Are ICE immigration agents acting outside the law?

Summary

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Americast – Are ICE Immigration Agents Acting Outside the Law?

Date: January 23, 2026
Host: BBC News
Main presenters: Justin Webb, Mariana Spring, Anthony Zurcher
Guest: John Sandweg (Former Acting Director of ICE under Obama)

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Overview

This episode investigates the current state of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under President Trump’s second term, exploring claims that agents are acting outside the law and beyond their traditional remit. The Americast team unpacks how ICE’s role, methods, and accountability have changed, the scale and consequences of mass deportations, and the rapidly intensifying public backlash following high-profile confrontations across American cities—most notably, recent events in Minneapolis.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. How ICE Has Changed Under Trump (01:40 – 03:54)

• Increased Scale and Funding:
  • ICE originated after 9/11 for enforcing immigration laws inside the U.S.
  • Under Trump, ICE has received a dramatic increase in attention and funding—$75 billion in a recent spending bill—allowing a more expansive operation and hiring surge.
  • Target: 3,000 arrests and deportations per day, amounting to over one million annually.
  • Quote:

    “It’s not just criminals... you can’t get to that number, 3,000 a day, without deporting people who... the only laws they violated were the immigration laws.”
    – Anthony, 04:19

2. Who’s Being Targeted and Who’s in Charge? (03:54 – 06:49)

• Beyond Criminals:
  • Enforcement casts a much wider net, including many with no criminal record.
  • Trump administration’s public framing emphasizes violent criminals but the reality sweeps up average workers and families.
• Leadership Dynamics:
  • Stephen Miller remains the driving force behind aggressive enforcement tactics; strategies are designed both for removals and as deterrence.
  • Major drop in attempted border crossings (“encounters”) compared to the Biden years, due to visible deterrence.

3. Public Impact, Backlash, and Notorious Incidents (06:49 – 13:41)

• Community Disruption:
  • ICE activity increasingly visible, leading to confrontations, especially in cities like Minneapolis.
  • The killing of Renee Goode, an unarmed woman, has triggered national scrutiny; reports of aggressive ICE behavior, including actions against U.S. citizens.
• Governor and Mayor Reactions:
  • Gov. Tim Walz (MN) on ICE:

    “Armed, masked, undertrained ICE agents are going door to door, ordering people to point out where their neighbors of color live... kidnapping innocent people with no warning and no due process.” (09:58)

  • Mayor Jacob Frey (Minneapolis):

    “We will not be intimidated by the actions of this federal government... Yes, [citizens] are able to record what is happening, taking place... we are not going to take the bait.” (10:42)

• Distressing Examples:
  • Arrest and detention of 5-year-old Liam Ramos and his father; photographs of a 56-year-old U.S. citizen, Chong Li Scott Tao, detained in freezing temperatures, released after mistaken identity.
  • Quote:

    “Even people who support the policy would... start to think, oh, I’m not. Why are you focusing on people like that?”
    – Mariana, 12:09

4. Shifting Public Opinion & Political Ramifications (13:41 – 15:08)

• Social Media Impact:
  • Undercover Voters segment: Hispanic, politically indifferent voters now inundated with distressing stories, souring on Trump.
• Eroded Support:
  • Immigration enforcement—a former Trump stronghold—is now a political liability, particularly among Hispanic voters targeted or caught up in dragnet tactics.
  • Quote:

    “Support for immigration enforcement [is] dropping to net negative overall... it is becoming a political liability for Donald Trump.”
    – Anthony, 14:07

5. Official Defense of ICE and Presidential Response (15:08 – 17:21)

• ICE and Administration Statements:
  • US Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino:

    “Our operations are lawful, they're targeted, and they're focused on individuals who pose a serious threat to this community... they are not random and they are not political.” (15:27)

  • President Trump acknowledges “mistakes” but defends policy, expressing regret over individual tragedies while emphasizing focus on violent criminals:

    “Sometimes ICE is going to be too rough... Sometimes it can happen. We feel terribly... But her father was a tremendous, and parents were tremendous Trump fans... it’s a hard, hard situation.” (16:06)

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In-Depth Interview: John Sandweg, Former ICE Acting Director (17:57 – 29:52)

