The New York Times Calls the Regime Liars While CEOs Cower
A tale of two shitties as ICE "training" questions emerge
As many of my readers know, I’ve been a vocal critic of the paper sometimes referred to as The Grey Lady, what they themselves refer to as “All the news that’s fit to print,” the New York Times.1
Today, they finally pumped out a headline worth reproducing:2
I won’t expect (yet) mainstream media to correctly use the correct term “Trump regime” instead of the Trump Administration. So for now, I’m calling a headline like this a win, especially since it’s coming from the editorial board.
I unsubscribed from the New York Times during the November 2024 election. The newsletters I was subscribed to kept rolling in, so eventually I grabbed one of the “We want you back” deals. I can live with $3.99 a month, and a subscription helps me let you know what is going on over there.
The newspaper still offers valuable investigative reports from reporters who’ve decided to stick it out during the sanewashing phase, which, as I’ve explained before, isn’t really a phase:
https://www.ruminato.com/i/184083485/the-times-has-been-propping-him-up-since-the-mid-seventies
The editorial is still a bit of weak sauce compared to what you’ll find from independent media sources like you’ll find on Substack. I would have written this paragraph a little differently:
Those videos showed that Mr. Pretti had nothing but a phone in his hands when he was tackled by Border Patrol agents, and that he never drew the gun he was carrying (and reportedly had a license to carry). Indeed, the videos seem to show that one federal agent took the gun from Mr. Pretti moments before a different agent shot him from behind. Separate analyses by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, CBS News and other organizations all concluded that the videos contradict the Trump administration’s description of the killing.
At a minimum, I would have cut out the word “seem” from the phrase “the videos seem to show that one federal agent took the gun from Mr. Pretti,” and I never refer to ICE goonatics as “federal agents.”
Even the DHS refers to them as officers. Phrasing matters. I prefer “goonatics” lately, but we all have our preferences.
There have been hundreds of different reports from independent news services and blogs demonstrating that the newest ICE recruits are being rushed into “service” with insufficient training. Renee Nicole Good’s killer was an exception to the rule in that he was a long-time veteran, but his training consisted of hours on the shooting range, not how to deal with civilian unrest, for which this agency receives almost no training, based on what law enforcement professionals and investigative journalists are telling us.3
The training that ICE does get is what most reasonable people would generously describe as “reckless training.”
ICE agents shooting at people isn’t new. As investigative journalist Lila Hassan writes:4
According to The Trace, a US outlet tracking gun violence in the country, ICE agents shot at least 12 people this and last year. From 2015 to 2021, ICE agents discharged a firearm at least 59 times, injuring 24 people and killing 23 others.
What is the likelihood of an ICE agent facing criminal charges by either federal or state agencies? Slim. None of the shootings I examined resulted in an ICE agent being indicted, even in cases where someone was killed.
The reason you haven’t heard of most of them is that most Americans don’t much care if the person shot is someone crossing the border from south of the Rio Grande. Now that Americans are being shot, it hits home. That’s not a criticism. Americans aren’t any different than other cultures that way.
Use of force policies by ICE run counter to those of the Department of Justice (DOJ).5 The DOJ’s guidelines for situations like Renee Nicole Good’s, for example, are clear. You don’t shoot at cars unless they’re equipped like a James Bond vehicle about to gun you down:
Deadly force may not be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect.
Firearms may not be discharged solely to disable moving vehicles. Specifically, firearms may not be discharged at a moving vehicle unless: (1) a person in the vehicle is threatening the officer or another person with deadly force by means other than the vehicle; or (2) the vehicle is operated in a manner that threatens to cause death or serious physical injury to the officer or others, and no other objectively reasonable means of defense appear to exist, which includes moving out of the path of the vehicle. Firearms may not be discharged from a moving vehicle except in exigent circumstances. In these situations, an officer must have an articulable reason for this use of deadly force.
If feasible and if to do so would not increase the danger to the officer or others, a verbal warning to submit to the authority of the officer shall be given prior to the use of deadly force.
Warning shots are not permitted outside of the prison context.
Officers will be trained in alternative methods and tactics for handling resisting subjects, which must be used when the use of deadly force is not authorized by this policy.
Deadly force should not be used against persons whose actions are a threat solely to themselves or property unless an individual poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others in close proximity.
