The Worst of the Worst

ICE agents are barely vetted, receive poor training, and have been given permission to commit violence with impunity

[Photo Credit: Ellen Schmidt, AP]

Since ICE agent Jonathan Ross murdered 37-year-old wife, mother, and American citizen Renee Good, ICE and Border Patrol have effectively begun occupying Minnesota. The American government is reigning terror in one of our own cities against peaceful Americans.

Who are these ICE agents so eager to break laws, kidnap people, inflict violence, wield weapons, hide their faces, and carry out the Trump regime’s extraordinarily cruel immigration agenda?

Recently, journalist Laura Jedeed set out to answer that question. She went through the ICE application process herself and discovered that the bar for entry could scarcely be lower. Jedeed recounted her experience on Democracy Now.

They were promising on-the-spot hiring to where you could, in fact, walk out with your $50,000 bonus that day, possibly. I went in, I handed in my résumé, which I did as a skills-based résumé. I’m a veteran. I served two tours in Afghanistan. So, on the surface, the résumé looked pretty good.

I had a very brief interview. It took all of six minutes. They didn’t ask very many questions. And then I left assuming I would never hear back because I’m a very Googleable person. I have an unusual name. I’m the only Laura G. on the internet. And I make no secret of how I feel about ICE and Trump and all of it.

So, I was not expecting, several days later, to receive a tentative offer. I missed it in my inbox, and it sunk to the bottom, which means that I never filled out the paperwork they requested.

She went on to explain just how little scrutiny the agency applied.

I never accepted the tentative offer. I never filled out my background check paperwork. I never signed the affidavit saying I committed no domestic violence crimes, none of it.

A few weeks later, I got a message from LabCorp saying that ICE wanted me to do a drug test, and I went ahead and did that. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t pass. I’d partaken in legal cannabis six days before the test, but why not waste some of their money, right?

And then nine days after that, I decided I was just curious. Had they processed the drug test yet? So, I logged onto the ICE hiring portal. And what I found was that not only did the drug test not seem to be relevant, but I was also listed as having joined ICE as of three days earlier.

I had listed that I had accepted the offer. They had offered me a final position as a deportation officer. My background check was listed as completed three days in the future for when I was looking at it.

So, it seems like the answer to the question, “Who are they hiring?” is they don’t know.

The answer is even worse than that. They do not know, and they do not care.

Attempting to save face, the Department of Homeland Security tweeted at Jedeed, calling her a liar. DHS claimed she had not been offered a position, but merely a “tentative selection letter.” Jedeed refuted that claim with a screen-recorded video of her ICE portal, which clearly welcomed her into the ranks.

Once again, the Trump regime made clear that it neither understands nor respects how video evidence works, or how records can be used to establish facts.

News reporter Julia Ainsley later revealed an exclusive story detailing ICE’s catastrophic onboarding failures.

They had the mandate to hire 10,000 new recruits after the “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed, and they had to do it by the end of 2025.

So, an easy way to do that is to find people who already have law enforcement experience, and they only have to do a four-week online class, and then they’re sent to their field office. The field office trains them a little more, and then they can go out.

But what happened is AI went through these résumés, and any time they saw the word “officer,” even if it was “I aspire to be an ICE officer” or “I was a compliance officer,” all these other ways, they automatically put them in the law enforcement officer field.

That meant they didn’t go to the ICE Academy, which is eight-week in-person training. You get trained on things like the Fourth Amendment, when you can break the window of someone’s car, how to handle your gun, physical fitness tests—things that are really a barrier to entry on purpose so that people know how to go out in the field and do law enforcement work.

Agents are not being trained properly in skills that are increasingly critical as confrontations between ICE and peaceful protesters grow more frequent. DHS’ primary goal is not public safety. It is deployment is flooding American cities with agents whose purpose is to spread fear, not uphold the law.

[Photo Credit: Tim Evans, Reuters]

It should surprise no one that there are criminals within ICE’s ranks. Recently, the Pacific Anti-Fascist Research Collective compiled a list of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol agents who are sex offenders, as well as those with credible accusations in their past.

A disturbing pattern has emerged. Last year alone, Ohio saw two high-profile cases involving ICE agents accused of violence against women. Lynn Tramonte, founder of the Ohio Immigration Alliance, put it plainly:

There’s a real problem with gender-based violence by ICE agents, and the agency is not taking it seriously.

Agent Andrew Golivich abused his power over women who feared deportation to extort sex.

Police were called to Agent Samuel Saxon’s home 22 times for domestic violence incidents, including strangulation—a clear and alarming predictor that such violence can escalate to murder.

We were told this anti-immigrant crackdown was about going after the “worst of the worst.” Instead, the Trump regime is hiring them.

That includes former white supremacist Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio. He denies involvement with ICE, yet according to the UK news outlet Canary, a whistleblower leaked the personal information of 4,500 ICE agents and Tarrio was among them.

Tarrio was a central figure in the January 6 insurrection and was convicted and sentenced to 23 years for some of the most serious crimes against the United States. Not despite that, but because of it, Donald pardoned him. Tarrio had also been banned from Washington, D.C., by a federal judge for burning the banner of a historic Black church, and Donald’s pardon extended to that crime as well.

Stephen Miller, the Homeland Security advisor, has repeatedly expressed white supremacist ideology. During an appearance on Fox News, he delivered the following message to ICE agents.

To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties, and anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony.

You have immunity to perform your duties, and no one—no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist—can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties.

And the Department of Justice has made clear that if officials cross that line into obstruction, into criminal conspiracy against the United States or against ICE officers, then they will face justice.

Miller is pouring gasoline on an already volatile situation, giving ICE agents carte blanche to do whatever they want to anyone, including peaceful protesters exercising their First Amendment rights. In Miller’s twisted mind, that kind of power is seductive.

The rise of ICE as a fascist, unaccountable agency is not an abstract threat. It is a clear and present danger, as Minnesota has now learned the hard way.

Under the Trump regime, fear has become the law, and American cities are the testing ground.