Training, Deployment, and the Changing Culture

• Reduced Training for New Agents (18:52 – 20:34)

  • Standard ICE agent training has shrunk from 13 weeks to 8 weeks to meet ambitious hiring goals.
  • Background checks and vetting have been loosened; experience thresholds lowered.
  • Quote:

    “We’ve seen the training shrink from a 13 week standard course now down to an eight week... alarmingly, the next two, three years, we’re gonna see all these new agents hitting the streets with a lot less training than they had before.”
    – John Sandweg, 19:31

• Rules of Engagement and Deployment (21:47 – 24:09)

  • Use of force rules “pretty much the same” as other US law enforcement: escalate only when necessary, deadly force only if lives are at risk.
  • The real issue is ICE agents doing tasks they are untrained for—large-scale, street-level encounters with civilians and protesters.
  • Quote:

    “ICE agents typically are not encountering people in motor vehicles ... they’re being deployed in a way that’s inconsistent with their training.”
    – John Sandweg, 23:20

• Diversion of Focus and National Security Risks (24:26 – 26:29)

  • ICE’s former focus—serious criminal investigations (e.g., terrorism, smuggling, cartel activity)—has been sidelined in favor of mass immigrant detentions.
  • Other federal agents (FBI, DEA) redeployed to ICE, risking neglect of critical national security cases.
  • Quote:

    “We’re pulling these 7,000 agents who were focused on those national security, public safety things... get on the streets of Minneapolis and get those immigrants off the streets. I have real concerns with that.”
    – John Sandweg, 25:11

• Erosion of Culture and Internal Accountability (26:59 – 28:33)

  • Experienced, public safety-oriented mid-level ICE supervisors are being replaced by ideologically driven appointees.
  • A “culture change” at the agency could foster extremism, reduce internal checks, and undermine public safety.
  • Quote:

    “My frustration is we’re using ICE like it’s a political weapon in a way that’s advancing a political agenda... ICE exists to protect, to make America safe... not just red America or blue America.”
    – John Sandweg, 27:50

• Body Cameras and Oversight (28:33 – 29:52)

  • ICE is rolling out body cameras—could aid both officer protection and accountability—but crucial internal watchdogs have been dismantled.
  • Top administration figures promise legal immunity for aggressive tactics, undermining attempts at accountability.
  • Quote:

    “The cameras will be helpful. But at the end of the day, it’s about what are you going to do if you see something you don’t like? And that’s the million-dollar question.”
    – John Sandweg, 29:39

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Memorable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• On Public Perception and Policy Drift:

  "You can't get to those numbers without also sweeping up a vast larger group of people... they envisioned getting the criminals out, but not your gardeners and your landscapers, the people who are building your houses and everyone else."
  – Anthony, 04:19

• Governor Tim Walz's Alarm:

  "Armed, masked, undertrained ICE agents are going door to door... kidnapping innocent people with no warning and no due process. Let's be very, very clear, this long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement."
  – Governor Tim Walz, 09:58

• On ICE's Changing Focus:

  "All those agents who spend their time trying to stop... the illicit export of weapons, they're spending way more time now walking the streets... trying to get run of the mill migrants."
  – John Sandweg, 25:19

• On Internal Culture and Motivation:

  "Those senior mid-level career public safety law enforcement... they're being pushed out and people who are ideologically pure being put in. And that's when it gets scary..."
  – John Sandweg, 27:13

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• ICE under Trump: Institutional Changes - 01:40 – 03:54
• Who’s Being Targeted? – 03:54 – 06:49
• Public Protests, Minneapolis Focus – 06:49 – 13:41
• Political Opinion Shift and Social Media – 13:41 – 15:08
• Administration's Defense (ICE & Trump Statements) – 15:08 – 17:21
• Interview with Former Acting ICE Director John Sandweg – 17:57 – 29:52

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Conclusion

This episode presents a detailed, critical look at the transformation of ICE in 2026, contending with new leadership, political priorities, allegations of misconduct, and an eroding public mandate. The team weaves together events on the ground, statements from authorities and critics, and insights from a former ICE leader, painting a sobering picture of an agency at a crossroads—raising urgent questions about law enforcement, accountability, and America’s identity as a nation of immigrants.

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Transcript

[Justin]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.

