With every norm busting move, with every

boundary busting decision, you get this

debate around Donald Trump. Is it

authoritarianism now? Has a nature of

the American state finally changed into

something else? It's not going to be

that clean. There's no one moment where

we phase from one thing to another. But

I think what we can say, what can't even

really be argued is that the

authoritarianism is here. It's just

unevenly distributed.

But you can see it.

>> You can see it in the video of an ICE

officer shooting and killing.

>> Renee go to Minneapolis.

>> You can see it when you watch a disabled

woman dragged out of her car on her way

to a doctor's appointment.

>> You can see it when a family of eight on

his way home from a basketball game is

teargassed and needs to give CPR to

their six-month-old child. I was giving

a mouth to mouth and I remember stopping

and I said, "I will give you all my

breath till you get yours back because

nobody wants to see their kids."

>> Look, look, look, look, look.

>> You can see when Border Patrol agents

tackle and detain

>> a US citizen who is filming their

activities and then they accuse him of

assaulting them. You can see it when

masked men walk up to people with brown

skin and just ask them to prove that

they are American. US

>> and you can see it spreading every day,

distributing itself more widely to more

kinds of people.

>> Good morning everyone. I'm Mark Reley,

police chief of city of Brooklyn Park.

>> In Minnesota, local law enforcement

officials held a press conference to

announce that their own officers were

being racially profiled by federal

immigration agents.

>> We started hearing from our police

officers the same complaints as they

fell victim to this while off duty.

Every one of these individuals is a

person of color who has had this happen

to them.

>> But we are at the beginning of this. We

are one year into this administration.

And now thanks to the unprecedented $170

billion windfall for immigration

enforcement in Trump's one big beautiful

bill.

>> The administration has essentially a

blank check to build the police state of

its dreams.

It is hard to keep the scale of what the

Trump administration is building in your

mind. all at once. There is so much more

happening than what is recorded on viral

video clips. So, I want to talk to

someone who has been tracking it.

Caitlyn Dickerson is a journalist at The

Atlantic. She's been covering

immigration closely since Trump's first

term. She won a Pulser Prize in 2023 for

reporting on Trump's family separation

policy. asked her on the show to walk me

through as clearly as she could what

this new infrastructure looks like, how

it fits together, how it is being

administered, what it is being used to

do right now, and what that might mean

for the future. As always, my email

times.com.

>> Caitlin Dickerson, welcome to the show.

>> Thanks for having me. So I want to begin

with some of the pieces of the

immigration enforcement we have now. I

think the agency people have heard the

most about in the last year is ICE. What

was ICE under Joe Biden and how is it

different now?

>> So ICE is responsible for immigration

enforcement within the interior of the

country going after people who've made

it across the border are living in

American cities and who are subject to

deportation. That's who they were under

the Biden administration and that's who

they are now. The difference is how they

go about that work. So really since the

Ford era, we've had some level of

priorities that immigration enforcement

officials are supposed to follow for who

they should go after versus who they

shouldn't. Because throughout the United

States history, we've had lots of

unauthorized immigrants. Some are

thought of sort of society and in the

eyes of government as a problem and

others really not. They're minding their

own business. They're doing jobs. And

the Biden administration imposed the

severest form or the strictest form of

priorities that we'd seen historically

where ICE was directed only to go after

people who had very serious criminal

records. The rest of the undocumented

population was left alone. So ICE

officials had to get permission if they

wanted to go after somebody and arrest

them and deport them and the bar was

considered very high. Now of course

there are no restrictions whatsoever.

ICE has cart blanched permission to go

after any immigrant in the United States

without legal status. And ICE has always

done lots of arrests, hundreds of

thousands some years and consistently

gone after these people with serious

criminal records. But central to their

approach was to make arrests happen in a

way that was meant to be as safe as

possible and as seamless as possible.

Not that this is going to sound great to

people, but to describe it for you, what

ICE agents did historically is that they

would identify someone they wanted to

arrest, do lots of work at a desk on a

computer before they ever pursued this

person to confirm their identity, to

confirm they had no claim to legal

status in the United States. Once that

work was done, they would often go to

the person's house at 5 or 6:00 in the

morning, knock on the door, and try to

take them into custody, often while

other relatives are still sleeping and

before they leave for work for the day.

So, you know, I I point out that this

isn't going to sound great because of

course what I'm talking about is a

situation where you'd have kids wake up

in the morning and find out that their

mom or dad was gone. But that approach

was to minimize the kinds of chaos that

we're seeing ICE really invite now. So,

I've talked to so many current and

former ICE officials who are watching

this happen, and they're really

bewildered because it's as if ICE is now

going against all of its former training

to make arrests as dramatic as possible,

to do them in the streets in front of

the general public, kind of inviting

conflicts that then lead to protesting

and to escalations. And they're also

filming a lot of these violent clashes,

making it them as dramatic as possible

and prioritizing that over safety. It's

really just such a significant change.

It's hard to understate. And part of it,

I think, is because they're trying to,

and I'm sure we'll get into this, really

spread a certain level of fear that's

intended to encourage people to leave

the country on their own so that they

don't have to make as many arrests. You

know, they want to encourage self-

deportations. So, it's absolutely the

case that the look and feel of ICE is

really different right now. I think

people are right to feel that way. It's

the massive increase in boots on the

ground. It's the tactics that are being

used. It's the locations that arrests

are taking place. ICE had a policy that

made courouses, schools, and hospitals

off limits for immigration enforcement

for the same reason to to prioritize

safety. That policy is now gone. And I

think both for purposes of efficiency

and getting as many deportations done as

possible, but also playing into the

drama now you see ICE very frequently in

those places. I

>> I want to pick up on something you said

there, which is that many of the videos

we're seeing, many of the vine clashes

we're seeing are staged to be that way.

Something I've been tracking often with

the Trump administration is the way it

uses spectacle as policy, spectacle as

message. oftentimes, this is less true

in immigration, but oftentimes they're

not changing rules so much as they are

doing things, making sure the thing

spreads virally, mimetically, so people

understand that this government is

different. Things are different now.

>> Mhm. And I'd be curious to hear and and

partly from maybe some of these past

conversations you're having with former

ICE officials, what they make of the

propaganda, what they make of the

videos, what they make of the clips,

what they make of the the visual

spectacle being constructed around it

all.

