On a cold afternoon in January, demonstrators gathered to condemn the shooting death of Renee Good, the 37-year-old killed in an altercation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. They chanted slogans, blew whistles and carried homemade signs comparing ICE to the Nazi Gestapo.
The demonstration didn’t take place in Minneapolis, where Good died and the site of a broad deportation operation conducted by ICE and sister agency Customs and Border Protection. Instead, the protesters stood near the gates of a sprawling federal facility 1,400 miles away near Brunswick.
Known as the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, the college campus-like property on Georgia’s coast is the primary education hub for 105 federal agencies ranging from the Secret Service to the Marshals Service. It’s also the base for the Department of Homeland Security’s Surge Operations Training Center, created last fall to train newly hired ICE agents and others brought on as part of what President Donald Trump has labeled the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history.
Homeland Security estimates 4,000 officers and agents recruited as part of the surge will have completed training at FLETC by September.
The agent who fatally shot Good was a 10-year ICE veteran. However, a rash of recent ICE-related incidents, such as the forcible entry of a home in Minneapolis and a traffic-stop-turned-tragic in Savannah, have raised questions about agent training.
Then earlier this week, an ICE trainer-turned-whistleblower testified before a congressional committee about scaled-back curriculum at FLETC’s Surge Operations Training Center. According to documents, ICE training has been pared since July from 584 hours over 72 days to about 335 hours over 42 days.
The whistleblower, Ryan Schwank, called the current program “deficient, defective and broken.” He resigned from ICE earlier this month ahead of giving testimony.
Here’s what to know about FLETC.
FLETC started as World War II Navy base
The U.S. Navy developed the property now home to FLETC and its neighbor, the Brunswick-Golden Isles Airport, in 1942 at the height of World War II. A Nazi U-boat had sunk two merchant ships off St. Simons Island, and the site was chosen to house the antisubmarine aircraft of the day — blimps.
The Glynco Naval Air Station featured two 1,058-foot-long hangars for the aircraft, which were in use until 1959. The base remained open as a school for military air traffic controllers until 1974.
Transition to ‘West Point of Law Enforcement’
The announcement of the naval base closure sparked panic over what it would mean for the Brunswick-area economy. Enter U.S. Rep. Bo Ginn, congressman for the district that covers Georgia’s coast. He recruited allies on Capitol Hill to support relocation of the then-4-year-old Consolidated Federal Law Enforcement Center from the Washington, D.C., area to Brunswick.
FLETC’s debut class comprised 30 security trainees from the U.S. Mint, Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Walter Reed Army Hospital and Government Printing Office. By the first anniversary, more than 5,000 students had graduated, and a year later 30 federal agencies were conducted training at the site.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution dubbed FLETC the “West Point of Law Enforcement” in an article published Aug. 24, 1976.
FLETC is so big it has its own ZIP code
FLETC measures 1,600 acres in an unincorporated area of Glynn County. With housing for 3,000 trainees on-site and about 1,200 staff members, FLETC has its own ZIP code: 31524.
Training at FLETC starts with basic programs where trainees from various agencies learn together for three to four months. From there, would-be agents and officers undertake agency-specific training, with many of those follow-up courses happening at FLETC as well. FLETC’s current training catalog lists 93 programs.
The campus isn’t just a collection of classrooms.
There are 16 vehicular training tracks, a mock-up cityscape with 34 buildings, 18 firearms ranges, an explosives range and even a simulated international border entry point. Other facilities include a library, interviewing suites, mock courtrooms, computer forensics laboratories, fingerprinting and narcotics labs and a 3-acre physical fitness training center.
The instruction and facilities are considered world-class and models for smaller-scale law enforcement training centers across the country and the world, including sister federal training centers in Maryland, New Mexico and South Carolina. Before the opening of the Surge Operations Training Center, FLETC routinely hosted local and state law enforcement trainees, as well as those from other countries.
About the Author
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured



