Narrator/Voiceover (2:57)

Iranians are risking their lives to show the world the brutality. The reg unleashed a ruthless crackdown it's tried to conceal under the COVID of a communications blackout.

Anonymous Iranian Doctor (3:14)

There were bursts of automatic fire, screaming, people gathering, protests, the staccato of dushka bursts, people shrieking and slogans in the street. I opened the window briefly. The smell of gunpowder and tear gas was everywhere.

Narrator/Voiceover (3:27)

This is the voice of a doctor who's just left Iran. He's sharing his account exclusively with CNN and the pro referen forum news outlet Iran Wire. He still fears for his safety. So we are concealing his identity. We're bringing you this rare firsthand testimony of what he witnessed inside the country. He says the crackdown intensified dramatically on Thursday. It was just as we began getting pictures of larger crowds out on the streets of Iranian cities.

Anonymous Iranian Doctor (4:02)

Everything fell apart. At 8pm the Internet was cut. At 8:20, I got a call from the hospital. Doctor. Come. You must come. When I arrived, I saw what we call a mass casualty situation. Every single One of the four operating rooms was full. I was there from 10 or 11pm until the morning. I don't know how many surgeries I did, maybe 10 or 11.

Narrator/Voiceover (4:24)

This is one of the few videos to have surfaced from inside Iran's hospitals. It shows some of the injured. But the doctor's testimony paints an even more distressing picture.

Anonymous Iranian Doctor (4:40)

From midnight Thursday onward, the type of injuries changed. The live rounds started. By Friday evening, all the beds were full. Most had pellet injuries and similar wounds.

Narrator/Voiceover (4:53)

Throughout these and previous protests, the regime's security forces raided hospitals and hunted down injured protesters and the medical staff treating.

Kouta Ben Haniya (5:01)

Them.

Narrator/Voiceover (5:09)

Turning places of healing into scenes of horror.

Anonymous Iranian Doctor (5:16)

There was so much fear. Three patients contacted me through intermediaries. I was afraid to answer, wanting to make sure it wasn't security agents trying to trap me.

Narrator/Voiceover (5:28)

The true scale of the carnage is only just beginning to emerge. Once again, so many Iranians find themselves abandoned and alone in this nightmare.

Anonymous Iranian Doctor (5:42)

The hope being pumped by external media is not what we feel inside. Inside Iran, it's a mix of terror, desperation, and a tiny flickering shred of hope.

Narrator/Voiceover (5:55)

Jomana, Karachi, cnn.

Christiane Amanpour (5:59)

And like many reporters, I've also received word of these voice messages which are regularly being sent out to explain from the ground there in Tehran what's going on. One woman talks about how one night in their neighborhood, they witnessed the Basij, which are the shock troops, if you like, of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, coming in on motor bicycles and firing what they called automatic weapons. They used the word Kalashnikov, and they said that everybody in that street, we're trying to help each other, trying to get out of the way of that. So these reports keep coming out. For its part, the Foreign Ministry has now been saying for the last two days that they have the situation under control and that nothing big has been happening on the streets since. They also say many of the security forces have been killed as well. So this is a critical moment for the regime, caught now between threats from its own people and from the United States. But what options does the US Have? Elliott Abrams served as President Trump's Special representative for Iran during his first term. And he joined me a little earlier from Washington. Elliot Abrams, welcome to the program.

Elliott Abrams (7:11)

Thank you.

Christiane Amanpour (7:12)

Uh, this seems to be a very, very critical moment in not only the situation for the people of Iran, but relations between the United States and Iran. Uh, we've played President Trump multiple times, you know, saying to the Iranians, help is on the way. And now I just want to ask you first to react to that before I play another little bit of what he said.

Elliott Abrams (7:32)

Well, I think he's painted himself into a corner. Help is on the way is pretty stark. It means I am going to do something. And he has in the past, you know, criticized President Obama, the red line over the use of gas in Syria. He's got to act now. He's got a few days to do it in maybe a week at most. At most. But he's got to act.

Christiane Amanpour (7:58)

Wow. You don't sound like you agree with this, but I'm going to play a little bit more and then you can tell me this is more of that statement calling on Iranians to protest. And by the way, to all Iranian.

Elliott Abrams (8:10)

Patriots, keep protesting, take over your institutions if possible.

Christiane Amanpour (8:17)

So how do you interpret that, Mr. Elliot Abrams? I have never heard an American president actually say that to any case, except we'll go back to the first Gulf War. But that's quite a thing for an American president to do, right?