Other officers who are in the area aren’t permitted to cheerlead or gang up on protesters like they did Alex Pretti, the ICU nurse who was shot in the back while five goonatics were kicking his ass. They also must take action to stop other officers from violating civil rights:
Officers will be trained in, and must recognize and act upon, the affirmative duty to intervene to prevent or stop, as appropriate, any officer from engaging in excessive force or any other use of force that violates the Constitution, other federal laws, or Department policies on the reasonable use of force.
Officers will be trained in, and must recognize and act upon, the affirmative duty to request and/or render medical aid, as appropriate, where needed.
When the New York Times calls for Congress to act, this part should be easy, even for Congress critters whose only purpose in life seems to be either acquiescing to Trump or, in the case of Democrats, issuing strongly worded statements.
There’s apparently a clear discrepancy between how ICE is trained to deal with the public and what the DOJ recommends.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE’s parent agency, is considerably more vague but uses some language similar to the DOJ:6
A. Respect for Human Life
All DHS personnel have been entrusted with a critical mission: safeguarding the American people, our homeland, and our values. In keeping with this mission, respect for human life and the communities we serve shall continue to guide DHS LEOs in the performance of their duties.
To ensure that DHS LEOs are proficient in a variety of techniques that could aid them in appropriately resolving an encounter, DHS Components shall provide use of force training that includes de-escalation tactics and techniques.
As you can see, not even the DHS calls their various goonatics “federal agents.” They call them “law enforcement officers (LEOs).”
Love them or hate them, real federal agents undergo substantial training that goes well beyond just shooting at people:
For example, FBI agents must complete 20 weeks of rigorous training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.7
Agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) have all kinds of intense training, such as a year-long training program for entry-level firearm and toolmark examiners, along with additional modules for things like forensics.8
Drug Enforcement Agency agents undergo a 20-week entry-level training program, then a 16-week Field Training Agent (FTA) program.9
Agents for other agencies receive considerable training also, typically, at least ten weeks of basic training through the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC). 10 Most agencies require additional agency-specific training through FLETC for anything from marksmanship to Archeological Resources Protection Training.
ICE agents are supposed to go through FLETC, but there’s some evidence that newer recruits don’t.
Instead, it looks like ICE goonatics get a signed autograph of Kristi Noem and a semi-automatic pistol, a mask to hide their face, some puffy jackets, and then are told to hit the local county sheriff’s shooting range. The surge we’ve seen in ICE personnel since the regime took over doesn’t track with the training times for other federal law enforcement agencies.
Consider, for example, a report out of Escondido, California, that reveals that recruits are getting trained at a local police shooting range.11
It’s reasonable to assume this isn’t limited to one shooting range in one California county. This problem doesn’t look like it started with the Trump regime, either. The Escondido contract was renewed from a previous contract set up during the Biden administration.
According to Lisa Hassan’s reporting, ICE agents are encouraged to use deadly force in dangerous situations. What constitutes a deadly situation appears to be at their discretion.
One of their written training tests, Hassan discovered, contained the following multiple-choice question:
Faced with an immediate deadly force situation, the “Use of Force Continuum” requires the ICE officer to implement which “force” prior to initating deadly force?
Pressure Points
OC Spray
Collapsible Baton
None, deadly force can be initiated immediately.
If you answered 4), you are correct!
AI to the rescue!
To the surprise of nobody who’s been tracking the insidiousness of the Trump regime, AI was used to recruit new ICE officers, according to an NBC News investigation.12
The AI tool was used in an attempt to recruit ICE officers who already had law enforcement training so that they could skip the FLETC training I mentioned earlier and go through a short four week “training” period instead.
You’ve heard of AI hallucinations, right? Well, in this case, AI hallucinated nonexistent law enforcement training of an unknown number of applicants:
The AI tool was initially the mechanism used to categorize résumés, the officials said and flagged anyone with the word “officer” on their résumés — for example, a “compliance officer” or people who said they aspired to be ICE officers.
The majority of the new applicants were flagged as law enforcement officers, the officials said, but many had no experience in any local police or federal law enforcement force.
DHS responded to the report by claiming only 200 recruits were affected, but under Kristi Noem, DHS long ago lost the right to its own defense.