[John Sandweg]

Are you really buying a car online on autotrader right now?

[Mariana]

Really? I can get super specific with dealer listings and see cars based on my budget.

[John Sandweg]

You can really have it delivered or pick it up. Mommy's, I think, kid is walking up the slide. Really?

[Justin]

Autotrader, buy your car online.

[Mariana]

Really?

[Justin]

Donald Trump came to office promising the largest mass deportation program in history.

[Anthony]

And.

[Justin]

And pretty much he seems to be doing it. Are Americans pleased? Well, no. It seems, in fact, he is going down in the polls on specifically the subject of immigration. That used to play so well for him. So what is going on? What is happening with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the ICE officers? Who are they? How are they behaving? Are they detaining people they shouldn't be detaining? And what do Americans really make of it all? Welcome to AmericasT.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

AmericasT.

[Mariana]

AmericasT, from BBC News.

[John Sandweg]

When Donald Trump calls, they say, yes, sir, right away, sir. Happy to lick your boot, sir. We are the sickest country in the world.

[Mariana]

Oh, dear.

[John Sandweg]

Are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry?

[Anthony]

Of course the president supports peaceful protests.

[Mariana]

What a stupid question.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?

[Justin]

Hello, it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmericasT in London, England.

[Mariana]

And it is Mariana sitting next to Justin in the worldwide headquarters.

[Anthony]

And it's Anthony flying solo here in the American headquarters of AmericasT in Washington, DC.

[Justin]

And before we get into the future of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency and indeed the makeup of it now and what seems to be going on with it, let's just take a step back, as it were, and talk about how it might have changed under Donald Trump. So they've always been there, these people, haven't they, Anthony? But in a sense, one of the criticisms of them is that they seem to be doing something slightly different.

[Anthony]

Yeah, ice, Immigration Customs Enforcement is an agency that was actually created after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the creation of the Homeland Security Department and is tasked with essentially enforcing immigration law outside of the borders. Customs and Border Patrol handle immigration at the borders, at airports, places like that. ICE is the federal agency that enforces immigration laws everywhere else in the country. And they've been around, as you mentioned, for a couple of decades, but they have had a dramatic increase in, one, attention and two, funding since Donald Trump returned to the White House. And that is what has generated all this controversy because there are just a lot more ICE agents out there and, and they have a lot more money to spend.

[Mariana]

And, Anthony, when it comes to the goal that ICE has now, how many people are they expected to detain? What are the targets?

[Anthony]

The target, according to Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff at the White House, and Kristi Noem, who's the head of Homeland security, is about 3,000 arrests a day. That could add up to more than a million arrests and deportations over the course of a year. Now, we didn't see those numbers in 2025, but we do have reports of around 300,000 deportations, which is a significant amount. And part of the reason why they've been able to ramp up the deportation so dramatically over past years is because there's just a lot more money flowing into ice. Tens of billions of dollars. They were given $75 billion just in that big, beautiful bill earlier this year. And that money is going to hiring new people to. To expanding detention facilities and to generally casting a much wider net when it comes to enforcement activities.

[Justin]

And it's not just criminals. Is it? Because he made that promise on the campaign trail then when they first came to power, it was noticeable, wasn't it? They said, well, you know, we're gonna start with the criminals, really, the gang members. And that's where our emphasis is going to be. And that was, politically, almost certainly the right thing to do, is where the American people were. But that target figure that you've just mentioned, Anthony, that's not 3,000 criminals. It's just 3,000 people.

[Anthony]

Yeah, yeah. And you can't get to that number, 3,000 a day without deporting people who. The only laws they violated were the immigration laws. And yes, they're in this country without proper authorization. And yes, the federal government has the right to remove them. But doing so on such a massive scale can be disruptive. You know, the administration likes to characterize the people they're deporting as the worst of the worst. If you remember that press conference that Donald Trump just held earlier this week, he had a stack of papers of people, he said, who had been arrested and were in deportation proceedings. And he ticked through the criminal records for all of them. And yes, a lot of them had, you know, pretty nasty records, whether it was sexual assault or fraud or murder or ticked through the list. But you can't get to those numbers without also sweeping up a vast larger group of people, which is what I think. A lot of the people who supported these mass deportations, they didn't envision, as you said, Justin, they envisioned getting the criminals out, but not your gardeners and your landscapers, the people who are building your houses and everyone else.

