Weapons Violations, Misconduct, and Whistleblower Retaliation at ICE

The Intercept

2 days ago

The Houston office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is one of the most reliable engines of America's deportation machine.
Even before Donald Trump took office a second time, with the goal of 1 million immigrant expulsions in a year, ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations Houston Field Office was deporting 12,000 to 15,000 people annually, according to its director, Bret Bradford.
Bradford — a darling of right-wing deportation coverage, from the New York Post to Fox News — touts his determination to 'restore law and order in our communities.' He recently lauded 'the brave men and women at ICE Houston' for their 'unwavering dedication,' and for working 'tirelessly every day to enhance public safety.'
Scores of internal documents reviewed by The Intercept paint a different picture and suggest a commitment to safety and law and order may stop at the entrance to ICE's Houston Field Office.
The files lay out a series of allegations against Bradford and other top Houston ICE officials, including retaliation against a whistleblower who reported being intimidated with an '8-inch tactical knife' by a fellow ICE officer in a facility that does not allow weapons. The whistleblower also alleges another supervisor knowingly lied on an official document.
An email from the whistleblower sent to the Congressional DOGE Caucus earlier this year reported 'corruption' among top Houston ICE officials. Bradford 'turned a blind eye to the criminal activity and has taken no action against the officials,' wrote the whistleblower. The allegations of retaliation are further detailed in public documents from the Merit Systems Protection Board, which reviews cases of government employees who are contesting demotions or terminations.
After he blew the whistle on a weapons violation, the ICE officer was effectively demoted.
Documents show that almost immediately after he blew the whistle on a weapons violation, the ICE officer was effectively demoted. While that demotion was overturned in 2024, he remains locked in a yearslong struggle with ICE over alleged whistleblower retaliation and has a hearing before the Merit Systems Protection Board scheduled for June 3 and 4.
Bradford has been aware of these allegations of wrongdoing and whistleblower retaliation since at least August 2023, according to emails and memorandums reviewed by The Intercept.
Repeated requests by The Intercept for an interview with Bradford were denied by Tim Oberle, an ICE spokesperson in Houston. A whistleblower complaint against Bradford was recently closed.
'We don't comment on employment matters for privacy reasons,' Oberle told The Intercept. '[Office of Professional Responsibility] investigations inherently involve 'employment matters' and U.S. privacy laws prohibit federal agencies from releasing details of those investigations to the media.'
Complaints about operations at ICE's Houston Field Office are just the latest in a long line of allegations of waste, mismanagement, abuse, cover-ups, and other wrongdoing across the agency and among its contractors. ICE failed to provide The Intercept with a count of whistleblower complaints thus far in 2025, but allegations of wrongdoing at ICE surface regularly. The Intercept found, in fact, that ICE's own Office of Professional Responsibility — which oversees the agency's professional standards — reviewed more than 16,000 allegations of potential misconduct last year. This February, for example, multiple whistleblowers informed Congress of 'chronic and dangerous understaffing' and a 'discriminatory and hostile work environment' that reportedly occurred with the knowledge of ICE leadership at a contractor-operated detention facility in New Mexico.
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The story laid out in the documents centers on Carlo Jimenez, a Navy veteran who served in the Iraq War before beginning his federal law enforcement career as an immigration enforcement agent with ICE in 2007.
In 2022, he was serving as a supervisory detention and deportation officer, or SDDO, at the Montgomery Processing Center, an ICE detention facility in Conroe, Texas, just north of Houston.
His immediate supervisors were Euna Fuchs, the assistant field office director, and Paul McBride, the deputy field office director. Jimenez himself oversaw a team of ICE officers — including a deportation officer named Rolando Ferrufino.
Fuchs refused to speak about the case. 'I can't answer any questions,' she said by phone. 'No comment.' McBride also did not respond to multiple phone messages.
Oberle did not make available any of the seven ICE personnel that The Intercept requested to interview, including Jimenez and Ferrufino.
Documents reviewed by The Intercept detail a tense relationship between Jimenez and Ferrufino. 'Obviously, there is some kind of a bad blood between them,' Fuchs later recalled in sworn testimony to a government investigator from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, or OSC.
In December 2022, things came to a head after Jimenez sought to reprimand Ferrufino for a 'major mistake,' as Fuchs characterized it in her testimony, while on duty.
Ferrufino came into Jimenez's office 'uninvited opening and closing a folding knife' on December 15, 2022, Jimenez told a senior officer who was later brought in to investigate the incident, Assistant Field Office Director Anthony Bennett. During a tense conversation, Ferrufino leaned in, bringing the knife, Jimenez said, close to his face. Ferrufino then pressed his knife to Jimenez's computer screen 'making the screen distort,' according to the inquiry report.
