This American Life 882: Give a Little Whistle
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Mar 8, 2026 Ryan Schwenk, a former ICE attorney who testified to Congress as a whistleblower, recounts alarming training and policy changes at an ICE academy. He describes warrantless-entry memos, gutted oversight, compressed constitutional and use-of-force instruction, and how failures in training and compliance led him to resign and warn about risks to public safety.
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Training Cuts Hollow Out Legal Safeguards
- Ryan Schwenk says stripped constitutional training removes the internal moral check that keeps officers lawful.
- He warns compressed curriculum and removed Fourth Amendment lessons will set well-intentioned cadets up to fail in the field.
Cadets Arrived Without Background Checks
- Ryan observed cadets arriving without completed background checks because the academy was processing thousands too fast.
- He found people with disqualifying offenses showing up due to a backlog after hiring surged tenfold.
Admin Forms Tried To Replace Warrants
- A Todd Lyons memo instructed agents to use I-205 internal approvals instead of judicial warrants to enter homes.
- Ryan realized this directly conflicted with training materials and raised a major Fourth Amendment red flag.