[Justin]

Which then leads to the question, who's in charge? Actually, what's going on? I mean, in a formal sense, who are the ICE agents answerable to? But also in a less formal sense, who's actually driving this? Is it Stephen Miller? Is it Donald Trump? Is it another.

[Anthony]

I think Stephen Miller has been the point person on immigration enforcement for the entirety of this administration. He was obviously a big influence in the first term, too. He was attributed as being the person behind that family separation policy that generated headlines in Trump's first term, where they were taking minors away from their parents who had crossed the border together and filing criminal charges against the parents, and then trying to replace or move the minors into some sort of a separate facility. Those are the kind of things that he's pushed. He wants a vigorous, aggressive enforcement of immigration law, not just to get people out of this country, but also to serve as a deterrent to other people who are looking to come into the country. And we have seen that deterrent be effective. The number of encounters on the US Mexico border during Trump's second term have dropped to near zero. It is a remarkable turnaround compared to the hundreds of thousands a month who were entering during the Biden years, I guess, as well.

[Mariana]

Kind of on that point you were making, Anthony, about when it was initially sold as it's the bad guys who we're getting rid of from this country that you could see why that had mass appeal. But when people start to see it impact their sort of daily lives or people that they interact with quite regularly, who they like, you say, like a landscape or someone in some, someone who works for you, it feels different. I think what's really ramped up that feeling different is then also seeing confrontations between the people working for ICE and some either migrants or people who are not migrants but who disagree with ice. And Justin, I mean, the prime example of that recently has been what happened in Minneapolis.

[Justin]

Yeah, the thing is, the situation in Minneapolis really brought it to everyone's attention, didn't they? There was the killing, the shooting of an unarmed 37 year old woman. And we did that episode about that appalling event a couple of weeks ago now. But more widely as well, plenty of other confrontations on the street, ICE agents behaving very aggressively. But also, it's worth saying, protesters also being aggressive towards the ICE agents and this real sense of sort of ongoing conflict on the streets of Minneapolis and that particular state, with its problems that it's had with corruption in the Somali community, which we've also talked talked about in a previous episode, and the racial tensions stoked around that and the political tensions, too, because they've tended in the past to support the Democrats. All these things sort of all ebbing and flowing around. The central issue, which is that for all Americans, because of what happened in Minneapolis, initially they had to focus on it, although it's fair to say, isn't it, Anthony, it's much wider than Minneapolis as well.

[Anthony]

It is much wider than Minneapolis. Minneapolis is just the latest and most dramatic, the most potentially inflammatory example. But we'd seen them here in Washington, D.C. last year in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Chicago, in Los Angeles, these surges where immigration agents go in and they go neighborhood by neighborhood in immigrant communities, asking people for their citizenship documents, pulling people over, pulling them out of their cars, taking them out of their homes. But Minneapolis, because of what happened to Renee Goode, has elevated this, I think, in the national consciousness. And the response, the protest response has been much greater. But we're talking about thousands of agents now, federal agents, ICE enforcement officials, as well as other government agents in Minneapolis doing this ramped up enforcement. And you've seen the protests pick up in intensity as well because of Good's death, but also because of time after time, these dramatic examples of people, sometimes US Citizens being taken by ice, detained, sometimes released, but other times transported halfway across the country into these new detention facilities that all that money I mentioned has been going to build and, and expand.

[Mariana]

Here's how Minnesota's Governor Tim Waltz described what's going on in his state.

[Governor Tim Waltz]

Armed, masked, under trained ICE agents are going door to door, ordering people to point out where their neighbors of color live. They're pulling over people indiscriminately, including US Citizens, and demanding to see their papers. And at grocery stores, at bus stops, even at our schools, they're breaking windows, dragging pregnant women down the street, just plain grabbing Minnesotans and shoving them into unmarked vans, kidnapping innocent people with no warning and no due process. Let's be very, very clear, this long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement.

[Justin]

And the mayor of Minneapolis as well has been weighing in. Jacob Frey speaking out to CNN last Sunday.

