Petition: Media Must Probe ICE's Reckless Hiring Practices

The family of David Brouillette — the ICE officer who shot and killed a Colombian man in Maine — told the Associated Press that he struggled with serious mental health issues since early childhood and never should have been given a badge and a gun. His precise hiring circumstances remain unclear, but the revelation fits a pattern: an AP investigation earlier this year found that applicants with questionable histories were either not fully vetted or were hired despite their past. Since the hiring surge began, Homeland Security says it has brought on 12,000 new officers and agents — thousands of whom were deployed to the streets almost immediately. The Department of Homeland Security has dismissed all concerns about these practices. 

This is not a human interest story. It is a public safety and accountability story. An agency that has now killed more than a dozen people since Trump returned to office is simultaneously rushing to hire thousands of new agents, cutting training requirements, and stonewalling questions about who it is putting on the street with a badge and a weapon. When a family says their loved one never should have been armed by the federal government — and the government refuses to explain how he was — journalists should be demanding answers.

We call on the media to cover ICE's hiring surge not as a staffing story, but as a accountability crisis — one that asks how officers with violent histories are clearing background checks, who is responsible for vetting them, and what the consequences are when that process fails. The public deserves reporting that connects the agency's reckless expansion to the deaths that have followed.