When it comes to the former law

enforcement officials, what they make of

the propaganda is is grave concern

because they feel like it's taking away

from the legitimacy of this agency. I

mean, ICE, people will tell you, has

always kind of been the redheaded

stepchild of federal law enforcement.

It's a less prestigious job. It's easier

to get into than other federal law

enforcement agencies, and it's always

politicized. And so there was this real

emphasis to learn the law and to apply

the law with a certain degree of

professionalism to kind of give ICE more

legitimacy as a serious federal law

enforcement agency. My best impression

of the situation is that whereas before

there was very thorough training to

explain what are people's civil rights,

what is immigration law, what are your

authorities and what are not your

authorities as a deportation officer.

Now training is dramatically truncated

and basically the message has come down

to do what you got to do to bring people

into custody. So what I'm hearing from

these former officials is that the

propaganda and the videos are taking

away from that impression really making

the public quite skeptical of them and

they feel the same way about the fact

that officers now are routinely wearing

masks and refusing to identify

themselves. All of it sort of takes away

from how seriously they're viewed as a

law enforcement agency.

>> Who is ICE now? One of the things that

surprised me when doing research for

this episode was recognizing that now

most of its enforcement agents are new

recruits.

>> That's right. So, we had about 7,000 ICE

agents toward the end of the Biden

administration. And the Trump

administration says that they've hired

12,000 people since then. some

percentage are people who'd retired from

immigration enforcement before, so they

have some experience, but we're talking

about a lot of new faces. Um, they're

trying to hire as many former law

enforcement agents as they can just to

bring people in with some familiarity

with how to do this type of work. But

there are lots of people, it seems,

within this new workforce who have

absolutely no experience who are

learning how to enforce the law, how to

carry a weapon, how to interact with the

public, just starting from square one

right now.

>> When you look at the way they're

recruiting, when you look at the images

they're using to recruit, the videos

they're using to recruit, who are they

who do they seem to be targeting to you?

>> So, it varies. Some of the messaging

says that the Department of Homeland

Security is looking to hire patriots,

looking to hire people who want to

defend and protect the country. But

we're also seeing a lot of explicit

references to white nationalist ideas

and the kind of dog whistles that we've

all become used to when Trump is

president. So they've used slogans,

they've referenced songs, they've used

images

that speak to manifest destiny and this

idea that the United States was a land

intended for white people and really

language that I think to people who are

unfamiliar with these phrases, it just

seems kind of weird. It seems kind of

old-fashioned and strange and odd. But

the fact is that if you're a member of

the Proud Boys or you're a follower of

QAnon, you recognize these exact phrases

that are being used as a kind of call to

action and to apply for a job as an ICE

agent.

>> I want to play you a clip from Steven

Miller who went on TV to deliver a

message to ICE agents under fire for

brutality and and and aggression.

>> To all ICE officers, you have federal

immunity in the conduct of your duties.

And anybody who lays a hand on you or

tries to stop you or tries to obstruct

you is committing a felony. You have

immunity to perform your duties. And no

one, no city official, no state

official, no illegal alien, no uh

leftist agitator or domestic

insurrectionist can prevent you from

fulfilling your legal obligations and

duties. And the Department of Justice

has made clear that if officials cross

that line into obstruction, into

criminal conspiracy against the United

States or against ICE officers, then

they will face justice.

>> What do you make of that?

>> I make of that that Miller is trying to

communicate to ICE and to these new

members of ICE in particular that they

will not face consequences for use of

force. Specifically, I think he's

speaking to the ICE officer who shot

Renee Good in Minnesota last week and

killed her, but also to officers who've

used tear gas, who've pushed and shoved

and arrested protesters, who've claimed

that people who are filming them are

impeding arrest and using that as a

pretense to either take those people

into custody or have some sort of

violent altercation with them.

It's it is very striking. I was talking

to one former ICE official who told me

that, you know, you would always fear

discharging your weapon in an

interaction, even a potentially violent

and a dangerous one. Usually the concern

was that officers would be too unwilling

to use their gun because they worried

about potential repercussions. And there

were all these layers of investigation

that would take place after a shooting.

And so his fear when he was in ICE for

30 years was that he wouldn't use his

gun in a moment when he needed to. And

now it's almost as if the opposite fear

is true. And we've seen within ICE

people losing their jobs, high level

officials losing their jobs because

they're not delivering enough

deportations. They're not being

aggressive enough. And so I think Miller

is just underscoring that argument that

you're not going to get in trouble for

being too aggressive. And in fact, the

only thing you will get in trouble for

is not being aggressive enough.

>> Tell me about that high level purge or

turnover of leadership.

>> So it's happened a couple of different

times. Um the very head of ICE was

replaced, a deputy was replaced, and

then we've also seen several field

office directors. So the ICE has the

country divided into individual field

offices. And those directors are the

people who are overseeing the officers,

carrying out these deportations, talking

to them on a daily basis, communicating

quotas and guidelines. And we've seen a

significant number of those field office

directors taken off of their duties and

replaced with officials from the Border

Patrol. I think that's really

significant because the Border Patrol in

general, reputationally, is viewed even

within the Department of Homeland

Security as a tougher and more um I mean

wild wild west almost type of

environment that they tend to work in.

and but also the there are legal

differences. What people's rights are at

the border are different from their

rights within the interior of the

country.

>> So, I'm glad you brought up Border

Patrol because I said at the beginning

that I think people have heard the most

about ICE, but a lot of the very

aggressive raids we're seeing now are

led by certainly include Border Patrol.

So, tell me a bit about how that

agency's mission and focus have changed,

you know, over the past 18 months.

So the border has been relatively

compared to the past empty since Trump

took office. And so you have a lot of

border officials who are available and

have been detailed to American cities to

support ICE. And I think that you're

seeing the difference in the way that

they're used to working in these

interactions that we're watching in

American cities. You know, Border Patrol

officials operate in a different

constitutional zone. Border Patrol

officials have a lot more freedom when

it comes to how they stop and question

people, what sorts of information they

can access. Very different from the

Fourth Amendment protections that we're

used to in the interior of the country.