Ferrufino told Bennett that he had the knife in hand because he was 'cleaning it after cutting fruit,' Bennett wrote in a document summarizing his findings on the incident. Jimenez saw it differently and said that he feared for his safety. 'I thought this was irrational behavior,' he told Bennett. 'I felt threatened and that is why I reported it.'
Jimenez reported the knife incident to his supervisor, Fuchs, during a scheduled meeting on December 19, and repeated it at another meeting two days later, according to testimony from both Fuchs and Jimenez. Fuchs indicated, in her sworn statement, that Jimenez mentioned the knife incident almost in passing.
Being in possession of a knife is against ICE's rules as McBride later wrote in a reprimand letter to Ferrufino, let alone holding it while talking over a workplace dispute, as Jimenez alleged. No weapons or ammunition are allowed inside the building, including firearms, electroshock devices, chemical agents, or 'knives of any kind,' a rule that's made clear in a sign bolted to the wall at the Montgomery Processing Center.
Fuchs, in her sworn statement, acknowledged that weapons were banned but that she did nothing in response. 'We both agreed that Rolando's actions were inappropriate but I didn't feel the need to counsel Rolando or take any further actions,' she wrote in a December 27, 2022, email to top Houston ICE officials including McBride.
Jimenez had made complaints about various incidents of alleged discrimination or retaliation in 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015, and 2018, and in a lawsuit filed in 2021, he alleged he was denied a previous promotion as a result. In 2023, a district court ruled against Jimenez, finding he hadn't shown sufficient evidence of retaliation.
When Fuchs took no action on his weapons charges, Jimenez reported the violation via an online whistleblower portal to the Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General.
In an email to Fuchs on January 2, 2023, Jimenez wrote that he believed Ferrufino was a 'threat to me and ICE staff at the Montgomery Processing Center.'
A formal investigation into Jimenez's allegations began on January 5, when Bennett was assigned to conduct his management inquiry.
The following Monday, January 9, Fuchs switched Jimenez's schedule from 4 p.m. to midnight to the less desirable 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift. Jimenez interpreted this as retribution for his whistleblowing.
On February 7, Bennett sent his findings to top officials at the Houston Field Office, offering several conclusions.
Bennett determined that Ferrufino 'did display inappropriate behavior by having a knife in his hand in the office during a discussion with SDDO Jimenez.' He also found that Jimenez 'did feel threatened by DO Ferrufino's actions.' Ferrufino admitted to Bennett that he 'touched the screen with the blade causing distortion on the screen' according to Bennett's report and said that after Jimenez asked him to stop, he 'removed his knife from the screen.'
When asked about Jimenez's allegations, Bennett told The Intercept, 'I'm familiar with the name but I'm not sure about a case,' before referring further questions to ICE Houston public affairs.
Ferrufino also 'admitted to having the knife' in Jimenez's office, according to a letter of reprimand issued to him by McBride in March 2023, which noted that this was a 'direct violation' of the facility's no weapons stricture. 'There is an inherent obligation to ensure you follow these rules and policies as it relates to the safety of personnel,' wrote McBride in the letter, also reviewed by The Intercept, adding 'you failed in fulfilling this obligation.' Fuchs also admitted to Bennett that Jimenez had reported the knife incident.
Despite this apparent vindication, the pattern of retaliation against Jimenez continued, he alleges. Two days after Bennett filed his report, Fuchs wrote to McBride recommending that Jimenez not 'pass supervisory probation.' This would effectively demote him, and the agency did so in a way that violated Jimenez's right to contest it, the Merit Systems Protection Board later found. The MSPB panel also found Jimenez's claim of whistleblower retaliation required a full hearing.
Just months earlier, in October, Fuchs had praised Jimenez in an official evaluation. 'Jimenez has great technical skills and knowledge which he imparts to the employees,' reads an appraisal by Fuchs. 'Jimenez conducts himself in a professional manner and continues to collaborate with this colleagues, staff, and all stakeholders.' Jimenez received high marks on his job evaluation from Fuchs and McBride — a 4.7 out of 5.0 rating — and received a cash award and time off for his performance on the job.
Less than a week before the knife incident, Fuchs even approved Jimenez to attend advanced leadership training, following a standard probationary period, according to a text chain shared with The Intercept.
'He is and will continue to be a liability to the Agency unless we remove him from a supervisory position.'
Now Fuchs cast the same officer as a pariah. 'Jimenez' supervisory tactics are toxic to the Command Center's culture. Jimenez brings employees' morale down and fails to keep good order and discipline of the unit,' Fuchs wrote in a February 9, 2023 email. 'While Jimenez has many positive qualities as an officer, he is not fit to be a supervisor. He is and will continue to be a liability to the Agency unless we remove him from a supervisory position.'
