ICE is hiring illiterate white supremacists while MAGA demands English tests for immigrant truckers

Good lort.

A 469-pound man whose own doctor certified him “not at all fit for any physical activity” got sent to the ICE training academy in Georgia. That’s a direct quote from a Department of Homeland Security whistleblower to the Daily Mail.

He wasn’t an outlier – he was the system working as designed.

See, Kristi Noem had a deadline. Trump wanted 10,000 new deportation officers by the end of 2025. And when you’re building an armed federal force on a political timeline, standards become suggestions. Vetting becomes optional. Basic literacy becomes negotiable.

“We have people failing open-book tests,” the DHS official said, “and we have folks that can barely read or write English.”

Open-book tests. The answers are literally in front of them. And they’re failing.

This is the same administration that declared a national emergency over immigrant truckers who allegedly can’t read highway signs. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been holding press conferences about how foreign CDL drivers are “a threat to public safety.” Congress introduced the SAFE Drivers Act to mandate English proficiency testing because, as Rep. Pat Harrigan put it, “If you can’t read ‘Bridge Out Ahead,’ you have no business driving an 80,000-pound truck on American highways.”

But apparently you can have business carrying a gun for the federal government.

The Daily Mail investigation is a story of bureaucratic horror. Recruits were flown to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center before drug test results came back. Some tested positive after they were already in training. Background checks happen after people start work now, with HR rubber-stamping applications in days because the $50,000 signing bonus attracted anyone with a pulse and a willingness to deport people.

When those recruits stripped off their shirts during workouts, staff discovered tattoos associated with gangs and white supremacist groups. One trainee asked to be excused from class to attend a court date – for a gun charge. Another recruit – 29-year-old Darien Coleman – was arrested by county police for getting belligerent with a FLETC bus driver and smashing his phone.

They found recruits with “stolen valor” claims. Sexual harassment accusations emerged from the academy. Training got slashed from 16 weeks to six. They eliminated the sit-up requirement because too many recruits couldn’t do them.

Sit-ups. The exercise you learn in middle school gym class. Gone.

The physical fitness test asks for 15 push-ups, 32 sit-ups, and a 1.5-mile run in 14 minutes. More than a third of recruits failed it. An internal ICE email from October lamented “a considerable amount of athletically allergic candidates” who had “misrepresented” their physical condition on application forms.

“Athletically allergic.” That’s the official language now.

By December, the numbers painted the picture: 584 recruits washed out, 558 graduated, 620 were still in training. Roughly half the people who showed up couldn’t even make it through the gutted program. One HR chief suffered a stress-related fainting episode. A young recruit told relatives the whole operation felt like a “circus.”

A DHS insider gave the Daily Mail the summary: “We’re bringing people in who shouldn’t be hired at all into any federal government job, definitely not one that has a badge and a gun.”

So, theconservative media apparatus spent months demanding that immigrant truckers prove their English skills. Fox News ran segment after segment. Congressmen introduced bill after bill. They wanted funding stripped from any state that didn’t enforce literacy requirements. They wanted drivers pulled off the road, careers ended, livelihoods destroyed – all because some couldn’t pass an English test.

And now we have a federal deportation force that, by the government’s own admission, includes people who “can barely read or write English.” Armed. Badged. Loose on American streets.

Where’s the outrage? Where are the press conferences? Where are the bills demanding standardized testing before you hand someone a gun and the authority to detain American citizens?

The MAGA position, apparently, is that an immigrant trucker who struggles with English is a national emergency. But an ICE officer who can’t pass an open-book test? That’s just the cost of meeting a political deadline.

They cut five weeks of basic Spanish instruction from the training program. For an agency whose entire job involves interacting with Spanish-speaking populations. Now recruits use translation apps, which definitely won’t introduce “delays and confusion during stressful encounters,” according to a former police officer writing in USA Today.

The whole thing is a vetting bypass dressed up as law enforcement. ICE claims 85 percent of new hires are experienced officers already trained. But the DHS whistleblower shot that down: “Even those who identify as former law enforcement, they’re not being properly vetted and require basic training.”

So we’ve got gang affiliates, white supremacists, people with pending criminal charges, people who can’t read, people who can’t do sit-ups, people who fail tests where the answers are provided – and they’re all getting badges and guns because Kristi Noem promised Trump she’d hit a number.

“This isn’t the department of baking cookies,” one source told the Daily Mail. “This is the Department of Homeland Security, where you can be deported from the country. And we’re now employing people who are not equipped to tie their own shoelaces. This whole thing is a complete disaster from beginning to end.”

SOURCES

https://www.rawstory.com/ice-shooting-2674862836/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/new-ice-recruits-showed-training-full-vetting-rcna238739

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-barbies-hiring-blitz-descends-into-disaster-with-shockingly-bad-recruits/

https://atlantablackstar.com/2025/12/06/noem-pushes-through-ice-recruits-with-gang-white-power-tattoos/

https://www.military.com/daily-news/headlines/2026/01/06/ice-hiring-surge-triggers-oversight-concerns-over-training-standards.html

https://www.npr.org/2025/11/28/nx-s1-5620965/commercial-drivers-licenses-cdl-dot-immigration

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-bill-would-require-all-truckers-pass-english-test-highway-safety-fears-grow

https://www.irishstar.com/news/politics/ice-recruitment-standards-embarrassing-36347125