[Mayor Jacob Frey]

Right now we have about 600 police officers and they've got 3,000 or so ICE agents and border control that they are now talking about deploying 1500 military. This is. Well, it's ridiculous. But we will not be intimidated by the actions of this federal government. We have tens of thousands of people throughout the city that are peacefully protesting. Of course they're marching. Of course they're expressing Their First Amendment rights. Yes, they are able to record what is happening, taking place. I mean, that's part of their right as citizens of the United States. And no, ICE agents can't stop, nor can they hide from a recording that is taking place. And at the same time, the message is very clear that we are not going to take the bait.

[Mariana]

And one of the reasons why everyone is talking about this is because a lot of the examples that we're seeing relating to ICE agents are just so emotive, provocative, distressing. I mean, however you want, however you best want to characterize them. Some of the most shocking ones, though, have involved kids in particular. So there's this story that's popped up today, actually it's Thursday, of this little five year old boy. He's in a blue hat with his backpack on and a shirt. His name is Liam Ramos and he was arrested in the drive of his home in Minneapolis and sent to a detention center that's more than a thousand miles away.

[Justin]

Even people who support the policy would.

[Mariana]

Start to think, oh, I'm not. Why are you focusing on people like that?

[Justin]

Was that what I really wanted? There was another case, wasn't there? This guy who was detained at gunpoint. Again, we're still talking about Minnesota. Now taken out onto the street and again, there are pictures of him. It's minus 10 degrees. His name is Chong Li, Scott Tao. He's 56. You can see him, his chest is bare, he's in his underwear, he's got a kind of blanket over him. And then they just take him back.

[Mariana]

And, and they haven't explained why he.

[Justin]

Was arrested, why they took him in the first place.

[Anthony]

Yeah, I think they said it was, he looked like someone they were looking for. And, and then they realized not only was he not the person they were looking for, he's a U.S. citizen. He, he was from Laos, had come over to the United States in, in a large number of immigrants who come over. Hmong immigrants who had come over from Southeast Asia who had helped the United States during the Vietnam War and were given homes and citizenship in the United States. The Liam Ramos case. Ramos was coming home from preschool with his father and ICE detained them in the driveway. The father ran off. ICE held the five year old, had him go up to the door of his house and knock to see if there was anyone else there. And they subsequently didn't detain anyone else in the house, but they took the father and Liam to Texas and that's where they are right now. So it feels arbitrary. It does feel at times capricious.

[Mariana]

I've been looking at my undercover voters, my fictional characters with all their profiles across the main social media sites, but particularly at Gabriella. So Gabriella is my kind of apolitical, not that fussed about politics voter. She's also Hispanic and her feed has been pretty sort of solidly populated by these kinds of images over the past week or so. I'd say it's that kind of voter that you start to get in trouble with, isn't it?

[Anthony]

Immigration used to be one of Donald Trump's strongest issue areas. One of the, one of the places where he had a distinct advantage over Kamala Harris and Joe Biden before her in the 2024 election. But now you see support for immigration enforcement dropping, dropping to net negative overall. But it is becoming a political liability for Donald Trump. And I think that's one of the reasons why you saw in those off year elections, just last year, in places like New Jersey, where we looked at Hispanic majority districts, those areas, the Hispanic voters had started to turn against Donald Trump because of the breadth of the enforcement effort and the way it was catching people not based on their immigration status, but maybe by their accent or the color of their skin, which the Supreme Court has held is perfectly reasonable to detain people at least temporarily based on just those kind of suspicions. And, you know, that is angering a lot of Hispanics who didn't think they were going to be caught up in all of this.

[Justin]

Okay. And in the light of that anger, let's hear what the administration people are saying to try to persuade people they are doing the right thing. So first, this is the US Border Patrol Commander, Gregory Bovino, who's been heading up quite a few of these raids in cities around America. This is him back on Tuesday defending ice.

[US Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino]

Our operations are lawful, they're targeted, and they're focused on individuals who pose a serious threat to this community. They are not random and they are not political. They are about removing criminals who are actively harming Minneapolis neighborhoods. For too long, residents have been told that enforcing our nation's immigration laws undermines public safety. In reality, the opposite is true.