And I think some of the differences that

we're seeing in how interior arrests

look now versus how they did in the past

may simply come down to training.

>> Let me pick up on what you said at the

beginning there, which is that the

border has been very quiet since Trump

took over. I mean, Trump did run for

office promising to secure the southern

border. I remember talking to B

administration officials often during

his term, and there was a huge upsurge

in people crossing the border, people

being stopped at the border, and you

would get all these explanations that

made it seem like it was quite out of

their control that there were all these

things happening in Latin America and,

you know, problems in Venezuela and and

and people fleeing. and they often

treated it as outside the realm of

policy. Now, in the last year of Biden's

administration, they began to change

policy and border crossing seem to go

down. What has Trump done though to

basically I don't want to say end people

coming to southern border, but you look

at the numbers and it is very very very

low. What is the lesson of that?

So, I don't think the lesson is that the

changes in numbers of people crossing

the border is solely due to policy. I

hear what you're saying. I'm very

familiar with this debate. And I think

that circumstances outside the United

States and outside American policy are

very relevant. I think a lot of times

missing from that conversation is

acknowledgement of the fact that there

was a global pandemic and an incredible

pentup demand for crossing borders given

the way that international economies

struggled. so much. You know, the US

recovered better better than any country

in the world economically. And so it

makes sense that coming out of the

pandemic with travel restrictions

lifting abroad and with so many other

countries suffering more than they were

previously that there was a huge pent-up

demand that contributed to the increase

in people who crossed the border under

the Biden administration. you know, you

had millions of people leave Venezuela

because of falling apart within that

country and the regime there and the

economy and and public safety. You know,

political dissident were being jailed

and killed, etc. And so, at a certain

point, everybody who was able to leave

Venezuela has left Venezuela. So, I

think there can be a real problem with

just taking a slice of a moment in time

and saying, you know, the Biden

administration had record-breaking

immigration and leaving it at that to

suggest that there would that only

factors that had to do with Biden

administration and their policies were

at fault for these really high numbers.

I don't think I'd say only factors, but

I think I would be

I I think I'd be surprised, although

tell me if this is your view that the

sense of American cruelty and the signal

sent by the Trump administration and and

by these videos and by networks of

immigrants coming here and what it is

like to be here. I'm not saying it is

good. I don't think you should close the

border through sheer cruelty, but it I

mean the numbers are very very very low

>> and it's definitely having an impact.

So, getting to the other side of the

conversation now, I I completely agree

with you, and I think there are a couple

things going on here. Policy-wise, Trump

is sort of riding the wave of legal

restrictions to asylum that the Biden

administration put into place. So, those

numbers dropped precipitously even

before the election. And I think it's

undeniable that the Trump administration

is benefiting in terms of these low

numbers from the public messaging

campaign that they have going on right

now. I mean, there's this long-standing

debate about whether deterrence works,

whether imposing consequences, legal

consequences, putting people into jail

or deporting them can in a significant

way decrease the number of people

crossing the border. I think that what

the Trump administration is doing is

going far beyond deterrence, right? it.

They're spreading this message of fear

internationally and frankly conveying an

image of the United States that doesn't

make it look like the type of place that

people want to seek refuge. You know,

the the rule of law is a huge part of

what makes the United States the most

attractive country in the world for

migration. And when you turn on the news

and you look at what's happening in the

United States right now, it doesn't look

like a place where the rule of law is

still in effect or where the country is

necessarily free to participate in basic

democratic freedoms like voting and like

protesting. You know, there's a lot of

violence in the streets right now. And

so I think that is having a significant

impact on the number of people who are

crossing the border. You know, you're

not going to seek safety in a place that

doesn't look very safe. You often have

immigrants coming here because they have

a credible fear of persecution where

they're from. And it often seems to me

the Trump administration's policy is

meant to create a credible fear of

persecution here. Like why would you go

somewhere where these things could

happen to you?

>> Exactly. That's a that's a good way of

putting it just to look at the standard

for what asylum requires. And that's

why, you know, we're seeing people

leave. And we don't know the exact

numbers of how many people have left the

United States. And we don't really have

reason to believe that the 1.9 million

number that the Trump administration is

touting is accurate. But I am hearing on

a regular basis about people, especially

people in so-called mixed status

families where you have a mom or a dad

who's undocumented and the rest of the

family who are United States citizens

who are deciding that it's no longer

worth it to stay in the United States. I

think it's going to be years before we

have a good sense of how many those

people are, but it does feel like the

calculation is changing.

>> So, as you say, the the border through

whatever mix of mechanisms has gone

quiet that has created the space to

focus the border patrol on the interior

of the country. What has that meant?

What does it mean to have the border

patrol focused on the interior of the

country? both in terms of operations but

also

in terms of

I guess the the sort of deeper question

about the way the Trump administration

is looking

>> at the country itself and what its

problems are.

>> So operationally it means a lot more

boots on the ground. It means a lot more

arrests and a lot more deportations. I

think that because ICE and ICE field

office directors are primarily dealing

with people who have long-standing ties

to the country and direct relationships

with American citizens are often

represented by lawyers. They're used to

being held to a higher level of

scrutiny. people who work along the

border are mostly dealing with folks who

are trying to enter the United States

for the very first time, may not speak

English, are not represented by lawyers,

and people who just don't have an

expectation of basic rights and

protections in the way that American

citizens do. And so when you put

officials from that agency into American

cities, you have this incredible clash

of expectations versus how these border

officials are used to working. To your

question about the deeper meaning, the

Border Patrol is a law enforcement

agency that is supposed to fortify the

exterior of the United States and keep

people who are unwanted out from

entering the country in accordance with

the laws and the policies that we have

etc. Now you have that force of people

moving into the center, moving

throughout our cities and communities

and really creating this impression that

there are outsiders, that there are

others, that there are unwanteds

everywhere among us. And we see them in

fact taking into custody American

citizens. We see them taking into

custody people who have legal status,

stopping people and openly acknowledging

that they're stopping people because of

their physical appearance, because of

their race, because of their accent. And

so it really is sending this message of

a sort of enemy within and I think

helping to foster fear and division.

>> A lot of the immigrants swept up in

these raids and in some of these

policies

they have or at least until very

recently had some legal status. And

we've been talking about at least in

theory people here without legal status.