Elliott Abrams (8:30)

Yes. I mean, he's calling on them to remain in the streets, take over institutions means, I guess, seize buildings, which is why I think that really, considering the rate at which people are being killed in the streets, he's got to act. And I would think before the weekend is over.

Christiane Amanpour (8:49)

Can you tell me then, given that you were his adviser, as we stated, on Iran and indeed Venezuela in the first term, and you help create maximum pressure and those packages, what do you think he should do? And should he do something you said painted himself into the corner?

Elliott Abrams (9:05)

Well, I think he should act. I think he has to now. But, yes, I think we should show more than just verbal support for the Iranian people. Just saying, you know, the world is watching or something like that doesn't help them. So what would I think that doing something like hitting missile sites or nuclear sites today doesn't help them? I would hope he would look at, for example, cyber options that actually hurt the regime and its ability to suppress the Iranian people.

Christiane Amanpour (9:38)

So do you not think that they should? Because it's very difficult to pass. Obviously they're not going to tell us what they're going to do if Anything. But some are thinking about missile strikes or, you know, the kind of thing that he did around Venezuela before actually abducting, abducting the President there, you know, hitting the boats, et cetera.

Elliott Abrams (9:57)

Well, the equivalent would be if there are reasonable targets hitting, for example, Revolutionary Guard headquarters sites that are actually used in the suppression of demonstrations. If we have such targets, then they are reasonable action for the president to take.

Christiane Amanpour (10:16)

Mr. Abrams, I mentioned the first Gulf War. You will remember that President George H.W. bush essentially urged the Shiites and the Kurds in Iraq to rise up and depose President Saddam Hussein after the US and the coalition kicked him out of Kuwait. And then they did rise up and the US did not come to their help and they were massacred. They were slaughtered. We all covered it. Is there a risk that this could be, I don't know, this could happen in Iran if people believe the President's going to come to their help and come out and put themselves at risk on the streets? Sure.

Elliott Abrams (10:53)

I mean, if he acts and demonstrations increase and you have a kind of Tiananmen Square where the regime continues to do even more of what it is already doing, which is shooting down what looks to be thousands of people, and then the rebellion is put down and the United States does nothing more, then yes, that would be a terrible situation. And I hope the President and his advisers thought about that before he in essence, encouraged further demonstrations.

Christiane Amanpour (11:25)

You've been covering, watching, dealing with the Iran file, so to speak, for many, many decades. What is your assessment? Because I know everybody, whether it's in the US Government, in the Israeli government, in the diaspora, wherever there is, every time there is an uprising, and I've covered many of them, people immediately say, this is it, the regime is about to fall. Do you see a difference this time?

Elliott Abrams (11:48)

I see a difference in that it didn't start with students at universities. It started with bizaris. It started with middle class people and then spread A, B, it's really all over the country. And C, there is a new focus on Reza Pahlavi, a figure who didn't appear in the past. But I would say what I think we have not seen yet, I've certainly not been privy to it. Is any breaking up of the security forces, I don't see yet disloyalty. I don't see security forces refusing to follow orders. Maybe that's happening and they're covering it up. But that would be a critical ingredient if the regime is really going to start falling.

Christiane Amanpour (12:36)

The regime has said that more than 100 security forces have been killed and they've shown what they call the funerals of martyrs on the state television. So they are admitting that those security forces have also been killed as well as obviously hundreds if not thousands of protesters. Let's talk about Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah who was overthrown by this Islamic movement by Khomeini, Ayatollah Khomeini, 46 odd years ago. The President Trump has avoided out and out, you know, put throwing his weight behind him or saying that he's going to meet him. He has enabled though, his envoy, Steve Witkoff, to open a channel and I guess to meet Reza Pahlavi. You've been covering this for a long time. What kind of support organization, Coherence Unity, does the Iranian exile opposition movement have around Pahlavi, for instance?

Elliott Abrams (13:33)

Well, he certainly has many supporters inside the country. I cannot tell you how well organized they are. And I don't think the United States should be in a sense trying to pick a winner and say he's our guy and we want to restore some kind of constitutional monarchy. But I am very struck by what looks to be a wave of support for him. And you know, Christiane, I saw him on TV wearing a suit and a white shirt and a tie. And I thought that will appeal to tens of millions of Iranians. No more of the mullahs in their robes and their shirts collared up to here. A normal western looking, modern looking person dressed normally, I think will appeal to millions of Iranians. That's what they want. That's the future they want. I think that helps them a great deal.

