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Garage Logic
CRABBY: Former ICE agent Eric O'Denius joins the show today also ECXCLUSIVE video of an ICE arrest outside of SPPD
00:59:04
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- [00:00]
Jay Coles
The 2026 Minnesota Golf show is swinging into the Minneapolis Convention Center February 13th 15th, and we want your business on the green. With thousands of passionate golfers roaming the floor, this is your chance to get your brand in front of this quality demographic with a vendor, booth or larger sponsorship. And this year's ambassador, NFL hall of Famer and Viking legend John Randle. So, yeah, it's kind of a big deal. Want in? Don't wait for your invitation to land in the fairway. Call Bernie Lauer at 651-632-6646 or email blaurbi.com before the best spots are gone.
- [00:31]
Eric Odinius
Join me, John Randall, at the North American Banking Company Minnesota Golf Show February 13th through the 15th at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Test your skills in the long putt.
- [00:40]
Jay Coles
Contest for a shot at a $100,000 prize package.
- [00:44]
Eric Odinius
Plus, try the latest gear from top.
- [00:46]
Jay Coles
Manufacturers and get free lessons from local PGA pros.
- [00:49]
Eric Odinius
Don't miss it.
- [00:50]
Jay Coles
Tickets on sale now at mngolfshow.com save $3 with advance purchase. Each ticket includes 14 free greens fee passes valued at $500. Learn more at mngolfshow.com.
- [01:05]
Ken
Come on. Jay Coles, 5 Eyewitness News.
- [01:19]
Jay Coles
How you doing, Ken?
- [01:20]
Ken
I'm doing all right.
- [01:21]
Jay Coles
Excited about our guest. You know, can you tell?
- [01:23]
Ken
Are you an ICE agent? Are you a narc for ice, Jay?
- [01:27]
Jay Coles
I am. I told you, I'm a man without a political party. I'm a man without a law enforcement party.
- [01:32]
Ken
He's got a great guest today.
- [01:34]
Jay Coles
We have a great guest. Yes, we do.
- [01:35]
Eric Odinius
Yep.
- [01:36]
Jay Coles
Eric odinius, right? Yes, Eric, 24 years, an ICE officer. How would we describe it? ICE agent. How do you guys describe the man and boy?
- [01:47]
Eric Odinius
Well, yeah, I got hired back when it was the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
- [01:52]
Jay Coles
Back when it was ins. Yeah.
- [01:54]
Eric Odinius
And I was hired to be what they called a detention enforcement officer, but it's really just a fancy name for a U.S. marshal for immigration. You drive the. Drive the people around.
- [02:03]
Jay Coles
Yeah. So we'll go with ICE officer.
- [02:04]
Eric Odinius
All right. That's a good one because I had five different job titles in 24 years.
- [02:09]
Jay Coles
Yeah, 24 years right here in St. Paul. So he worked right here and probably would know some of the guys out on the street in the field today, I would assume. Right.
- [02:18]
Eric Odinius
A lot of them look to be detailed in, but yet the ones who are still here at Fort Snelling, Yes, I do know quite a few of them.
- [02:25]
Jay Coles
And you also mentioned that you wanted to tell folks that you're about to become a paralegal and you're not trying to offer up any kind of legal opinion or legal advice today, correct?
- [02:35]
Eric Odinius
Yeah. If anybody from the bar is listening. I'm a paralegal student at Inver Hills. My anticipated graduation date is May 2026. Nothing I say should be construed as legal advice. I'm paralegal, not a lawyer, and also I'm a retired officer, so obviously nothing I say should be construed as the agency's viewpoint, the viewpoint of Inver Hills, the viewpoint of anybody else but me.
- [02:58]
Jay Coles
This is huge that you're gonna talk to us, so thank you.
- [03:00]
Ken
Eric, what did you do in law enforcement before you started with INS and then ICE?
- [03:05]
Eric Odinius
Well, I was in the National Guard for eight years with the Minnesota 125th Field Oratory. Actually, I was a student at Gustavus Adolphus from 90 to 94. Graduated cum laude, bounced around for about three years. I was out in Seattle, Washington, actually. I was working the catalog order desk at Eddie Bauer, taking inbound calls, and I just put in.
- [03:27]
Jay Coles
You end up at ice.
- [03:28]
Eric Odinius
I know. Well, the thing is, I put in for a federal job in February out in Seattle. And I didn't realize that there were two agencies hiring like gangbusters. One was the Department of Agriculture because there had just been a huge E. Coli scare. And Congress said, We want 10,000 food inspectors right now in Ames, Iowa. And the other agency was the Immigration and Naturalization Service because Congress had just passed the last major immigration reform act and they had hired all these GS12 big money people to do all these investigations and stuff like that. But they realized that they had not hired anybody to actually move the people from place to place. Yeah, so actually do the movement. So they said, oh no, we need 10,000 van drivers right away. And by the way, they've all got to have four year degrees or four years of law enforcement experience. But I have my four year degree. So I put in, I got hired, and all of a sudden, in September, you know, I'm at our old leased space just south of the airport at 2901 Metro. Before we moved to Whitbill, was there.
- [04:33]
Ken
Was there any law enforcement training, tactical type of stuff that all police officers get when they go to the academy?
- [04:41]
Eric Odinius
Yeah, for. For the detention enforcement officer. I went down to Glencoe, Georgia for eight weeks, which is where most federal agencies do their training. Eight weeks. You get constitutional law, then some immigration specific law, firearms trainings, defensive tactics, stuff like that. And you get one week of conversational Spanish, which is enough to say, turn left, turn right. Have a seat, whatever. But every time our agency reinvented itself, every couple of years, like after September 2001, and also in about 2008, I think there was another surge in about 2016, they would reclassify us, give us more authority, give us a promotion, and say, okay, well, because they'd say, look, we got all these trained and vetted van drivers. Why not make. They've probably been listening. Why not make some of them immigration agents? And then 2008, why not make them deportation officers? And so I just kind of rose up the ranks like that.
- [05:39]
Jay Coles
I think it's important to point out, Kenny, for clarification, you were never part of the fugitive task force that we see the most of right now.
- [05:47]
Eric Odinius
Yeah. What you're seeing is our dedicated fugitive teams. Now, while I did on occasion go out and support their mission, there are other roles you can have in the district office. And I was. I think we discussed it. I had about. There are probably four or five significant jobs you can have that aren't on the fugitive team. I was in all four or five of those. And I was only collaterally supporting the fugitive team if they had a big project.
- [06:10]
Jay Coles
Yeah, because you were still out in the field along with some of these arrests, and you had to go to court and testify. You did everything short of what the fugitive team is. And we see mostly the fugitive guys. Right.
- [06:19]
Eric Odinius
Right now, that is, from what I'm seeing, the bulk of it is fugitive operations.
- [06:25]
Jay Coles
So the training is there on both sides for the. For the guys who aren't on the fugitive team. And I'm assuming the fugitive team probably has a lot more training. Right.
- [06:35]
Eric Odinius
They get extra special training. They have to qualify additionally and with more things and have to do more special things. So, yes, they are, and they are. They operate more or less autonomously, so they are kind of out on their own. But the reason why they do travel with at least a couple people is, generally speaking, at least one of them has to be a supervisor. So, you know, they'll. They'll go with some number, but you never want to go with less than, you know, four or five. You want good witnesses if something goes south or whatever, you can't. You can't know that. So they're not going to be just traveling singly. When I would go out to the jails and prisons to interview foreign mourns, that could be just me or maybe somebody with me. Because I'm in the jail, I'm in a secure environment, I can do my interviews, no problem. But if you're actually going out on the streets and you're doing stuff like that that's not appropriate to go solo or with just one other person.
- [07:29]
Jay Coles
I mean, you've heard some of the criticisms, right, that who are these guys? They're not trained. What's your answer to the criticisms about the training and the level of expertise these guys have?