But but how have things changed for many

of the people came in with some legal

status, even temporary legal status?

>> Yeah, a million and a half people lost

their temporary legal status from the

Biden administration into the Trump

administration. I think it was

interesting to see how Trump campaigned

really fudging data and referring to

everybody who came into the United

States

>> under the Biden administration. I know

it's a shock under the Biden

administration as illegal, as

unauthorized. And you know, it was just

such a blatant misrepresentation of the

reality when someone has, you know, for

better or worse, if whether you not you

like this program, someone who's filled

out an application, who's been invited

to an interview, who's undergone an

interview, and then after being vetted,

allowed into the country to all of

sudden sudden call them illegal is just

such a bait and switch. But we're also

seeing now the Trump administration

reopening refugees cases and trying to

relitigate vetting that in that case can

take years. So it's not even just people

without legal status. It's sort of

anyone that they can figure out a way to

claw legal status back from as well.

>> You've done a lot of reporting on what

it is like to be caught up in these

raids. You've talked to people in them.

I mean, people I think have seen many

clips, but what are some stories that

that stand out to you? What what happens

if you're, you know, an immigrant or

you're nearby, uh, you know, an

unauthorized immigrant or a you're in

the building that they've decided to

target? What is it like?

>> You know, what I'm hearing now is just

that people are living with a really

high level of panic and that's exactly

what the Trump administration wants. And

so people without legal status in

moments like this keep in really close

touch with one another. You know, there

are networks of communication. People

use WhatsApp. People use Facebook to try

to um let one another know in advance if

they've someone has seen ICE or if a

raid is going on. You know, I've talked

to kids who've told me that they look

outside in the morning before their mom

or dad go, their undocumented parent

goes to work and they watch them walk

out the front door, walk to their car,

and that they monitor their parents

obsessively, like all day on fine my on

their iPhones to just try to track their

parents' location. So, it's just this

24/7 paranoia that people are dealing

with. And I've talked to law enforcement

officials about this, too. I mean,

specifically talking about Renee Good's

death. I I spoke to a bunch of officials

who reviewed the video there and said

from the very beginning, you know, the

first officer who runs up to her car,

uses expletives, tells her to get out,

starts trying to force open the door.

These officers said to me, you know,

there's no reason to not approach her

and say, "Ma'am, can you shut off your

car and please open the door?" And

that's in fact how you want to approach

a civilian, someone who has never been

arrested before, isn't used to being

screamed at in the face by police. But

they're coming at people in these

arrests with such aggression that it's

making people panic. And I think that is

leading to some of the more violent

incidents that we're seeing. You know,

people getting hurt and thrown to the

ground or worse. I I can't tell although

I have a suspicion to what degree that

is the actual policy. I mean from the

beginning as these raids have and these

occupations have escalated in their size

and their aggression in their framing

and their propaganda

it has always looked to me like they are

creating the conditions

for these tragedies to occur.

And that is a fairly common thing. in

authoritarian regimes. We've seen this

in in other countries. You've seen it in

in history where you

you attack your own population and when

and then when and you look for pretexts

then to escalate that that the question

is not how to prevent

the killing of Renee Good from happening

again, but actually how to escalate

around the killing of Renee Good in

order to

catch more of the Trump administration's

enemies in their net. you know, call the

protesters domestic terrorists, etc.

That that I think this is a it's not

exactly knowable, but it is a very

important distinction whether this is

seen by the Trump administration as a

tragedy. We need to think about how we

are training our troops versus part of

the policy. Actually,

>> one thing that can be helpful is that

the Trump administration usually signals

what they want to do before they do it.

So, for example, with Title 42, the

COVID era border ban, Steven Miller

tried for years to figure out a way to

completely cut off access to the

southern border and shut down asylum.

And then finally, the CO 19 pandemic

came around and gave him the pretense

that made White House lawyers say,

"Okay, now is the time we can shut down

the border." I think something similar

is happening with the Insurrection Act.

Trump has been threatening to invoke the

Insurrection Act since his first

presidency, and it's coming up again

now. And so I can see why you're saying

that there's a perception that there's a

desire to create the conditions that

would justify something like that as an

even further escalation would mean we've

seen so many. So I don't have the sense

that individual ICE officers are being

told escalate things as much as

possible. Make sure things get violent.

You know that would be pretty reckless

um and actionable legally. But what I

think we are seeing very clearly and in

Steven Miller's message that you played

a few minutes ago is that the idea is do

what you have to do. Don't focus so much

on the laws and the rules and civil

rights. Focus on getting people into

custody at any cost. We've been talking

about physical raids, but one thing

you've written about is how the OBBBA

bill, which included a huge amount of

money for ICE, for Border Patrol, for

the Department of Homeland Security,

that included a lot of that money for

advanced technology and surveillance

systems, and that the the effort to

build a very different form of

surveillance network, partic

and might create something that is

around for a long time. What can you

tell me about what's being done or

envisioned there?

>> So, a lot of this is really being kept

under wraps by the security contractors

that are involved. But from what we can

see in the public requests for

proposals, ICE is really increasing its

use of facial recognition technology

both at the border and within the

interior of the country and then hiring

companies like Palunteer to collect as

much data really to create almost dossas

on people drawing from their education

records, their financial records, their

social media accounts, utilities,

etc. and try to create files on

immigrants and then there's also data on

people's cars and their license plates

and and just to kind of be able to

constantly monitor and locate people and

I think there are lots of concerns about

what happens with all that data and and

who is being swept into these collection

efforts. I think it's pretty impossible

to keep American citizens out, you know,

when you're collecting video for the

purposes of facial recognition, whether

it's at the border, when people are

coming home from their vacation or

within the interior of the country. Um,

you know, I think what it comes down to

is just collecting a massive amount of

information on people that can be used

to track them down more easily, but also

to monitor their behaviors and their

activities. And I think that's important

because of what you mentioned earlier,

this expanded

use of labels like domestic terrorist

that the Department of Homeland Security

is is sprinkling into its messaging that

we've seen in a presidential action memo

from Trump himself. This memo that

hasn't gotten, I think, as much

attention as it deserves is very broad

in its definition. It says that domestic

terrorists tend to espouse views such as

and list anti- capitalism,

anti-Christianity, um views opposing the

traditional American family, and even

extremism on migration, which of course

this administration would describe

anybody who is out in the streets

protesting or trying to protect

immigrants without legal status in their

communities. I mean, you can't imagine

language that's more broad. And so I

think that's one of the things that

makes this technology so concerning.