[Justin]

Here we are. Let's hear as well from the President himself. This is what he was saying on the same day on Tuesday.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Murderers, child predators, human traffickers, fraudsters, and savage criminals. Why wouldn't you want them removed? The reason is because these are insurrectionists that are doing this work. And you know they're going to make mistakes. Sometimes ICE is going to be too rough with somebody or, you know, they're Dealing with rough people. They're going to make a mistake. Sometimes it can happen. We feel terribly. I felt horribly when I was told that the young woman who was had the tragedy. It's a tragedy. It's a horrible thing. Everybody would say. Dice would say this same thing. But when I learned her, her parents and her father in particular is like, I hope he still is, but I don't know. Was a tremendous Trump fan. He was all for Trump, loved Trump. And, you know, it's terrible. I was told that by a lot of people. They said, oh, he loves you. He, he was a. I hope, I hope he still feels that way. I don't know. It's a hard, hard situation. But her father was a tremendous. And parents were tremendous Trump fans.

[Anthony]

There was a tinge of regret, I suppose, or emotion over her situation. But standing by what immigration authorities are doing and trying to characterize them as getting the worst of the worst and ticking through all of these examples of violent criminals who they have rounded up. What they don't mention, of course, is that it's more than just that. And to hit these numbers, as I said before, you have to start getting people like 5 year old Liam Ramos in addition to people who have criminal records.

[Justin]

Okay, this is a really good moment to go to our guests. So Mariana and Anthony have had to go and do other things, but I am joined by someone who's not only worked in US Homeland Security for many years, mainly as a lawyer, but also, and here is the crucial point, was in charge of all ICE operations as the acting director of ICE under Barack Obama. John Sandweg is his name. And John is on the line. John, thank you very much for sparing us the time. Really good to have you on.

[John Sandweg]

Yeah, Justin, thanks for having me.

[Justin]

I want to start with a question, actually, not from me, it's from a listener, it's from David in Preston. My question is about the training that ICE agents go through. I'm very conscious they carry firearms. They have lots of responsibility. I read online says, David, that they only do 47 days of training. I wonder if this is actually true. How does it compare to other law enforcement agents? Tell us what the training used to be and what it is now.

[John Sandweg]

Yeah, it used to be, Justin. So historically it was a 13 week basic training course. And then you get out in the field and you get additional training. Right. As well as in service training as you go forward. Here's what's going on. The Trump administration, though, has got all this money from Congress and this big, beautiful bill right The Trump administration gets in as part of the President's legislative priority. He wants to massively expand ice, and he wants to expand it obviously in the long term. And I think there's a strategy behind this, which is to churn ice, not that it was a small agency before it had 14,000 agents, but into an agency that's even bigger. You could sustain these deportation, increased deportation levels in the next decade. So they're gonna increase 10,000 agents. But of course, he wants those agents quickly as possible so that he can rack up these deportation stats. So the problem is hiring 10,000 people is really hard and training them is really hard. And the training academies aren't built to handle that many agents and the background checks and everything else. So what we've seen is a couple of things. One is they've lowered their hiring standards. They're taking people that are older than they used to. They're taking people, you know, they're not doing as much of those in depth interviews where you're trying to determine whether this person has the integrity to be a federal agent or not. And of course, they're shortening the training. The idea being they can pump them through the academy more quickly. So we've seen the training shrink from a 13 week standard course now down to an eight week. What I don't know, and we don't know right now is how many of those new agents are on the streets. And all the stuff we're seeing in Minneapolis and Chicago and la, I think most likely we're still looking at only a very small percentage of the ICE officers. But I think what probably alarms a lot of people here in the States is that the next two, three years, we're gonna see all these new agents hitting the streets with a lot less training than they had before.

[Justin]

And are they really being trained from scratch? I mean, do you need, in order to become an ICE agent, do you need, for instance, to be able to fire a gun? I mean, what level of training is actually being offered?

[John Sandweg]

A lot of them from scratch. And so one thing the administration's doing, which I not critical of, is they are targeting a lot of people with law enforcement experience. Their thinking is exactly that, that we don't have to give as much training to those people who are cop, let's say they're state policemen or city police, you know, a highway patrolman in some state, if we can. So they're throwing a lot of money. They've got tons of money right now. So they're throwing huge signing bonuses to those people. They think they can deploy those people more quickly and get them out on the street making those arrests. But yeah, there's people from scratch. And I think, I think the things that are concerning is that that's always been true. This is always in the law enforcement world. I don't want to make it too complicated, but there are different types of agents at ice. But the agents they're primarily hiring has generally been like an entry level federal law enforcement position. I don't mean that disparagingly, just that more people with less law enforcement experience are hired into position. But of course here there's one more catch which is, you know, I'm sure we'll get into it, but also who they're hiring. Right. Which not just people with no experience, but might be ideologically view this mass deportation thing as one of the most critical things in US history.