- [07:38]
Eric Odinius
Well, they're trained and they have expertise. It's just that what a lot of people don't understand is there's many different parts to the Department of Homeland Security and ice. There's Border Patrol, there's ice, and there's Customs and Border Protection. And they look like they're the same thing, but they're really not. The Border Patrol people go to Artesia, New Mexico for their training, and they're the only agency that trains in Artesia. Right. So. And their training is more specific to the kind of cases you would see on the southern border. And moreover, they don't see the process once they pass the body to district, they serve the charging documents and all that, they send the body to district, but then they don't usually follow through to see what happens. Go to the immigration judge, go to the asylum office, get the travel document, get the person back to where they're from safely, make decisions like that. If we have somebody that cannot be accepted or the judge restricts what country we can remove them to, so we have to consider them for release. There's a worksheet we have to do, there's an analysis we have to make. And all these things are things they don't usually see. So there is that.
- [08:50]
Jay Coles
What do you make of what we're seeing?
- [08:53]
Eric Odinius
You know, we talked about that, too. I don't want to comment on anything specific until, you know, the judicial branch has had a thing to pass on and I'm sure the grand jury is talking a meeting about all this other stuff. You know, you see stuff like this St. Paul police, you know, the judges are not going to Monday morning quarterback because that's not how the test is. Yeah, the Supreme Court reaffirmed as recently as last year that they're not going to. They're neither going to look at the very instant everything went south and they're not going to Monday morning quarterback, but they're going to look at the totality of circumstance.
- [09:28]
Jay Coles
So you're talking about each instance that we.
- [09:30]
Eric Odinius
Every instance that you see, if it goes to federal litigation, if the estate sues or the people sue or there's a claim for some sort of claim, whatever it might happen to Be. Ultimately, it comes down to the totality of the circumstances.
- [09:44]
Jay Coles
But I mean, when we see. Here's the question I have when I watch some of this, for example, okay. Without getting into a specific case. Right. And we're gonna show some exclusive video that we have of an arrest that's happening.
- [09:54]
Eric Odinius
Okay.
- [09:56]
Jay Coles
You'll see protesters blocking an alleyway and they lock arms. The ICE agents ask them to move, they don't move. They get asked to move again, they don't move. At some point, the ICE agents move in, physically move them, throw them to the ground, throw them out of the way, push them away, pepper spray them. So many people have questions about that enforcement. Usually the question is, can they even do that? And so I'm asking you to speak in more general terms rather than a specific case.
- [10:24]
Eric Odinius
Sure. When you see that, that I can talk about. So in the statute, in the regulations, the Code of Federal Regulations, if you look in title eight, which deals with the foreign nationals and nationality, there is a section in section 287 of the Code of Federal Regulations, not the law specifically, but the CFR. And the CFR, I think it's 286.6. I'm sorry, 287.6. And it talks about when ICE officers may use non deadly force and. Deadly force.
- [10:59]
Jay Coles
Got it.
- [11:00]
Eric Odinius
And it actually is in there, it says when this happens, you may use deadly force. When this happens, you may use non lethal force.
- [11:07]
Jay Coles
Non lethal, yeah.
- [11:07]
Eric Odinius
And then the other thing that they teach you when you go to the academy is there's. The lowest level is simply called officer presence. And that means you look the part, your uniform is like it should be. You don't, you're, you know, you're well groomed, you're presenting yourself well, you're establishing a presence and all that. That's the lowest level. And then it goes up from there to, you know, to passive force, active control measures.
- [11:34]
Jay Coles
So when we see that if they're blocking the alleyway or a street, under the law, they would be within their rights to move them out of the way.
- [11:43]
Eric Odinius
Right. And yes, but they would, like I said, when something like that happens too, you have to be mentally prepared or you should be prepared to say when you get, you know, you had time to consider it all. If I went to court, can I truthfully say that this person was doing X and so I did this.
- [12:02]
Jay Coles
Right.
- [12:02]
Eric Odinius
If you can.
- [12:05]
Ken
It's peaceful protest versus violent protest, is it not? Didn't we have a federal judge ruling coming late last week talking about this specific issue?
- [12:15]
Eric Odinius
And that's interesting because I actually know Judge Menendez, who issued the order when I did reentry prosecutions. She was part of the Federal Defender's office. And so when I testified to probable cause or detention, she would cross examine me to make sure that my agency had all the I's dotted and the T's crossed. Because, you know, the cases that the U.S. attorney's office would take, you're talking to somebody who's reentered after deportation, which is itself a felony. And then usually they would take cases where the person had prior drug or gun convictions. Well, when you look at the federal sentencing guidelines and you stack it all up, most of those people are looking at something like a 57 to 70 month sentence in the Bureau of Prisons. That's a long time to lose your liberty. Right. So I appreciate and respected the fact that she was aggressive, respectful, but that she was probing and that she knew where to probe and she knew what to look for. And so, you know, I answered truthfully, yes, ma', am, no, ma'. Am, and, and let the judge make the decision, because that's when you're on the witness stand. As long as you're not the target of the investigation, you just present the evidence. The correct thing is to always tell the truth. You don't have to volunteer anything, but always tell the truth and let the judge figure it out. You're not involved.
- [13:34]
Jay Coles
And we've heard so much about warrant or no warrant needed. Correct?
- [13:38]
Eric Odinius
Okay. And here again, you can look to the statutes, and here you can go to the law. Actually, section 287 of the actual talks about the duties and powers of immigration officers as it relates to foreign nationals. And it talks about authority to arrest without warrant. And there's also a section that talks about authority to arrest anyone without Warrant, including a U.S. citizen. But the U.S. citizen has to have committed a felony cognizable as a federal felony in your presence or view.
- [14:10]
Jay Coles
Okay?
- [14:11]
Eric Odinius
So if a US Citizen physically assaults the person next to you, Right. Who's federal officer, that is a. They are committing a federal felony and they don't need a warrant, recognize it, then they can make the warrantless arrest with the understanding that within the requisite timeframes, they get called the U.S. attorney's Office, submit the case for prosecution, and then if the, if the case is taken, then the body is presented and put before the magistrate, and then the magistrate decides whether you know where to go from there.
- [14:40]
Jay Coles
What if they show up at your door? What if they come to your house? What if the agents show up at someone's house, do they have to have a judicial warrant signed by a judge, or is it different for immigration purposes?
- [14:52]
Eric Odinius
It is different for immigration purposes. And the thing is, too, now we're really going to get. And again, I hope you'll weigh me down if I kind of get in the tall.
- [15:03]
Jay Coles
Kenny's good at that. Good. He won't let you get in the weeds.
- [15:06]
Ken
Oh, believe me, I have a lot of questions.
- [15:09]
Eric Odinius
Because now you're talking common law and police officers and authority and license and all the property rights and things like that. And there's a concept called curtilage, right. You have a house, it's got a front door, it probably has a mailbox. Right. There is an expectation that people can come up to your door, knock on your door, remain for a given period of time and leave. If a person can do that, you know, if the post op man can come up and deliver the mail, the Girl scout cookie lady can come up and knock on your door, the police can knock on your door. Because this is a consensual encounter at this point. Right.
- [15:46]
Jay Coles
However.
- [15:46]
Eric Odinius
However, you don't have to. There is. Within the administrative thing, there is boundaries. Right. The curtilage stops at the threshold of the door.
- [15:58]
Jay Coles
The door.
- [16:00]
Eric Odinius
You're not in the curtilage now.
- [16:02]
Jay Coles
So they wouldn't need a warrant up to that point.
- [16:05]
Eric Odinius
Up to that point.
- [16:05]
Jay Coles
But to go into the house, you.
- [16:08]
Eric Odinius
Need consent or a warrant.
