A veteran Immigration and Customs Enforcement official warned federal investigators that the agency's rapid expansion under President Donald Trump allowed some recruits to receive job offers before completing basic security checks, creating what the whistleblower described as "grave national security risks."
The complaint, filed with the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General in August 2025, alleged "systemic breakdowns" in ICE's preliminary vetting of applicants as the agency raced to expand its workforce. The whistleblower, a 17-year ICE veteran who led a unit in the Office of Professional Responsibility, supervised more than 100 employees responsible for evaluating thousands of applicants, according to The New York Times.
"We chose as an agency to be more convenient rather than thorough," the official told the Times. "By doing so, there was a potential to put lives at risk and to jeopardize national security."
The allegations offer a new look at the internal strains created by one of the largest expansions in ICE's history. The agency said in January that it had hired more than 12,000 officers and employees in less than a year as the Trump administration increased resources for immigration enforcement.
According to the whistleblower complaint, human-resources officials were issuing final job offers in some cases before preliminary screening had been completed. The disputed checks included fingerprinting, verification of applicants' identities and reviews of their credit histories-procedures intended to identify potential criminal, financial or national-security concerns before candidates advance further in the hiring process.
The official also alleged that the accelerated process weakened the mechanism for identifying candidates who warranted additional scrutiny, including polygraph examinations. The complaint warned that inadequately vetted personnel could increase ICE's exposure to insider threats, criminal infiltration or foreign influence.
The hiring concerns overlap with a separate controversy over how ICE prepared the influx of recruits for field operations. Former ICE attorney and academy instructor Ryan Schwank testified this year that the agency shortened its basic training program from 72 days to 42 days and eliminated or reduced instruction and testing in areas including constitutional law, firearms and use of force. Documents reviewed by The Washington Post indicated more than 240 hours of instruction had been removed from the program.
Schwank also accused the agency of instructing recruits to operate under guidance that he believed violated constitutional restrictions on entering private residences. "ICE is teaching cadets to violate the Constitution. And they were attempting to cloak it in secrecy by demanding that I lie about it," he said.
DHS has disputed characterizations that ICE abandoned proper hiring or training standards. Responding to the latest whistleblower allegations, the department said the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility "diligently applies the proper personnel vetting regulations, including guidelines for national security, and evaluates all available information for every applicant based on these factors."
The department has said applicants can receive a tentative selection letter after applying and interviewing and that some candidates may receive temporary status allowing them to begin training while their full background investigation remains pending. The distinction is significant because the whistleblower's complaint focuses in part on how far applicants were permitted to progress before preliminary security checks were completed.
DHS similarly challenged Schwank's earlier account of academy changes. "No training hours have been cut. Our officers receive extensive firearm training, are taught de-escalation tactics, and receive Fourth and Fifth Amendment comprehensive instruction," the department said in February. Records subsequently reviewed by The Washington Post showed a reduction of more than 240 hours between the earlier and accelerated programs.
The agency has since moved to lengthen training again. The changes follow months of scrutiny over whether the speed of ICE's expansion had outpaced the systems designed to screen and prepare federal law-enforcement officers before putting them into the field.
The latest whistleblower's allegations haven't been established as findings of fact by the DHS inspector general. The official was interviewed twice by investigators, however, and the concerns have become part of an ongoing inspector-general review of ICE's hiring and vetting practices, according to the Times.
Schwank said the emergence of another whistleblower reinforced concerns he and other instructors had raised about the consequences of lowering standards during the expansion.
"Other ICE instructors and I worried about a loose cannon or a criminal being recruited and the tragic effects that could have," Schwank said. "The American public and ICE officers themselves will be safer when we hold incoming recruits to the standards we should expect from federal agents."