[Justin]

I remember from when I used to go to wars for the BBC, one of the big things was always the rules of engagement. And you'd go with a group of soldiers and it's really important, isn't it? The soldiers need to know. And it's usually with the western army's at least done extremely well because it's kind of absolutely drummed into them. These are the rules when you may open fire, when you may act violently and when you may not. And I just wonder what those basic rules are for an ICE age. And never mind whether they're being kept to or not at the moment. But first, what are the rules of engagement? If you go out on the streets and you're meant to be looking for people and deporting them, what are you allowed to do or not allowed to do?

[John Sandweg]

Yeah. So the rules, the use of force rules are pretty much the same in every US law enforcement agency, including ice. Of course, where the rubber meets the road is in how you deploy those. Right. How those individual officers makes those decisions. So just quickly, the rule is you're not to use more force than is reasonably necessary. You're to try to de escalate things first. And when it comes to lethal force, you can't use lethal force unless you have an objectively reasonable basis to believe that there's an imminent threat to your life or the life of others. Basically that's the standard. The problem is this, and this is why I think people are just so shocked at what they're seeing is how the administration is deploying these agents. So immigration enforcement and ICE has been going on. It's always a little bit controversial. Cuz immigration enforcement is controversial in the United States. But the way in which ICE was deployed was much more quiet and targeted and specific. And most of ICE arrests candidly are happening from people who've been arrested by other agencies. So ICE would be picking up people in prisons and jails or primarily picking up people at the US Border who the Border Patrol had arrested. But this administration is putting them out there in a very public manner in a way that's triggering a lot of these protests. And now you're having these encounters between these ICE agents and these protesters. And I think the problem is not the rules of the use of force, but these agents are out of position. They're just having to do encounter circumstances like the situation with Ms. Good that they just don't have as much experience as, as other law enforcement agencies. It's not that the rules were different, it's just that ICE agents typically are not encountering people in motor vehic. And, and I think that is where a lot of the concerns are arising is how they're being deployed and the fact that it's inconsistent with what they've been trained to do, because this is not. We're using them in a way that they haven't normally done.

[Justin]

Yeah, that's really interesting because I mean it's, it's, it's Customs and immigration, isn't it? And presumably before there was a lot of customs work as well, which would have involved not necessarily anything violent, but actually trying to work out who was smuggling what and where it was ending up and all sort of stuff.

[John Sandweg]

Justin, I think this is a huge issue that's kind of being neglected on this, which is that this administration's so focused on these deportations that one of the things they've done is they've pulled half of ICE was always focused on criminal investigations. And you're exactly right. Customs related stuff. Smugglers, drug cartels, money launderers, anything really that crossed the border, including investigating banks who are knowingly laundering money for the Sinaloa drug cartel or even saving children who are being exploited. I mean, and one last thing most critically is of course the illegal export of US military technology to countries like Iran and North Korea. All right, so what have they done? They said to the agents, hey guys, that's not as important. We gotta get these immigrants off the streets. And that's kind of lost in this is that we've pulled these 7,000 agents at ICE who really were just focused on those national security, public safety things. And we said de emphasize those investigations. They're still doing some of them, but not nearly as many get on the streets of Minneapolis and get those immigrants off the streets, candidly, they're doing it at other agencies too. They've got FBI agents deployed to ice. They have DEA agents deployed to ice. I think there are serious questions about when you look at just like, what is the public safety impact of arresting someone who's been in this country 20 years and has no criminal history versus getting that investigation to get someone illegally exporting microchips to Russia that are used in drones. But that is a reality and something I think, frankly, the media here in the US hasn't focused on as much because I think there's a real national security impact.

[Justin]

Yeah, that's really interesting. So some organized, really serious crime might go by the board, as it were, and not be properly investigated. Because in part of this emphasis.