Christiane Amanpour (14:29)

Let me just, since you brought that up, you know as well as I do the history of American intervention, involvement, coups in Iran, not to ment deposing Mossadegh for the oil, if you remember, along with the Brits during the height of the Cold War in the early 50s and bringing back the Shah, that led to a whole load of backlash that eventually culminated with the 79 revolution that brought the Ayatollahs. Is there a risk for the United States in trying to manage any kind of intervention, much less if Israel is involved? Is there a risk that this could all backfire?

Elliott Abrams (15:09)

There's always a risk, but I don't think it's a very great one because I think in past decades the regime had nationalism in its favor. It doesn't anymore. The people of Iran, the great majority, appear to have reached the conclusion that this regime is ruining the country, that their support for Hezbollah and Hamas, that their nuclear program has wasted tons of money that Iran really does not have that has created an enemy relationship with the United States and with Israel that they don't need to have. So I think a lot of people thought last year after the Israeli and American attacks, oh, Iranians are going to rise up in a, in nationalist fervor. They didn't. Nationalism now works against the regime.

Christiane Amanpour (15:58)

And to be fair, all those things you say, you know, may be true, but the thing that really sparked this one was their quality of life, poverty. They're being plunged into partly because of maximum pressure that you've all engineered, but also because of total mismanagement by this regime. They want a decent living. So what I want to ask you then, do you believe because again, you have the, you did have the Venezuela file. This is what Iran expert Suzanne Maloney wrote just now. Faced with a well entrenched and ideologically committed regime, Mr. Trump has no Venezuela option, no limited operation that removes a malignant leader, leaving a newly compliant power structure that maintains some semblance of order. So a, do you agree that there's no Venezuela option? And B, do you have you heard, like some analysts are saying, that perhaps the Trump administration is actually trying to make a deal with the irgc, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps?

Elliott Abrams (16:56)

Well, there is no snatch and grab option in Tehran. That's correct. The president this week ruled out negotiations until all of this violence stops. I certainly hope that if it stops being still in place, he doesn't immediately start negotiations that will end up actually strengthening the regime and in that sense forgetting about or even rewarding them for the massive violence against the people of Iran. I do think we have options for weakening the regime, for example, using naval power and air power to prevent them from continuing to violate our sanctions on the export of Iranian oil. We did a lot of that in the Trump first term. And in the last four or five years, there's been less enforcement and a lot more oil has been getting out and going primarily to China. We can stop that. We can certainly try to stop that. That's a medium term thing. That's not going to affect today's demonstrations there. I think the question is, are there ways of weakening the regime and its security forces?

Christiane Amanpour (18:07)

All right, Elliot Abrams, thank you very much indeed for joining us.

Elliott Abrams (18:11)

Thank you, Christian.

Christiane Amanpour (18:13)

Later in the program, the Voice of Hindra Job, an award winning film based on the heartbreaking story of a young Palestinian girl, Israel's final hours before she was shot dead by the IDF in Gaza. I speak with the writer and director Kouta Ben Haniya. In Gaza Israel continues to kill people, more than 400 since the ceasefire came into effect. And so many are still grieving those who were lost at the height of the war. Among them thousands of children. The death of one little girl in particular is seared into the memories of many. In January 2024, five year old Hind Rajab was trapped in a car with her relatives under fire by Israeli forces. When she called the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, she used a mobile phone. She pleaded for someone to rescue her, but in the end it was too late. She was killed by those Israeli forces in that area. The Red Crescent posted audio of Hind's own desperate voice, which shocked the world. Now filmmaker Kauta Bin Haniya has turned that audio into a feature film. It is called the Voice of Hindrajab. And here is some of the trailer. Just begin. And Kouto Ben Hania joins me now in the studio. You know, many people have seen it and written that it's almost impossible to watch this. How do you feel about that, given that you're trying to make people watch it and see it and understand?

Kouta Ben Haniya (20:36)

I know that many people have fears. I was scared to death while I was doing this movie. But I think it's important to watch it. Why? Because this is not a story. This is history. We can't afford to look away. And I often tell people who tell me it's hard, I don't know if I can handle it. I tell them, it's not your life. Thanks God. So bear witness. And if it's really hard, do something about it.

Christiane Amanpour (21:11)

So tell me, you're Tunisian, you were in the middle of doing another movie when you heard this audio that was posted and that it shocked so many people around the world. What did you think when you heard it? You're talking about having to bear witness.

