America’s Deportation Obsession, Caught on Tape (w/ Drew Harwell)

Summary

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Bulwark Takes: "America’s Deportation Obsession, Caught on Tape"

Host: Sam Stein (Bulwark Managing Editor)
Guest: Drew Harwell (Washington Post)
Date: February 24, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the viral story of comedian Ben Palmer, who set up a fake ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) deportation tip line as a form of social experiment and satire, only to reveal the disturbing zeal with which ordinary Americans attempt to report suspected undocumented immigrants. Hosted by Sam Stein, with guest Drew Harwell, the Washington Post tech reporter who broke the story, the conversation explores the uncomfortable realities exposed by Palmer's prank—including the motivations, confessions, and chilling attitudes of callers, as well as the broader implications for American society’s approach to immigration.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Genesis of the Story

• Drew Harwell discovered Ben Palmer’s work procrastinating on TikTok, stumbling upon the now-viral call featuring a kindergarten teacher ([02:11]).
  • “He lays out the premise, like, right off the jump...he says, I created this fake guy's tip line. People call me, they think I'm legitimate.” — Drew Harwell [02:15]
• Palmer, a Nashville-based comedian with a history of culture-centric pranks, took a political turn with this project, not anticipating the darkness it would uncover ([03:00], [03:26]).

2. How the Fake ICE Tip Line Works

• Palmer's websites mimic official government pages but never state direct affiliation, leaving enough ambiguity for people to fall for the ruse ([04:36]–[05:46]).
  • “If you search for different phrases like that, it's on, like, the first page of Google.” — Drew Harwell [04:46]
  • “He's like an SEO master here.” — Sam Stein [04:58]
• Callers find the site by actively Googling how to report undocumented immigrants, with Palmer deadpanning as a government official and letting people fill in the blanks ([05:46]).

3. Motivations and Unintended Revelations

• Palmer’s intent began as comedic satire and a challenge, probing what Americans really say when they think the government is listening ([06:31]).
  • “He just thought it would be a good bit...to flush out a lot of people who would be talking very candidly in an interesting way.” — Drew Harwell [06:34]
• The responses, however, turned out to be revealingly dark, with real-life confessions that exposed underlying prejudice and paranoia in society ([07:55]–[10:36]).

4. Examples of Calls Received

• Suspicious Neighbor: A woman reports her neighbor due to packages and presence of “brown people”—exposing the thin rationale sometimes used to justify suspicion ([07:31]).
  • “Basically what it ends up being is the person sees a brown person in their neighborhood...and they kind of find the justification afterward.” — Drew Harwell [07:55]
• The Publix Encounter: A shopper tries to report someone who couldn’t speak English but actually helped her find a water fountain ([08:19]).
  • “They helped you with exactly what you wanted and you're responding by trying to support them.” — Sam Stein [08:45]
• The Kindergarten Teacher: The most viral call—a teacher reports a 5- or 6-year-old student’s parents, knowing only they’re from Honduras/El Salvador and don’t speak English ([09:04]):
  • Palmer guides the caller through her logic, revealing the chilling implications of her motivations; as the call progresses, she realizes “you’re making me sound so terrible” ([09:40]).
  • “All the commenters are like, no, he's just kind of holding up a mirror to you.” — Drew Harwell [09:53]
  • Harwell later spoke to the teacher, who declined to comment; the child was born in New York and is a citizen, with no evidence the parents are undocumented ([09:20]–[10:36]).

5. Psychology of Reporting & Social Experimentation

• Many callers appear to treat government agencies as personal enforcers for their own grievances ([11:07–11:44]).
  • “He was surprised...how much people thought of the government as their own personal army.” — Drew Harwell [11:26]
• The experiment reveals “prejudice hotline” attitudes—cold and transactional perspectives regarding the fates of real families ([13:59]).

6. Ethical & Sociological Implications

• Palmer is hesitant to publicize details, knowing the ethics of deception and privacy at play. Harwell, as a journalist, notes the line between reporting and pranking—this exposes raw sentiment that would not otherwise surface ([15:03]–[16:15]).
  • “As a journalist, it's not something we would ever do...but you're not going to get that kind of raw answer from people outside of this kind of setup.” — Drew Harwell [15:50]
• The host and guest underscore the uniquely revealing nature of this “social experiment,” one that journalism can document, but not actively perform ([16:15]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “He lays out the premise, like, right off the jump...I created this fake guy's tip line. People call me, they think I'm legitimate.”
  — Drew Harwell [02:15]
• “They helped you with exactly what you wanted and you're responding by trying to support them.”
  — Sam Stein [08:45]
• “When people will submit a report and call him...they would never be saying that to a comedian if they really knew.”
  — Drew Harwell [05:31]
• “All the commenters are like, no, he's just kind of holding up a mirror to you.”
  — Drew Harwell [09:53]
• “He was surprised going into this how much people thought of the government as their own personal army.”
  — Drew Harwell [11:26]
• “It was just a prejudice hotline basically and was really disturbed by how cold people could be on the phone talking about shipping people away.”
  — Drew Harwell [14:01]
• “As a journalist, it's not something we would ever do...but you're not going to get that kind of raw answer from people outside of this kind of setup.”
  — Drew Harwell [15:50]

