ICE Whistle-Blower Says Training Is ‘Broken,’ and OpenAI Faces Questions About Mass Shooter

0:00This podcast is supported by USA for UNHCR, a dire new report from the UN Refugee Agency. As the numbers of people fleeing war escalate, funding shortages have left them without the basics to survive. The impact is devastating. Families who've lost everything now struggle in overcrowded camps without food, water or shelter. Your gift can rush clean water, hygiene kits and shelter materials within 72 hours of an emergency. Donate at unrefugees.org slash headlines. From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, February 24th. Here's what we're covering.

0:43For the last five months, I watched ICE dismantle the training program, cutting 240 hours of vital classes from 580... A former ICE official has come forward as a whistleblower, alleging that the training protocol for new agents is broken and deficient. Law enforcement is a deadly serious business. It is not a place for shortcuts. Ryan Schwenk was hired by ICE in 2021 and started teaching legal courses at a federal law enforcement training academy last year. He shared his account yesterday in D.C. at a forum organized by congressional Democrats. Without reform, ICE will graduate thousands of new officers who do not know the limits of their authority and who do not have the training to recognize an unlawful order.

1:33Yesterday, Senate Democrats also released dozens of pages of internal ICE records that suggest the Trump administration has curtailed the basic training right as it's been staffing up. Under Trump, ICE has been on a massive hiring spree, bringing in over 12 ,000 new officers and agents, more than double what it had before. That surge has threatened to overwhelm the centers, which train most federal agents. In response, ICE officials scaled back the regimen. For example, the documents senators released include two different syllabi, one from July and one from this month, which show a 40 percent decrease in training hours.

2:16Other documents suggest that courses like use of force simulation training are no longer required, along with some on immigration law and ICE's legal authorities. Taken together, the new disclosures underscore concerns about the conduct and preparedness of agents from the Department of Homeland Security, who have shot and killed at least three U.S. citizens in the last year. When pressed by Congress earlier this month about whether ICE had lowered its standards, the acting director of the agency said, quote, the meat of the training was never removed. And the DHS says it's streamlined training without, quote, sacrificing basic subject matter content.

3:03The process of intelligence is very complicated. In Mexico, authorities are sharing new details about how they tracked down the country's most wanted cartel leader, known as El Mencho, who was killed by security forces on Sunday.

3:26Mexico's defense minister said authorities found the criminal kingpin, who'd been on the run for years, by tracking one of his romantic partners. Late last week, she traveled to meet him at a cabin in the mountains of the Jalisco State. After she left, authorities raided the cabin. El Mencho fled into the woods as a gun battle broke out between Mexican troops and his security team. Special forces then tracked him down. He was severely injured and later died while being transported to a medical facility. The defense minister said Mexican intelligence officers led the search, but that information from American authorities helped pinpoint the cartel leader's location.

4:08Meanwhile, the mayhem that broke out across the country after El Mencho's death has now largely subsided. Cartel operatives had blocked highways and set fire to buildings and cars in a show of force. Authorities say at least 62 people were killed. A majority of them were suspected cartel members or members of the Mexican military. The violence rattled many cities, including some that are central to Mexico's tourism industry, which is a vital economic driver for the country. Several major U.S. airlines canceled flights to Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara yesterday, and the operators of three cruise ships that were set to dock on Mexico's Pacific coast in the coming days have canceled their visits.

4:55In Canada today, OpenAI, the company that runs ChatGPT, will face questions about how the 18-year-old behind a recent mass shooting used its platform. The country's minister of artificial intelligence has said he is, quote, deeply disturbed by reports about what the company may have known before the attack. Earlier this month, the shooter killed two family members at home before killing five children, one educator and herself at a nearby school. A Times review of her social media accounts found she had a years-long struggle with mental health issues and a growing fascination with weapons and extreme violence.

5:37Last June, messages she sent to ChatGPT raised flags internally at OpenAI, and she was banned from the platform. According to the company, it had considered informing law enforcement about her account, but ultimately decided not to, since it determined she had no credible plan for an attack. The Wall Street Journal has reported that decision upset some of the company's employees at the time. The top government official of British Columbia, where the attack took place, said it was very troubling that OpenAI didn't share what he called, quote, related intelligence. Now, Canadian officials will be asking for explanations about OpenAI's safety protocols and its threshold for when information is shared with the police.

6:25For its part, OpenAI says it did contact Canadian authorities after the attack and that it tries to balance public safety with protecting the privacy of individual users.

6:48In Iran over the past few days, anti-government protesters, mainly students, have taken to the streets for some of the first demonstrations in the country since a brutal crackdown on protests earlier this year. The regime is on high alert for a possible attack from the U.S. over its nuclear program, but it's also trying to suppress the widespread discontent that's threatened to destabilize the government from within. In January, security forces killed thousands of protesters, and since then they've arrested around 40 ,000 people, according to several rights groups. My colleagues have been reporting on the high-tech surveillance tools that Iran used earlier this year to target demonstrators.

7:33One of the things that jumped out to me the most is many of these Iranians were out at the protests. And then later they received a text message that was essentially threatening and warning them, saying that their presence at illegal gatherings, quote unquote, had been noted and that now they were under intelligence monitoring. Adam Citariano, a Times tech reporter, has been looking at how Iran has essentially used people's location data to create a digital dragnet. We heard other examples of this, of how people's phones or social media behavior were used against them. So people who had posted on social media about the protests or other politically sensitive topics, they found that their SIM cards, so their access to mobile networks, had been turned off.

8:23access to mobile banking had been interrupted. We also heard about people who were detained and interrogated and shown evidence of facial recognition or location tracking. And so as just an example of this menu of surveillance technology that the Iranian government has, and this is something they've been building up for years and years, Iran has some of the most expansive surveillance technology available in the world, and they've shown a willingness to deploy it in ways that is really notable.

9:10And finally.

9:20Bad Bunny's performance at the Super Bowl earlier this month has people wanting to learn how to salsa.

9:30His hit song, Baile Inovidable, or Unforgettable Dance, was part of the medley he put on on the field. He led Lady Gaga to the dance floor for it. Ever since the song came out last year, it's been driving people to dance lessons. One salsa teacher in Queens told The Times his classes doubled in size. And since the halftime show, teachers say there's been another wave of new faces. Salsa, of course, has a big, rich global history. A lot of people pick it up informally at weddings or family events. Others go to studios to learn. But Bad Bunny, the most streamed artist in the world promoting it, definitely helps, especially among young people.

10:12What also helps, people say, is that he's not a professional expert dancer. Not to say he's not good, just that he dances like an everyday person, which kind of gives everyone else permission to join in, whatever their level of coordination.

10:30Those are the headlines. Tonight, President Trump will give his State of the Union address at 9 p.m. Eastern. You can follow live coverage at nytimes.com, and we'll have a breakdown of his speech on the headlines tomorrow morning. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back then.

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