Members of President Donald Trump’s administration are pushing back on recent remarks by Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther, who said that federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are not properly trained.
Ginther criticized the training and preparedness of federal immigration officers deployed in the city, saying he believes ICE agents lack the level of law-enforcement training typical of police officers, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
The comments come as the Trump administration continues large immigration enforcement operations in major American cities, including Columbus.
“They are being dropped into these different cities to do federal immigration enforcement, and they really haven’t been trained the way most law enforcement professionals have been,” Ginther told The Dispatch. “And what we’re seeing is deaths and fatalities. I mean, Minneapolis wasn’t the first (shooting). Unfortunately, Portland may not be the last.”
The mayor also told the news source that Columbus police would not assist ICE with immigration enforcement unless other crimes are involved.
“Columbus has a policy of not working with ICE on immigration enforcement,” he said, adding that “we have not asked for and do not need this unwelcome intervention” because local officials had not been informed of enforcement plans.
Ginther’s claims about ICE officers being untrained were repeated by several news outlets, including the right-wing outlet The Daily Mail, which reported that ICE handed out $10,000 bonuses to hundreds of recruits. Even though they allegedly failed basic training and open-book tests, which made them unsuitable for service, they still received the money for simply showing up.
“At first, we were wondering why all these sh***y students were showing up for training, and then later were like, ‘Wait, we’re giving them a free $10,000?’” one of the Department of Homeland Security officials told the news outlet.
DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin pushed back on the narrative, saying that ICE officers are highly trained, according to The Washington Post.
“Officers are highly trained in de-escalation tactics and regularly receive ongoing use-of-force training,” she said.
It isn’t the first time ICE officers have been accused of inadequate training. In its report last year, The Atlantic, a liberal-leaning publication, claimed that the academy training was shortened to 47 days to reflect that Trump is the 47th president of the United States.
However, an anonymous DHS official told The Washington Examiner that the information is false, adding that “training to become an Enforcement and Removal Operations officer is eight weeks long.”
The official said that ICE “continuously evaluates and modernizes its training programs and curriculum” and that recruits “still learn the same elements and meet the same high standards ICE has always required.”
