Are ICE agents trained by Israel
Executive summary
Yes — there is documented, longstanding engagement in which some U.S. law‑enforcement personnel, including ICE officials, have attended trainings, exchanges, and seminars that feature Israeli military, police, and security personnel or Israeli‑developed tactics and technologies, but the relationship is selective (targeting senior officers and specific programs), unevenly documented, and framed mainly in reporting from advocacy groups and opinion outlets rather than a single official ICE admission [1] [2] [3].
1. What “trained by Israel” means in the record: targeted exchanges, seminars and tech transfers
Reporting and campaign documentation shows that the term “trained by Israel” often describes a mix of activities — U.S. officers attending Israeli‑hosted seminars and counter‑terrorism institutes, Israeli trainers presenting inside U.S. programs, and procurement of Israeli surveillance technologies — rather than a one‑size‑fits‑all military boot camp for rank‑and‑file ICE agents [1] [3] [2].
2. Who went, and how many: senior officials, not every agent
Advocacy groups such as Deadly Exchange and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) have catalogued exchanges going back to the early 2000s and argue that “thousands” of U.S. police, sheriffs, Border Patrol, ICE and other federal agents have participated in Israel‑linked trainings, noting that many programs focus on higher‑ranking officers who then influence policy and training back home [1] [2]. JVP’s reporting specifically identified that a senior ICE official attended an ADL‑organized counter‑terrorism seminar in Israel (Peter Edge, per JVP) as an example of that pattern [4].
3. What the trainings reportedly covered: surveillance, crowd control and detention practices
Multiple sources assert that the subject matter in these exchanges includes surveillance, crowd control, detention and deportation techniques — topics critics say mirror tactics used in the occupied Palestinian territories — and activists maintain that Israeli companies and security services have exported both know‑how and products used by U.S. agencies [1] [5] [3]. These characterizations appear across activist reporting, opinion pieces and investigative accounts that link program content to Israeli security practices [5] [6].
4. Evidence, biases and gaps in the public record
The strongest publicly available evidence comes from FOIA requests, advocacy group research and press reporting that names programs (e.g., ADL’s National Counter‑Terrorism Seminar, the Georgia LE Exchange) and individual trips [4] [1] [2]. Many claims, however, derive from activist campaigns (Deadly Exchange, JVP) and opinion pieces (Newsweek, Scalawag, Truthout), which present clear political critiques and seek policy change; mainstream government confirmation or comprehensive official rosters of participants are limited in the public record, leaving gaps about scale, frequency and operational details [1] [2].
5. The more explosive claims: spyware, “IDF‑trained” frontline agents and contested assertions
There are repeated media and activist claims that ICE used Israeli spyware or that ICE agents are “trained by the IDF,” but these assertions often rely on secondary reports and advocacy interpretations rather than declassified procurement or training orders; some outlets repeat the claims while others qualify them as part of a broader network of exchanges and technology transfers [7] [8] [9]. The available sources document Israeli tech sales and contractor relationships and show training exchanges, but they do not uniformly prove that every ICE field agent is directly trained by the IDF or that specific illegal tactics were formally adopted agency‑wide [3] [6].
6. Motives, agendas and what each side emphasizes
Advocacy groups frame these exchanges as a transfer of repressive practices and urge cutting ties (Deadly Exchange, JVP) and emphasize ethics and racialized outcomes [1] [4]. Opinion and investigative writers extend that critique to technology and doctrine links [3] [6]. Proponents of exchanges — including some security organizations and organizers who run seminars — typically argue that sharing counter‑terrorism expertise improves public safety; however, those pro‑training perspectives are less prominent in the provided sources and are not represented with the same documentation in this collection [1].
7. Bottom line and limits of available evidence
The publicly cited record supports the factual claim that selected ICE personnel and other U.S. law‑enforcement leaders have attended programs involving Israeli security forces, trainers, or contractors and that Israeli surveillance and border technologies have been sold to U.S. agencies, but the evidence in these sources does not establish that all ICE agents are trained by the IDF or that a single, uniform “Israeli training” doctrine has been systemically imposed across ICE — gaps that require further government disclosure or independent investigation to close [1] [3] [2].