- [16:11]
Jay Coles
Or a warrant.
- [16:12]
Eric Odinius
Judicial warrant.
- [16:13]
Jay Coles
Got it.
- [16:14]
Eric Odinius
An administrative warrant. Now, again, there's a concept called exigent circumstances.
- [16:19]
Jay Coles
Right. That means if it's a burning house and somebody's about to die, you don't have to get a warrant.
- [16:26]
Eric Odinius
Here's another example. You have an administrative warrant for somebody who was ordered removed from the United States. You've seen their picture, you know what they look like.
- [16:33]
Jay Coles
Yeah.
- [16:34]
Eric Odinius
They open the door, it's that specific person.
- [16:37]
Jay Coles
Then you can grab them.
- [16:38]
Eric Odinius
Then you can reach across the threshold, make the grab, make the arrest. But when you document it, you say the accident circumstance to break the plane and enter the threshold was. That was my target, and he was right in front of me.
- [16:53]
Jay Coles
Got it.
- [16:54]
Eric Odinius
So I have permission to do that.
- [16:56]
Jay Coles
So even if an ICE agent. Because I think we need to explain to the listener, this is another source of confusion.
- [17:02]
Eric Odinius
I'm sure it is.
- [17:04]
Jay Coles
These are. They would still need a warrant to go into the house. We've established that. Unless they get permission. Right. Or permission.
- [17:13]
Eric Odinius
But consent can be limited. Say you have permission to come here, but just here.
- [17:19]
Jay Coles
Right. Like in the foyer.
- [17:20]
Eric Odinius
Right? In the foyer. You come into the foyer.
- [17:22]
Jay Coles
Understood. But this is not a criminal. You've explained to me this is handled administratively, not criminally. I got so confused as a reporter. If I'm hearing from one side, if they're here illegally, it's a crime. Then I hear from the other side, oh, but it's not criminal. It's administrative.
- [17:41]
Eric Odinius
It exists in both worlds. But that's where you have to. That's where you have the training. Right?
- [17:46]
Jay Coles
Yeah.
- [17:47]
Eric Odinius
It is in the statute that it is illegal to enter the United States. It is rarely prosecuted in the District of Minnesota. Because it's a misdemeanor. It's not.
- [17:58]
Jay Coles
So. But it's a crime.
- [17:59]
Eric Odinius
But it is a crime.
- [17:59]
Jay Coles
Okay, but a misdemeanor crime.
- [18:01]
Eric Odinius
But a misdemeanor crime. If you had no other prior criminal history and it's your first entry, yada, yada, yada. Right. There's a provision for other stuff, but we won't get into that. So then there's that. But there's also the administrative charge of being present in the United States without having been inspected. And the difference is the burden of proof. Right. Because when you were going to school and you were watching Law and Order episodes and all that other stuff they told you about reasonable doubt. Yep. Reasonable doubt. Reasonable doubt. Reasonable. In immigration, the standard is clear, convincing, and unequivocal, which is somewhere between preponderance of evidence, which is 51%.
- [18:37]
Jay Coles
Which is a civil.
- [18:38]
Eric Odinius
Which is a civil matter.
- [18:40]
Ken
Right.
- [18:40]
Eric Odinius
And which is considered civil immigration. And the reasonable doubt standard. Got it. And where it. And again, please talk me off the ledge if I'm getting in the tall weeds here.
- [18:51]
Jay Coles
No, this is important to know. It really is.
- [18:53]
Eric Odinius
But the standard that the courts look at is under the Fourth Amendment where it talks about reasonable search seizures.
- [19:01]
Jay Coles
Yep, Yep.
- [19:01]
Eric Odinius
Now, here's where the tall weeds part might come in. If you are a prisoner and you are convicted, you're in prison or something like that. Right. The standard for you is 8th amendment. It's cruel and unusual punishment. But if you are in any form of an immigration administrative proceeding and you are not, you are not in the criminal process, you are treated as. The arrest has to be reasonable. So every immigration arrest that an immigration officer has to make on an administrative basis must be reasonable.
- [19:34]
Jay Coles
Got it.
- [19:35]
Eric Odinius
And that's what the court will look at.
- [19:37]
Jay Coles
This is super helpful, and I hope people are paying close attention, because these are a lot of the arguments coming from both sides, and you never can figure out which one is accurate. The next question I had from the administrative part of this, I guess, even though it can be criminal, you hear a lot of this. There's no due process. They're just snatching people without due process. My question is this, Eric.
- [20:00]
Eric Odinius
Yes.
- [20:02]
Jay Coles
Has there already been due process? By that, I mean, has most of these people most likely gone through the immigration process and an immigration judge has ordered their arrest or ordered them to be detained because they've already had their court hearing?
- [20:21]
Eric Odinius
For some of them, yes, that may very well be the case. There are certain others that are going through what's called habeas corpus proceedings right now where we're not quite sure. A lot of the immigration private bar attorneys are now taking some of these refugee cases to court to ask the judge to see if these detentions are reasonable.
- [20:45]
Jay Coles
Got it.
- [20:45]
Eric Odinius
Because it's something they haven't seen before. And we're not. We are all not. The bar is not. I'm thinking paralegal, not a lawyer. But the lawyers believe that the law does not support that kind of arrest. And it'll be up to the judges to make those decisions. But in some cases, the judges have already said no, the arrest is warranted.
- [21:11]
Jay Coles
There's a deportation order.
- [21:13]
Eric Odinius
But in the refugee cases that are now also taking place, some of those cases have already come back. No, the detention is not reasonable. I ordered the person released.
- [21:24]
Jay Coles
Released.
- [21:24]
Eric Odinius
And then they.
- [21:25]
Jay Coles
So when we hear of these complaints about no due process.
- [21:28]
Eric Odinius
No. Well, that's the thing. Due process. It's funny you should mention that, because the first case they take you through when you go to. Not the first time I went to for training, but when I came back in 2004 for immigration enforcement agent training, and they're teaching about jurisdiction and who is a foreign national, who is a U.S. citizen. And the first case you talk about is from, like, 1892, and it talks about. It's about a Chinese. No, a Japanese female who came in on a steamship, and the inspector did not believe she was here for the purpose that she stated.
- [22:06]
Jay Coles
Okay.
- [22:06]
Eric Odinius
And it was reviewed by the Supreme Court on habeas corpus. And the decision by the court was that every foreign national who is at least seeking admission to the United States. So you got to be physically present, right. You got to be on the threshold, not going to come in. As long as you're at that standard, you're going to get some kind of due process. The amount of due process you get.
- [22:30]
Jay Coles
Will vary depending, depending on the case.
- [22:33]
Eric Odinius
The ties that you get. So, like a permanent resident, for instance, somebody with A green card has the most due process rights. No immigration officer can order a lawful permanent resident removed, though all those cases have to go to the immigration judge. Got it. But as the person has fewer and fewer ties and connections to the United States in terms of how much time they've been here, there is due process in every case, but it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. And to the court's thinking, this is only rational. Right. Because. Because when you look at the scheme of international law, the law of nations and things like that, every country can decide for itself who it wants to admit. If you could not choose who could cross your borders, you would not be sovereign. So the States, they can't control who moves across, so they're not sovereign in that sense. But if you are a country that can control and permit the entry or exit of foreigners, as you see, that's what makes you sovereign. And so that's one of the tests. So every country is like this. And when I go overseas on travel, I'm the foreign national. I have to abide by what they say. And if I don't, I'll get shipped out, too, one way or the other.
- [23:50]
Jay Coles
So you're pretty confident most of these, there is due process. When we're hearing this argument that you're being snatched without due process, it's not as simple as just.
- [24:00]
Eric Odinius
It's nowhere near as simple as that.
- [24:01]
Jay Coles
It could already be a judge's order.
- [24:03]
Eric Odinius
There. There could be.
