SWFL.io - Local NewsSome newly-hired U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers started working before passing background checks and had financial, legal and employment problems in their histories, according to an investigation by The Associated Press.
ICE announced earlier this year that it had completed an unprecedented hiring spree, adding 12,000 new officers and special agents to double the size of its force. Their mission is to help carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, financed by a $75 billion funding infusion from Congress for ICE.
But the speed with which they were brought on to the federal payroll, to jobs that have immense power and are considered important for national security, has raised some alarm inside and outside the agency.
Unlike many local law enforcement agencies, ICE shields the identity of employees, saying that's necessary to protect them from harassment. The secrecy makes a full accounting of the new hires impossible.
The AP focused on more than 40 officers who recently made public their new jobs as ICE officers on LinkedIn pages, using public records to check their backgrounds. Here are some takeaways from AP’s investigation:
Among the new hires is Carmine Gurliacci, 46, who resigned as a police officer in Richmond Hill, Georgia, to join ICE in Atlanta in December, according to a resignation letter obtained by AP through a public records request.
He filed for bankruptcy in 2022, saying he had no income and had been unemployed for two years after moving from New York to Georgia, court filings show. He said he was living with a friend and doing chores in exchange for housing, listing tens of thousands of dollars of unpaid loans, bills, child support and other debts.
He also had filed for bankruptcy in 2013 in New York, when he listed $95,000 in liabilities, records show. Gurliacci, who worked for six Georgia law enforcement agencies in three years, declined comment.
The AP found two other new ICE hires with recent bankruptcies, including officer and an agency lawyer. Several other new hires had previously been sued over unpaid debts.
Claire Trickler-McNulty, who served as an ICE official during the Obama, first Trump and Biden administrations, said that financial problems are a “pretty big red flag” for candidates because they might make them susceptible to bribery and extortion attempts.
But it makes sense that ICE would attract some cash-strapped candidates after aggressively advertising signing bonuses of up to $50,000.
Another new hire is Andrew Penland, 29, who joined ICE after resigning in December as a sheriff’s deputy in Greenwood County, Kansas.
Penland had spent most of his career as a deputy in Bourbon County, Kansas, but left last year after facing a lawsuit alleging he arrested a woman on false allegations in 2022. The county’s insurer paid $75,000 to settle the woman’s lawsuit, the agreement shows.
The woman who brought the lawsuit, June Bench, said she was outraged to learn Penland had been hired by ICE. She had unsuccessfully pushed authorities in Kansas to review all of his arrests and take disciplinary action against him.
“That’s scary to me. He abuses his power,” Bench said of Penland’s work for ICE.
After being reached for comment, Penland deactivated his LinkedIn account and alerted ICE to the inquiry but did not respond to AP.
The AP found two other new ICE employees who had been sued for allegedly improperly using force in prior law enforcement jobs, but those cases were dismissed.
The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, did not answer questions about specific hiring decisions. But it acknowledged some applicants received “tentative selection letters” and offers to begin working on a temporary status before they had been subjected to full background checks.
“ICE is committed to ensuring its law enforcement personnel are held to the highest standards and rigorously vets them throughout the hiring process,” the department said. “Vetting is an ongoing process, not a one-time occurrence.”
The process includes reviewing their criminal histories and credit scores and conducting background investigations that include interviewing prior employers and other associates, which can take weeks. But the deluge of hires has strained the agency, which advertised that college degrees were not required.
An internal memo, first reported by Reuters in February, told ICE supervisors that if they receive “derogatory information about a newly hired employee’s conduct” they should refer the allegations to an internal affairs unit for investigation. Such information could include the employees’ termination or forced resignations, the memo said.
ICE’s acting director, Todd Lyons, said during a congressional hearing in February that he was proud of the hiring campaign, which drew more than 220,000 applications.
“This expansion of a well-trained and well-vetted workforce will help further ICE’s ability to execute the president’s and secretary’s bold agenda,” he said.