Did ICE train in Israel
Executive summary
Public reporting and campaign research make a clear, if uneven, case that ICE personnel and senior Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) leaders have participated in law‑enforcement exchange trips to Israel; advocacy groups cite named officials and participant lists while ICE’s own materials describe leadership travel to Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the course of international partnerships [1] [2] [3]. What remains contested is scale, intent, and the degree to which those visits amounted to formal “training” vs. diplomacy, information‑sharing, or program exchanges — facts that advocacy research and official communications emphasize differently [4] [3].
1. What the investigative and advocacy reporting documents
Multiple advocacy campaigns and investigative pieces document that U.S. police and federal agents — including individuals who have worked for ICE or participated in HSI programs — have traveled to Israel on exchange programs and seminars organized by groups such as the Anti‑Defamation League and academic exchange projects like GILEE, and these sources explicitly list ICE among the U.S. agencies represented [4] [2] [5]. Jewish Voice for Peace reported obtaining an ADL seminar participant booklet showing Peter Edge, later Acting Deputy Director of ICE, attended an ADL National Counter Terrorism Institute Seminar in Israel in 2015, which is a concrete example named in public advocacy FOIA reporting [1].
2. Which programs and organizers are repeatedly named
Reporting and campaign materials identify repeat organizers: the Anti‑Defamation League’s counter‑terror seminars, the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE), and various private security conferences and vendors are cited as the vehicles that have brought American police, ICE, Border Patrol, and FBI personnel to Israel for exchanges and courses [4] [6] [5]. Deadly Exchange and related sources assert thousands of U.S. law‑enforcement officers, across many agencies, have participated in Israel‑based exchanges since the early 2000s, a framing used to argue systemic influence [4] [2].
3. How ICE and HSI characterize travel to Israel
An ICE news release recounting a trip by ICE/HSI leadership — noting Deputy Director Kumar Kibble’s visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority alongside other senior HSI officials — frames such travel as part of necessary international partnerships and operational collaboration rather than ideological training, emphasizing liaison work, visa‑fraud examination, and cooperation with local law enforcement [3]. This official positioning illustrates that some of the same trips cited by activists are presented by ICE as routine international engagement.
4. Critiques, claimed impacts, and counterclaims
Advocacy outlets and analyses argue these exchanges import Israeli occupation tactics — surveillance, crowd control, detention practices — into U.S. policing and deportation operations, and they point to specific program curricula and participant lists as evidence of knowledge transfer; these pieces treat trips by ICE officials as substantive training with harmful downstream effects [7] [8] [9]. Opponents of this framing point to ICE’s stated mission and the diplomatic or investigative nature of some visits, suggesting that labeling every exchange as “training” overstates intent or effect; the available materials show overlap of personnel and programs but differ in interpretation [3] [4].
5. Limits of the public record and the measured conclusion
The documented facts support the conclusion that ICE officials — at least some senior HSI and ICE leaders and personnel — have attended exchange programs and seminars in Israel and met with Israeli and Palestinian law‑enforcement counterparts [1] [3]. Claims that “thousands” of ICE officers specifically trained in Israel come primarily from advocacy aggregations that often combine municipal police, Border Patrol, ICE, and federal agents into a single tally, so scale and agency‑specific counts are disputed in the public reporting [4] [2]. There is therefore a defensible, evidence‑based answer: yes, ICE personnel have traveled to and participated in Israel‑based exchanges that included training elements, but the extent, frequency, and precise curricular influence remain a matter of debate between advocacy researchers and official accounts and are not exhaustively quantified in the cited sources [1] [3] [2].