- [24:04]
Jay Coles
Yeah.
- [24:04]
Eric Odinius
So. And, Or. Or an agency or. Or something like that. Or we. Again, we don't know.
- [24:09]
Jay Coles
We don't know. Right.
- [24:10]
Eric Odinius
And that's why I, you know, I just, you know, I hate to see everything ratcheted up like this. Minnesota being the focus of all this, whatever, you know, I would just hope that cooler heads. I've been hoping for the last three weeks the cooler heads will prevail, but, you know, my phone's blowing up. I talked to. I talked to a. God. What was there. What was there a radio station from Europe yesterday? I talked to a correspondent from some.
- [24:36]
Jay Coles
Everybody's been tracking you down.
- [24:38]
Eric Odinius
Yeah, they're getting my name from a private bar and then they're calling me.
- [24:42]
Ken
Are you getting paid for any of this?
- [24:44]
Eric Odinius
I wish, believe me, my educational fund could use it, but I'm getting enough.
- [24:48]
Ken
Jay, write them a check.
- [24:50]
Jay Coles
I think we ought to. Channel five helped me track them down.
- [24:53]
Ken
Well, speaking of Channel five, I wanted to bring something up. I'm reading from the website, and it goes back to protesting and the difference between peaceful and violent protesters. And I Alluded to it briefly, this federal judge, you're telling me it's Catherine Mendez. She ruled. She ruled late Friday. Federal agents conducting immigration operations in the Metro cannot detain or tear gas peaceful protesters.
- [25:20]
Eric Odinius
Right.
- [25:21]
Ken
Also saying the agents cannot arrest, detain or retaliate against peaceful protesters, including those observing they can't pepper spray or use other non lethal munitions against them. They cannot stop or detain drivers or passengers and vehicles with no reasonable suspicion that they're obstructing agents, including people following them at a appropriate distance. There's some words in their appropriate distance that caught my eye. And peaceful protesters that caught my eye.
- [25:51]
Eric Odinius
Yep.
- [25:52]
Ken
And we're seeing some, what we've been calling on garage logic, very bad optics regarding ICE and their actions. And then their, their lack of, or their slow response to why they did what they did. Witness the guy, the hmong guy in St. Paul. Well, we found out days later they were there because they were looking for a couple of really dangerous guys that were reported to be living in the residence.
- [26:20]
Eric Odinius
I know a little about that from who might or might not be working an angle of the case. So, yeah, I'd rather not.
- [26:28]
Ken
But my point here is they could control, you know, it's obvious that in my opinion, that some of the press is out to get them. And I think they could control their image better if they were a whole lot more graceful in the way they do their job and it's more timely in their response.
- [26:46]
Eric Odinius
And that was why we always, or I was always trying to be careful because the last thing you want is a bad precedent. And we had an issue like that. I remember in the early 2000s where we had a provision in the law where we could take people who had previously been removed and just reinstate the prior judge's order of removal and remove them again because it doesn't make sense to keep sending a person to the judge, you know, every couple of weeks like that.
- [27:17]
Ken
Right, right.
- [27:18]
Eric Odinius
Well, in the ninth Circuit, which is the area out in which some of your listeners may, is kind of. Sometimes they're a little controversial out there on the West Coast. They kind of think they're their own little Supreme Court or whatever, but they had a circuit rule that because it was sometimes used injudiciously over there, that they couldn't do that. And the Supreme Court eventually fixed the circuit split around 2009, 2010, I think. But when I got detailed to Phoenix for 45 days in 2005, and I was a brand spanking new immigration enforcement agent, I was doing cases and I Was like, you know, this guy's been removed 5 times in the last 6 months. Should I just reinstate? And they're like, nope, you got to send him back to the immigration judge.
- [28:01]
Jay Coles
Really?
- [28:02]
Eric Odinius
Okay. So, yeah, the reason to be judicious about what you do and things like that is that you do get a reputation over time. Believe me, Word gets out, word gets around, you're known, and you don't want a bad precedent that interferes with your operations. But you know what you keep. You know, I think the phrase is, win stupid game, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
- [28:26]
Jay Coles
Yeah, it's been said a few times.
- [28:29]
Eric Odinius
You know, they say that on cops, but it can be applicable in the law enforcement realm, too. You gotta be mindful that you're not operating in a vacuum out there, and other people are looking at what you do, and you've just gotta mind your P's and Q's. If people realize, you know, I worked for these private bar attorneys for years on the other side, so to speak. But we all respected and understood. I mean, we were. Because, you know, of how many hours I worked, we were all living together anyway, almost. Right? So. But as long as there was mutual respect on both sides, we could deal with that. As long as we were being honest with each other and said, hey, I can't do anything. I don't have jurisdiction. I know what you're saying, and I know what you're trying to do, but you need to go here. You need to go to the federal court. You need to go to the field office director or the immigration judge. Your case is sympathetic, but I can't do it. And so as long as they understood that it was okay.
- [29:22]
Jay Coles
And to Kenny's point, what Menendez ruled was interesting. What is a reasonable. What was it? A reasonable distance or.
- [29:32]
Ken
Yeah, as for following them. Yeah, hold on. Let me find the direct quote.
- [29:38]
Jay Coles
I think it's reasonable, appropriate or something. Appropr. Appropriate distance.
- [29:42]
Eric Odinius
Yeah. That sounds very judicial right there. Reasonable and appropriate.
- [29:45]
Ken
Yeah. Following at an appropriate distance.
- [29:49]
Jay Coles
Who determines what's.
- [29:50]
Ken
Define that.
- [29:50]
Jay Coles
Define appropriate.
- [29:51]
Eric Odinius
Well, then that's the thing. District court's gonna do that. When it comes time for somebody to apply that test, they're gonna look at reasonable. They're gonna look at other similar cases and stuff like that, and they're gonna. And they're gonna say what a reasonable person would do, but that is the standard. And also, again, there's that word again from the Fourth Amendment that I was talking about, right? Reasonable. Reasonable. She's applying a Fourth Amendment should be Reasonable. It should be out there already. But now that she's felt she's had to put it out there, you know, that tells you something.
- [30:21]
Ken
So, yeah, let's do the video.
- [30:23]
Jay Coles
I was just gonna. That's where my. Now, I was gonna pivot.
- [30:26]
Ken
Let's define exclusive before we play the video. Well, what do you mean by exclusive?
- [30:32]
Jay Coles
Definitely exclusive to news from the crabby coffee shop. Because a source of mine, law enforcement source, gave me the video.
- [30:39]
Ken
Okay?
- [30:40]
Jay Coles
And it's surveillance video taken at the St. Paul Police Department, Okay. And nobody else has it, okay, except us. And it was sent to me because I'd been asking a lot of the questions we're asking. Eric, you know, why does it take 6, 8, 9, 10 ICE agents to arrest one guy, right? Maybe one guy who's not armed and doesn't appear to be dangerous. So I got this video sent to me, and it's outside the St. Paul Police Station. And we can. I can set it up this way so that you understand what you're looking at. ICE is pursuing someone to arrest. Don't know for what. And that person pulls up to the backside of the St. Paul Police Department and tries to get into the Police Department. And ice does its thing. Now, I wanna also be clear. St. Paul Police did not assist in this arrest. This just happens to be at the St. Paul Police Department. And I wouldn't doubt the guy might have drove to the St. Paul Police Department, hoping to get some help from.
- [31:39]
Ken
St. Paul PD I have a shocking bombshell about this, but I want everybody to watch it first, and then I'll drop this big bomb on you, Jay. Okay, so here it is.
- [31:51]
Jay Coles
So this is the guy pulling up. That's the suspect's vehicle. The cars behind him are ICE vehicles, as you'll see. These are now ICE agents getting out.
- [32:00]
Ken
He runs to the back door, up the steps, can't get in.