Another investigative journalist, Laura Jedeed, in an article titled “You’ve Heard about Who ICE Is Recruiting. The Truth Is Far Worse. I’m the Proof,” was hired after a six-minute marathon interview at an ICE career expo. She didn’t submit any background materials or paperwork.13 Basically, she just showed up and asked for a gun.
If ICE had bothered to look into her background, they would have quickly discovered that she wrote articles with headlines such as, “What I Saw in LA Wasn’t an Insurrection; It Was a Police Riot” and “Inside Mike Johnson’s Ties to a Far-Right Movement to Gut the Constitution.” They would have also found her on AntifaWatch, a right-wing website that employs good old-fashioned McCarthyism to dox what it thinks are dangerous journalists (most of Substack).
I’d hire her, but I would think ICE might find her values a conflict of interest.
Eventually, a whistleblower or three will show up on The Intercept or ProPublica to inform us about what kind of training ICE agents receive. Until then, we are stuck with conjecture and an occasional chunk of evidence, but their behavior suggests that if they’re receiving training, it’s off the farm, so to speak, and doesn’t follow DOJ or even DHS guidelines. It’s a shoot first, ask questions later mentality.
The New York Times editorial board’s plea to Congress to act on anything at all, much less ICE reform, seems like a fool’s errand, which is why the streets will keep filling up with protesters as the weather gets better and ICE goonatics continue hunting and killing innocent civilians.
Meanwhile, CEOs deplete the nation’s kneepad supply in cahoots with the DEA
The New York Times editorial is an okay minor adjustment to its sanewashing past, but CEOs, who mysteriously don’t understand that a stable government would make their companies more profitable, are lining up to kneel before the wackadoodle president, whose actions are economy-killers.
The weird thing is, most of these CEOs have enough business experience to know that the long-term outlook for the economy is not great, even though tariffs haven’t yet completely hammered it into submission.
Many CEOs are doing a lot more than bowing to the mad king’s bizarre economics. Popular Information’s Judd Legum points out that some are directly participating in the spread of ICE gore and violence.14
Amazon
Amazon is right in the thick of all this. According to Legum:
Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosts the database, known as Investigative Case Management (ICM), that ICE uses to target and deport immigrants. ICM, which was created by Palantir, “integrates a vast ecosystem of public and private data to track down immigrants and, in many cases, deport them.” The data includes “a person’s immigration history, family relationships, personal connections, addresses, phone records, biometric traits, and other information.” Through Palantir, AWS receives millions of dollars annually from the federal government to host ICM.
Legum notes that AWS hosts…
…a massive surveillance system for ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The $6 billion system, known as Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology System (HART), is designed to hold “personal and biometric data on over 270 million people, including 6.7 million iris scans and 1.1 billion face images.”
Remember that bit about face images. You’ll want to refer to that info later in this post.
Amazon announced in 2025 that it was making a substantial investment in its AWS operations to specifically support the federal government. How big an investment? $50 billion.15
Some of this can be attributed to simple competition. Microsoft’s cloud computing service, Azure, has made significant inroads into federal business.16
That’s one reason all these tech bros, such as Jeff Bezos and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, are on their knees in front of the mad king as often as they are.
And this doesn’t even consider all the massive, thirsty data centers these guys want to build.
Palantir
Nobody familiar with techbro jackals will be surprised to see Palantir’s name.
Palantir is owned by the now infamous Peter Thiel, who is not only full of needless piles of cash but is abjectly weird.17
ICE has had a relationship with Palantir for more than a decade, beginning with the Obama administration. ICE recently awarded Palantir a big, fat new contract worth $30 million to create a system called the Immigration Lifecycle Operating System, but which ghouls like Stephen Miller fondly refer to as ImmigrationOS.18
"Palantir has deep institutional knowledge of ICE operations," says a publicly available document developed by Palantir as part of its contract proposal.19
Citizens Bank
Not all of the corporate news is terrible. Popular Information’s Legum notes that several financial institutions withdrew services to the private prison contractors at the heart of the regime’s emerging incarceration industrial system that has seen the number of incarcerated migrants grow from “40,000 in January 2025 to over 73,000 today.”20
According to Legum, “JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, SunTrust, BNP Paribas, and Fifth Third Bancorp” announced in 2019 they’d cease supporting private prison companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group. The problem is that the president in 2019 was Joe Biden. Stephen Miller was still lurking in his mother’s basement, planning his attack once Trump returned to office.