Kouta Ben Haniya (21:29)

You know, the first millisecond I was thinking she was asking me to save her, you know, which was interesting. But her voice was so alive, so immediate that the feeling I had when I understood the situation was unbearable, you know, hearing a child pleading for life. And I was, I felt helpless. And I hate it when I feel helpless. So I asked myself, what can I do? I'm a filmmaker, you know, I can do, I can give a space at least for this little girl to be remembered and to be heard, you know, because hearing her voice on social media wasn't, you know, the right place to remember. Social media is not place for, you know, mourning and to remember and to bear witness also, because you forget, you know, social media, it's about scrolling.

Christiane Amanpour (22:18)

But you didn't forget. And this one really, really, you know, it really cracked through the defenses that people were just so up to here with the war. But this one really make a difference. So tell me a little bit so that our audience fully understands this happened in 2024. Israel was bombing in response to the horrendous attack by Hamas on October 7th the year before. And shewhy was she in this car? How was she able to call out? What was her situation at that moment where you're describing in this film?

Kouta Ben Haniya (22:52)

Yeah, that day the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of Tellel Hawa neighborhood. So her mother, it was raining. We are in January 2024. And her mother wanted to protect her, so she put her in a car with her uncle, aunt and four cousin to flee, you know, the area. They were shot at like 500 meters away from home. They, all of them were killed except Laene and her cousin Laine, her name, the cousin of Hind. And so she was. The Red Crescent people called the phone and they talked to Laene. And we know this is a very famous, you know, recording piece that was all over Internet. Lain was killed on the phone with the Red Crescent people.

Christiane Amanpour (23:52)

Okay, so let's just stop for a second. So the Red Crescent is the Palestinian version of their Red Cross. Yes, it's an aid operation that operates all over the west bank and Gaza.

Kouta Ben Haniya (24:04)

They were in Ramallah because all the lines.

Christiane Amanpour (24:06)

Which is in the west bank way away from Gaza.

Kouta Ben Haniya (24:08)

Exactly, because all the lines were bombarded by the Israeli army. So if you have an emergency and you call the Red Crescent number to have an ambulance, you will be transferred automatically to the West Bank.

Christiane Amanpour (24:22)

Yes. Where they had the central command station, essentially. So let us play the first clip that we have. And this is where the medics from Ramallah, Red Crescent are speaking to Hind in the car. Shall speak in the.

Elliott Abrams (24:38)

Shall we speak.

Christiane Amanpour (25:05)

So again, she says Hanoud, that we understand is a diminutive, a sort of a nickname for Hind.

Kouta Ben Haniya (25:10)

Yeah. And he's asking about her sister because just before he had Laene the cousin.

Christiane Amanpour (25:16)

And thinking it was her sister.

Kouta Ben Haniya (25:18)

Exactly. And she was saying, I'm alone. I'm alone. And what she means, actually that she was the sole survivor of all her family and she was surrounded by dead body of six member of her family talking to those first responders in the car.

Christiane Amanpour (25:37)

Let's not forget, they're not out of the car. They're still trapped, hiding in the car. The forces are somewhere outside and they're desperate. Now, this is Hind Rajab's voice. Your film is called that. It is that it is extraordinary. I don't know whether there are other films, feature films, because this is not a documentary. But all of these others are actors. Yeah, but Hind's voice is her voice. Tell me about that. Why did you just not do a documentary? What was the. What was the artistic and historical witness you want to bear using that format?

Kouta Ben Haniya (26:12)

I have to mention that what the actors are saying is word by word what the real person said in those recordings. So I needed to be very faithful and close to those recordings. I thought about doing a documentary in the beginning because I'm a documentary filmmaker, but quickly understood that there was great work done by the forensic architect, for example, the Washington Post, they did a great piece, investigation around the killing of Hendra Zhab, which kind of weapon was used and where were the tank with the satellite images. So you have all the proof of this war crime outside in the world. And Al Jazeera, actually they did a documentary. And I thought that maybe cinema can do something better than explaining. We are done explaining at some point. You know, cinema can provoke empathy. We can be with those incredible hero trying to save life in a very, very difficult condition. And I needed to be with them, you know, to hear his voice, because they are the one who listened. They are the one who tried and did everything and paid a heavy price, actually, because they lost two colleague, Ahmed Madhoon and Yusuf Zainu.

Christiane Amanpour (27:36)

We'll come to that in a moment. Yeah, we'll come to that in a moment. But I want to know, because this is now the artistic part. These actors, Omar and the others in the film, the medics who are trying to help Hind and try to organize her extraction, did they even know? Had they heard the voice? Did they know? Did you practice? Did you rehearse?

