FOIA documents expose a secret ICE program that is training armed civilians to act as an aggressive immigration enforcement group that spies on immigrants in their neighborhood.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a program that might remind some people of the plot to Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol.

This footage was not obtained from Citizens Academies but is believed to accurately depict the program.

A FOIA request resulted in documents related to the program called “Citizens Academies, which includes role-play scenarios for civilians to conduct raids on immigrants, training on multiple types of firearms, and lessons on how to conduct investigations and surveillance on immigrants in New York and cities around the US. This was reported by multiple media outlets.

Ian Head, Open Records project manager at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) estimated that up until 2020 about 200 civilians were trained in aggressive tactics including shooting at human-like mannequins with M4 assault rifles. The training covers ICE’s “use of force” guidelines, which encompass deadly force, with one slide suggesting the phrase “drop the gun” as a potential justification for lethal actions.

According to thousands of internal documents obtained from ICE via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request litigation, published on Oct. 1 by a group of civil rights organizations, the program was piloted first in Puerto Rico in 2014 and turned national in 2019.

https://documentedny.com/2024/10/01/ice-immigration-train-citizens-academy/

The FOIA request was made by ORGANIZED COMMUNITIES AGAINST DEPORTATIONS, IMMIGRANT DEFENSE PROJECT, and CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS who ended up bringing a federal lawsuit in the Northern District of Illinois. It is pretty incredible that they were able to expose this insane program.

During the program’s active period, HSI agents launched thousands of workplace investigations nationwide and would sometimes raid businesses arresting hundreds of immigrant workers in a single day. They also did extensive surveillance, accumulating “bulk domestic surveillance databases,” reportedly used beyond its authorized scope and stated mission, as explained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Director of the hotline at the Immigrant Defense Project, Genia Blaser, described how “Citizens Academies are a propaganda effort to romanticize ICE’s brutal tactics”. Explaining that “They recruited individuals who become force multipliers for ICE in their communities, stoking the fires of vigilantism.”

An ICE spokesperson has confirmed that HSI’s Citizens Academies are still ongoing across the United States, although some of these training programs were put on hold after COVID. It has been reported that similar initiatives are being implemented by other law enforcement agencies including the FBI, ATF, and DEA, so that is something to look forward to.

ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations continues to operate the academies to enhance “public understanding” of its mission, according to the ICE spokesperson, so hopefully the public will better understand ICE’s mission now that they know that ICE is building an armed civilian militia to hunt immigrants in our communities.