As the federal government cracks down on protests in Minnesota, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has told its officers they must undergo more crowd-control training that opens the door to using chemical munitions against demonstrators, according to a memo obtained by HuffPost.

CBP, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, is responsible for safeguarding the country’s borders and ports of entry, but has taken a leading role in the crackdown in Minneapolis.

Under the plan, many current CBP employees would need to attain a higher certification in what’s known as “mobile field force training,” according to the memo. The certification requires a three-day training on how to handle the kind of civil unrest that isn’t common at ports or borders but is fast becoming a basic feature of the White House’s urban immigration operations.

The advanced training is a prerequisite for using pepper balls and tear gas canisters — as opposed to just pepper spray — provided officers attain additional certifications.

Leadership expects its field offices to carry out the training as quickly as possible so that CBP employees can be deployed in more volatile situations alongside other law enforcement agencies.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

The change comes as the city of Minneapolis boils over with anger following the killing of Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer last week. The Trump administration has claimed Good “weaponize[d]” her car and that the agent, Jonathan Ross, acted in self-defense, though video of the encounter shows Good turning the vehicle away from Ross as he opens fire.

Good’s death — along with viral videos of federal agents ripping people from their cars to arrest them — spawned dozens of protests in Minneapolis and other cities across the country. The Trump administration has poured hundreds of additional ICE and CBP officers into the Twin Cities in recent days, and the president has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and send the U.S. military to Minnesota to put down protests.

Gil Kerlikowske, who ran the CBP under former President Barack Obama, told HuffPost the new training requirement signals that those in the agency “don’t intend to back off” on their deportation campaign and want “a little better skillset” when it comes to crowds.

“It has to be this clear recognition that they are completely untrained,” he said. “This kind of stuff — just walking through a Home Depot lot or something like that — is not what they do. It’s been pretty clear in the shootings inside vehicles, the standing in front of vehicles … tossing tear gas, shooting people with pepper balls, body-slamming people.”

The Trump administration has faced sharp criticism for how aggressively officers have dealt with anti-ICE protests. A federal judge issued an injunction in November restricting federal agents’ crowd-control methods, finding that their use of force during Chicago demonstrations violated people’s constitutional rights and “shock[ed] the conscience.”

Tear gas fills the air outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs building during a protest on June 14, 2025, in Portland, Oregon.

AP Photo/Jenny Kane

While the most recent recruits to CBP have been required to take the more advanced course in crowd control, many of those who were already at the agency have only a lower certification. Everyone would now be certified to handle bigger demonstrations and emergencies, even supervisors who’ve mostly been working behind desks.

DHS is a sprawling department with different responsibilities and sub-agencies. Inland immigration enforcement has historically been the domain of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but personnel from CBP, which includes the U.S. Border Patrol, have been enlisted in large numbers to boost deportations for the Trump administration.

As HuffPost reported last year, around 2,000 CBP and Border Patrol agents were being diverted from their typical roles at U.S. ports and borders to assist ICE in rounding up undocumented immigrants, possibly hurting efforts to combat drug smuggling and human trafficking.

It is now common to see CBP and Border Patrol alongside ICE on the streets of Minneapolis and other cities. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said the flood of federal agents following Good’s shooting was “causing chaos,” and he urged residents to remain calm and demonstrate peacefully.

“There’s still a lot that we don’t know at this time,” Frey said Wednesday night. “But what I can tell you for certain is that this is not sustainable. This is an impossible situation that our city is presently being put in.”

This would not be the first time Trump has enlisted CBP to help quell demonstrations. In the summer of 2020, during his first presidency, the administration deployed CBP personnel to handle racial justice protests in several cities in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

According to public records obtained by the American Immigration Council, one agency official expressed concern at the time over putting the officers in “direct contact” with the public in such a manner.

“[T]hey do not possess the appropriate crowd control training and equipment,” the official wrote.