As the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hiring surge becomes a reality under an executive order from President Donald Trump, new hires will focus on civil and criminal immigration enforcement.
Many of these new employees will train at the Maneuver Center of Excellence U.S. Army base in Fort Benning, Georgia, where ICE’s Office of Training and Tactical Programs (OTTP) Firearms and Tactics Division makes its home. The division plans on increasing its number of faculty and students by the hundreds.
The massive Army base covers more than 182,000 acres of land and supports 120,000 military personnel and their families.
ICE Division Chief, Bert Medina, explained what takes place at Fort Benning.
“We train experienced law enforcement personnel in the use of force and existing weapons in application of force,” he said. “In addition, we provide law enforcement instructors the skills and abilities to teach use of force and defensive techniques with and without weapons so they can prepare ICE officers on the front lines of federal law enforcement to perform their duties safely and in accordance with standards.”
The students at OTTP Fort Benning are experienced ICE law enforcement personnel who have volunteered or taken on collateral duties in order to be instructors. Instruction is available for defensive tactics, firearms, lethal weapons, restraints technique, intermediate batons and empty-handed techniques. ICE instructors are able to conduct periodic qualifications for 13,000 ICE officers in the field.