[John Sandweg]

Absolutely. Justin, really quickly, look, the administration's not shy about this. Right on day one, they issue all these policies at doj. Immigration is our highest priority. So you're seeing all these white collar crime prosecutions drop. You're seeing. And again, just in terms of ICE itself, all those agents who spend their time trying to stop, like I said, the illicit export of weapons, they're spending way more time now walking the streets of Chicago, D.C. louisiana, Minneapolis, trying to get right of the mill migrants. I have real concerns with that. Listen, do you think they will too?

[Justin]

I mean, if you're a decent ICE agent, you think you're doing the work that is really important for the country and for keeping the country safe, and suddenly you've got people coming in who are not so well trained, but also to go back to the point you were making earlier, not necessarily so well vetted. So they might have all sorts of reasons to do this work. They might just like beating people up, to put it really bluntly, or they might be racist or whatever. And suddenly you as an ICE agent have to have these people coming in.

[John Sandweg]

Justin, you hit the nail on the head. I mean, I think what concerns me is in my experience, we're so fortunate here, the majority of these ICE agents, what we're seeing is not because they want to beat people up, thankfully, it's because they're put out of position and they're put into circumstances that are different than their training and their experiences. We're still lucky that the majority of these ICE agents signed up to make a difference. But you are exactly right. I know from just conversations I have with current people. I know from conversations I have with former people, there is tremendous frustration. There are people at the agency who say what we're doing, we are ignoring critical national security and public safety crimes and to focus on just run of the mill migrants. And we're undermining our public safety result. And unfortunately, Justin, what we're seeing is a culture change at the agency. Those senior mid level career public safety law enforcement, those cops who are the mid level supervisors at ice, they're getting pushed out. They're being pushed out, they're being marginalized and people who are ideologically pure being put in. And that's when it gets scary because that's the culture that really you can write all the policies you want out of Washington D.C. but it's about that culture of the people in the field. And when you start losing those responsible, really public safety minded, focused people, you're taking a major step back. And let me just say one last thing. I mean, my frustration is we're using ICE like it's a political weapon in a way that's advancing a political agenda. But ICE exists to protect, to make a America safe to the United States of America, not just red America or blue America. And unfortunately, while there's a lot of agents who feel that way, I think they're becoming an extinct species at ICE is the sad truth. And I do worry about that in the coming years.

[Justin]

There has been a call, hasn't there? Well, it's come from the Minnesota Governor, Tim Walls, but others as well saying at the very least they ought to be filming themselves as they go about their work, as some police forces do. But they don't generally at the moment, do they? Can you see that being anything like a solution or a partial solution?

[John Sandweg]

I think it's a partial solution. I think it's an important solution. Right. In my experience, there's always a little bit of resistance initially with body cameras. So it is a growing trend in the United States that every law enforcement officer wear a body camera. Ice, historically there was a little bit of resistance, but they've adopted the technology and to be fair, they are rolling it out on a nationwide basis. In my experience, oftentimes it does defend the officer. But again, at the end of the day, Justin, even with the body cameras, it's about accountability. And I think one piece of this that a lot of people have covered is this administration has dismantled the internal watchdogs and apparatuses that used to keep try to regulate how ICE does its job. And obviously the administration is sending us Stephen Miller and Secretary Noem and the Vice President are really aggressively encouraging kind of the aggressive tactics they're seeing and promising the agents, they'll be getting immunity on the back end. And so, yeah, the cameras will be helpful. But at the end of the day, it's about what are you going to do if you see something you don't like? And that's the million dollar question, John.

[Justin]

We got to leave it there. But John, it's so good to talk to you and so fascinating and people will be fascinated and to some extent, I think a bit horrified about some of the things you've told us. John, sandwich? Thank you very much.

[John Sandweg]

Thanks, Justin. Thanks, all.

[Justin]

Okay, that's it for today. We haven't even mentioned Greenland, have we? And where Donald Trump is on his plans to acquire it, which is, of course, yet another huge news story this week. If you want to listen to that or any of our other episodes, you can find them wherever you get your podcasts, of course. And if you want to get in touch, do we read every single bit of correspondence we get? It's AmericaSTBC. Or you can send us a message or a voice note. WhatsApp is 443-301-23-9480. Bye.