>> You wrote something that I think has

really stuck in my head all year that

after the OPBBA,

the amount of money going to domestic

immigration enforcement is larger than

the budgets of any military in the

world, save the US or China.

And

in addition to worrying about that on

behalf of of immigrants, when you think

about these questions like surveillance,

when you think about

how Trump talks about domestic

opposition, how Steven Miller talks

about domestic opposition,

I think something that I fear that that

I see I would say the shadows of, but I

think it's actually much more visible

than that is an infrastructure that

could be turned against all kinds of

internal targets, um, political

opposition, media, uh, protesters,

anybody they don't like. You know,

you've seen very strange picking up of

random academics and students, and it

seems that it has something to do with

social media posts. And when people

build infrastructures like this, they

tend to get used. It's very very

hard to resist using what you have and

when you're as radical administration as

this one is.

So I guess I'm I'm asking how the how

the infrastructure itself looks to you.

what it is. There's what it's being used

for now. But when you think about how

many new agents this is, how much more

they're spending on new weapons for the

new agents, when you think about the

surveillance, when you think about,

which we'll talk about in a minute, the

dramatic increase in detention centers,

uh

what what does that look like?

the money is so staggering that and and

unprecedented that we don't have an

image in the past that we can look to to

try to guess where all of this is going.

But as you pointed out, it's a

military-sized budget and it's leading

to

physical changes to the country, large

detention centers that are already

starting to grow to to spring up and

that the administration wants to

dramatically increase

boots on the ground in American cities.

you know, armed officers who are

questioning people, asking for proof of

citizenship, accosting them, um, who are

hostile to protesters and anybody

willing to question their work. Although

I I think it's important to acknowledge

that it's not typical the level of push

back that law enforcement is facing in

the streets either. I think, you know,

they are facing an unprecedented level

of challenge to their work and all of

that is contributing to the conflicts

that we're seeing and the chaos that

we're seeing. I think it just looks like

a very different country than we're used

to. I mean, we're starting to see what

that image is. We can see it on social

media and on the videos that have gone

viral. So far, though, most of those

incidents are relatively isolated. Most

of the country can look at those videos

and say, "Wow, that looks really scary."

but then walk outside their front door

and go to work and mostly have the same

experience that they were used to prior.

I think those videos are going to become

the reality more and more in American

communities because the money is there.

As you said, the mission is there, the

mandate is there, the money is there.

Um, one of the only checks that remains

are the federal courts and we are seeing

significant challenges in federal court

to some of what the Trump administration

is trying to do, but the courts are sort

of hanging on their own right now as a

check. Congress has been quiet other

than to fund this massive expansion. So

I really think that we're looking at a

reality with this 170 plus billion

dollars for immigration enforcement that

involves

law armed law enforcement in the streets

as a a regular fixture of our lives of

chaotic conflicts in the streets as

something that we're going to become

accustomed to and massive detention

centers that are going to come up and

that are going to be built for the

purposes of holding people and then

getting them out of the country.

>> Tell me about those detention centers

because that was a huge space of new

funding in the OBBBA.

What how are they using detention

differently and what do they seem to be

envisioning for detention, you know, in

a year or two?

So, the number of immigration detention

facilities in use has dramatically

increased since Trump took office. And

they're really just getting started with

spending the $45 billion that were

specifically dedicated to detention in

the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

This means that private prison companies

and counties that want to rent bed space

to ICE are going to be able to profit

really significantly on increasing the

detained populations. When Biden left

left office, the detained population of

immigrants was around 39,000 people. Now

it's 70,000 people. You know, you need

to be able to detain people to

effectuate deportations. And at times, a

lack of detention space has held them

back. Um, there was a time last year

when I was reporting in Atlanta and

people who were going to the downtown

ICE field office for their ICE check-ins

were being arrested and put into im

immigration custody. Many of them were

folks who had temporary legal status

under the Biden administration and then

had that eliminated when Trump took

office. And then a few weeks after I

started reporting on this issue, I

started to hear that people were going

into their ICE check-ins once again and

having this normal interaction where

they would tell the officer what they'd

been up to, where they were living, and

be told to come back in 6 months or a

year. And I asked what the difference

was, and it was just that the detention

facilities in Georgia had filled up in

the intervening time. So really, who was

being arrested and who wasn't had

nothing to do with the circumstances of

their case, with whether they were a

legitimate threat to the public or not.

It was, is there a bed to put them in?

And so I think the Trump administration

really wants to eliminate the

possibility that limited bed space could

hold them back in any way. So, you know,

immigration detention is legally not

actually meant to be punitive. Um, which

is a little bit ironic given what we

know about the health and safety

conditions in detention centers. Um,

lots of people are dying in detention

more than in years past, which is a huge

concern for people. But there's also

problems with access to legal

representation with adequate food and

sanitation and medical care. So the

Trump administration is very much seeing

this dramatic expansion of the detention

system as a important part of

immigration enforcement.

>> We've been talking about places where

the Trump administration is trying to

dramatically expand the capacity of

immigration enforcement. More ICE

agents, more border patrol agents, more

detention centers. One very odd thing

about the OBBBA is it capped the number

of immigration judges at 800. What was

that? And and and what does it reflect

about how they're using the immigration

courts?

>> That was a headscratcher. It was one of

the only caps that existed in the entire

bill. Everything else seems to be about

sort of limitless spending. So, there's

been a lot of churn on the immigration

court since Trump took office. They've

fired dozens of judges, mostly ones, it

seems, who were granting too many

requests for relief, requests to remain

in the United States, and replacing them

with people who they think will be more

harsh. And you're seeing that reflected

in the denial rates. So overall, asylum

denial rates were around 50% when Biden

left office, and now they're up to 84%.

