cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/46633927
The owner of a company that trained paramilitary Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents testified that he was involved in at least four lethal shootings, according to a 2021 deposition related to a lawsuit reviewed by WIRED.
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Customs and Border Protection did not respond to WIRED’s questions about how many SRT teams and operators went through the Gilbert, Arizona, company’s training course.
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Once reserved for armed or high-risk suspects, manhunts, and potentially dangerous building entries, the SRTs are now being used for civil immigration enforcement, crowd control, and basic warrant service, operations that the unit was once restricted from performing. Both Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed while protesting the militarized federal immigration surges in Minnesota, with SRT members implicated in both of their deaths. While recent debate over Homeland Security’s violent immigration sweeps have focused on whether agents receive adequate training, the background of SRT’s training contractor raises questions about who is training ICE’s and CBP’s paramilitary units, and what they are being trained to do.
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The Phoenix PD’s overall high rate of police shootings, along with the brutality of city cops towards the homeless population, prompted the US Department of Justice to open a civil rights probe into the agency in August 2021. In June 2024, federal investigators probing the practices of Phoenix PD as a whole issued a findings report establishing a “pattern or practice” of violent, unconstitutional policing in Arizona’s largest city, including unjustified uses of lethal force.
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Special Response Teams, along with the Border Patrol’s BORTAC and BORSTAR paramilitary units, have been at the heart of clashes with protesters during DHS’s militarized sweeps in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis. In the fatal shootings of both Good and Pretti, the tactics of the SRT officers raised questions: SRT agent Jonathan Ross walked in front of Good’s SUV while recording with a cell phone before drawing his pistol and firing four rounds into her SUV. In the Pretti shooting, a Sig Sauer pistol the ICU nurse legally possessed was taken from his belt holster by a federal agent as several others dogpiled on top of him. Even after viewing multiple videos of the incident and speaking with other law enforcement officials, it is unclear whether Pretti’s gun misfired or if something else caused CBP SRT operator Raymundo Gutierrez and Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa to shoot him several times.
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According to ICE’s website, as of fall 2024, there are at least 22 Special Response Teams for Homeland Security Investigations around the US (up from 18 in 2021 and five in 2005). Each SRT has 16 to 18 “operators” who all went through a three-week training course at Fort Benning in Georgia similar to the one that TruKinetics ran. After completing an intensive three-day selection course involving “pushups, sprints, burpees, pullups, obstacles, weighted sprints and dummy drags followed by intense marksmanship training,” SRT operator candidates are required to pass a 40-hour training course at Fort Benning, which is home to the Army’s training centers for Infantry, Armor, Airborne, and Ranger units.