Republicans in Congress keep handing Immigration and Customs Enforcement more money and more agents. In June they passed another $70 billion for ICE, Border Patrol and the rest of immigration enforcement, and the bill passed the House by two votes without a single Republican voting no.

Here is what that agency has been doing with the power it already has. Four stories came out in the space of five days: a government inspection, school bus camera footage, a Washington Post investigation and a federal court ruling.

The watchdog walked into a jail with no room left

In May 2025, inspectors from the Department of Homeland Security's own Office of Inspector General showed up without warning at the Krome detention center in Miami. On September 11, 2026, they published what they found.

Krome's maximum capacity is 882 people. On the first day of the visit it held 1,102 — 25 percent over its maximum.

• Men were packed into intake rooms past the posted limit and had to stand or lie on the floor. Intake sheets taped to the doors were dated two days before inspectors saw the men inside. The limit is 12 hours.
• In those rooms, detainees got one chance to shower and brush their teeth, no matter how long they stayed.
• Men slept on temporary cots because there weren't enough beds. The average stay was 33 days.
• Six of the 11 housing units didn't have enough working toilets for the number of people in them. Toilets and showers were broken.
• In a tent-like overflow building, people ICE had marked as low risk were mixed in with people it had marked high risk, breaking the separation its own standards require.

The kitchen was worse. Inspectors found raw chicken thawing in three big vats — one with water pouring over the side and onto the floor, two with the chicken uncovered. Two freezers read 20 degrees Fahrenheit, 20 degrees too warm. A pallet of food boxes stamped "Keep Frozen" sat outside in direct sunlight for more than two hours, on a day that hit 82 to 90 degrees.

The report also found officers skipped de-escalation in two of the five use-of-force incidents inspectors reviewed. In one, an officer used pepper spray on a man who, the facility's own review said, was "offering no resistance." In the other, an officer used a choke hold during a cell search on a man who posed no danger of death or serious injury to anyone. The medical department had 15 open positions, including the person in charge of it.

The watchdog had already inspected Krome in 2023 and flagged problems with use of force and medical staffing then too.

This isn't the only Florida detention report from the inspector general this month. Its report on Alligator Alcatraz found Florida's Everglades camp held 79 people in metal cages about four feet wide.

DHS said it never happened. The school bus camera was running.

On August 26, during a weeklong ICE operation in Connecticut, local officials and immigrant advocates in Danbury said agents had arrested a parent at his child's school bus stop.

The Department of Homeland Security said that was false. "Any claim that ICE targeted parents at a school bus stop is FALSE," it said, adding that "the vehicle stop did not take place in the vicinity of a bus stop." When CNN asked about it on August 30, Trump's border czar Tom Homan said, "Did they — somebody arrest somebody at a bus stop? I'm not aware of that."

On Monday, Danbury Public Schools released two videos from cameras on the bus to CT Insider under a public records request. They appear to show an ICE arrest: dark vehicles with flashing red and blue lights box in a car at an intersection less than a block from the stop, moments after children with backpacks climb aboard. A group of adults at the stop looks toward the intersection and runs. The driver then pulled the bus into a church parking lot, the superintendent said, to shield the children from what was happening.

Superintendent Kara Casimiro said she couldn't confirm that ICE made an arrest near the stop, but described what happened: "As soon as the man entered his car after walking his child to the bus stop, multiple cars (surrounded) him." She came back for the midday kindergarten drop-off to make sure they arrived safely, and rode the same bus route the next morning.

DHS confirmed it arrested a man that day, Leonel Morocho-Arteaga. It said he had crossed the border without inspection, a misdemeanor, and that officers found a kitchen knife in his car's center console. His court petition says he is still appealing a judge's denial of his request to stay in the country. His lawyer filed an emergency petition in federal court that same day, and ICE let him go at 6:30 p.m. "The detention of Mr. Morocho, moments after he helped his child board the school bus, shocks the conscience," his lawyer said.

Asked about the videos, DHS sent CT Insider the same statement it had sent before.

It isn't the first time ICE has shown up where children wait for school. In April, agents in ten unmarked cars zip-tied two Mississippi high school students at their bus stop.

ICE hired first and checked later

To carry out Trump's promise of mass deportations, the budget bill Trump signed on July 4, 2025, set aside billions to double ICE's officer workforce, from about 10,000 to 22,000. ICE offered $50,000 signing bonuses, cut weeks off training or skipped it, and made 12,000 job offers.