The immigration courts are a a a point

at which a kind of choke point for

deportations because you've got someone

in custody, but if they have access to a

legal remedy, then they're going to

fight their case. And sometimes those

cases take years. I think one thing that

the cap on judges could reflect is that

the Trump administration is trying to

find ways that go around the immigration

courts to remove people. So, they're

trying to expand the use of something

called expedited removal, which allows

for people to be deported without going

before a judge and trying to fight their

case. They want to be able to effectuate

removals more quickly and just go around

the courts entirely if they can.

>> You you spent some time reporting on an

immigration court in in Virginia. Tell

me what you saw there.

So my reporting was actually done on

Zoom because immigration court was being

done virtually so that it could go more

quickly. That's something that started

during the pandemic and that's continued

into this administration as all

messaging and goals and systems are

being modified to effectuate

deportations as quickly and efficiently

as possible. So, what I saw was a j a

judge sitting in an empty courtroom and

looking into boxes on her screen,

calling people up and moving incredibly

quickly through their cases. Most people

in court that day were unrepresented by

lawyers. As people may or may not know,

in immigration court, you don't have the

right to an attorney if you can't afford

one or to a jury of your peers. And

people were panicked. They were in

shambles. I I definitely saw the change

in this administration wherein most

people who are being arrested by ICE on

a given day have been in the United

States for a long time and have no

criminal record. In that, you know, I

was hearing parents break down in tears

crying and saying, you know, I'm worried

about my child. There was one father in

particular in my story who said he was

arrested in front of his two youngest

children who were both under 5 years

old. He said he was desperately worried

about how they were going to survive

without him. People like this father,

but others too were asking about their

children and how they were going to be

dealt with because they'd been taken

away from their children when they were

arrested and the judge really seemed

uninterested and answering their

questions was just moving very quickly

through their cases. You know, there's

all this focus on numbers. Each one of

them, I was reminded in court, is not a

number, is is a person and and has

family and has employers and a community

that is impacted each time that this

happens. So, I was just I was really

struck by the speed with which this

judge was moving through cases. Um, you

know, you could tell that a lot of

people were confused. You have a lot of

people for whom English is a second

language or maybe they don't speak

English at all who are in immigration

court and the Zoom hearings make it that

much more difficult because you might

have inconsistent video. The translation

might not be as good quality as it could

be. It seemed to me that some people

whose cases were being heard didn't even

fully understand what the judge had

decided. She would issue a ruling. These

were preliminary hearings. So for the

most part, people were going to be

coming back for a subsequent hearing.

But some people after that first hearing

stipulate to their removal and and I was

concerned that it seemed some people

didn't really know what they were

agreeing to because the proceedings were

moving so fast.

>> Something I think people have heard

about is this move towards third country

removal where somebody is making an

asylum claim or they've come here and we

are deporting them to Uganda or

somewhere and saying deal with it there.

What is that policy? How is it being

used? Has it legal?

>> So, the Trump administration is also

using its diplomatic might to get other

countries on board with its mass

deportation effort. I mean, it's sort of

amazing. Anybody from a city mayor to a

business owner to a leader of a foreign

country, if they come to President Trump

right now, the message seems to be,

"Bring me something on immigration if

you want to work together." And so

through diplomatic efforts and through

pressure campaigns, the Trump

administration has has convinced

um several dozen countries to accept

deportes who are from other parts of the

world. In theory, this is to address the

problem that some countries don't accept

deportes from the United States. That's

their way of pushing back against the

United States and American foreign

policy is to say, "We're not going to

accept people who you want to deport to

us." But I think in reality that was

always a small number of people. I think

this third country removal program is

really a scare tactic more than anything

else. I mean even though we have

relationships with I think more than 40

countries that have been established and

I think the administration is in

negotiations with more than 60

currently. There are more coming online

regularly. You only have a few hundred

people who actually have been removed to

a third country. But we've been talking

about this fear campaign that's designed

to convince immigrants living in the

United States to leave and discourage

anybody thinking about coming here from

doing so. What is scarier than knowing

that you may not only be deported, you

may be deported to a poor country where

you don't speak the language and you

don't have any relationships or anyone

to protect you and keep you safe. So, I

really think that the third country

removals, which are are legally dubious.

They've been challenged, but they have

been carried out so far. Um, are more

about the fear campaign, they're not

really logistically feasible on a large

scale. They don't really make sense as a

foreign policy initiative, but they're

very intimidating.

>> I've been thinking about something I I

heard Chris Rufo, the right-wing

activist who's inspired many of the

Trump administration's activities, say,

and and I want to play it for you.

you're never going to have enough muscle

uh enough kind of logistical force to

deport 15 million people uh you know in

handcuffs. Uh and then also it's just

not it's not possible, it's not

practical, it's not feasible, it's

probably not wise because then the

narrative is going to turn because

you're going to start making mistakes

because you're expanding at such such an

extraordinary logistical rate. So what

do you do? The solution as you suggested

is you have to shift the incentives so

that there's remigration sometimes

called you know self-deportation. Yeah.

So voluntary exit and this is where I

think the rubber meets the road and

where it's going to be difficult for the

Trump administration. So I want to talk

about that because

I think that gets to what at least some

of the underlying strategy is they don't

as much as they are expanding they are

not expanding at the rate or to the

numbers and do not have the political

support to go doortodoor and deport the

numbers of people they seem to want to

deport. It does seem their strategy is

to make it so miserable and frightening

to be here that very large numbers of

people leave. Do you believe that?

That's a long-standing strategy on the

right that kind of the most prominent uh

anti-immigrant or restrictionist even

elected officials but also activist

groups have pushed for a really long

time. And I think it's just the degree

to which the administration is willing

to pursue this that that is the change.

Um but yes, this idea of pushing for

self deportations is has been popular

for a really long time among people like

Steven Miller. Um, and it was just once

a fringe idea and now it isn't. You

know, in the past, the ways that states

and municipalities would go about this

was by doing things like not letting

people without legal status get driver's

licenses, not letting their kids get

instate tuition in schools. Now, it's

very different. It's those things plus

you might be violently arrested. you

your your relatives, even those who are

legal immigrants or citizens, might be

stopped and accosted based on how they

look or what their accent is. I mean,

it's just so much more aggressive. But

absolutely, you know, the administration

has been open about the fact that

they're trying to encourage people to

self-deport. You know, they post memes

and videos making fun of undocumented

immigrants and basically telling them to

get out of here or else. So, yes,

absolutely. I think that they've also

shown a willingness to inflate the

numbers and kind of claim victory and

success before there's evidence to

support it. It really is all about

messaging more than it is substance. I

mentioned they're claiming that 1.9

million people have self-epported.

