Get ‘em Off The Streets

Written By Jamie Joyce

A four-year-old with Stage 4 cancer was thrown on a deportation flight without his medication. If that doesn't cross your line, you don't have one.

Want A Deeper Dive? Read the MAD Act Fact-Sheet

It’s important to mention that ICE and CBP have done real work that matters. They've arrested high-ranking MS-13 leaders, dismantled human trafficking rings that rescued children as young as five, and seized record quantities of fentanyl at the border. [1] [2] [3] When these agencies focus on violent criminals, trafficking networks, and drug cartels, they serve a legitimate and necessary function.

But that's not all they've been doing.

In January 2026, federal agents in Minneapolis shot and killed two American citizens in three weeks. [4] They entered homes with battering rams and rifles using administrative forms instead of judicial warrants. [5] A federal judge documented over 200 court order violations in a single month, writing that ICE had "likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence." [6] Agents used pepper spray at a high school and handcuffed staff members. [7] They stationed themselves at hospitals for weeks, causing vaccination rates for Hispanic children in some cities to drop by half. [8]

By the numbers, the shift is stark. Early in 2025, 87 percent of ICE arrestees had criminal records. By FY2026, 73 percent of those booked into detention had no criminal conviction whatsoever. [9] The Cato Institute found that only 5 percent of detainees had violent criminal convictions. [10] ICE imposed internal daily arrest quotas of 1,200 to 1,500 across 25 field offices — creating structural pressure to arrest to meet numbers, not because of actual threats. [7]

A 5-year-old U.S. citizen was deported to Honduras. A 2-year-old U.S. citizen was deported to Honduras. A 4-year-old with Stage 4 cancer was put on a deportation flight without his medication. [11] Students, legal residents, and American citizens with no criminal records have been grabbed off streets, pulled from their homes, and in at least one documented case, detained at their own citizenship interview. [12]

This is what executive overreach looks like. And the agency carrying it out doubled in size while cutting its training nearly in half. The returns were diminishing, but what remains is clear. What people fear is a de facto Gestapo, and whether that fear is grounded in reality or not - let’s end the possibility of that fear coming to fruition right now. No one who loves the U.S. constitution should find a problem with that.

A Bloated Force With Half the Preparation

In August 2025, DHS cut approximately 240 hours — more than 40 percent — from ICE's basic training program. [13] Gone were more than 100 hours of hands-on instruction, half of all firearms training, and all legal instruction on use of force. The program dropped from 584 hours over 72 days to roughly 340 hours over 42 days. The graduation rate fell from 80 percent to 60 percent.

At the same time, ICE expanded from roughly 10,000 to 22,000 officers. [14] More than 900 recruits completed the compressed program before being deployed to American cities. The national average for basic police academy training is 806 hours. [15] ICE's new agents got less than half that.

A former ICE instructor testified before Congress: "The ICE Basic Immigration Enforcement Training Program is now deficient, defective, and broken." [16] He disclosed that DHS was actively lying about what had been cut, and that he had been shown a secret internal memo authorizing warrantless home entries — with an implied threat of termination for disobedience.

These are not the hallmarks of a law enforcement agency that needs more personnel. These are the hallmarks of an agency that has been bloated beyond its capacity and deployed beyond its mandate.

What the MAD Act Would Do

The MAD Act draws a clear line. Agents who have been stationed in communities for years, who have clean records, and who are doing the work that actually matters — human trafficking cases, gang takedowns, criminal investigations — would continue their work. The bill doesn't touch them.

What it would do is pull every undertrained agent off the streets immediately. No agent would be allowed to participate in an interior enforcement operation — meaning operations in urban and suburban neighborhoods — without completing a rigorous, certified training program and maintaining current certification through regular recertification.

The bill creates a three-phase program. Phase I covers the fundamentals that should never have been cut: firearms, defensive tactics, constitutional law, use-of-force decision-making, de-escalation, and crisis intervention. These programs already exist and can be delivered immediately.

Phase II addresses the specific gap that has gotten people killed: the difference between operating on a remote stretch of border and operating in a neighborhood full of civilians. It would require training in urban enforcement operations, crowd management, trauma-informed approaches, and cultural competency — built from evidence-based programs shown in peer-reviewed randomized controlled trials to reduce use-of-force incidents by as much as 28 percent and officer injuries by 36 percent. [17]

Phase III is supervised field training before agents can operate independently.

If DHS actually needs all 22,000 of these agents, then it can pay for the rigorous training the MAD Act requires out of its existing budget — which Congress tripled to roughly $29 billion in 2025, making ICE the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the country. [18] The money is there. The question is whether it's spent on preparation or on speed.

Why This Matters

Nobody is arguing that ICE should stop arresting MS-13 leaders or dismantling trafficking rings. The agents doing that work are experienced, trained, and effective. The problem is the flood of undertrained new hires who have been deployed into American communities to meet arrest quotas — not to address actual threats, but to generate numbers.

The evidence on what proper training accomplishes points in one consistent direction. A randomized controlled trial of over 1,000 Louisville police officers found a 28 percent reduction in use-of-force incidents, a 26 percent reduction in civilian injuries, and a 36 percent reduction in officer injuries. [17] A separate trial of more than 2,000 Chicago officers found a 23 percent reduction in use-of-force incidents. [17] Training protects everyone — the public and the agents themselves.

The 2020 deployment of CBP agents to Portland is a case study. A DHS Inspector General review found that fewer than 11 percent of those agents had documented crowd control training. [19] The result was chaos. No mandatory training standards were enacted afterward, and the same pattern repeated itself in Minneapolis six years later — with fatal consequences.

No amount of training will prevent every tragedy. But the MAD Act would ensure that the agents operating in our neighborhoods have the skills, the legal knowledge, and the judgment the job demands. It would separate the legitimate work these agencies do from the unchecked overreach that has cost American lives, violated court orders, and eroded the public trust that effective law enforcement depends on.

Sources

A note to readers: We are committed to providing the public with accurate, factually grounded information. If you identify any errors of fact, gaps in sourcing, or flaws in the reasoning presented in this article, we would be grateful if you would bring them to our attention so they can be corrected. Mistakes are possible in any work of this kind, and we take corrections seriously.

Jamie Joyce
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