It moved so fast that many new officers were put on the street before anyone had properly checked their backgrounds, the Washington Post reported this week, citing multiple former officials. In August 2025, an ICE unit chief warned the inspector general in a memo that applicants were being cleared for duty "without fingerprints, identity verification, or credit checks." He recommended stopping the hiring surge. It kept going. He retired this July.

Two officers hired in Philadelphia told the Post they were hired without a formal job interview. Both skipped the training academy. One said the online course on immigration law was so thin that many recruits "kind of clicked through it, which was scary, because it was actual immigration law."

Now ICE is quietly firing some of those recruits, according to three former DHS officials, citing poor performance or red flags in their past that should have been caught earlier.

One of them was Joseph Moore, a 38-year-old Marine reservist and father of two. Two law enforcement agencies had fired him, including the IRS, which let him go as a criminal investigator in 2022 after a background check, writing that he had shown a "lack of candor." ICE hired him anyway. It raised questions about his suitability in May, kept him on for three more months, and in late August told him he was going to be fired. He died on August 28 outside ICE's Philadelphia office; the city medical examiner ruled it a suicide. His family has raised doubts about that, pointing to how Philadelphia police handled the situation, and police say none of their officers fired a weapon. ICE says the incident is under investigation.

Two former colleagues told the Post they believe his death might never have happened if the agency had checked his background before it gave him a badge. "The job's important, but it's not that important," one said. "People shouldn't have to die for this."

ICE's answer was that the firings are "nothing new," and that "ICE is hiring the best of the best to go after the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens."

If you or someone you know needs help, call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.

ICE sent agents to a man's house over an email

In January 2026, federal immigration agents shot and killed two people in Minneapolis: Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

David Streever of Rochester, New York, was furious. On January 26 he emailed Todd Lyons, then ICE's acting director. He called Lyons "a monstrous human being," compared him to a Nazi, and predicted he would become "a sad, despised man who eats himself alive with shame."

Five months later, two ICE agents showed up at his house. He was traveling in Europe, so they handed his wife a "WARNING NOTICE." At the top it said, "YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW." It asked him to "remove and/or discontinue the aforementioned behavior," listed federal crimes for threatening officials, warned that he could face federal and state prosecution, and said receipt of the notice would be "taken into consideration." Agents later tried to talk to him at a hotel in New York City on his way home, and called him twice.

ICE later said it had closed the investigation. Nobody told Streever. When he sued, DHS's official account posted that "ANYONE who assaults or threatens our law enforcement officers will face the consequences."

On September 15, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington, D.C., sided with Streever. ICE's notice, he wrote, "threatened him with prosecution if he did not 'discontinue' his criticism of ICE," and that likely violated the First Amendment. He ordered the government not to rely on the notice, not to send Streever similar threats, and not to carry out the ones it made. The order takes effect in 14 days unless a higher court steps in.

"Mr. Streever has a right to express his political views through non-threatening speech, however degrading the speech might be," the judge wrote.

It fits a pattern. In July, people who film immigration agents in public sued DHS, saying agents identified them with facial recognition and followed them home.

What the record shows

DHS's own inspector general found ICE holding 1,102 people in a Miami detention center built for 882, with men standing and lying on floors, sleeping on cots and sharing broken toilets, and raw chicken thawing in open vats in the kitchen. DHS denied arresting a father at his child's school bus stop in Danbury, and then the school district's own bus cameras appeared to show agents boxing in a car less than a block away as the kids boarded. ICE put new officers on the street before properly checking their backgrounds and is now quietly firing some of them; one, Joseph Moore, died on August 28 after being told he would be fired. And a federal judge ruled that ICE likely violated the First Amendment when it sent agents to a critic's home to warn him he could be prosecuted for an email.

Sources

Results of an Unannounced Inspection of ICE's Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami, Florida (OIG-26-29) — DHS Office of Inspector General, September 11, 2026; Video appears to show ICE arrest near CT school bus stop, despite federal denials — Joshua Eaton, CT Insider, September 14, 2026; ICE is quietly firing new hires. For one recruit, it was devastating. — Alex Horton, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Maria Sacchetti and Ted Hesson, Washington Post, September 15, 2026; Streever v. Mullin, Memorandum Opinion — U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, September 15, 2026. Photo: Danbury Public Schools bus camera, August 26, 2026, via CT Insider.