ICE officers’ use of force and training: ICE retiree sees agency he doesn’t recognize

Amid congressional testimony this week raising troubling new questions about the training new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers receive, the former head of ICE’s Baltimore Field Office said he no longer recognizes the agency where he spent his career.

Darius Reeves, who said he’s proud of his decades in federal immigration enforcement before retiring from ICE in May 2025, told the News4 I-Team his officers were “known as the silent service” for operating quietly and behind the scenes.

That changed quickly, he said, under President Donald Trump’s deportation push last year.

“There was never this thirst for numbers that I’m seeing now,” he told the I-Team. “Three thousand arrests per day? That’s insanity.”

In the wake of a pair of deadly shootings in Minneapolis, Reeves is among the law enforcement experts speaking out against the tactics immigration agents are using in their mission, saying they’re leading to too many violent encounters and harm the relationship between the public and police.

“It destroys the trust of the community,” he said.

Former Dallas Police Chief Renee Hall, who leads the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, said “we are witnessing something that I have never seen in more than two decades of policing in the United States.”

She said local police have spent decades repairing relationships with communities of color – work she fears is being undone by what she called agents’ questionable tactics and training.

“There’s no de-escalation. There’s no communication. It’s aggressive policing. It’s excessive use of force,” she said.

Hall’s organization called for an independent investigation into the death of Reneé Good, who was shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis last month. Just weeks later, Veterans Affairs ICU nurse Alex Pretti was fatally shot during an incident with Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection officers.
As the investigations into their killings continue, Hall said the deadly encounters cast a long shadow on police everywhere.

“Everyone carrying a badge is judged whenever one of us, whenever one of us, regardless what agency you come from, when we fail to execute with dignity, with authority, with integrity, with ethics. Every law enforcement officer in this country pays for that,” she said.

ICE use-of-force cases skyrocketed after Trump took office, emails show

Earlier this month, Acting ICE director Todd Lyons appeared in a pair of congressional oversight hearings into immigration agents’ tactics after the Good and Pretti shootings in Minneapolis.

Lyons declined to comment on those ongoing investigations but blamed violent protesters for some of the chaotic scenes that played out in the city.

“The issue we were dealing with there is organized groups,” Lyons said, then referencing a flyer that he said instructed people “on how to impede ICE operations and arrests.”

Reeves said he would never condone protesters impeding law enforcement operations, “but this is what we ask for by threatening these communities. People are gonna come out and be part of the show.”

Internal ICE emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the nonprofit American Oversight show use-of-force incidents by ICE officers skyrocketed after Trump took office last year, with 67 reports filed between Jan. 19 and March 20, 2025 – a nearly 300% increase.

“Each statistic that we reviewed, there are people behind that. Those are real human beings who are being impacted by those encounters,” said Chioma Chukwu, executive director of the group.

But instead of the emails revealing concern over the increase, Chukwu said: “We saw that the agency officials were more focused on assaults on law enforcement officers and finding ways to package that information so they could pursue more prosecutions.”

In public statements, the Department of Homeland Security has said it’s seen a “1,300% increase in assaults” against its officers, with Lyons testifying on the Hill that ICE is “facing the deadliest operating environment in our agency’s history.”

The I-Team asked for a breakdown of those numbers, but DHS has not provided it.

In those congressional hearings, Lyons also said ICE has investigated 37 use of force complaints against ICE officers since January 2025. The I-Team asked ICE for the total number of use-of-force complaints filed since January 2025 but was directed to file a Freedom of Information Act request. It’s still pending.

Dozens of students and community members marched in protest of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in their communities. News4’s Dominique Moody reports.

What we know about ICE officers’ training

The violent clashes have heightened the focus on what training federal immigration officers are receiving, especially as DHS seeks to hire thousands more officers.

University of South Carolina use of force expert Marc Brown trained ICE officers at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center from 2019 to 2024.

He said when he was there, ICE officers received less defensive tactics training than other agencies and weren’t trained in how to operate in chaotic urban environments, like protests.

When asked if he believes the training recruits received then prepared them to operate in cities like Minneapolis now, Brown said: “Based on what I observed and the training I conducted directly, no, it did not.”

Brown, who is now academic director at the University of Southern California’s Excellence in Policing and Public Safety Program, said he’s concerned by some of the encounters seen on social media depicting officers deploying pepper spray on bystanders or protesters who don’t appear to pose an immediate threat.

“There seems to be a gap in knowledge as far as what you can and can’t do when someone’s openly protesting or they’re filming or they are just standing there. Because again, this is all part of operating in an urban environment now, especially in 2026,” he said.

In the Senate hearing, Lyons said DHS reduced the length of time new ICE officers train from about 75 days to 42 – a figure an ICE spokesperson echoed in a statement sent to the I-Team.

In a statement, an ICE spokesperson said the agency streamlined training to “cut redundancy and incorporate technology advancements, without sacrificing basic subject matter content.”

This week, former ICE attorney and trainer Ryan Schwank appeared on Capitol Hill to refute that claim in a high-profile hearing.

“DHS told the public that new cadets receive all the training they need to perform the duties, that no critical material or standards have been cut. This is a lie,” he said.

Schwank, who said he resigned from his job earlier this month in order to testify, continued: “ICE made the program shorter, and they removed so many essential parts that what remains is a dangerous husk.”

Asked about the reduction in training, Reeves grew emotional. He said training isn’t just important for the safety of the public, but also for officers.

“I’m disappointed, because you think that you can water down the training for something I spent 20 years over, as if what we do doesn’t matter,” he said.

In a lengthy statement, a spokesperson from ICE said the agency has hired more than 12,000 new officers and that training for recruits includes arrest techniques, defensive tactics, conflict management, legal and firearms training.

“Their training does not end when recruits graduate from the academy,” the spokesperson said. “ICE officers go through rigorous on-the-job training and mentorship. This additional training is tracked online and monitored closely. New hires take what they learn at FLETC and apply it to real-life scenarios while on duty, preserving ICE’s reputation as one of the most elite law enforcement agencies not only in the U.S., but the entire world.”