A Third of ICE-Academy Recruits Are Failing Out

"President Donald Trump's plan to double the size of the ICE workforce has met a foe more powerful than any activist group. It is decimating new recruits at the agency's training academy in Georgia. It is the ICE personal-fitness test. More than a third have failed so far, four officials told me, impeding the agency's plan to hire, train, and deploy 10,000 deportation officers by January. To pass, recruits must do 15 push-ups and 32 sit-ups, and run 1.5 miles in 14 minutes."

""It's pathetic," one career ICE official told me, adding that before now, a typical class of 40 recruits had only a couple of candidates fail, because the screening process was more rigorous. The academy's standards have already been eased to boost recruitment, he said, and the new parameters "should be the minimum for any officer." He and others, none of whom were authorized to speak with reporters, told me."

President Donald Trump's plan aims to hire, train, and deploy 10,000 deportation officers by January. The ICE training academy in Georgia is experiencing a failure rate exceeding one-third on the personal-fitness test. The test requires 15 push-ups, 32 sit-ups, and a 1.5-mile run in 14 minutes. Screening previously produced only a few failures per class, but standards have been eased to boost recruitment. Agency veterans express concern about the quality of fast-tracked recruits. ICE headquarters reported candidates misrepresenting their fitness and directed preliminary field fitness exams. DHS expects to fast-track many experienced law-enforcement hires.

Read at The Atlantic