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Important Timestamps

• [02:11] — Harwell describes discovering Ben Palmer’s TikTok account and the now-infamous teacher call.
• [03:26] — Palmer’s comedic background and the shift to immigration-related material.
• [04:36] — Explanation of how the fake tip line duped callers; website structure and SEO tricks.
• [07:31] — Overview of the types of calls received, starting with suspicious neighbors.
• [09:04] — The detailed retelling of the kindergarten teacher call and its viral impact.
• [11:07] — Palmer’s reflections on people using the government as a “personal army.”
• [13:59] — Palmer’s changed outlook after the experiment; the “prejudice hotline” effect.
• [15:03] — Ethical tensions for both Palmer and Harwell; journalist and prankster boundaries.

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Conclusion

This episode reveals, through real audio and candid discussion, the unsettling depths of anti-immigrant sentiment in America—brought to light by an unintended social experiment. Drew Harwell’s reporting exposes how easily suspicion, prejudice, and anonymous reporting can spiral, and how technological savvy (and dark comedy) can unmask the unvarnished beliefs people might otherwise keep hidden. The story raises hard questions about the American conversation on immigration and the institutions—both real and satirical—that enable it.

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Transcript

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[Sam Stein]

Hey everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark, and I am pleased to be joined by Drew Harwell of the Washington Post, who has, or had, I should say, because we got him a little late. An incredible piece last week about a comedian in Nashville, Ben Palmer, who's been pranking people more or less by setting up a fake ICE tip line that has nothing to do with ice or the government. And we're going to get into that. And then people call in and they just kind of ratting out and exposing the worst of humanity. The piece is called He Made a Fake ICE Deportation Tip Line. Then a kindergarten teacher called Drew, thanks so much for doing this. Really appreciate it. Let's start with how did you get like tipped onto the story? I'm just sort of curious.

[Drew Harwell]

Yeah, well, I would love to say I was in like a smoke filled room and meeting with secret sources, but I really was just procrastinating on TikTok and he, you know, came onto my feed and he lays out the premise, like, right off the jump, he says, I created this fake guy's tip line. People call me, they think I'm legitimate. And then he placed a call, and I was just horrified because the one that I saw, it had like a million views at the time, but now is over 20 million. This is the kindergarten teacher call where, you know, there's a woman who says there's this five or six year old at her school. The parents seem like nice parents, but she looked them up in the school records. They're from Honduras and El Salvador. Nice family, but they don't speak English.

[Sam Stein]

So we're looking to deport the parents and leave the child.

[Drew Harwell]

Right.

[Vrbocare Representative]

Like I said, I don't know if they're here illegally. I'm just. I just think it's odd.

[Drew Harwell]

And it was just horrifying to me. And it was horrifying because, you know, this was not this. This guy, Ben Palmer is not like this ideologue. He's just like a comedian. And yet the video was really just like uncovering how just horrific some of these calls could go. And just. I just. It really seemed like an interesting moment in 2026 to, to. To experiment with and, and it was nice to talk about.

[Sam Stein]

So who is this guy?

[Drew Harwell]

Yeah, so Ben is a standup comic. He lives in Nashville. His whole shtick is he does these deadpan, elaborate pranks where he'll, you know, he went on like, these court TV shows and he was just like, goofy, and he was just making fun of like, these daytime, you know, Judge Judy shows. He's done these calls with like, pranking pyramid schemes. They've all been kind of like, looking at little minutiae of American culture, kind of having a laugh about it. Not really hyper political, but last year he had this idea to do like, these immigration calls and. And, you know, part of his. His bit is like, he sets up fake websites, fake phone calls. People subscribe to his Patreon, and they kind of follow along as he builds up the. The ruse. So this was. This was a political turn for him. I don't think he expected it to go to this level of darkness, really. I think he just thought it would be kind of goofy, but I think that just kind of shows where we're at.

[Sam Stein]

So he sets up this, I don't know, tip line, I guess is what you can call it. And he said people follow him and kind of got tuned into it. But like, how. I mean, this isn't a government tip line. I don't think he's publicizing it widely, if at all. Like, how did the people even find this?

