The Deadly Military-Vet-to-ICE Pipeline
US police have long recruited military veterans with conditions that make them prone to violence and aggression. The problem is even worse when it comes to ICE, whose leaders valorize brutality and allow officers to kill with impunity.
David Brouillete, the ICE officer who shot and killed Johan Sebastián Duran Guerrero in Maine last month, was a military vet with a traumatic brain injury and a history of abusive behavior. ICE is hiring many vets like him. (Charly Tribailleau / AFP via Getty Images)
The media spent a lot of time this summer examining whether a certain Maine oysterman and Marine veteran seeking federal employment should have been better vetted by those around him.
Even after Graham Platner abandoned his US Senate bid, his friends and foes argued about whether service-related conditions — which earned him a 100 percent disability rating from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) — contributed to past substance abuse, mental health problems, and aggression against intimate partners.
Now, in the same state, the spotlight has shifted to David Brouillette, a troubled Afghan war vet. Brouillette spent eight years in the US Army and Maine Army National Guard before getting hired for not one but two federal jobs. Thanks to an ill-advised push to recruit more ex-military personnel for law enforcement roles without proper background checks, he got to carry a gun again.
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