Now that he has, Bank of America and SunTrust have begun to back off the pledge.21
And why not? Why let Citizens Bank have all the money?
Citizens Bank has established a $450 million revolving credit line to GEO Group and underwrote $500 million in bonds for CoreCivic, according to more verifiable info from Popular Information’s Legum.22
It won’t be long before other banks jump back into the human container business.
AT&T
In yet more outstanding reporting by Popular Information’s Legum, he reveals a 10-year, $147 million contract with ICE’s parent agency, DHS, to ‘provide mission-critical communications services.’”
Other companies, of course, are lining up to service the needs of ICE.
Charles’ Conspiracy Theory Gone Wild
I was understandably laughed out of one Substack comment area when I suggested that Renee Nichole Good could have been targeted by a simple license plate check, then found to be wanting a bit in the LGBTQ+ department, or for her social media posts.
I don’t like conspiracy theories any more than most rational people, but Palantir has created a system where they probably know more about your bowel movements than your doctor does. Calling in a license plate and getting a one-word response, “Antifa,” is now a thirty-second operation.
And let’s face it, we’re all Antifa. My dad, who fought in World War 2, was Antifa, too.
This regime is trying to build a surveillance state. We ignore the wildest possibilities at our own risk. If this kind of thing hasn’t happened yet, it will.
Remember the database of face images?
The surveillance state is capable of building a database of people based on their online presence. That doesn’t mean they have. But the capability, through Palantir, is there now. Protest in an online comment area now, then find yourself gunned down at a protest a year from now.
This is our new reality until we dismantle DHS from the bottom up. Not just ICE. All of it.
Notes
If you’re in the tech business and you find the term, “tech bro jackal” insulting, I do have empathy. I spent 20 years in the software biz. I was, in essence, a tech bro. But in my day, we sort of tried to have some minimal standards of decency, and most of the people I worked with rejected libertarianism.
If you’re a good software engineer, you don’t need to work at a place like Palantir. Please leave. Plenty of other good companies will hire you.
It’s not enough to abolish ICE. The entirety of the DHS needs to be torn apart. There’s no reason for many of the agencies that were absorbed by the DHS when it was formed to be run by Kristi Noem.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was created in response to 9/11 in 2002. It was never meant as an internal security agency for use against internal dissent.23
It was created out of the following agencies:24
The U.S. Customs Service (Treasury)
The Immigration and Naturalization Service (Justice)
The Federal Protective Service
The Transportation Security Administration (Transportation)
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (Treasury)
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (part)(Agriculture)
Office for Domestic Preparedness (Justice)
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Strategic National Stockpile and the National Disaster Medical System (HHS)
Nuclear Incident Response Team (Energy)
Domestic Emergency Support Teams (Justice)
National Domestic Preparedness Office (FBI)
CBRN Countermeasures Programs (Energy)
Environmental Measurements Laboratory (Energy)
National BW Defense Analysis Center (Defense)
Plum Island Animal Disease Center (Agriculture)
Federal Computer Incident Response Center (GSA)
National Communications System (Defense)
National Infrastructure Protection Center (FBI)
Energy Security and Assurance Program (Energy)
U.S. Coast Guard
U.S. Secret Service
Domestic aspects of the agency were designed to coordinate first responders during catastrophic events caused by external enemies, such as dirty (nuclear) bombs, and to prevent terrorists from entering the country.
A priority for the next Democratic administration must be the elimination of the DHS, the transfer of its child agencies to other departments, and the replacement of ICE and United States Customs and Border Protection with something more benign.
Thanks for reading!
Restacking helps grow awareness, so please restack if you like what you read.
Footnotes
A screenshot of a few of my takes on the reporting from the New York Times:
NPR. “Homeland Security Expert Talks about ICE’s Truncated Training after Hiring Blitz,” January 9, 2026. https://www.npr.org/2026/01/09/nx-s1-5671120/homeland-security-expert-talks-about-ices-truncated-training-after-hiring-blitz.
Hassan, Lila. “What ICE Agents Are Taught: How to Use ‘Deadly Force’, Evade Lawsuits.” Al Jazeera, January 23, 2026. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/1/23/are-ice-agents-trained-to-shoot-and-evade-lawsuits.
