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The Headlines
ICE Whistle-Blower Says Training Is ‘Broken,’ and OpenAI Faces Questions About Mass Shooter
00:10:21
Plus, how Mexico tracked its most-wanted cartel leader.
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From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, February 24th. Here's what we're covering.
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For the last five months, I watched ICE dismantle the training program, cutting 240 hours of vital classes from 500.
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A former ICE official has come forward as a whistleblower, alleging that the training protocol for new agents is broken and deficient.
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Law enforcement is a deadly serious business. It is not a place for shortcuts.
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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.
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Without reform, the ICE will graduate thousands of new officers who do not know their constitutional duty, do not know the limits of their authority, and who do not have the training to recognize an unlawful order.
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Senate Democrats also released several dozen pages of internal ICE records that suggest the Trump administration has curtailed the basic training for agents 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. The documents senators released include two different syllabi, one from July and one from this month, that appear to show a 40% decrease in training hours. Other documents suggest that courses like use of Force, simulation training have been cut, 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 US Citizens this 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 that it's streamlined training without, quote, sacrificing basic subject matter content. 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. Mexico'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. Con el Comando Norte, Los Estados Unidos. Yes importantizimo es intercambio informacion, the defense minister said. Mexican intelligence officers led the search, but that information from American authorities helped pinpoint the cartel leader's location. Meanwhile, 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 US 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. In 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 was, quote, deeply disturbed by reports about what the company may have known before the attack. Earlier this month, the shooter killed two of her family members at home before driving to a school and killing five children and one educator. 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. Last 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, unquote 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. For 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. A note the Times has sued OpenAI, accusing it of copyright infringement related to AI systems. The company has denied those claims. In 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 US 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.
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One 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.
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Adam Sutariano, a Times tech reporter, has been looking at how Iran has essentially created a digital dragnet.
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Researchers later determined that this was done by the government essentially pulling people's phone data to see that they were at these protests and then cross check it with a database to see who they were and then to send them these warning, threatening messages. And we heard other examples of this, of how people's phones or social media behavior were used against them, 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. Access 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 it's 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.
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And finally, Bad Bunny's performance at the super bowl earlier this month has people wanting to learn how to salsa. His hit song, Baile y Novidable 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 teach them. But Bad Bunny, the most streamed artist in the world, promoting it definitely helps, especially among young people. What 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 abilities. Those are the headlines tonight. President Trump will give his State of the Union address at 9pm Eastern. You can follow live coverage@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.