Experts have looked into that number. It

seems to be based on uh looking at a

census report that was done with a very

small sample size and not taking into

account that it's not very likely

immigrants are going to be fully

forthright or even participate in any

kind of a census count right now given

the environment of fear that we're in.

And so they extrapolated from this very

small census and declared that 1.9

million people had left the country

which does not seem true. So I I want to

with all this in mind get at what has

been happening in Minneapolis. What was

the administration's justification for

this operation?

>> So the administration said this

operation in Minneapolis had to take

place because of rampant fraud there and

there is a long-standing federal

investigation going on about COVID 19

relief funds and fraud in Minnesota. But

really, Trump seems to have latched on

to uh this video that was posted online

by Nick Shirley. He's this young

right-wing social media video influencer

who went around Minneapolis to daycare

sites claiming that they were

fraudulent, that they had no children

inside when in fact, of course, a a

strange man who's showing up outside of

a daycare who videoing what's going on

is probably not going to let that person

inside to see children. And if there are

children,

>> somebody with young children, the idea

that I would want my daycare if somebody

like knocked on there be like, "Show me

the kids in here." Like letting them in.

>> You probably don't want to let that guy

in. And and we don't know, you know,

there is active investigation going on

in Minnesota about legitimate fraud.

>> It does not mean there's not fraud, but

it does mean that I'm not sure I would

take that video as strong evidence.

>> Exactly. But the administration took it

and ran with it and launched what

they're calling the largest immigration

enforcement operation in the country as

a result of it. You know, there are so

many things to talk about with sort of

what's going wrong in Minnesota. One

thing to point out though is that fraud,

again, even if it's happening, is a

white collar crime. And so the idea that

it deserves a response that involves

weapons and officers in the street and

stopping people at random really doesn't

make sense. I mean, the way that you

research fraud is on the computer.

You're looking at records. You're maybe

eventually going out and doing some

investigative work to shore up what

people have claimed to be true about

their businesses. You do not catch fraud

by stopping people at random in the

street. I will note they've also gutted

Republicans over time the IRS's fraud

division. There's a lot of tax fraud. It

is a lot bigger than daycare fraud in

Minnesota. And the I would say concern

with taxpayer money uh not showing up

where it should seems a little bit

selective to me here.

>> That's right. I mean, I I was talking to

one political analyst yesterday about

what's happening in Minnesota with this

fraud scheme. I thought he put it really

well.

Labeling Somali immigrants as fraudsters

almost seems like Trump's version of

Ronald Reagan's welfare queen, which is

really convenient at a time when the

country is realizing that this promise

of only focusing immigration enforcement

on hardened criminals isn't being kept.

That far more people are being swept up

by ICE than the public initially

expected. you know, there's people are

turning away from and are questioning

this campaign. And so if you can instead

send this message that suggests that

most or all immigrants, maybe all Somali

immigrants, maybe all African

immigrants, you know, maybe all

immigrants in Minnesota, who knows if

they if you can suggest kind of vaguely

that they may most or all be involved in

some rampant fraud scheme that involves

taking public dollars that are supposed

to be going toward kids for their own

personal use. It it you know makes

people a little bit more sympathetic

toward the fact that this campaign

doesn't look the way that they wanted it

to or that they think they want it to.

>> Well, it also reflects the move towards

these fraud arguments and there is fraud

out there. There's fraud from

immigrants. There is much fraud from

native born Americans.

It reflects the appeal of conflict

expansion I think for the Trump

administration which is to say they are

pointing this at blue states where they

can also use it as an attack on

political enemies. So obviously Tim

Waltz his political career seems to more

or less be in shambles. Now they've

talked about moving into California to

try to do this against Gavin Newsome and

and justify uh crackdowns in in

California. But they're I think for them

both the fraud thing is very amorphous

and you know it they're using it to

justify widespread crackdowns that as

you note correctly is not how you run a

fraud investigation but it also creates

a an interface with the political system

and the political leaders of of blue

states. So you can use it to go after

your political enemies as well. It

creates a bit of a twofer for them.

>> You're right. And there are other

examples of the administration focusing

on fraud. I mean, accusing elected

officials that they don't like, of

mortgage fraud, for example. I think

you're making a good point that fraud is

rampant and who is pursued in a fraud

investigation almost says more about who

the investigator wants to target than

the existence of the fraud itself.

Especially when you think about

immigration. So you the Trump

administration is looking at

denaturalizing people, taking their

citizenship away or preventing them from

requesting asylum status based on a

discrepancy between documents just to

walk people through the process. When

you're applying for any form of legal

status in the United States, you're

filling out dozens and dozens of forms.

And some people do it with a lawyer. A

lot of people don't do it with a lawyer.

But any lay man would be confused by

some of these questions in these

applications that are being filled out.

Sometimes the questions seem to conflict

with one another. You know, one document

seems to be putting a request one way,

another a different way. And even people

who are trying their best will end up

with two documents that say two

different things. And it could be very

simple. you know, the omission of a

middle name or an explanation of why you

left the country on the day that you did

or why you came, you know, did you put

on one document that you came for work

and another that you came to visit

family when both were true. So, that is

a a a really powerful pretense or could

be a really powerful pretense for again

clawing legal status back from a lot of

people by claiming fraud. You know, when

you're doing an audit on someone's

entire life, you can find something and

and even the most upstanding immigrants

will tell you there's something on a

document that could be used against

them. And so, it's it really isn't just

an entree to focusing on the people,

whether it's Democratic politicians or

or immigrants that the administration

wants to go after.

>> I want to talk here at the end about the

ideology behind all of this. I mean, we

are discussing,

I think, the most significant change in

policy under Donald Trump. This is the

place where they've put the most energy,

where they've gambled the most, where

they are putting the most new money.

It is very, very important to them.

Why? When you listen to the Trump

administration, its top officials, the

people who seem to influence them and

they listen to, what is their broad

theory of immigration? Why is it such a

problem? What are they trying to to do?