Kouta Ben Haniya (27:55)

You know, when I made a choice to tell this story with actors, to do a movie in the present tense, to go back to this moment when saving her was possible, not to do a movie about historic thing. You know, when I made this decision, I was asking those actors something very hard equation for an actor, which is to be faithful word by word to what is said by the real person, because they are portraying real person and at the same time to be in the present time as if they were the real person. So what we did actually that they learned their lines as actors do, word by word. And when we started shooting, they received the voice and they heard the voice of Hendra Zhaab for the first time in front of the camera. So what we see in the movie.

Christiane Amanpour (28:48)

It'S not acting, it's genuine emotion.

Kouta Ben Haniya (28:50)

It's beyond performance. It's them reacting to the voice of.

Christiane Amanpour (28:54)

This little girl and it really comes through. I mean I was. It was like. It just like goes right through you. The force of that emotion and what they're forced to cope with and they can't do anything. The rescuers are just the rescuers in Gaza who they're trying to coordinate to get to her. Only eight minutes away. Yeah, but yet they're trapped inside layer upon layer inside, you know, that's closed off by the idf. I think there's coordination that has to happen. That word between the Israelis and the Palestinian rescuers. Now, Masha Gessen, as you know, New York Times op ed has called it the movie I was afraid to see writing. What I didn't realize when I resisted seeing the movie was that these deaths were not its subject. The subject of the movie is the moral injury inflicted on people who became implicated in these deaths even as they tried to prevent them. Do you agree with that? Is the subject the injury that they face in trying to save a life that in the end they couldn't save and the whole coordination conundrum or is it about the death of this little girl?

Kouta Ben Haniya (30:01)

It's about all those things, you know. And I decided to tell the story from the point of view of the Red Crescent first responder. Because when you think there is an ambulance eight minutes away and we have a child surrounded by the dead body of her family, why don't you send the ambulance? This is the first question any normal person ask himself, you know. And when I understood that there is a set of rules imposed by the Israeli occupation that they have go through so they don't bomb the ambulance. And the Red Crescent did everything to respect this set of rules. And they got the approval and they got the green light, the secure route. And the Israelis were aware of this ambulance coming and they bomb it meter away from the car. We hear it on the recording. We have Yousef Zainu saying the bus, the ambulance aid worker saying on the phone in the recording, there she is. He saw the car and we hear the bombing on the phone, you know, so you think this bureaucracy set by design by the occupation is something that the Israeli don't respect themselves, you know, but they need the Palestinian to respect it, you know. So for me this was outrageous. I couldn't like not explain this in the movie.

Christiane Amanpour (31:36)

I want to play just before this final burst of fire that kills her. What's happening Again, in the control area where they're trying to get it. This is now sort of an argument between Omar, who we saw before, one of the. The person who was on the phone with Hind, and, and. And. And Mahdi, who I believe is in charge of that department. So this is the tension that's going on as they're trying to save a life and obeying those rules that you just talked about.

Kouta Ben Haniya (32:17)

She's bleeding.

Christiane Amanpour (32:39)

Ambulance. So, yeah, she needs an ambulance. Pure and simple. These two represent sort of the conflict in trying to do this under these circumstances. Tell me a little bit about that.

Kouta Ben Haniya (32:54)

You know, all of them want the same thing, to save this little girl. And actually Mahdi is saying in the movie, if I'm losing.

Christiane Amanpour (33:05)

He's the supervisor.

Kouta Ben Haniya (33:06)

Yes, he's the coordination officer. If I'm losing other colleague, I resign. And this is what the real Mahdi did after Hindrazab's story, because he's in a very, very hard position. He's the one tasked with the fact to send ambulance, you know, to save life. His job is a noble job, you know, but he's sending people to their death because you have cruelty, you know, because you have war crimes. So he resigned just after this story. And Omar is in this position. He don't trust, you know, those rules and he want to act immediately. And both are right, you know, both positions. So we choose, in the movie, they choose to follow the set of rules imposed by Israel. And at the end, Israel didn't respect those set of rules. She imposed them, you know, so you have this disparate situation of the killing of Yusuf Zaynu and Ahmed Maddo.

Christiane Amanpour (34:15)

Those are the two. Those are the two ambulance medics who came to save him, to save her. Finally they got through these layers of coordination. They got there and at the last moment they were fired upon.

Kouta Ben Haniya (34:27)

Yeah.