- [32:04]
Jay Coles
They start to arrest him. Now look at the other ICE agents showing up. You got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. And they also arrest a woman in the top right hand corner.
- [32:17]
Ken
Meanwhile, he didn't put the car in park, so the car kept going down the alley, across the street and possibly into a couple of trees. The lady got out and ran, but it looked like she got behind some obstacles that she might have fallen down on the ice.
- [32:31]
Jay Coles
Yes. And so they arrest her. And as you can see, the video ends there. And again, what I liked about this video, and I was glad it was shared with us, it's away from the protesters It's a clean arrest in terms of he doesn't put up a fight other than he's trying to get in the door, and they arrest him, and that was the end of it. But it was something, Kenny, that I thought we should play, because when you see it, apart from when arrests are happening at the protests, it gives you a real clean idea of how most of these arrests are occurring. This is how most of them are being carried out. And we only get the snippets when it's happening at the protests.
- [33:07]
Ken
Let's watch it again.
- [33:08]
Jay Coles
Yeah, let's watch it again.
- [33:09]
Ken
Replay it one more time.
- [33:11]
Jay Coles
So this is outside St. Paul Police Headquarters, but they're not involved. There's the suspect's car. ICE is in pursuit.
- [33:21]
Ken
The suspect jumps out, runs to some steps, goes up to the back door. Okay.
- [33:25]
Jay Coles
White T shirt, knocking on the door.
- [33:27]
Ken
Two agents so far. Another car, third agent. Four, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. I think it's ten.
- [33:42]
Jay Coles
Ten. Okay, so we had ten agents. And there's the car rolling across the street, which could have been dangerous, but nothing happened. Thank goodness.
- [33:49]
Ken
Okay, can I drop my bomb? Let's check the video.
- [33:53]
Jay Coles
What do you got?
- [33:54]
Ken
Here's the bomb I'm gonna drop on you. No big deal, right? No big deal.
- [34:00]
Jay Coles
That's not even a bomb.
- [34:02]
Ken
Eric is part of my duties at Hubbard. I'm a traffic reporter, and I have. I listened to state patrol scanner and I watched the. The cameras, the streaming cameras. And I've watched many, many, many police chases that end, and some of them have ended violently. But this was. You asked me a run of the mill arrest. Can you see anything wrong with what happened here?
- [34:27]
Eric Odinius
Well, again, you know, we don't know. I'm actually wondering about the female there and what her title was, but I'm sure they decided the best thing was to clear the scene and figure it out later.
- [34:42]
Ken
Well, this is an old trick that I've learned a long time ago when the driver of a car you're riding in is pulled over and arrested. Just enforce the case that he's the guilty party. He got weed. Search that guy. Get all the. It's like when you're being chased by a grizzly bear. Push down your best friend, let them get hit.
- [35:02]
Jay Coles
And I'm glad you dropped that bombshell, Kenny, because to my point, so many questions I've received from people is, why does it take 8, 9, or 10 of these guys?
- [35:11]
Ken
Well, I have a simple answer to that, and it's only a theory. I don't think it's fact, I think, because now the local police departments cannot provide crowd protection or whatever. They're being asked not to. I think that they're just overstaffing each incident in order to protect themselves from the possibility of violent protest.
- [35:32]
Jay Coles
And that could very well be. And what I thought also, it gave you a nice clear. That's a good clear shot of how most of these arrests are going down. We have the images just where the arrests are happening with the protesters, right? There's been over 3,000 arrests, and most are happening like that. And I asked Eric, I said, eric, you could have 8, 9, 10 guys chasing him because we don't know how bad that guy is. Right? He could be a really bad guy for all we know. Right.
- [35:57]
Eric Odinius
Well, and like I said, that's. If it goes to litigation, that's, that's absolutely going to come out, and then they're going to. And that will all be balanced against the reasonableness. And that's, that's the standard that they'll be looking at.
- [36:08]
Ken
Jay the morning after the good shooting, that would have been a Thursday morning, there was a protest going on at the Whipple Building, which is down by the airport. Highway 62, Fort Snelling, that area, Hiawatha, just across the Mendota, there was an ICE arrest happening on Highway 62. And it was so boring that I tuned it out. I, you know, I was more interested in the crash in St. Paul than I was this very boring police arrest.
- [36:39]
Jay Coles
100%, Kenny.
- [36:40]
Ken
It's so critical, and I'm not trying to defend anybody here. I'm not trying to give my opinion other than, you know, every case is different, I guess.
- [36:50]
Jay Coles
Every case is different.
- [36:50]
Eric Odinius
Every case is different.
- [36:51]
Jay Coles
And I like the fact that this one involved protesters. You could cleanly see how arrests are carried out. And to your point, Kenny, pretty routine arrest. Yeah. Nothing spectacular about it.
- [37:02]
Ken
It would have been more interesting if one of them slipped on the ice, you know, because that's the kind of nonsense that goes viral.
- [37:09]
Jay Coles
Well, here's the other thing, too. I said to Eric, what if he had gotten in that door? Now what happens?
- [37:15]
Eric Odinius
Right?
- [37:15]
Ken
There you go. The speculation on this video is fun, right?
- [37:18]
Jay Coles
Because it's speculation because St. Paul police have been ordered not to assist in arrests. They can assist with crowd control, but not in arrests.
- [37:25]
Ken
I can spec if he would have come in hot like he did, with no explanation. And by the way, the front and back doors are locked, so you can't come in hot. But if for some reason he had come in hot, he would have been bounced on right away and hands behind the back. And now what's going on here, pal?
- [37:44]
Jay Coles
Yeah, yeah.
- [37:45]
Ken
And then the room would have been flooded with ICE agents. It would have been. It would have been a catastrophe.
- [37:50]
Jay Coles
Well, that's what I'm saying. That was a Sunday afternoon. That was last Sunday afternoon. Now, had he gone to the front door Sunday afternoon, it might have been locked during the business hours. You can get into the front foyer and there's a cop sitting behind the glass. And it could have been a whole mess had he gotten inside.
- [38:05]
Ken
Right.
- [38:06]
Jay Coles
But I was thankful to get the video because I said to my source, this to me, shows what. And, Eric, you correct me if I'm wrong. This shows you what probably 95% of the arrests look like out there. Am I wrong?
- [38:21]
Eric Odinius
90%, probably. You hope they're. At the end of the day, you want to go home safe. Right.
- [38:27]
Jay Coles
But we just see the chaotic ones with the protest, with the coverage. And that's generally what you see, Kenny, is what we just witnessed.
- [38:37]
Ken
Here's a question for both of you. I'm speculating again, which gets us nowhere, but I have to do it. If, in fact, he would have got into the front secure lobby. Is that Switzerland? Is he safe then, given that the police are told not to assist ice, or could they go in there and grab him and pull him out again.
- [38:57]
Jay Coles
Without knowing for sure? I'm pretty sure they could. If he was in that public area of the foyer there, ICE could have continued in and continued the arrest. The question would become, would have any of the St Paul police officers been able to assist in the arrest? Yeah, because they've been ordered not to. So I don't hear.
- [39:11]
Ken
I can hear all those St. Paul cops muttering under their breath, oh, now what's change?
- [39:22]
Eric Odinius
You know, change of fact. It changes the whole thing. You know, that's the. That's the interesting thing about the law. It's like, well, you know, you read about a case and it's like, well, that's what they did. But let's just change one fact. Well, now you've. Well, then you can't really predict it because it changes the whole time, the whole thing.
- [39:38]
Jay Coles
I mean, I guess for us, I'm glad he did not get into that.
- [39:41]
Eric Odinius
Building because it could have been a whole. Saved a lot of knotty jurisdictional issues, we'll just say.
- [39:46]
Jay Coles
Not to mention the politics of.
