Inside the facility where ICE is training recruits to take on Trump's deportation goals

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — At an obstacle course in the humid Georgia heat, an instructor shows recruits how to pull a wounded partner out of danger. In a classroom with desks cluttered with thick legal books about immigration law, recruits learn about how the Fourth Amendment governs their work. And on a firing range littered with shell casings, new recruits for Immigration and Customs Enforcement practice shooting their handguns.

“Instructors, give me a thumbs up when students are ready to go,” a voice over the loudspeaker said before a group of about 20 ICE recruits practiced drawing and firing their weapons.

The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick, Georgia, is the epicenter of training for almost all federal law enforcement officers, including the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who are at the center of President Donald Trump's mass deportation efforts.

Now, with lots of money approved by Congress this summer starting to flow into ICE, the agency is in midst of a huge hiring effort as it aims to get thousands of new deportation officers into the field in the coming months.

On Thursday, The Associated Press and other news organizations got a rare look at the Basic Immigration Law Enforcement Training Program that new ICE recruits — specifically those in the Enforcement and Removal Operations unit responsible for finding, arresting and removing people from the country — go through and what they learn.

ICE is getting $76.5 billion in new money from Congress to help it meet Trump's mass deportation goal. That's nearly 10 times the agency's current annual budget. Nearly $30 billion of that money is for new staff.

They're hiring across the agency, including investigators and lawyers, but the numbers they're hiring in those areas pale in comparison to how many deportation officers are coming on board. Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, was at the training demonstration Thursday. He said the agency currently has about 6,500 deportation officers and is aiming to hire 10,000 more by the end of the year.

With that hiring surge has come concerns that vetting or training of new recruits will be shortchanged. The Border Patrol went through a similar hiring surge in the early 2000s when hiring and training standards were changed; arrests for employee misconduct rose.

Lyons pushed back on concerns that ICE might cut corners when it comes to training. although he said they have made changes designed to streamline the process.

“I wasn’t going to water down training,” said Lyons.

Caleb Vitello, the assistant director of ICE in charge of training, says new recruits will go through about eight weeks of training at the Georgia facility. But they also have training before and after they come here.

One key change, Vitello noted: ICE cut out five weeks of Spanish-language training because he said recruits were only getting to the point of being “moderately” competent in Spanish. He said language translation technology can help fill that void in the field.

During the six-days-a-week training, new recruits live on the grounds of the sprawling facility, which is covered with pine forests and sits near the Atlantic Ocean a little less than an hour's drive north of the Florida state line. Hundreds have gone through the training here in recent months.

During the course, new recruits train on firearms in a large indoor shooting range that looks as big as a football field. On Thursday, the floor was littered with spent shell casings as roughly 20 new recruits wearing blue shirts and blue pants practiced shooting from a bent-elbow position and transitional shooting — involving transferring their guns from one hand to another. Instructors in red shirts walked behind them, occasionally giving them instruction. Everyone wore eye protection and red, noise-reducing earmuffs with earplugs underneath.

Dean Wilson, who oversees the firearms training, compared some of the operations that ICE agents face to a haunted house where they don't know what might be coming at them.

"We do our very best to make sure that even though they’re in that environment, that they have the wherewithal to make the proper decision," said Wilson. “Nobody wants to be the one to make a bad shot, and nobody wants to be the one that doesn’t make it home.”

In a big field with various driving tracks and courses, they also train on driving techniques — how to recover from a skid on wet pavement or how to navigate a winding course similar to an urban environment where they have to come to a full stop or navigate blind corners.

The curriculum also includes de-escalation techniques designed to prevent the use of force in the first place, Lyons said.

“In any type of law enforcement situation," he said, “you’d rather de-escalate with words before you have to use any use of force."

Not all of the training is in the field.

ICE agents like to point out that when it comes to complexity, immigration law is second only to the tax code.

At the training academy, they get about 12 hours of classroom instruction on things like the Fourth Amendment — the part of the Constitution that protects against unreasonable searches and seizures — and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which has evolved over the decades and governs all facets of immigration. Those legal lessons are also interspersed throughout the rest of the training.

On the desks in one classroom are training manuals and immigration law handbooks roughly two to three inches thick. Recruits learn about how to determine if someone is removable from the country, under what circumstances they can go into someone's house to search and when they have to leave.

ICE staff pushed back on accusations that they are indiscriminately pulling people over or setting up checkpoints in Washington, D.C., or elsewhere as part of immigration enforcement.

They said they have to have probable cause to go after someone, and they do targeted operations. They said they can't — and don't — do traffic stops but can work with local authorities who are.

“Once local law enforcement makes a stop, and then they contact ICE saying we have somebody that we possibly think might be an alien,“ said Greg Hornsby, an associate legal adviser at ICE. ”And that’s where we step in."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) trainees practice shooting a handgun at the indoor firing range at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) in Brunswick, Ga. on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Fran Ruchalski)

Caleb Bitello, left, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Academy assistant director and Todd Lyons, second left, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) speak to the press at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) in Brunswick, Ga. on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025 about the training program ICE officers go through. (AP Photo/Fran Ruchalski)

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Response Team members demonstrate how the team enters a residence in the pursuit of a wanted subject at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) in Brunswick, Ga. on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Fran Ruchalski)

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Response Team members demonstrate how the team enters a residence in the pursuit of a wanted subject at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) in Brunswick, Ga. on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Fran Ruchalski)

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) instructor demonstrates getting a 170 lb. dummy into a position to be handcuffed on the agility course at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) in Brunswick, Ga. on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Fran Ruchalski)

FILE - A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer listens during a briefing, Jan. 27, 2025, in Silver Spring, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — When a rare but deadly rodent-borne virus struck passengers on a cruise ship and seemed to be spreading, there were no treatments for those who fell ill and no vaccines to protect others.