Christiane Amanpour (34:28)

And that also, you know, sprayed the car and hinned and was killed, basically. Now, Israel never accepted responsibility for the killing. As you mentioned Washington Post and the New York Times, other outlets investigating, they showed armored vehicles as close as 13 to 20 metres from Hind's car. And the car was hit by 64 bullets from an Israeli tank or machine gun. And the ambulance was struck by a tank shell. Did you ever. I mean, it's just probably. I don't know, it's a silly question. Did you ever try to put the Israelis in it as well? Did you ever try to get a response or have an actor play that part?

Kouta Ben Haniya (35:11)

You know, the Israelis say their response, they are denying. They are denying this and you know, when you tell a story in cinema, it's not like journalism. You choose a point of view. You know, you have one point of view and you stick to it because you need to be in the shoes of those characters. So the Israeli perspective was, you know, for me who to portray, you know.

Christiane Amanpour (35:38)

Okay, very quickly about the response because it's been really critically acclaimed and received. We saw images of, what was it, a 23 minute standing ovation at the premiere at the Venice Film Festival. You know, executive producers like Brad Pitt, Alfonso Cuaron, Jonathan Glazer. But as almost all Palestinian films, it has struggled to get a US Distribution. What does that say to you and have you made any inroads since this to get it?

Kouta Ben Haniya (36:06)

Yeah, I mean, thanks God the movie is distributed right now in the United States. It was very hard because another movie about another subject with all these praise. At Venice Film Festival, we won the Silver lion and you expect it to be distributed by a huge distributor. It wasn't the case, but I knew it, it would be a fight, you know, and thanks God the movie is being distributed in a small scale, but people are coming to watch it.

Christiane Amanpour (36:40)

Well, good luck to you. It's an incredible story and you've done it in most amazing and powerful way.

Kouta Ben Haniya (36:45)

Thank you.

Christiane Amanpour (36:46)

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Kouta Ben Haniya (36:48)

Thank you very much.

Christiane Amanpour (36:49)

The voice of Hindra Job is out now in the U.S. france, Spain, Middle east, and it's coming to UK cinemas on Friday. Coming up, protests continue a week after the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Goode. That's in the United States. How easy will it be for her family to seek accountability? Cato Institute legal fellow Mike Fox weighs in. That's after a break. Now, outrage over the surging presence of federal agents in Minneapolis continues as the United States reels from the deadly shooting of Renee Goode by an ICE officer last week. Minnesota and Illinois are now suing the Trump administration, while new calls to defund ICE are emerging amongst Democrats. But what about actual accountability for Good's death? Six federal prosecutors quit yesterday after the Justice Department pushed for a criminal investigation into Renee Good's widow. Mike Fox is a legal fellow at the Cato Institute, and in a new op ed, he highlights this tragedy and its aftermath, which are part of a wider trend, he says, of federal impunity. Here he is with Hari Srinivasan Christianan.

Hari Srinivasan (38:07)

Thanks, Mike Fox, thanks so much for joining us. Just this past week, Renee Good was shot and killed on a residential street in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by a U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement agent named Jonathan Ross. You Wrote recently in an op ed something that kind of caught our eye, which was that this is part of a pattern. And tell us, what is that pattern?

Mike Fox (38:29)

Yeah. Hari, good to be here. Thanks for having me. So, you know, it's difficult to get data from the government, from Border Patrol, from ice, from the Department of Homeland Security. There's been a pretty good investigative report in the Wall Street Journal. And then I took what they wrote and tried to parse through. And from what I can gather, since July, the immigration enforcement, be it ICE or Border Patrol, have shot 13 times at individuals in cars. Of those, they've hit eight people. Two, including Renee Goode, were killed. So one of the patterns that's emerged in these cases, as soon as the government shoots someone in a vehicle. And by the government, I'm referring to ICE and Border Patrol, the propaganda machine. Assistant Secretary Trisha McLaughlin, who's the communications guru for the Department of Homeland Security, starts trying to frame the narrative in a way that the agents are always right and the civilians are always wrong, trying to sanitize their hands, paint the person who was shot at as being some horrific, violent criminal. They were already calling Renee Goode a domestic terrorist, taking the side of the officers who were accused of killing them. The reality is, because there were many instances where this is what Ms. McLaughlin was saying, and it's been objectively false, and it's been proven false, we've seen a number of instances where she's alleged people have committed these heinous crimes only for the cases to fall apart the second they get into court.

Hari Srinivasan (40:00)

One of the things that you wrote about that I want to highlight for our audience, you said the tragedy of the GOOD case is compounded by a legal regime that all but ensures federal agents remain untouchable by civil damages lawsuits. If good surviving family members attempt to sue Ross and the agents involved in her shooting for violating her civil rights, they will almost certainly find no remedy in a courtroom. How?

