Booker, Blumenthal, Padilla Urge Secretary Mullin to Immediately Remove ICE Officers Hired Without Background Checks

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Alex Padilla (D-CA), members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, call on Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin to immediately remove all U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers hired during the Department's 2025 hiring surge. In a new oversight letter that comes days after new reports of the agency's plans to hire 5,000 new officers before year's end, the senators demand that DHS complete comprehensive retraining and re-vetting for all current officers.

"Over the past year, ICE and other DHS personnel have fatally shot and killed multiple people during vehicle stops and enforcement operations, including several instances in which agents opened fire on people inside their own cars," wrote the senators. "These killings, combined with the whistleblower's account of corners cut on both vetting and training, make clear that officers hired during the surge did not receive adequate instruction in de-escalation, use-of-force standards, and vehicle-stop protocols before being sent into communities with the authority to use deadly force."

Republicans poured $75 billion into ICE through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and then added $38.5 billion more this summer, allowing ICE to hire thousands of new officers with incentives including a signing bonus of up to $50,000 and up to $60,000 in student-loan repayment. The agencies dropped hiring standards and cut corners on background checks to meet the hiring demand, leading to heightened concerns of unqualified and poorly trained officers conducting immigration arrests. Several incidents of death and violence led to increased congressional oversight. ICE is preparing a second hiring surge of 5,000 employees before year's end-roughly 17 percent in three months-without having completed background investigations for thousands of hires from the first.

The letter follows reporting from the New York Times detailing a formal whistleblower complaint from 17-year ICE veteran overseeing background investigations. The complaint revealed job offers were extended to candidates without completion of basic fingerprint, identity, or credit checks and evaded by political appointees. A former ICE Academy instructor and agency attorney also disclosed that ICE cut training hours on use of force, firearms safety, and the constitutional rights of the public during this same period. According to another New York Times report, 7,500 active officers with arrest authority hired during last year's surge are still awaiting the full background investigations required for their positions.

• On January 7, 2026, an ICE officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, fatally shot Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, as she attempted to drive away from agents during an enforcement operation.
• Less than two weeks later, Border Patrol agents fatally shot Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, during the same wave of Minneapolis enforcement operations.
• On July 7, 2026, an ICE officer in Houston, Texas fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old construction worker and father of three, while he was driving a work crew to a job site.
• Six days later, on July 13, 2026, an ICE officer in Biddeford, Maine, fatally shot Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old father, in his car after agents rammed his vehicle and fired multiple rounds through it while executing a warrant for someone else. Mr. Durán Guerrero was not the target of the operation and was authorized to work in the United States.

"DHS cannot allow officers whose backgrounds were never properly vetted, and who may never have received adequate use-of-force training, to remain on the streets with arrest authority and firearms," concluded the senators.

In the letter, the lawmakers urge DHS to:

• Immediately suspend field enforcement duties for all ICE officers hired during the 2025 hiring surge, pending completion of full background checks and training.
• Provide a full accounting of how many current ICE officers received job offers or field assignments before completing fingerprint, identity, and credit checks, and how many of those officers have discharged a firearm in the course of duty.
• Provide ICE's 2026 hiring plan, including
  • All documents, memoranda, internal communications, staffing assessments, and analyses of staffing needs.
  • The vetting and training protocols.
  • The name and title of each official who approved the plan.
• Provide a copy of the whistleblower's complaint and any Office of Inspector General findings or corrective action plan arising from it.
• Provide a detailed accounting of the use-of-force policy and vehicle-stop protocol changes DHS has made since January 2026.
  • Including how those changes have been implemented and audited across ICE field offices.

Read the full text of the letter here.