U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has run a secretive program for years where ICE agents have trained hundreds of civilian volunteers on how to operate multiple types of firearms, conduct investigations and surveillance of immigrants, and use lethal force on human beings.
The program, known as Citizens Academies, includes role-play scenarios for civilians to conduct fictional raids on immigrants and is active in New York and in more than a dozen cities across the country. The program is run by Homeland Security Investigations, the branch of ICE in charge of intelligence, international affairs, and surveillance.
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.
An ICE spokesperson confirmed to Documented that HSI’s Citizens Academies are still ongoing across the country. Similar initiatives are implemented by other law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the spokesperson said.
The documents were obtained by the Immigrant Defense Project and Organized Communities Against Deportations, with the legal assistance of Beyond Legal Aid, Latino Justice, and the Center for Constitutional Rights. They include detailed images showing where to strike with a baton or a weapon to cause differentiated harms on the body.
“It is a violent and racist program, where people pretending to be violent ICE officers got to hold guns and fire them in role-play situations where agents pretended to be immigrants,” said Ian Head, Open Records project manager at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) a legal center advocating and defending human and constitutional rights.
Documents also contain presentations on how to shoot a gun, point at targets, and stand in positions to fire. The shooting practices include military-style rifles. Likewise, a training in Atlanta organized drills to shoot at human-like mannequins and fire M4 assault rifles, extensively employed by the military. The training also covered ICE’s guidelines for “use of force,” encompassing deadly force. One presentation slide suggests yelling “drop the gun” as a potential cover when employing lethal force against someone.
Started in 2014 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the academies were “fully implement[ed]” across ICE field offices during the Trump administration. The program was paused in 2020, when the other branch of ICE, Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) — whose mission is to arrest and deport non-citizens — announced an academy in Chicago.
It is not clear, however, when the program was resumed. Internal ICE documents dated in 2022 outline the program’s goals, which involve “a series of real-world experiences and investigative activities” like those carried out by ICE agents.
Documents suggest that dozens of academies, with no more than 20 volunteers each, were organized mostly from 2017 to 2020. Up to that year, about 200 civilians were likely trained in these tactics, Head estimated.
“Citizens Academies are a propaganda effort to romanticize ICE’s brutal tactics,” Genia Blaser, director of the hotline at the Immigrant Defense Project, said. “They recruited individuals who become force multipliers for ICE in their communities, stoking the fires of vigilantism.”
Amid the proposal by the Republican presidential ticket to carry out mass deportations, the groups behind the FOIA litigation are calling for the Citizens Academy to be permanently shut down.
It all started in NYC
The academies were launched by ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to push back against the “current negative opinion” fueled by “harmful headlines or political views,” internal documents show.
After the Puerto Rico pilot trainings, the inaugural Citizens Academy was held in New York City in 2017 with 19 volunteers from business, nonprofit organizations, academia and community groups, according to an ICE press release. Two or three additional academies were likely held in the city, documents suggest.
The community “stakeholders” selected were not the usual vigilante type — e.g. a rugged man with a military background. Among the initial participants was David B. Chenkin, partner at Zeichner Ellman & Krause, a law firm dealing with government investigations, financial crime compliance, and cybersecurity, among other legal matters, with offices in the United States and Israel.
Another volunteer, Karen Hennigan, the director and associate general counsel for Citigroup, the third largest financial institution in the United States, was quoted as saying that the program “help[ed] we all be better citizen partners to the HSI family.”
Apart from law enforcement agents, bank employees were heavily represented at Citizens Academies, documents reveal. Employees at Bank of America, Standard Chartered Bank of New Jersey, US Bank, and more, were volunteer participants in the program. All were hand-picked by the local HSI office after being nominated by one of their employees, former academy graduates, and community leaders.
The program’s 2022 Communications Plan lists the types of people ICE seeks to attract: “Media, Hill, academic leaders, business/community leaders, prosecutors and local and state law enforcement, local citizens, non-governmental organizations.”
One of the goals, Blaser said, was to shape the media coverage around ICE’s operations — some very controversial, especially during the Trump administration.
While the program was active, HSI agents initiated thousands of workplace investigations across the United States, sometimes arresting hundreds of workers in a single day. The agency was expanding its extensive surveillance apparatus by amassing “bulk domestic surveillance databases,” employed beyond its authority and stated mission, according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Despite HSI’s contentious activities, the academies seemingly ran smoothly and were even publicized by ICE. Citizens were immersed in simulations of drug busts, surveillance of immigrants, and violent detentions in which they were able “to shoot simunition — paintball-like ammo that fires like a real gun,” read a 2018 LA Times article about a local academy.
In 2020, some Chicagoans received a letter from ICE inviting them to apply to participate in a “scenario-based training” that included “defensive tactics, firearms familiarization, and targeted arrests.” The training would be run for the first time by ICE’s ERO branch — whose mission is to arrest and deport non-citizens. It was scheduled for Sept. 15, Mexico’s Independence Day. Advocates were alarmed by ERO’s plan to train civilians.
A local campaign denounced that ERO’s Citizens Academy was seeding “xenophobia and violence” in Chicago, portraying “immigrant neighbors as targets.” It also sowed fear and indignation in the community, which protested on the streets and prompted Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office to condemn what she called “ICE’s vile plan.”
A week before Sept. 15, ERO said that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the academy in Chicago was postponed to 2021, with an exact date to be determined. The program was also halted across the country.
According to the ICE spokesperson, ERO did not attempt to organize an academy after the outcry in Chicago. However, HSI is still running the academies to improve public understanding of its mission. The spokesperson clarified that the training in no way empowers civilians to enforce any laws.