- [39:48]
Eric Odinius
I was telling you about there's been a fourth amendment and eighth amendment arrest. And I remember I was. Because I am such a law nerd.
- [39:55]
Jay Coles
And so for those who don't know, fourth amendment's unlawful search and seizure right.
- [39:58]
Eric Odinius
An eighth amendment is cruel and unusual. You had rational punishment. So when you're convicted of an offense, the conditions of custody are evaluated under the eighth amendment standard. And when you're not anything other than that, you're the fourth. But what if you had a case that the 8th Circuit had where the guy had an unexecuted two year sentence hanging over his head but was still in pretrial confinement and for something else, he was in the squad car going to the police station. The squad car had to respond to a robbery in progress thing at the bank. It went through this parking lot with all these speed bumps and the guys in the back with the handcuffs bouncing all over the place, getting injured from the y. The only thing hay circuit wants to know is who is this fourth amendment or eighth amendment? What standard are we looking at?
- [40:45]
Jay Coles
Well, it would have been interesting.
- [40:46]
Eric Odinius
You would think there were like 5,000 other questions to ask. But they're the appellate court and they're just looking for error and they're like, we get all the other stuff that happened, but the really important thing is did the injury happen under a fourth amendment standard or an eighth amendment standard?
- [41:00]
Jay Coles
Well, you know, I'm glad we showed the video. I'm glad you could talk about it because there are people who will see that and say there is no need for ice to have eight, nine, ten guys there. Right. And it's very important to point out we don't know that.
- [41:12]
Eric Odinius
We don't know. And the other thing is, like I said, it's been so crazy the last three weeks, they probably do feel they have to have a few extra buns. Kenny's point was right on target. I think that's a large part of it. But if they know now or are concerned that they're not going to get backup from the local authorities, then it would be foolish not to bring that many extra people just in case, because now you don't. You may not have that backup. And it's. It's dangerous on those streets out there. You know, I, you were out there, I was out there. I wasn't doing it at the level they were doing that. But you know, when I, when I did go out, you know, you're. It's a pretty intimidating feeling out there. You can be in the agency a long time and still have that feeling every time you go out there. But those spidey senses are what keep you safe. Right? Because it's like you know what? Maybe we come back to this house a different day. Maybe we come back a different time. Maybe we we just back off and. But some depending on who it is. Depending on who it is, right? But maybe you don't have that luxury. Maybe it's like, you know, gun and trafficking charges and stuff like that. And this may be our only opportunity. We don't want this guy vamoosing, you know.
- [42:22]
Ken
So I have more questions. Jay, let's pause for three seconds in case we have an ad insertion and then we'll ask the question.
- [42:30]
Eric Odinius
Good.
- [42:31]
Jay Coles
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Ken
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Jay Coles
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- [43:51]
Ken
Okay, Eric, have you, did you actually, did you happen to see the Brooklyn park police chief? His name is Mark Brulee. Did you happen to see his presser last night?
- [44:05]
Eric Odinius
I didn't, but I did see the police chief from Apple Valley. My wife showed me a text from the police chief of Apple Valley and he gave a very nice, measured statement about the issue and things people could do about it constructively.
- [44:20]
Ken
Evidently, Brulee and I'm just going to paraphrase what happened. He was commenting on ice tactics and how they in fact have pulled over a couple of off duty Brooklyn park police officers One was a female. And they were giving her, my words, the business. Not physical, but, you know, intimidating. And then she finally identified herself as a off duty police officer and they left. And that's basically what the presser was about last night with Chief Brulee.
- [44:53]
Eric Odinius
Right. Well, I. I mean, she needs to address that upper chain of command. And if there needs to be some department to department talking, that's the obvious first. First step. And if she doesn't get the satisfaction, there are other channels she can go off of. But, you know, the important thing, and you know, for the officers, too, if you find yourself in that situation, you know, wrong target or whatever, you should be writing up a memo to relate that and say what your basis was. Because the thing is, again, when these cases go to litigation, it's not going to happen instantly. They take time. You're going to find situations where, like it might be a year or 18 months and you get subpoenaed, you have to come into the grand jury or you have to go to the judge in a suppression hearing and you have to remember about what happened 12 months or 18 months ago. Good luck with that. So what prudent officers will do sometimes is you write your memo for the date. Right. Or you can do things like you write down your recollections and you mail it to yourself if you're really concerned, that's probably one thing you can do constructively. Right. Because then you have a contemporaneous recollection of what you did. But important thing is dialogue. Dialogue. I mean, the chiefs were.
- [46:10]
Jay Coles
I watched that presser, Kenny. They were alluding to racial profiling.
- [46:15]
Ken
That's what I was going to bring up.
- [46:16]
Jay Coles
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [46:18]
Ken
She was a. I, for lack of a better term, person of color. God, I hate that phrase.
- [46:24]
Jay Coles
But she's most likely black.
- [46:26]
Ken
Black or Mexican or something along those lines. Right.
- [46:28]
Jay Coles
But it's again, conflicting information. One side says, oh, the Supreme Court says in immigration cases, racial profiling is okay. Others legal people say, no, that racial profiling does not have. Does not apply in immigration cases.
- [46:43]
Eric Odinius
Eric, what's not racial pro. What is it? It's again, there's a 19. Oh, God, I'm such a law nerd. Again, it's okay.
- [46:51]
Jay Coles
We need one today. That's why you're here.
- [46:53]
Eric Odinius
Okay.
- [46:54]
Jay Coles
Yeah, we're trying to understand all this, Kenny, and I don't know anything about this.
- [46:59]
Ken
No, I know how to blame my friends for my actions.
- [47:02]
Eric Odinius
Yeah. Roughly around 1976 case, there was a case called Ponce versus United States. And that case and if it seems like it comes right to recollection, I actually cited it one of my paralegal classes a couple weeks ago.
- [47:18]
Jay Coles
Good. So you're perfect for this. So can we racially profile in immigration cases?
- [47:22]
Eric Odinius
No, you cannot do that.
- [47:24]
Jay Coles
Cannot do it.
- [47:24]
Eric Odinius
You must have. See, you must have more than one articulable fact. Now, can ethnicity be one of those? Sure, sure. But let me tell you a true story that happened to me when I was on detail in El Paso. This story is, like, almost 20 years old. So in 2008, I get detailed down to El Paso to help him out for 45 days. Okay? Let me tell you, El Paso is just. And I can say this, too, because I was actually born there, okay? So I don't know. Now it's pretty dusty, right? There's not a lot going on. Juarez is where all the action's at. Juarez has got, like, 1.5 million people, and El Paso has 300,000.
- [48:07]
Jay Coles
And they're right across from each other.
- [48:09]
Eric Odinius
Yeah, they're right across from each other. So after about halfway through this detail, I have just got to. I've just got to go for some R and R. And I don't want to be crossing the border to Mexico for an R and R, but there's a casino in Mescalero, New Mexico, about two hours drive north. So one of the other detail officers and I, we get in the car and we drive up and we. While we're. As we cross into New Mexico, we actually hit a Border Patrol checkpoint. Because they have checkpoints on the highways, right? And the Border Patrol guy looks at us. I mean, we are, you know, the whitest Minnesotans, you know, right? And he says, you're American, aren't you? Now, I just want to get out of El Paso, get to Mescalero, and do something other than deal with my job. So I don't have time to lecture the Border Patrol officer that he's doing it wrong. But because that's not how you should ask that question.
- [49:09]
Jay Coles
Okay? That's what I want to ask you. What can you do?
- [49:12]
Eric Odinius
The problem is that when you say, you're American, aren't you? A person could not. Or they could say, oh, shoot, I'm from Central America. Yeah, I'm American.
- [49:22]
Jay Coles
I'm American.
- [49:23]
Eric Odinius
Yeah. Or they're Canadian, right?
