ICE agents’ conduct is drawing scrutiny. Recruits are trained in Georgia.

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 widely hailed as a training ground that turns out top-level professionals — one two-time FLETC student, Savannah Alderman Nick Palumbo, said, “It was the best, intentional training I’d ever received.”

Palumbo first attended FLETC as a U.S. Park Police trainee and later as a diplomatic security service agent.

FLETC is 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.

Schwank’s assessment differed greatly from Palumbo’s experience at FLETC and speaks to the consequences political pressure can have on training.

Palumbo said: “What’s broken about it is what’s being asked of it. That training makes great agents. The message, at least in my experience, was ‘don’t cut the corners.’”

Homeland Security rebutted as “false” allegations it is cutting corners as it hires more ICE officers and increases immigration enforcement. It said in a statement Monday new ICE recruits receive 56 days of training and an average of 28 days of on-the-job training. It said officers receive the same number of training hours as before and that training doesn’t stop after graduation. Candidates “meet the same high standards ICE has always required,” it added.

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.