Justice.gov. “1-16.000 - Department of Justice Policy on Use of Force,” June 2, 2022. https://www.justice.gov/jm/1-16000-department-justice-policy-use-force.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. “What Kind of Training Does an Agent Go Through? | Federal Bureau of Investigation,” 2022. https://www.fbi.gov/about/faqs/what-kind-of-training-does-an-agent-go-through.
Atf.gov. “Firearms-Related Training for Law Enforcement | ATF,” 2026. https://www.atf.gov/careers/learning-and-training/tools-services-law-enforcement/firearms-related-training-law-enforcement.
DEA. “Office of Training Programs,” 2026. https://www.dea.gov/office-of-training/office-training-programs.
Fletc.gov. “Frontpage | Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers,” January 5, 2026. https://www.fletc.gov/
Lai, Alex. “Newly Unveiled Contract Shows ICE Agents Have Been Training in Escondido for Years.” cbs8.com. KFMB, January 25, 2026. https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/newly-unveiled-contract-show-ice-agents-have-been-training-in-escondido-for-years/509-4919c517-aec9-46aa-bc91-ffafa7f131e9.
Ainsley, Julia. “ICE Error Meant Some Recruits Were Sent into Field Offices without Proper Training, Sources Say.” NBC News, January 14, 2026. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/ice-error-meant-recruits-sent-field-offices-proper-training-sources-sa-rcna254054.
Jedeed, Laura. “You’ve Heard about Who ICE Is Recruiting. The Truth Is Far Worse. I’m the Proof.” Slate Magazine. Slate, January 13, 2026. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/01/ice-recruitment-minneapolis-shooting.html.
Kelley, Alexandra. “AWS to Invest $50B in AI and Supercomputing Infrastructure for Government Customers.” Route Fifty. Nextgov/FCW, November 25, 2025. https://www.route-fifty.com/artificial-intelligence/2025/11/aws-invest-50b-ai-and-supercomputing-infrastructure-government-customers/409776/.
Cloud services are big business. In the before times, companies hosted their own websites, but as that grew more complicated, and hackers began ruining websites, companies like Amazon and Microsoft developed hosting services that made it easy for companies to more securely host websites and scale up with a click of a few buttons. Most major websites are now hosted on these large hosting clouds. Cloudflare, which made the news recently during a major outage, is a service that specializes in handling security for these clouds.
Kulwin, Noah. “Tech Billionaire and Gawker Destroyer Peter Thiel Has Some Wacky Beliefs.” Vox, July 21, 2016. https://www.vox.com/2016/7/21/12241474/peter-thiel-billionaire-gawker-rnc-beliefs.
Alvarez, Alayna. “Palantir’s Partnership with ICE Deepens.” Axios. Axios Denver, May 2025. https://www.axios.com/local/denver/2025/05/01/palantir-deportations-ice-immigration-trump.
Sam.gov. “SAM.gov,” 2026. https://sam.gov/opp/f71acee6010c423db4902446a59a690c/view.
Camilo Montoya-Galvez. “ICE’s Detainee Population Reaches New Record High of 73,000, as Crackdown Widens.” Cbsnews.com, January 16, 2026. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ices-detainee-population-record-high-of-73000/.
Berzon, Alexandra, Allison McCann, and Hamed Aleaziz. “Private Prisons Are Ramping up Detention of Immigrants and Cashing In.” The New York Times, March 7, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/us/politics/private-prisons-immigrants-detention-trump.html.
Legum, Judd., Popular Information, ibid
LII / Legal Information Institute. “Department of Homeland Security (DHS),” 2020. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/department_of_homeland_security_(dhs).
U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “Who Joined DHS | Homeland Security,” 2026. https://www.dhs.gov/who-joined-dhs.
Wow, the 'Trump regime' framing is so spot-on. Will mainstream media ever catch up to that accurasy? Brilliant.
Some of those federal agencies are real head scratchers for having been combined into DHS.
The Plum Island Animal Disease Center (PIADC) in Suffolk County, NY, is a high-security research facility that studies and develops defenses against foreign animal diseases. It also sometimes is used for animal quarantine, although that’s mostly Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, also on the list and both formerly USDA. Plum Island also once stored some really nasty stuff like anthrax and one of two depositories of small pox. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is mostly made up of veterinarians and has locations around the country dealing with outbreaks such as avian and swine flu domestically. They also work with customs on the illegal plant and animal trade.