Mike Fox (40:27)

It's pretty clear if you pull the Department of Homeland Security use of force guidelines, which were Last updated in 2023, ICE and Border Patrol are bound by those guidelines. They're required to follow them. It's also pretty obvious that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security are not going to take any remedial measures. They're not going to punish him, dock his pay, fire him, do anything like that. So the only other ways that would be that would be to hold him or other agents, federal agents, accountable for constitutional violations would be criminal case, which is, obviously, we're not going to see the Trump administration federally prosecute this, and prosecuting at the state level poses a number of legal challenges. And that's assuming that the investigators from the federal investigators with the FBI, even cooperate with the state investigators to give them the evidence and the transcripts of interviews and body cam footage and things that would be necessary to pursue a criminal case, which they pretty clearly are trying to screen Minnesota investigators out of. So civil damages would be what most people think. And what that is, is that's the ability to go into court and seek money damages when your constitutional rights have been violated. In 1871, Congress passed a law that's commonly known as Section 1983. And that law was passed following the Civil War. There were newly freed slaves in the south who had all these wonderful rights on paper, but as they went to vindicate them or to exercise them, they were finding state and local officials in the south were precluding those rights from being exercised. So Congress passed this law allowing private citizens to go into court and seek monetary damages against state and local officials. That has never been extended to the federal government. And if you think about why, it kind of makes sense, right at the time in the 1870s, the ones violating the Constitution were the states and local governments in the South. They were not the federal government. But also, historically, the federal government's been one of enumerated powers. Very small, was never intended to do a whole lot. Flash forward about 100 years, and the federal government is involved in every aspect of our lives. So in 1965, there's a gentleman named Webster Bivens. Webster Bivens is in his Brooklyn apartment minding his own business when the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which was the precursor to the DEA or the Drug Enforcement Administration, barged in without a warrant, strip searched him, and made an arrest. Mr. Bivens decided to take his case all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. And six years later, the court read an implied right of action to sue federal officials for Fourth Amendment violations. Over the years, the court extended it a little bit, but the court over the past few decades has become increasingly reluctant to extend Bivens. Some of the more conservative justices want to actually get rid of it entirely. There were two cases within the past decade or so where the court could have extended Bivins to immigration enforcement contacts. And both times, the court did not do so, citing unfounded national security concerns. It's also worth noting, of course, that the cases that we're talking about now, by and large, don't even deal with immigration enforcement. Ms. Good was a U.S. citizen, they deal with street level policing. But because the court has so withered away Bivins and never extended it to the immigration context, and because the statutory cause of Action, Section 1983, only applies to state and local actors, if your constitutional rights are violated by federal agents, like ICE agents or Border patrol agents, you are without recourse to get into federal court. And the other point that I would make is, on the off chance that you somehow get into federal court, like in some utopian world where I become a federal judge and allow the case to proceed, you're still not going to get recourse because there's this doctrine known as qualified immunity. And that doctrine was created by the supreme court in the 1960s, and it stands in direct contradiction of the statute I mentioned earlier called section 1983. And what qualified immunity does is it says that unless you can identify a case where the exact same thing happened in the exact same jurisdiction. So unless Ms. Good's family could go into court and prove that an agent, an ICE agent, violated someone else's rights in the exact same way that their loved ones rights were violated in the 8th Circuit, which is where Minnesota stands, they have no redress. And of course, qualified immunity only matters if Congress were to codify Bivens or if the court were to recognize a implied right to sue federal immigration agents in the first place. So these two doctrines working together make it all but impossible to ever get into federal court seeking civil damages.

Hari Srinivasan (45:33)

If I'm hearing you correctly, her family would have more rights for recourse if it was a Minneapolis police officer or a state police officer that did this. Right. And you're saying that given the way that the laws are structured today, a federal agent can, in broad daylight, shoot someone and not be held accountable, depending on the administration's interests.

Mike Fox (46:04)

Yeah, that's exactly right. So let's say instead of being shot by an ICE agent, she was shot by a Minneapolis police officer. Right. She could sue. She could then get into federal court. She could bring a cause of action under section 1983. Of course, unless she could find another case in the 8th Circuit where someone's rights were violated in exactly the same way, the officer will likely benefit from qualified immunity. So it's a monumental battle. But at least there's a way to initially get into court, whereas with the federal agent for constitutional violations, there's not. And yeah, I think, I think most people are shocked when they see the impunity that federal agents can act with. They can literally gun a woman down on a public street. In broad daylight and face absolutely zero semblance of accountability. That should shock people to the core.