What would be accomplished if they did

succeed? What is the the macro narrative

they seem to believe here?

>> Two-prong answer. So, there are some

people within the Trump administration,

and I would say Steven Miller is their

leader, who want a return to um not just

a majority white country, which of

course we've always been, but one where

white American culture is dominant. that

we're not so much viewed as a diverse

nation of immigrants where different

languages and different foods are

celebrated, but one that is more purely

a white supremacist country. Then you

have people within the administration

and Trump I would consider to be the

highest ranking of course among them

who've latched onto the subject of

immigration because it gives him power.

When Steven Miller started working for

Donald Trump in his first presidential

candidacy, he was a speech writer that

people really weren't sure about until

rallies started and until the president

started to see the incredibly powerful

reaction that he was getting every time

he talked about immigration. And this

led to Miller being empowered throughout

that campaign all the way up until

Trump's first election, which remember

stunned Trump and his inner circle.

People did not expect him to win. And so

this narrative solidified within that

first Trump White House that Miller was

responsible for Trump's success. I think

everything that I've reported suggests

that since then Trump has held on to

that commitment to immigration and that

commitment to Miller not because he is

personally passionate about the issue.

And I would say the same is probably

true for people like Christine Gnome and

Pam Bondi. You know, these are people

who want to support the president and

his consolidation of power and are

latching on to immigration because it

seems to be working. I mean, they

believe that that's why Trump has been

so successful as a politician. So,

really, we're going to have to look at

the midterms and the next presidential

election to see how much that holds. I

do think that populist message, as

misleading as it was, was very powerful

and impactful to the electorate. But you

are seeing the polling change and you

you know at a certain point when you

create the image of these boogeymen and

you promise this unprecedented

deportation campaign, you're going to

have to do it and then the untruths that

you've been spreading are going to

become obvious. I I agree that power and

ideology are are braided for them and

and I think that's why I worry

particularly about the way in which the

scaling up of immigration funding of

domestic law enforcement

creates a a kind of apparatus. It can be

used in different ways. I mean I look at

the CBP and ICE I think about what their

recruitment videos and social media

presence looks like. I think about the

people in the masks. I think about who

would join it now given how

controversial it is. And it's very hard

as somebody who's, you know, read some

history of other places not to see the

at least possibility of a domestic

paramilitary force.

How real or overstated do you find that

concern?

>> I mean, I I don't necessarily You don't

want to be alarmist, of course. I know

you don't either, but I don't think that

it's overstated in the fact that the

president himself has said that he'd

like to unleash American troops within

the interior of the country. But I I

think we do have to believe Trump when

he says what he wants to do and he has

not gone so far as to say he plans to

unleash a domestic paramilitary force.

But I think he's also said lots of

things that come very close to that. We

have to take those seriously. I've seen

a lot more discussion among particularly

liberals of what was once just a social

media hashtag which is abolishing ICE

and the view that after this given its

leadership given who it's recruiting

that there's not going to be a way to

reform this organization that that you

just it's a younger agency that you're

just going to need to to get rid of it

much like Trump got rid of USA ID. What

have you thought about that discussion?

Usually when I hear abolish ICE, I think

it's coming from the realization people

are having about what our immigration

laws actually are and what they allow,

which is that anyone who does not have

legal status in the country is subject

to deportation. It doesn't matter if

you're best friends with a bunch of

families at church. It doesn't matter if

you're beloved in your community. You've

lived here for 20 or 30 years. you've

never committed a crime. You have a

bunch of American children. They're in

the military. You are subject to

deportation if you don't have legal

status. And for the vast majority of the

undocumented population, there is no

pathway to legal status. This is another

thing that people don't realize. I got

an email from a reader after a recent

story saying to me, Caitlyn, you're

writing about all these people you say

have been in the United States for 15 or

16 years. Why don't they just become

citizens instead of trying to leech off

the system and refusing to pay taxes?

And I had to write this person back and

say, you undocumented immigrants

contribute billions of dollars to the

American tax base every year. And trust

me, if these folks in my story could

have become citizens, they would have

eagerly done so to avoid being detained

and potentially deported after so much

time in the country. Those options do

not exist. And Congress controls all of

that. ICE does not control that. ICE can

only do what the law tells it to do. The

law on its face says everybody who

doesn't have status is deportable. So

even more so now I could see people

saying ICE they would want ICE to be

abolished at some point in the future

because you're going to have this

massive workforce that is is disaligned

with what I think a lot of people think

immigration enforcement should look like

in the United States. My sense is that

the country would not support a world in

which there was no immigration

enforcement. I I don't see that um as a

realistic possibility, but I think that

a lot of the anger behind this abolish

ICE message really directed really comes

out of people's frustration and they may

not realize this with what Congress has

told ICE to do.

>> Ben, as our final question, what are

three books you recommend to the

audience?

Okay. So, I'm going to recommend um

Impossible Subjects by May Nye. This is

kind of a holy grail book for

immigration nerds, but it's eminently

readable and it tells the story of

Americans relationship to immigrants. Um

really helps people understand how we

reached this moment and how immigration

enforcement has really always been

subjective. You know, it's never been as

simple as figuring out who's legal and

who isn't. It's really more been about

who's desirable and who isn't. So, I

really recommend that book by May Nye. I

also want to recommend Solito by Javier

Zamora going in the complete different

direction. If you want to learn more

about immigration in this moment, but

you don't want to read about policy, you

don't want to read anything wonky. You

just want to read an incredibly

beautiful story that helps you

understand what it's like to come to the

United States to cross borders in

general. What does it mean to be an

immigrant? It's a gorgeous book. The

last book that I'm going to recommend is

Meditations for Mortals by Oliver

Burkeman. So, I don't know about you,

but to get through the last few years,

meditation has been really critical for

me. And I've read a million books about

it, but this one is just incredibly

accessible. So, I think whether you've

been reading about mindfulness for years

and you need a refresher or you're

trying to jump into it for the first

time, I think this is a really great

book to kind of get you started and help

get you fortified to learn about what's

happening in the world right now and

kind of understand your place in it and

understand what to do about it. That's

where I'd start.

>> Caitlyn Dickerson, thank you very much.

>> Thank you.

Hey.