On this episode of Breaking Battlegrounds, hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone welcome Washington Examiner reporter Anna Giaritelli to discuss her recent article, Inside the Georgia Campus Where ICE is Training Thousands of New Recruits. Giaritelli takes listeners behind the gates of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick, Georgia, where ICE agents—both deportation officers and criminal investigators—undergo an intensive eight-week program.

She describes the campus as part college atmosphere, part boot camp, with rigorous obstacle courses designed to simulate real-life field situations, alongside heavy emphasis on legal training and Fourth Amendment issues. With the Trump administration aiming to boost ICE’s deportation force from 6,500 to more than 16,000 officers, demand for these jobs has skyrocketed. A recent recruitment push drew over 120,000 applicants for just 10,000 positions, thanks to generous incentives like $50,000 signing bonuses and student loan repayment up to $60,000.

Not everyone makes it through training—those who fail legal or physical requirements are cut—but ICE leadership stresses that training doesn’t end at the academy. Officers continue to sharpen skills after deployment. The conversation also touches on political tensions, with critics questioning ICE operations in states like California and New York, while Giaritelli notes that enforcement is nationwide, though often less visible when transfers occur directly from courthouse custody.

This episode offers an inside look at how ICE is rapidly expanding, the challenges of preparing a new generation of agents, and the political battles shaping immigration enforcement today.

Transcript

**Chuck Warren: **We want to go to an article you wrote, which is just fantastic, Inside the Georgia Campus, where ICE is training thousands of new recruits. Can you walk our audience about going through this campus, what you saw, what are your thoughts on it, what you learned, just, you know, dummy's guide to ICE training camp if you can walk them through it.

**Anna Giaritelli: **Yeah, so this is in New Brunswick, Georgia, Southeast Georgia, and it is called the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. It's where more than 100 law enforcement agencies in the country actually train, including ICE. And ICE has two different parts within itself. It has the enforcement and removal operations arm, so the folks who arrest, retain, and deport, and then the criminal investigators. So they're not involved with this deportation operation. But both of them are going to train there.

They go there for about eight weeks. They train ahead of time two weeks online and then they go to this campus. And it almost feels like an elevated college campus where you have plenty of freedom. You can come and go. You need to be there for classes. It's six days a week. There's an obstacles course that's very real life, meant to mimic jumping over cars, jumping over a fence, running through a tunnel, those sort of things, carrying your partner to safety. And then there's this really heavy emphasis on learning the law.

Understanding immigration law, you know, how to approach someone on the street or how to carry out an arrest and all those Fourth Amendment issues. So, you know, there's 10,000 deportation officers that the Trump administration will be hiring through the one big, beautiful bill funding. They're all going to be going through there. They've started already. And we can expect them to continue to go through there in the next few months. And then as we start to see those numbers, right now there's just 6,500 deportation officers at ICE.

So if you add in 10,000 more you know if you think ICE is out there now this is nothing compared to what we're going to be seeing the beginning of 2026.

**Sam Stone: **Well, so that actually, Anna, brings me to another question. You know, how are they able, at least according to Democrats a few years ago, they couldn't possibly hire all these people. Nobody wanted these jobs. But now all of a sudden we have the Trump administration. People are lining up for these jobs. Are they having any trouble filling them or is that kind of a mirage?

**Anna Giaritelli: **No I mean heres the thing money speaks. So I provided a big public campaign awareness campaign and trying to get people apply and about four weeks they had 120,000 people apply for 10,000 jobs. Now and that partly due I would think might maybe not partly but entirely due to them offering signing bonus's of up to fifty thousand dollars they're also offering to pay off you know loan debt up to sixty thousand dollars and then other various retirement pay and different types of bonuses such for men and women who join ICE at this point in time.

**Chuck Warren: **So Anna, they had 121,000 people apply. They're going to take 10,000. How did they choose the ultimate 10,000? And you know, when they're in this training at this Georgia facility, how long is the training and does everybody pass or do they fail people as well?

**Anna Giaritelli: **So appologies for the sirens in the background uh... so it is going to be yeah some people will not get through you can't complete the obstical course, if you don't understand immigration law adequately enough then it is going to you know have certain impact but you know one thing when I spoke with the head of ICE he was there at this last week when we were at the campus he said we we don't just send them out into the field and say hope for the best. They're going to be continuing to train once they get out to the location they're going to right. Because the issues that ICE officers face in New York City trying to carry out an arrrest in public are going to be very different than ICE officers who are out in, you know carry out an arrest in like Iowa or something.

**Sam Stone: **Well, and we have just about a minute left in this segment. We're going to be coming back with more from Anna Giritelli here in just a moment, a reporter for the Washington Examiner focused on Homeland Security, immigration and border issues. But one thing to touch on with that is the Democrats are freaking out. Why are all these ICE activities taking place in California and New York? They are still taking place in Texas and Tennessee and other red states.

They're just happening in the courthouse where there's no video being taken because these people are being transferred directly from custody to custody.

**Anna Giaritelli: **Yeah they're happening around the country everywhere. You know you don't have activists in you know certain red states that are going to be as concerned and filming and posting videos on social media. So that's really what amplifies and make it seem likes its happening more then I think other places.

**Sam Stone: **Absolutely. We're going to be talking more with Anna when we come back here.

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