Whether one shrugs off the death of Renee Nicole Good as her fault or is horrified by it, it’s clear from video footage from multiple sources that the events in south Minneapolis were not “perfect.”
It’s not the only questionable case. It appears that there’s a great need for full training, perhaps the type that ICE agents used to receive.
A lot of these problems could be the result of a rush to put agents in the field, mirroring problems the border patrol experienced decades earlier.
Even before the January 7 tragedy in Minneapolis occurred, Darius Radzius with military.com reported on Congressional concerns about “whether the agency lowered training standards to meet aggressive recruitment targets,” as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement claims that they’ve added 12,000 officers an agents, more than doubling the number of personnel in an attempt to reach a goal of one million deportations a year.
As Radzius reported just before the events in Minneapolis “‘Senator Peters has serious concerns about how ICE was able to appropriately determine suitability, train and onboard 12,000 new front-line personnel in less than a year, especially given recruitment challenges the agency has faced in recent years,’ the aide said.”
The military.com article finds “ICE reduced training requirements to meet hiring targets though the agency has not been transparent about the criteria used to determine which recruits qualified for abbreviated training pipelines or how those changes were evaluated internally. ‘Our office requested a briefing on these changes months ago but still have not been briefed,’ the aide said. ‘Given growing concerns about ICE personnel’s recent conduct and failures to meet prior professional standards, Senator Peters remains concerned this rapid hiring push could repeat past mistakes tied to lowered standards and inadequate preparation.’”
I confirmed those numbers, as DHS writes, “With these new patriots on the team, we will be able to accomplish what many say was impossible and fulfill President Trump’s promise to make America safe again… The accelerated hiring tempo has allowed ICE to place officers in the field faster than any previous recruitment effort in the agency’s history… As a result, ICE was able to exceed its hiring surge target while maintaining rigorous standards for training and readiness.”
I also looked to see what prior averages when there was a prior surge in hiring. According to FederalLawEnforcement.org “In FY2010, nearly 4,000 ICE employees were trained in more than 30 training programs. All new hires of ICE are required to attend 22 weeks of basic training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) in Glynco, Georgia.”
PBS reported in August 2025 that ICE officials insisted that they had not watered down training, or cut corners at all. “[T]he assistant director of ICE in charge of training, says new recruits will go through about eight weeks of training at the Georgia facility. But they also have training before and after they come here.” In that article, PBS also noted that “The Border Patrol went through a similar hiring surge in the early 2000s when hiring and training standards were changed; arrests for employee misconduct rose.”
ICE needs to provide Congress with the answers it demanded last year and earlier this year concerning evidence of agent training and standards, questions asked even before the recent shocking events in Minnesota.