Hari Srinivasan (46:48)

I just want to get your reaction to a statement that Trisha McLaughlin made to Time magazine after this shooting. It said it's a pattern of vehicles being used as weapons by violent agitators to attack our law enforcement. Dangerous criminal criminals, whether they be illegal aliens or US Citizens, are assaulting law enforcement and turning their vehicles into weapons to attack law enforcement within minutes and hours of an incident. You see the spokespeople or even leadership coming out before, you know, there is an opportunity for everyone just to get the facts on the ground of what happened. I mean, is there sort of. Is that strategic and tactical?

Mike Fox (47:27)

Oh, yeah. I mean, I think the end goal is to try to make the government look like the good guys and make anyone they deal with. With look bad, look like a domestic terrorist, portray a certain perspective. They're professional agitators. They're people with extensive criminal histories. Now, has ICE and Border Patrol arrested some violent offenders with extensive criminal histories? Oh, yeah. There's some cases ongoing for serious charges, but there's been four cases already that I'm aware of where cases have been dismissed. There's been several where they've yet to be filed. It's just a matter of what matters most. Does following the Constitution and vindicating people's rights matter, or does framing the narrative that Stephen Miller wants pushed around the country and Gregory Bevino wants people to believe is true matter more than the Constitution? I think it's pretty clear which the answer is here.

Hari Srinivasan (48:17)

So right now you are also seeing lawsuits from the state of Minnesota and the state of Illinois against the federal government. They're claiming, among several things, about this. Look, this is a violation of the 10th Amendment. I mean, we are having to push all of our police officers to all these different events instead of the jobs that they need to do and that the federal agents are terrorizing communities. Now, what's the likelihood that lawsuits like this against the federal government go forward?

Mike Fox (48:45)

Yeah, so it's important to distinguish. So these lawsuits are seeking injunctive relief. What they're doing is they're asking a federal judge, in this case, the state of Minnesota, the state of Illinois, are asking a federal judge. We've seen these cases happen in other jurisdictions. Kato Institute just filed an amicus brief and support of a challenge in Kern County, California, and the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. What they're asking is they're asking a federal judge to issue an injunction barring the agencies from operating as they are from violating the Constitution prolifically, from terrorizing civilians. And just all they're really asking is for the agencies to follow the law and do what they're supposed to do. From what I understand, the Attorney General of Minnesota simply wants ICE to conduct immigration enforcement, which is what ICE is supposed to do. I don't think that's in any way unreasonable. Now, the question as to how successful these lawsuits are going to be depends. Right. We've seen some cases where there's been success in the lower courts. I think eventually the Supreme Court's going to have to deal with the merits of these cases. And, you know, by and large, there'll be different questions. The questions in some of them is, can the government stop people or seize people on account of something like ethnicity and the fact that they're outside of Home Depot or working at a farm? If you open the Constitution, the answer couldn't be clearer. We don't live in a world where your Fourth Amendment rights depend upon the color of your skin or what country you were born in. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees with that. And then you have other questions like, are the courts going to be willing to stop stop what's going on in Minnesota and what's going on in Illinois? I certainly hope so. Right. The courts are really our last line of defense here.

Hari Srinivasan (50:29)

But is there anything that Congress can do to constrain how federal troops act on U.S. soil?

Mike Fox (50:36)

Yeah. And just to be clear, I'm not talking about federal troops as in the military. I'm talking about ICE and Border Patrol. Yeah. So Congress controls the power of the purse. Right. Congress can give ICE and Border Patrol as much or as little money as they would like. Like. Right. Obviously, if Congress were to cut their budget in half, that would dramatically impede their ability to do what they're doing. That would be one way Congress could do it. Right. Other things Congress could do is pass laws that have aggressive enforcement mechanisms. Like, for instance, ice. And Border Patrol agents cannot categorically under any circumstance wear a mask or balaclava on the job. They must have their name and employer on them at all times. But those policies alone don't accomplish anything because the government just ignores them. So you would have to tie it into something. Well, if they don't follow it, they lose X amount of funding. Or if they don't follow it at any time, there's some type of proceeding that gets brought in court, there's an inference against the agent or something like that. That's one thing that we could do. The other thing and I think the most important thing Congress can do is codify, expand Bivens and above.

Christiane Amanpour (51:47)

And we're going to go to Washington right now where the Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers have been at the White House today, and they're about to hold a news conference. Let's listen in.

Hari Srinivasan (51:56)

Capabilities.

Elliott Abrams (51:58)

Not dock slates, but ships, drones, fighter jets, etc.