“How does one become an ICE agent?”
This is the question I have been asking recently. It’s the question I ask whenever I see an ad on a website or a YouTube video that urges me to join ICE. It’s the question I ask myself when I see an ICE agent arrest a single dad and his five-year-old son. It’s the question I ask when I see an ICE agent throw an innocent civilian to the ground or deport someone who has every legal right to be in this country without any trial. It’s the question I ask when I see news about someone like Alex Pretti or Renee Good, or one of the many others who have died at the hands of ICE agents.
The only requirements listed on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) website for an application for frontline positions are a background check, a physical fitness test, and a medical exam. After that, Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) candidates are given 42 days of training with focuses on arrest techniques, defense techniques, de-escalation techniques, firearm training, and “much more,” according to the DHS website.
For reference, applicants to become police officers in the state of California are required to pass a writing test, physical test, be at least twenty-one, have a minimum of a high school education, and be of “good moral character.” At the police academy, which is at least six months of training, students are taught Criminal Law, Cultural Diversity, First Aid, Leadership, Ethics, and a number of other subjects, all of which can be found on the academy website.
The lack of ethics training for ICE officers and government officials is apparent in their recent actions in places like Minnesota. Recently, there has been an immense crackdown on immigration in Minneapolis. The state of Minnesota is over 75% white, and only about 5% hispanic. The following incidents occurred in Minnesota in 2026:
On January 7th, a mother of three from Colorado, Renee Good, was shot three times by an ICE agent. She had just dropped her six-year-old son off at school and was driving home with her partner. ICE agents prevented a physician from approaching her at the scene, and EMS arrived six minutes after the shooting. Good was pronounced dead shortly after.
On January 14th, a 51-year-old Venezuelan man was shot non-fatally in the leg. That same day, Victor Manuel Diaz, an immigrant from Nicaragua who had been arrested earlier in Minneapolis, was found dead in a detention center. It was initially suspected to be a suicide, but his death is still under investigation.
On January 20, five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was arrested with his single father. The child was intercepted coming home from preschool and was told by ICE agents to knock on the door of his home. The superintendent said that they were essentially using him as bait. The family has been taken to a detention center in Texas. The Conejo family are asylum seekers from Ecuador who have appeared at all court proceedings for their asylum application; none of them have criminal records and they entered the country legally. Liam Conejo Ramos is the fourth child from his school district to be detained in 2026. Liam and his father were returned to their home on February 1.
On January 24, an intensive care nurse named Alex Pretti was shot multiple times and killed by an ICE agent. Pretti was attempting to help a woman who had been shoved to the ground by an ICE agent when he was pepper-sprayed by another agent. He immediately held up his hands, one hand holding his phone, the other shielding his eyes from the mace. Alex Pretti was carrying a gun that he was legally allowed to own. After being thrown to the ground, an agent removed the gun before he was shot by another agent multiple times at close range. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claimed Pretti was brandishing the gun, not his phone, but videos of the murder can prove that this statement is false. The entire event was caught on video.
On February 12, DHS announced that it would end the surge of enforcement in Minnesota.
While Minnesota has the best documented incidents, ICE agents are enforcing President Trump’s vow to deport one million people per year all around the country. They have deported college kids with student visas, immigrants who came over to the US as children and legally reside in the country, and people with green cards, and have infiltrated immigration offices and arrested people seeking citizenship paperwork. The purposeful targeting of people in vulnerable states proves how the lack of ethics training affects Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