[Drew Harwell]

You know, I'm a tech reporter, my day job, and it was funny to me because so he basically just set up these random websites and he gave them names that somebody would find if they started, if they went into Google and said report an illegal immigrant. And so if you search for different phrases like that, it's on like the first page of Google. So there's a bunch of.

[Sam Stein]

He's like an SEO master here.

[Drew Harwell]

He's like an SEO master. I don't know how he did it, but he did it. And he actually doesn't publicize the names of the websites as he doesn't want to give it away. So I actually went to his patreon and I was looking. He has like a little snippet from the page and I was able to take some of the words from that and find it on Google. And it's funny because you look at the website and on, on its face, it does look like a government website. It has like the US seal. It says like, submit an official report. But he never really. It's like a sleight of hand thing. He never really says he's with ICE or dhs. And when people will submit a report and call him or he calls them, he never really like gives away that he's with the government. So people just kind of fill in the blanks and start talking to him and that's when they kind of get on the hook of like really sharing that. And so I just think it's kind of fascinating because it's like they would never be saying that to a comedian if they really knew.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, I mean, in one. In one, Paul, he asked the first affiliation. He says it's affiliated in a quote, non affiliated way with the government and that he works, quote, coherently and cohesively with the isis. Yeah, he just rambles it fast enough that these people don't notice. You talked a little bit about it, but I want to linger more on motivation for doing this because he is not political. You noted in your story that he does standup and he's kind of really not touch politics. He's got conservative audience members. Maybe they even skew a little conservative. Well, when you talk to Ben about this, what was, what did you take away from his motivation to set up these, these fake tip lines?

[Drew Harwell]

Yeah, I think he just thought at the outset that it would be a good bit. You know, it would get. It would flush out a lot of people who would be talking very candidly in an interesting way. I think he thought it was going to be very topical. Obviously, he was right, and he set this up last January. Obviously, we've had even bigger conversation over the last year. But I think he just saw it as an interesting challenge to set it up. And, you know, when people started submitting the reports, he would start texting them back, and he was kind of surprised by how much people would share and how much about their personal lives they were sharing. So I think he just saw, like, this is a good opportunity. This is something that everybody in America is thinking about. Um, there are conversations happening sort of below the surface that we're not really talking about. And. And I. And I think he was right because he really fleshed out, like, a lot of.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah. How many people do. He said he got what, like, 100 or so? Or is there more than that?

[Drew Harwell]

Yeah, he's gotten about a hundred. And he's. He's not fleshed out. He's not posted every single one of them. But the ones he has posted have been, like, really eye opening.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, let's go through a couple of them. So we'll get to the kindergarten teacher last. But there's, you know, woman who, like, notices that whoever has the house next door isn't there. And it could just be like, the guy has a rental or like. But she does. She thinks it's very suspicious because he's getting packages dropped off and they're different packages. Like, it was very hard to follow. But yeah. Yeah, I really understand that.

[Drew Harwell]

Yeah. Well, when he takes the calls, you know, he doesn't. Like, he tries to just sort of do it in this deadpan. Like, he's writing notes, and he's like, okay, so they're using electricity, and that's a pretty problem. And, you know, the person. And basically what it ends up being is that the person, you know, they see a brown person in their neighborhood that they feel like should not be there, and then they kind of find the justification afterward. That's kind of the pattern that happens in a lot of these calls.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, the grocery store one was another one, the Publix, where they basically were like, wow, this person didn't speak English. And then I wanted to get a water fountain. And then he's like, well, they led you right to the water.

[Drew Harwell]

Yeah. And she was like, yeah, they led me right to it. And she was like, but they didn't speak English, so. And. And, you know, he was like, but they communicated well enough that you were able. So it's just like, well, it was also.

[Sam Stein]

It was like they did you a solid.

[Drew Harwell]

Like, yeah, they helped you exactly what

[Sam Stein]

you wanted and you're responding by trying to support them. And I guess let's just talk a bit about the kindergarten one because there's a reason it's like got 20 million plus views on TikTok right now because it's, it's really depressing, like, if we're being honest about it. So why don't you talk a little bit about. Why don't you set up the situation here?

[Drew Harwell]

Here? Yeah. So it's a teacher who calls. They said, she says there's a five or six year old in her school whose parents are. Yeah. From Honduras and El Salvador. She says they seem like nice people, but she doesn't like that people like them are using up the resources in her county. She doesn't say where he. He doesn't really name who she is. I, I ended up talking to her. She did not want to comment for the story, but she lays out basically. Yeah, she lays out basically that, you know, the kid was born in New York, so is a citizen. She doesn't know that they are not citizens. She just knows that they speaking. They don't speak English well and that they were born in a different another country. And so as she's talking to Ben, she's laying out all of the, you know, and he, he's talking back to her and saying, well, so do you want to deport the parents but leave the kid? And she's like, well, you know, maybe like, it's not my fault that the kid is here. And he's, he's recounting back to her what she's saying. And she has this response like, oh, you're making me sound so terrible. And all the commenters are like, no, he's just kind of holding up a mirror to you. And it becomes this really unusual conversation where you can kind of sense that she is starting to realize how like, inhumane her request is. And so it's just horrifying to kind of see that, you know, and then she asked for his manager and all this stuff. So it becomes this really like, awkward call to be listening and just horrifying to think about like a teacher using the records to, to flush out the parents.

