Corruption and Misconduct at ICE and CBP is Far Worse than You Think

Criminality is so rampant inside CBP that it has seen one of its own agents or officers arrested every 24 to 36 hours since 2005, according to journalist and historian Garrett Graff. Now we know where the Proud Boys, Three Percenters and the Boogaloo Bois have gone.

In total, according to CBP’s own disciplinary reports, over the 20-year period from 2005 to 2024 (the last year for which numbers are available), at least 4,913 CBP officers and Border Patrol agents were arrested, some multiple times. (In 2018 alone, a single CBP employee was arrested five times.) To put that number in perspective:

• The population of CBP agents and officers who have been arrested would make it roughly the nation’s fourth largest police department — equal to the size of the entire Philadelphia police.

• Indeed, for much of the 2010s and likely before and since, it appears the crime rate of CBP agents and offices was higher PER CAPITA than the crime rate of undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Graff is a journalist, historian, and author of the Doomsday Scenario newsletter, which analyzes national security, politics, and historical threats. As a former editor for Politico and Washingtonian, he specializes in covering complex crises and is a prominent contributor to Wired and CNN.

‘Worst Scandal in U.S. Law Enforcement History’

Garrett Graff told an Illinois state commission on January 302026, that corruption and criminal conduct inside federal immigration agencies has grown into the largest law-enforcement scandal in modern U.S. history, warning the country’s democratic foundations are now at risk.

Testifying before the accountability panel created by Gov. J. B. Pritzker following last summer’s federal crackdown in Chicago, Graff detailed more than two decades of systemic failures inside the Department of Homeland Security and its enforcement arms.

“U.S. law enforcement has never experienced a scandal as big, as far-reaching, destructive, and long-lasting as the wave of corruption that has overtaken Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection since 2005,” Graff said.

The commission is investigating the Trump administration’s use of federal immigration forces in American cities and laying the groundwork for possible prosecutions and reforms.

Graff said his review of records, scandals and prosecutions within U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement revealed criminal behavior far more extensive than he had previously understood.

“These agencies were built after 9/11 with massive funding, rapid expansion and almost no meaningful oversight,” Graff said. “The result has been a culture where abuse, corruption and lawlessness were allowed to metastasize.”

The hearing also featured testimony from political violence expert Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, who warned that the federal government’s aggressive posture toward protest and immigration has crossed dangerous historical thresholds.

“The conditions that historically precede tragedy are now present,” Pape said, adding that democratic governments maintain legitimacy only when state force is used to protect citizens rather than intimidate them.

Pape said immigration enforcement has been reframed as a moral war instead of administrative law, fueling polarization and justifying escalating force.

Former DHS official Deborah Fleischaker told commissioners that long-standing enforcement procedures designed to ensure restraint and accountability have been abandoned.

“The system was rule-bound, deliberate and constrained,” Fleischaker said. “That has been thrown out the window. The enforcement we’re seeing is neither necessary nor effective.”

Another witness who trained federal officers in use-of-force standards testified that many of the tactics deployed by immigration agents in recent months would violate basic law-enforcement protocols.

Graff concluded that without sweeping reforms, the agencies now operating under the Department of Homeland Security threaten core democratic freedoms.

“America cannot survive as a free society if ICE and CBP continue to operate as they have,” he said. “Not with more funding, more guns and more unchecked power.”