Safe to say most ICE agents are not trained properly, hence their use of excessive and deadly force.
Fact check: Did the Trump administration shorten ICE agent training from five months to 47 days?
Madison Czopek, Maria Ramirez Uribe
Mon, January 19, 2026 at 6:00 PM GMT+8
5 min read
Protesters march up San Jacinto, back toward the J.J. Picle Building after shutting down traffic on Sixth Street, Jan. 10, 2026 during a protest to decry Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in solidarity with nation-wide protests after the killing of Renee Good, a Minneapolis woman, by ICE agents on January 7. (Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman)
The claim: The fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman in her car by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jan. 7 brought more scrutiny on Trump-era training requirements.
On CNN's "State of the Union"
Jan. 11, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., told anchor Jake Tapper the Trump administration had shortened ICE agents' training time while scaling up its hiring.
"Remember we're beefing up ICE 10,000 more agents," Warner said. "They are not getting the traditional five months training. Literally, Jake, the training for the ICE agents now is 47 days. Why 47 days? Because Donald Trump is the 47th president."
He also used this figure
Jan. 8 when talking to a liberal commentator and
Jan. 12 on CNBC's "Squawk Box."
Other
lawmakers, social media posts and
journalists repeated the same line in the days after ICE officer Jonathan Ross shot Renee Good.
PolitiFact ruling:
Mostly True. News outlets and Homeland Security officials reported cuts to the length of ICE training during Trump's second term, reducing it from about five months to six days a week for eight weeks. That's 48 days of training over a 56-day period. (What it has to do with Trump's status as 47th president is outside of the scope of this fact-check.) Ross, the ICE officer who shot and killed Good, had been with the department for about 10 years.
Two news organizations have since reported that the duration of training was further reduced to about six weeks; spokespersons from DHS and ICE did not respond to our requests for confirmation.
In the big picture, ICE officers' training time has been significantly shortened to a period at or near what Warner cites.
Discussion
The Trump administration has confirmed to multiple news organizations it shortened the duration of
immigration agent training, while taking issue with some outlets' framing and declining to answer follow-up questions. Neither ICE nor DHS responded to PolitiFact's queries. We were unable to confirm whether the number of training days is connected to Trump's status as the 47th president.
Ross had been a deportation officer with the agency since 2015, The Associated Press
reported, so he was subject to earlier, longer training standards.
Warner, who did not respond to PolitiFact, said on CNN that the investigation into Good's killing needed to be completed before people reached conclusions.
When Tapper pointed out to Warner that the ICE agent who shot Good "had at least 10 years experience," Warner said, "So be it, and again that's why there ought to be an investigation."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fact-check-did-trump-administration-100000108.html