[Sam Stein]

Right. I thought the most interesting. Well, maybe not the most interesting part, but like a really interesting part was when he calls her back. Because apparently they call back or. And he says, well, we looked into it and the parents are here illegally, are here legally. Which means, thank God the kid won't be deported. And she seems, like, not totally relieved, but, like, relieved enough. And then he's like, it's good because the kid, you know, we want to make sure he wasn't a national security threat. And then she really starts to. The light bulb seems to go off.

[Drew Harwell]

Yeah. I think she realizes that she's kind of been taken for a ride. And. Yeah, that happens in some of the other calls where he does kind of breaks. He breaks character a little bit and says that actually they are legal. He looked them up and they are illegal. And there's. There's never a sense of relief from the people. Like, oh, okay, great. It's sort of like they didn't like this person for one reason. And, and he, he told me this. Like, he was, he was surprised going into this how much people thought of the government as their own personal army. Like, I'm annoyed by this person that, you know, they created this, like, they have this personal peak about this person. They figured, okay, well, I could just call into social police to, to take them away.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, I mean, it's even. It's. It's even crazier than that. I mean, they basically proactively googled ways to, like, yeah, get rid of people in and around them. I mean, this is not. Again, this is not a government website. They went and googled and they found this website. He says to you, he says, if these are the calls I'm getting as a fake, non legitimate person, imagine what's happening at the actual ice. And yeah, you do have to imagine that they're completely inundated with these calls. And, you know, but they're solicitous of them.

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[Sam Stein]

When you talk to Ben about this stuff, did you get it all into how his sort of perception about, I don't know, the current political situation changed through this? Did he, did it change through this? Did it affect him?

[Drew Harwell]

It did actually, because like he told me, yeah, he does these shows in Tennessee. He has a big audience. He went into it kind of just expecting a joke out of it, but ended up feeling like he was seeing just a lot of like prejudice. Like he was just, it was a prejudice hotline basically and was really disturbed by how cold people could be on the phone talking about shipping people away. And it seemed like they weren't on the calls with him. He felt like they were not really acknowledging the reality of what they were asking for. It was just like they wanted a problem to be solved. They weren't thinking about people being, you know, ripped out of their life and family situation and.

[Sam Stein]

Or a six year old being. Yeah, six year old being separated from his or her parents.

[Drew Harwell]

Left parents. Yeah.

[Sam Stein]

I guess I have to ask this because I'm like such a inward looking journalist's question, but like part of his shtick rests on people not knowing that he's, you know, pranking them. And so was he reluctant to talk about this with you?

[Drew Harwell]

A little bit. And you know, he, he skates on thin ice, I think, because obviously the website is deceptive, right? He is deceptive. You know, he doesn't say that he's a federal agent, but the people wouldn't be talking about this if they didn't think he was in some way, 100%. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, as a journalist, it's not something we would ever do. He sort of saw it as a social experiment, almost like a test of like what the American conversation was that we weren't really talking. So he was a little, you know, nervous about talking Obviously he didn't want to share the specific names of the website because, you know, he had set these up, he didn't want to give them away. And, and you know, I told him like, I'm going to have to go to the government and ask for their comment about this. And, and DHS wrote back that, you know, they're, they're aware of this website and telling people not to, not to do this. And so, you know, as a journalist, it's not something we would ever do. But I think you have to look at the results of, of what people are saying and, and you're not going to get that kind of raw answer from people outside of this kind of setup. So I think it's.

[Sam Stein]

No, it's incredible that way. It's very revealing. It's really incredible. It's sociological exercise and it, you know, you're right. Journalists couldn't do this, wouldn't do this. But in a way it's just really, it gets at the core of human motivation in a way that we document it. But he actually experimented it. So Drew, I appreciate you talking to him. I appreciate the article you wrote. Definitely a great piece and you've been doing great work and thank you for joining us to talk about it with the Bulwark.

[Drew Harwell]

Yeah, thanks man. Thanks for having me.

[Sam Stein]

Absolutely. And for those who are watching and enjoy this, please subscribe to our feed. Just a little click of a button like and rate if you can, always helps with the algorithm. Talk to you soon.

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