Is ICE being trained by the IDF
Executive summary
Reporting across advocacy groups, specialty outlets and legacy news shows that large numbers of U.S. law‑enforcement personnel — including ICE agents — have taken part in training exchanges, conferences and joint programs with Israeli security agencies, police and private Israeli vendors [1] [2] [3]. There is robust evidence of sustained U.S.–Israel security exchanges and technology transfers, but the claim that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) institutionally “trains ICE” as a single, formalized program is more nuanced and debated in the public record [3] [2] [4].
1. What the public record shows about U.S.–Israeli exchanges
Multiple investigations and campaign groups document thousands of U.S. police, sheriffs, Border Patrol, FBI and ICE personnel attending trainings, conferences and exchanges with Israeli military, police and intelligence actors or attending Israel‑focused programs run by Israeli or U.S. intermediaries since the early 2000s [1] [2] [3]. Reporting and advocacy materials describe sustained contact: trips to Israel, conferences with Israeli security officials hosted in the U.S., joint trainings, and grants that enabled research and exchanges between DHS components and Israeli counterparts [3] [2] [1].
2. Who runs the training and how direct is the IDF’s role?
The programs are heterogeneous: some trainings are hosted by Israel’s national police or security services, some by the military (IDF) or by private Israeli companies and third‑party exchange networks; others are organized by U.S. groups that invite Israeli instructors [2] [1] [5]. Reporting shows high‑level U.S. law‑enforcement delegations and individual ICE officers have attended seminars and exchanges where Israeli military or police figures were instructors or hosts, but sources differ on whether ICE as an agency operates a standing institutional training pipeline directly run by the IDF [3] [6].
3. Technology and tactics cited in reporting
Investigations highlight concrete transfers: Israeli surveillance and border technologies sold to or contracted by DHS components, and forensic/hacking tools such as Cellebrite being marketed and trained on for U.S. agencies; advocates say those technologies and “crowd control” tactics taught in exchanges migrated into U.S. practice [7] [2] [8]. Journalistic and advocacy reports link specific procurements and joint projects — for example, contracts with Elbit Systems for border surveillance and vendors selling forensic extraction tools — to broader patterns of capability sharing [7] [8].
4. Competing narratives and political agendas
Advocacy groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and Deadly Exchange frame these programs as dangerous “exchanges” that transfer repressive, occupation‑tested tactics to U.S. policing and immigration enforcement [1] [7]. Conversely, critics of broad claims warn the “IDF trains ICE” slogan risks simplifying and sometimes echoing conspiratorial or antisemitic tropes; media monitors caution about recycled, imprecise rhetoric that conflates all Israeli security actors or private vendors with the IDF as a single actor [4]. Both perspectives have agendas: campaigners seek to end specific exchanges and sales, while defenders push back against what they call exaggerated or hostile framing.
5. What remains uncertain or undocumented in public reporting
Open‑source reporting documents many individual trips, conferences and vendor relationships, but it does not produce a single, public mandate showing the IDF runs a continuous, agency‑level training program for ICE in the way a U.S. federal training academy would run classes; much of the available evidence is aggregated from NGO FOIAs, participant lists, contracts and investigative reporting rather than one formal “IDF trains ICE” contract document in the public domain [3] [1] [6]. Where reporting names individuals, vendors or contractual links it supports the broader claim of significant contact; where it generalizes to a monolithic institutional claim about the IDF training ICE, the record is contested [7] [4].
6. Bottom line
It is accurate to say ICE personnel have repeatedly participated in trainings, exchanges and conferences involving Israeli security services, police, military figures and private Israeli vendors — and that technologies and tactics circulated through those channels [1] [2] [7]. It is imprecise, however, to reduce that mix of programs, vendors and one‑off delegations into the simple categorical statement that “the IDF trains ICE” as a singular, formalized institutional program without acknowledging the variety of actors, contractors and disputed interpretations documented in the sources [3] [4] [6]. Public reporting supports substantial contact and influence, but not an uncontested narrative of a single, uniform IDF training pipeline for ICE.