fall. He noted what he described as an emphasis on ‘force escalation, not de-escalation.’
By that, he means instructors were gung-ho about teaching arrest techniques and marksmanship for example, and less rigorous in teaching active listening, peaceful handling of protesters, tactical repositioning and other methods to stabilize volatile situations like the fatal, 10 seconds on Minneapolis’s Portland Avenue that led to Good’s death.
‘What I saw was a lot of what we call aggressive posturing, which has a place in any law enforcement training, including ICE agents.
‘What I didn’t see – or at least see enough of – is much instruction on how to prevent a miscommunication from turning into a homicide,’ he said.
Ross, the agent who killed Good on January 7, apparently has many years of experience with ICE.
Although there is no indication that training cutbacks was a factor in his decision to pull the trigger, sources in and close to the agency warn that cutting corners in recruiting and training could well lead to future tragedies.
‘If anything positive comes out of this mess, it should be a reminder to take de-escalation training way more seriously,’ the training observer said.
White House border czar Tom Homan has been made aware of the recruitment problems, an insider assured the Daily Mail
Sources previously revealed that applicants with no experience were being fast-tracked into the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia, where instructors have been astounded at the levels of incompetence
Also at issue is how – and if – ICE is vetting new recruits.
A source told the Daily Mail on Monday that, in its haste to flood the field with new hires, the agency isn’t doing enough research into the backgrounds of former police officers, including their emotional stability and possible use of excessive force and other misconduct in previous jobs.
He said he has learned of one new recruit with a history of sexually harassing colleagues and members of the public in his former job as a patrolman in Texas, and another with a long habit of inappropriately discharging his gun on traffic stops he made as a sheriff’s deputy in California.
‘It’s hothead central over there, and Homan has been made aware of it,’ he said of Tom Homan, the White House executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations, also known as the border czar.
Homan has long faced criticism about his approach to ICE recruitment and training.
An OIG report in 2018 – during Trump’s first administration when ICE also was trying to ramp up the number of its agents – slammed the agency’s move to train agents at several sites through the country rather than at one centralized location.
‘ICE’s decentralized program lacked clearly defined roles and responsibilities and a unified command and control process’, leading to ‘inadequate oversight’, it reads.
Keeping training programs decentralized, it warned, could lead to ‘unintended consequences, such as duplicative internal training investments, inconsistent training (and) degradation of training.’
Near-daily television news video showing agents roughing up protestors rattled national confidence in the agency with one poll showing 46% of people want to abolish the agency entirely
Renee Good’s death on the streets of Minneapolis has led to huge protests and outrage from local leaders who rejected White House claims she was a domestic terrorist
Under Homan’s watch, ICE did not concur with OIG’s recommendations to improve its training structure, leaving inspectors to consider the issue ‘open and unresolved’.
Most federal agencies have offices of inspector general (OIGs) to independently comb for waste, fraud, abuse, misconduct and mismanagement.
In Trump’s first days after retaking office a year ago, he fired at least 17 federal inspectors general, saying: ‘They’re not my people.’
Some of the insiders we spoke to see Good’s killing as out of line – a mark of an agency that is growing too fast, and is unprepared for throngs of protestors and legal monitors.
Others defended ICE’s recent killings in Minneapolis and elsewhere.
‘The shootings were justified,’ the ICE insider told us.
‘My concern is that the 10,000 new hires that are out there running around don’t have the training in this area.
‘They’re playing a game of Russian Roulette with these people.’