- [49:25]
Jay Coles
Because that's North American, right?
- [49:26]
Eric Odinius
The correct way to say it is, of what country are you a citizen or national of? Now, when I ask you that question, that makes you think, right? It's like, God, the words Are all twisted around. Of what country are you a citizen or national of? And what the heck is a national? Well, a national is somebody from American Samoa, but we won't get into that.
- [49:43]
Jay Coles
No.
- [49:43]
Eric Odinius
But anyway, so, yeah, of what country are you a citizen? It makes you think. And then you say, oh, I'm a United States citizen. Right. Or, you know, but it makes you think. And you, you. And when they have to think it and say that you can pick up on accents, you can pick up on other things. And as you're having that, you start from the consensual encounter. Right. And you continue to articulate. You're asking questions that you know.
- [50:10]
Jay Coles
So I hate to interrupt you, but it sounds like if you're going to go off accent and how they're responding.
- [50:16]
Eric Odinius
Yep.
- [50:16]
Jay Coles
Would color of skin then matter too?
- [50:20]
Eric Odinius
At some point. But again, you know, when the border patrol got. When you ask a question like that, you're only ever going to get your probable cause for persons of a certain ethnicity and type.
- [50:31]
Jay Coles
Correct.
- [50:31]
Eric Odinius
But you know what? The universe is larger than that. And what I wanted to lecture is like, you're never going to find an illegal Canadian asking a question like that. But there are a lot of legal Canadians in the United States. People don't know they're out there. Right.
- [50:45]
Ken
Well, we're surrounded by them.
- [50:47]
Eric Odinius
They're everywhere.
- [50:48]
Ken
Like Martians.
- [50:49]
Eric Odinius
They walk among us.
- [50:50]
Jay Coles
Right.
- [50:51]
Eric Odinius
They're all over the place.
- [50:52]
Ken
They're disguised. Yeah.
- [50:53]
Eric Odinius
We have a full service Canadian consul.
- [50:56]
Jay Coles
Disguised like a guy from Ely.
- [50:59]
Ken
It looks like he's. Yeah, yeah. From Rochester.
- [51:02]
Eric Odinius
So circling back to Bergoni Ponce.
- [51:04]
Jay Coles
Right? Yeah, yeah.
- [51:05]
Eric Odinius
You. You get, you get this whole thing. The problem with Bergoni Ponce, the reason it came up is the border patrol was kind of asking, looking for a certain kind of person.
- [51:15]
Jay Coles
So if there's a Mexican guy, we're gonna go. Because chances are.
- [51:19]
Eric Odinius
Right. And the Supreme Court's like, no, no.
- [51:21]
Jay Coles
You can't do it.
- [51:21]
Eric Odinius
Good. You're trying. You're. You are establishing two things when you are a border patrol, icbp, whatever. And this is why you're asking two specific questions. I already told you one of them. Right?
- [51:30]
Jay Coles
Yeah.
- [51:31]
Eric Odinius
Yeah. What country are you a citizen? National.
- [51:33]
Jay Coles
What's the next one?
- [51:33]
Eric Odinius
A lineage. And the next one is, how did you enter the United States?
- [51:37]
Jay Coles
Got it.
- [51:37]
Eric Odinius
But you're only reaching question two. Right. If question one comes back, I'm from somewhere else.
- [51:42]
Jay Coles
Right, got it.
- [51:43]
Eric Odinius
Because they're a US Citizen, you don't care how they enter the United States. It's not your jurisdiction. You don't care.
- [51:49]
Jay Coles
I'm so glad you referenced the Supreme Court decision. That clarifies this for me because I've watched different news reports where I have seen it reported that in immigration cases you can racially profile.
- [52:00]
Eric Odinius
No.
- [52:01]
Jay Coles
And then I've seen other stories say you can't. Well, it sounded ridiculous to me, but.
- [52:05]
Eric Odinius
Begonia Ponce specifically talks about. Because it talks about. In the context of border patrol arrests.
- [52:10]
Jay Coles
Yeah.
- [52:11]
Eric Odinius
And whatever. I. I can't.
- [52:13]
Ken
So did you get out and tell him all that? Did you tell that guy that I.
- [52:17]
Eric Odinius
Was on my way, he didn't want to work anymore? I didn't care. I. I needed that.
- [52:20]
Jay Coles
You need to go lose some money.
- [52:21]
Eric Odinius
I didn't have time to give him a remedial crash course. And establishing this has been like a crash course.
- [52:26]
Jay Coles
And what. All the questions I wanted answered about what's going on here.
- [52:29]
Ken
Yeah.
- [52:30]
Jay Coles
And I. And you've answered all of them.
- [52:31]
Eric Odinius
Them.
- [52:32]
Jay Coles
Wow.
- [52:32]
Eric Odinius
Okay.
- [52:33]
Jay Coles
Well, you have. You've done a great job. And I know you were worried about getting into the weeds, but you know what? As something as complex as this, if you don't bother to get in the weeds a little bit, you're never going to understand it, I guess. And you're never going to be trying.
- [52:43]
Eric Odinius
To keep it at the.
- [52:44]
Jay Coles
You did very base. Kenny and I. Kenny and I. Reavers were all like going, okay, I get it now. I get it. 1. One more question I've got, please. You were around from 97 to 2021 with. With ICE.
- [52:56]
Eric Odinius
Right.
- [52:57]
Jay Coles
So Clinton deported, I don't know, 10, 12 million.
- [53:01]
Eric Odinius
Well, the whole reason I got hired was that the Democrat aggressively remove persons because they tightened everything up.
- [53:11]
Jay Coles
Tightened everything up in the 90s. Immigration started to become a really big deal in the 90s under Clinton. Then it continued through Bush. Yeah.
- [53:17]
Eric Odinius
The September 2001 attacks and that.
- [53:19]
Jay Coles
And then it continued with Obama 2008 and then Biden. Right.
- [53:23]
Eric Odinius
And so nothing major is. The problem is nothing major has come really down since 97. But.
- [53:29]
Jay Coles
But in terms of deportations, we were still doing. We were doing.
- [53:33]
Eric Odinius
We were always doing our business.
- [53:35]
Jay Coles
Right.
- [53:35]
Eric Odinius
When I was there, you always work in the prisons and jails. You know, we'd have pickups for everybody we're picking up out of the prison system.
- [53:41]
Jay Coles
So this is my question then.
- [53:43]
Eric Odinius
Yep.
- [53:44]
Jay Coles
Why in Clinton? According to the numbers I saw this morning, I read it somewhere around 12 million were deported under his eight years. Why. Why now are we having all of these clashes, all of these protests? Right.
- [53:58]
Ken
You're asking a question. We all know the answer to.
- [54:01]
Jay Coles
Is it simply because it's Trump and the way Trump has approached it.
- [54:04]
Ken
Let's let Eric answer it.
- [54:07]
Jay Coles
What do you think? Why? Why? So if all this was going on is I was a news reporter downstairs in the newsroom from 92 to 2025.
- [54:15]
Eric Odinius
We didn't.
- [54:17]
Jay Coles
What's changed? Why now all this craziness?
- [54:19]
Eric Odinius
Well, you know, whenever you do have a new administration. Whether. And again, because, remember, I was in five different administrations.
- [54:26]
Jay Coles
Yeah. So you've seen it. So why now?
- [54:28]
Eric Odinius
The first six months to a year. Right. Yeah. The new people come in and they look at the statute book and they say, wow, that's neat. Let's do that. And then they hand the policy to us because we're charged with enforcing. You know, Congress sets the law.
- [54:42]
Jay Coles
Yeah.
- [54:43]
Eric Odinius
The executive kind of gets to nibble around the edges of it. But, you know, you look at the Constitution. Right. And the Constitution specifically gives the power to regulate foreign nationals to Congress.
- [54:54]
Jay Coles
Right.