That was the case even though it wasn't a novel germ that the world had never seen before, like the virus that caused the coronavirus pandemic. It was a hantavirus, one of a family of viruses that have been known for decades and are thought to exist around the world.

Teams of researchers, including in Chile, Argentina and the United States, have long been trying to find and develop drugs and vaccines. But because the viruses are relatively rare and don't spread easily between people, there hasn't been enough sustained investment by governments, global health groups, or drug companies to pay for the extensive safety and efficacy testing needed to make them available.

Still, there have been some promising developments. Researchers on Wednesday published a hint that a drug used for an autoimmune disease may help hantavirus patients fight off the most deadly symptoms.

They and others hope the attention that the cruise ship outbreak brought to the virus — and concern that hantavirus infections could become more common as a changing climate is expected to increase contact between people and rodents — may bring new momentum to the hunt.

“I hope this situation will help us continue our research and strengthen the collaboration between healthcare workers, the community, and the necessary resources," said Dr. Fernando Tortosa of the National University of Río Negro in Patagonia, Argentina, the study's lead author.

Hantaviruses usually spread when people inhale contaminated residue of rodent droppings. But there are unique species of hantavirus found in different parts of the world that have their own characteristics and can cause different symptoms.

The Andes virus, the germ behind the cruise ship outbreak, is a particular focus of researchers because it is the only hantavirus thought to be able to spread between people in some cases. And while hantavirus infections are rare, they can be extremely deadly.

“That is why it is a public health problem,” said María Inés Barría, a virologist at the Universidad San Sebastián in Chile who studies hantaviruses.

Three of the 13 likely cases among cruise ship passengers ended in death. Separately, in Chile, the Ministry of Health has confirmed 15 deaths and 42 cases of hantavirus so far this year. Authorities in Argentina have reported 32 deaths and 102 cases since June 2025. In the U.S., 35% of the hantavirus cases since tracking began in 1993 have resulted in death, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Argentina, researchers are testing whether a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis might help fight hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a severe infection caused by both the Andes virus and the Sin Nombre virus, a type of hantavirus found in North America.

The drug tocilizumab tamps down a molecule called IL-6 that triggers damaging inflammation in some autoimmune and other diseases. IL-6 also is a suspect in the inflammatory reaction to the infection, which can rapidly cause lungs to fill with fluid and fail.

Four of five patients in an Argentinian hospital survived after receiving tocilizumab in addition to traditional supportive care for hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, the research team reported in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

The report is unusual, tracking the first people to receive tocilizumab in an ongoing “compassionate use” study — meaning doctors can use it in patients they deem eligible. Another five who were deemed eligible for tocilizumab but didn’t get it and instead received only standard care died. Two worsened too quickly and the hospital lacked supply for the others, the researchers reported.

The research team cautioned that the five patients who didn’t receive the drug were sicker and older than those who did. Still, they said tocilizumab warrants further investigation.

Barría's team, which includes Chilean scientists, researchers from the U.S. National Institutes of Health's Rocky Mountain Laboratories and the Robert Koch Institute in Germany, is working on another approach — using cloned antibodies from hantavirus survivors to fend off infections. The team published research in 2018 showing the approach worked in animals, but they were not able to get funding to continue with human trials, in part because resources were diverted to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

“We are truly at the forefront, at a very important stage of moving to the next phase," Barría said.

Several other groups, including at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Vanderbilt Center for Antibody Therapeutics, are also working on antibody treatments.

Vaccines against so-called Old World hantaviruses have been developed and used, though the World Health Organization says there are no current licensed hantavirus vaccines. But there are new vaccines in the works, including ones aimed to fight the Andes virus. A team lead by Jay Hooper of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, is working on a vaccine that has successfully generated antibodies against the virus in early-stage human trials, according to a study the team published in 2020.

Dr. Paul Bollyky, an infectious disease doctor and researcher at Stanford Medical Center in California, said attracting and sustaining the support needed to produce vaccines and treatments is extremely difficult for rare diseases like hantavirus.

For one, labs typically don't have what Bollyky calls the necessary machinery they need to test and validate vaccines and treatments for rare infections. Also, because hantavirus outbreaks are so sporadic and unpredictable, that virus is much harder to study compared with a common germ that regularly circulates, such as the flu.

“That also makes clinical trials in this space super difficult because of the number of people you would have to immunize to protect against one infection,” he said. “It's just impractical.”

And it means there might not be a large or steady market for a vaccine or treatment, because it would be hard to know who is going to be exposed, and when.

Still, it frustrates researchers and doctors who know there are potential treatments that, with enough sustained investment, could be helping people now.

“What happened was a tragedy, but it can happen not only with this but also other diseases,” Tortosa said, referring to the cruise ship outbreak.

Montoya Bryan reported from Albuquerque, New Mexico. AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard in Washington contributed to this story.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

María Inés Barría, a virologist at the Universidad San Sebastián, gives an interview at the university, in Santiago, Chile, Wednesday, May 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

María Inés Barría, a virologist at the Universidad San Sebastián, poses for picture at the university, in Santiago, Chile, Wednesday, May 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

María Inés Barría, a virologist at the Universidad San Sebastián, poses for a picture at the university in Santiago, Chile, Wednesday, May 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

María Inés Barría, a virologist at the Universidad San Sebastián, works at the university, in Santiago, Chile, Wednesday, May 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)