ICE Needs Higher Education and Training Standards (opinion)

"At its best, police education and training prepare law enforcement officers with the knowledge and skills-including principles of constitutional law, active listening and verbal de-escalation techniques, implicit bias awareness, how to recognize signs of mental illness or substance abuse, use of force standards, and ethical decision-making and professional conduct-that they will need to protect and serve the public as safely and effectively as possible."

"In 2025, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) more than doubled the size of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) workforce, from 10,000 to 22,000 agents, in less than a year, through aggressive recruitment techniques, reduced standards and significantly less training. The results are now appearing, tragically, on the streets of cities across the country. Between 2015 and 2021, ICE agents were involved in 59 shootings, an average of 10 each year, resulting in 23 deaths."

Nearly half of police academies in America are offered at colleges or technical schools, with Northern Essex Community College in Massachusetts cited as an example. High-quality police education and training provide constitutional-law principles, active listening and verbal de-escalation, implicit-bias awareness, recognition of mental illness or substance abuse, use-of-force standards, ethical decision-making and professional conduct. Training content, quality, culture and time-on-task can mean the difference between lives saved and lives lost. Reduced training and lowered standards amid rapid expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement have correlated with increased use-of-force incidents, including recent shootings and fatalities.

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