- [54:55]
Eric Odinius
And the executive gets to nibble around it. But they get frustrated. You know, Obama, Biden, you can see it in some of these policies. They're like, why aren't we doing some case will come out or some issue will hit and do it. But it's just that this particular time, it's kind of cranked up to like 1,000. Right.
- [55:13]
Jay Coles
So it's just on steroids.
- [55:15]
Eric Odinius
We're just on steroids.
- [55:17]
Jay Coles
They're more vocal about it.
- [55:19]
Ken
Okay, well, it was a.
- [55:21]
Eric Odinius
That's one part of it. The other part of it is kind of political science.
- [55:25]
Jay Coles
It's politics.
- [55:26]
Ken
Yeah, there you go.
- [55:28]
Eric Odinius
Let me just lay that out. As I saw it from my time at Gustavus. Cause I did major in political science and history in the 90s, back in the battle days of the Soviet Union, as that was going on, the American public was a lot more bell curved. Right. There was a large middle. There were people on the left and right. But Democrats and Republicans were on each other's bowling teams and stuff like that in Congress. Right. And there was a lot more interplay. Right. Because it was all about the bad old Soviet Union. Well, as time has progressed, and again, this is just my opinion, I might be too.
- [56:04]
Jay Coles
Well, I'm just curious. To me, it seems like.
- [56:06]
Eric Odinius
But it looks to me like the country has gotten more divided. Right.
- [56:09]
Jay Coles
Yeah.
- [56:10]
Eric Odinius
So you have two now. You have a big glop of people on the left and a big glop on the right. Not very many people in the middle. And those people on each side are like, well, if you don't 100% agree with what we say. You're anathema. Get out of here. We don't want to deal with you. Right. There's no big tent anymore.
- [56:28]
Ken
That's what we talked about last week.
- [56:29]
Eric Odinius
Did you talk about that last week?
- [56:31]
Ken
Well, yeah. The fact that we're stuck. We're neighbors. Stuck in the middle of two neighbors on each side fighting with each other.
- [56:37]
Jay Coles
Yeah.
- [56:38]
Eric Odinius
There's a lot more squabble. There doesn't seem to be as much commonality of purpose. Right. Congress is just gridlocked. A lot of this stuff could be taken care of if Congress would just address these issues. One thing that people don't understand about immigration is. But once I tell you this, you're never gonna be able to unthink it. So is that if you look at all the major immigration reforms going all the way back to 1892. I told you about that one case, 1892. When were the big immigration. What's the commonality between all these years? 1924-1952-1972-1984, 1980, 1996. They're all election years.
- [57:16]
Jay Coles
Well, I was just gonna say.
- [57:17]
Eric Odinius
Oh, my goodness.
- [57:18]
Jay Coles
I was gonna say some followed World wars too.
- [57:22]
Eric Odinius
They did, but they were immigration. They boomed. But they're also many of them in response to election years. 1964, another notorious year. Right. So all of these happen in election years because the only time that Congress gets together and listens to their constituents and says, oh, we need to do this. And something else that used to happen but didn't because of this division, is that also after every major reform until 1996, Congress realized they'd probably screwed some stuff up. So about four years after each of these major changes, there would usually be some sort of technical correction. So after the big amnesty in 1984, there was a Technical Corrections act in 1990, after 1952, there was some technical corrections in 56. The point is that since 1996, with the minor exception of the whole DHS restructuring, INS, DHS, whatever, there hasn't really been any significant major change. So we're still operating under the same law as it was in 1997. Only now, you know, it's had all its warts are showing after 28 years.
- [58:29]
Jay Coles
And I'll give you an example here. So Obama deported 6,000 people from Minnesota. That's what I've been as.
- [58:38]
Eric Odinius
I researched it.
- [58:38]
Jay Coles
More than 6,000 in his eight years.
- [58:40]
Eric Odinius
All right.
- [58:44]
Jay Coles
Sounds reasonable. I was a reporter here the whole time. I don't remember anyone saying anything about 6,000 people being deported during the Obama. I don't remember us covering it. I don't remember us going to the Whipple Building. I don't remember us going to an immigration hearing. And all of a sudden, here we are in 2026, and it's. Everybody's losing their mind.
- [59:05]
Eric Odinius
And my phone is ringing off the. I got some Catawan public radio calling me from the Iberian.
- [59:11]
Ken
But it's easy to define, Jay. It started with President Trump's first administration in the wall, and then it went to Biden, where all the stories. Letting criminals in. Right.
- [59:24]
Jay Coles
Yeah.
- [59:24]
Ken
From China, from South America, from every country in the world, we're letting criminal. They're walking in with their luggage. And now Trump, second administration, he's coming back down on it. And whatever. Whatever Trump does to the left, that's very evil. Whatever Biden does to the right is very evil. And now we're just stuck in a tennis match here.
- [59:46]
Jay Coles
It's just devolved into politics.
- [59:47]
Ken
So even though these presidents on different sides of the aisles have done the same thing. You know what?
- [59:54]
Jay Coles
I've been had, Kenny. I've had people say, well, they weren't doing it the way they're doing it now. And I'm like, yeah, no, Eric, they.
- [60:00]
Ken
They were, but the press wasn't there following them, and there wasn't. There wasn't protesting.
- [60:05]
Jay Coles
They did it the same. They did it the same way.
- [60:08]
Ken
Well, yeah, we gotta wrap it up, Eric.
- [60:10]
Jay Coles
That's been great. That was great. I know we got into a lot of good legal stuff and you were worried about that, but people need to understand what's going on. And thank you.
- [60:16]
Eric Odinius
And like I said, I don't. I don't mind talking about the legal stuff. You can understand why I have to back up. No worries. Legal, professional. You have to be careful. And we know more than anybody else that, you know, we give speechless, defamatory or inflammatory.
- [60:29]
Jay Coles
You helped us understand a lot.
- [60:31]
Eric Odinius
Yep.
- [60:32]
Ken
Thank you very much.
- [60:33]
Jay Coles
Thanks, Eric.
- [60:33]
Ken
We're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back. Say goodbye.
- [60:36]
Eric Odinius
Yep. Okay.
- [60:40]
Ken
Wow.
- [60:41]
Jay Coles
It was a lot, wasn't it?
- [60:42]
Ken
Don't test me on anything he said.
- [60:44]
Eric Odinius
Okay.
- [60:45]
Ken
Because, like, 80% is gone. It went right through. That was really good. Thank you, Jay.
- [60:50]
Jay Coles
Excellent. Because I had a ton of questions answered, and now I can speak intelligently to other people about it.
- [60:57]
Ken
Yeah.
- [60:57]
Jay Coles
Because I kept hearing all these polarizing things that I. I'm just like, I gotta get some. I gotta find a former ICE guy to talk about this. Yeah, right, let's.
- [61:06]
Ken
Yeah, that was fun.
- [61:06]
Eric Odinius
Yeah, it was good.
- [61:07]
Ken
Another good one. Very informative. Thank you, Jay.
- [61:10]
Jay Coles
Video's good. So.
- [61:11]
Ken
And thank you to everybody for listening to another edition of News from the Crabby Coffee Shop. Special. Thanks, Chris Reivers for running the show.
- [61:19]
Jay Coles
Mr. Reivers.
- [61:20]
Eric Odinius
Thank you, Chris.
- [61:20]
Jay Coles
You got it, boys. See you, Kenny. Switching between tools for one project gets disjointed, especially on tight deadlines. Grammarly Built A game changing writing surface tailor made for professionals to help you move your ideas forward and sharpen your writing. You can brainstorm ideas, summarize meeting notes in seconds, or strengthen a proposal without context switching. Easy to get started and even easier to finish. Sign up for Grammarly free and get your professional writing from draft to done. Visit Grammarly.com that's Grammarly.com.