Has US ICE officer training been reduced to 47 days?

The fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman in her car by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer on January 7 brought more scrutiny on Trump-era training requirements.

On CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, US Democratic Senator Mark Warner told anchor Jake Tapper the Trump administration had shortened ICE agents’ training time while scaling up its hiring.

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“Remember, we’re beefing up ICE – 10,000 more agents,” Warner said. “They are not getting the traditional five months training. Literally, Jake, the training for the ICE agents now is 47 days. Why 47 days? Because Donald Trump is the 47th president.”

He also used this figure on Thursday, when talking to a liberal commentator, and on Monday, on CNBC’s Squawk Box.

Other lawmakers, social media posts and journalists repeated the same line in the days after ICE officer Jonathan Ross shot Renee Good.

The Trump administration has confirmed to multiple news organisations it shortened the duration of immigration agent training, while taking issue with some outlets’ framing and declining to answer follow-up questions. Neither the ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) responded to PolitiFact’s queries. We were unable to confirm whether the number of training days is connected to Trump’s status as the 47th president.

Ross had been a deportation officer with the agency since 2015, The Associated Press news agency reported, so he was subject to earlier, longer training standards.

Warner, who did not respond to PolitiFact, said on CNN that the investigation into Good’s killing needed to be completed before people reached conclusions.

When Tapper pointed out to Warner that the ICE agent who shot Good “had at least 10 years’ experience”, Warner said, “So be it, and again that’s why there ought to be an investigation.”

Training shortened, but reports vary on how much

The training talking point stems from The Atlantic’s August story – Fast Times at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Reporter Nick Miroff wrote that training for new deportation officers had been reduced from about five months to 47 days, quoting three unnamed officials.

“Administration officials have cut that time roughly in half, partly by eliminating Spanish-language courses,” the report said. “Academy training was shortened to 47 days, three officials told me, the number picked because Trump is the 47th president. DHS officials said the training will run six days a week for eight weeks.”

A DHS spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that The Atlantic’s reporting was “false” because training is eight weeks. The Examiner story quoted the ICE acting director, Todd Lyons, as confirming an eight-week training schedule of six workdays per week, which comes to 48 training days.

The frequently asked questions page on ICE’s career website reflects the outdated training schedule, saying new deportation officers will complete almost five months of training — five weeks of language and 16 weeks of law enforcement.

The AP in August reported the agency “cut Spanish-language requirements to reduce training by five weeks”, quoting Caleb Vitello, who runs ICE training. Vitello told AP the Spanish-language training that was cut would be supplemented with translation technology services.

News organisations and administration officials have reported training times shorter than 48 days in recent months:

• An unnamed DHS official told NBC News in October that ICE had originally shortened its training from 13 weeks to eight weeks before shortening it again to six.
• Government Executive, a news outlet that covers federal agencies, reported on January 5 that the DHS had shortened ICE agent training from six months “to around six weeks”.

The DHS has not offered clarity about new officer training since the Minneapolis shooting. A senior DHS official told People magazine on January 8, “Training to become an Enforcement and Removal Operations officer is 8 weeks long”, and declined to specify the number of days.

“The official did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for clarification, since eight weeks matches the timeframe that The Atlantic previously reported,” it reported.

Officer who shot Good had 10 years of experience, additional training

Having worked for ICE for a decade, Ross would have followed the previous 16-week training schedule and five-week language programme.

Ross also received specialised training after being selected for ICE’s special response team, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told AP.

Before becoming an ICE agent, Ross served in the Indiana National Guard and was deployed to Iraq. He also worked as a Border Patrol field intelligence officer.

Our ruling

Warner said immigration agents “are not getting the traditional five months training … The training for the ICE agents now is 47 days.”

News outlets and DHS officials reported cuts to the length of ICE training during Trump’s second term, reducing it from about five months to six days a week for eight weeks. That is 48 days of training over a 56-day period. (What it has to do with Trump’s status as 47th president is outside the scope of this fact-check.) Ross, the ICE officer who shot dead Good, had been with the department for about 10 years.

Two news organisations have since reported that the duration of training was further reduced to about six weeks; spokespeople from the DHS and the ICE did not respond to our requests for confirmation.

In the big picture, ICE officers’ training time has been significantly shortened to a period at or near what Warner cites. The statement is accurate but needs clarification, so we rate it Mostly True.