An ICE lawyer drafted a demotion letter containing Fuchs's allegations of Jimenez's failings in his job. 'Your performance as a SDDO has not been satisfactory in the core competency (critical element) of communication,' reads the February 22 letter, signed by McBride, which relieved Jimenez of his SDDO responsibilities, returning him to deportation officer status.
Fuchs later admitted in her sworn testimony that the letter contained factual errors. The letter confused details, including an incorrect date, regarding instances when Jimenez sought to discipline other ICE employees.
Fuchs said she brought this to McBride's attention later, but that she 'didn't have time to point out the mistake and correct it' beforehand because she only saw the letter the day it was scheduled to be served.
Fuchs and McBride nonetheless served Jimenez the demotion letter with the errors, according to Fuchs's sworn statement. In later correspondence with Bradford and the Office of Personnel Management, Jimenez claimed this was a potential violation of not only internal ICE regulations but also federal law.
The demotion wasn't the end of it. ERO Houston officials continued to take actions that Jimenez saw as a clear attempt to kneecap his career.
In March 2023, Fuchs and McBride issued Jimenez a poison-pen performance evaluation — an 'unacceptable' rating — but, unlike the demotion letter, they never served the document to him. Records indicate that it took more than a year for Jimenez to find, through discovery for his Merit Systems Protection Board case, that this negative assessment had been slipped into his file.
Earlier this year, Jimenez filed a whistleblower retaliation complaint, through the Office of Special Counsel, against Houston Field Office Director Bradford for 'abusing his authority by colluding to keep a reduced performance evaluation based on lies in my personnel file.'
Repeated emails sent to Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem requesting interviews to discuss allegations of corruption and whistleblower retaliation at ICE's ERO Houston office received no responses. An ICE officer watches as immigrants are deported on a flight in Houston to El Salvador on Nov. 16, 2018. Photo: David J. Phillip/AP Photo
Bennett's inquiry also determined that another ICE officer brought multiple weapons into an ERO Houston facility. In an interview, an SDDO confirmed that 'he issued pocketknives to the staff in the command center to include DO Ferrufino.' Ferrufino verified that the knife was 'issued to him at work.'
ICE regulations regarding inappropriate 'display or brandishment' of a weapon carries penalties of suspension or firing, but The Intercept found only Ferrufino's letter of reprimand. 'No disciplinary action was taken against the management official who gifted illegal weapons,' Jimenez wrote in a OSC whistleblower retaliation complaint against Bradford. In another memorandum, he noted that 'officers who did not disclose the misconduct were promoted.'
Oberle said that ICE Houston doesn't maintain statistics relating to weapons violations that have resulted in disciplinary actions. He recommended filing a Freedom of Information Act request, which often take months or years to, if ever, produce records.
Jimenez has, however, continued to press his whistleblower retaliation claims for more than two years while continuing to work in the Houston office.
In 2024, the Merit Systems Protection Board ruled that after ICE issued the demotion notice, Jimenez was not provided an opportunity to respond. This procedure 'did not comport with a tenured employee's constitutional right to minimum due process of law,' reads the order. As a result, his demotion was reversed.
In February, Jimenez wrote an email to the Congressional DOGE Caucus in an attempt to finally achieve some measure of justice.
'I wanted to bring a government corruption problem to your attention about upper management officials at the ICE Houston Field Office,' Jimenez wrote, calling out McBride and Fuchs and stating he provided material evidence of their 'corruption to ICE Houston Field Office Director (SES) Bret Bradford' through a series of memos, one of which he attached to the email.
In April, ICE agreed to expunge Jimenez's 2023 negative performance appraisal 'both physically and digitally, from your local files in ERO HOU,' according to an email from the ICE lawyer. 'Therefore, to the best of the Agency's knowledge, this [performance work plan] has been expunged from your records maintained by the Agency.' As a result, OSC closed Jimenez's whistleblower retaliation complaint against Bradford, deeming it 'resolved.'
In late May, the lawyer presented Jimenez with a proposed settlement, according to an email reviewed by The Intercept. 'The Agency is not increasing its offer, nor will it,' the lawyer wrote.
This week, Jimenez will, again, appear before the Merit Systems Protection Board for 'adjudication of [his] claim of whistleblower reprisal.'
'We need to see the public and private sectors recognize the value of blowing the whistle on wrongdoing as something that inherently works in their favor, too,' said Margaux Ewen, the whistleblower protection program director of the Signals Network, an independent nonprofit organization which supports whistleblowers and journalists' sources. 'Otherwise individuals who wish to speak out will continue to face significant hurdles, and information that is in the public interest will continue to be suppressed.'
Jimenez concluded his email to the DOGE Caucus by invoking Trump's vow to end corruption within the government and pursue accountability. 'Under President Trump's administration,' Jimenez wrote, 'he does not tolerate federal government corruption. Sadly, the unlawful demotion occurred 2 years ago this month, February, and both officials who knowingly used lies in a decision letter still work at ICE.'