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[00:00]
Andrea Pitzer
Please, can we talk at this point? We are over 18 months into the second Trump administration officials have unleashed countless crises in health, science, medicine, government services, military affairs, foreign affairs, and more. We are now in a totally unnecessary and unbelievably dangerous war. In addition to the war, there are in my mind, three competing horror shows that are particularly significant. But I think those are sometimes easier for Americans to ignore.
[00:35]
Donald Trump
And I said, yes, we can talk.
[00:38]
Andrea Pitzer
The first, which I try to mention almost every week, is the ongoing death toll of the cuts to usaid.
[00:44]
Nicholas Kristof
What's happening right now is dangerous for the United States and humanity. These are people shutting down an agency and having no clue the work that that is being done.
[00:55]
Andrea Pitzer
We are on track for millions to die before the end of this second
[00:59]
Reporter/Journalist
Trump administration budget for USAID was 0.6 to 0.7% of our budget every year. That is such a small amount of money. And the predictions of how many people will die as a result is in the tens of millions.
[01:16]
Andrea Pitzer
The second area, which is also easy to miss despite current conditions outside New
[01:22]
Jean Guerrero
York, Statue of Liberty, hidden in a
[01:24]
Andrea Pitzer
thick haze of smog, is climate change.
[01:27]
Jean Guerrero
Millions of Americans now under air quality alerts from Minnesota to Massachusetts.
[01:32]
Andrea Pitzer
We'll address that at another episode.
[01:34]
Nicholas Kristof
Those temperatures that helped to start these wildfires would have been almost virtually impossible without the influence of human caused climate change.
[01:41]
Andrea Pitzer
But the third, which is the one that I talk most often about and the one that I'm going to focus on today, the only thing that matters is action. Is the war on immigrants and the concentration camp system that Trump and Stephen Miller have prioritized expanding exponentially as quickly as they can.
[01:58]
Reporter/Journalist
Internal agency data obtained by CBS News shows ICE is making arrests at airports, immigration check in offices and communities across the country.
[02:13]
Andrea Pitzer
But before I get into all that, I do want to take a moment to say that we do have a lot of good news.
[02:19]
Donald Trump
The strait's going to be open very soon, or they're going to get hit very hard, and then the strait's going to be open.
[02:25]
Andrea Pitzer
As each new case comes forward, judges continue to rule in favor of states not being required to turn over their voter rolls to the federal government.
[02:34]
Historian/Expert
As you point out, they have filed 30 cases.
[02:36]
Nicholas Kristof
They are now owing 20 of those 20, 12 of them were decided by Republican appointees.
[02:41]
Historian/Expert
Of the 12, eight of them were by judges appointed by Donald Trump himself. Okay, so they are not winning anywhere.
[02:48]
Andrea Pitzer
Trump's approval rating is in the toilet.
[02:50]
Reporter/Journalist
60% of Americans overall disapprove of Trump's economic approach, lower than what former President Joe Biden experienced as a point of reference right before Trump left office in December 2020, half of Americans approved of how he was handling the economy.
[03:03]
Andrea Pitzer
Unfortunately, two of the three crises already underway.
[03:06]
Nicholas Kristof
Well, can we at least see a few kids?
[03:08]
Andrea Pitzer
Like, where are they deaths from USAID cuts.
[03:11]
Reporter/Journalist
You never forget the sight of children starving to death. So I wish White House officials could have been with me on this trip to south Sudan where 70% of nutrition assistance has come from the United States. I want to bring in New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.
[03:27]
Andrea Pitzer
In the worsening climate devastation, we protect
[03:30]
Nicholas Kristof
America from viruses, from pandemics in part by acting abroad. It's a lot easier to fight Ebola in Uganda, to monitor avian flu around the world, to keep polio at bay in Pakistan than it is to fight these diseases at home.
[03:44]
Andrea Pitzer
Have enough momentum to continue on their own unless we interrupt their downward cycle of devastation and death.
[03:51]
Nicholas Kristof
And as we shut this down, that will mean more Americans getting sick and dying.
[03:55]
Andrea Pitzer
But if we turn back to the focus on detention, we're having very good discussions.
[03:59]
Donald Trump
They don't like to admit that, but
[04:01]
Andrea Pitzer
so many major shifts have happened over this last year and a half.
[04:04]
Donald Trump
We were going to a tremendous attack, the biggest since World War II.
[04:08]
Andrea Pitzer
That I'm going to use today to review a timeline of the second Trump administration's actions attacking immigrants. Note the big developments and major shifts that have brought us to where we are now and think a little about what is on the horizon.
[04:21]
Donald Trump
This whole world would be a different
[04:23]
Andrea Pitzer
place if they back out again.
[04:24]
Nicholas Kristof
Are they done?
[04:25]
Andrea Pitzer
By the time Donald Trump and Stephen Miller returned to Washington, D.C. in 2025, several goals were already apparent.
[04:32]
Nicholas Kristof
Joining me now is Stephen Miller, the White House veteran and current Trump campaign surrogate.
[04:36]
Andrea Pitzer
They had regularly spoken publicly about deporting 20 million people or more, 20 million foreign aliens, a population removal operation on a scale that would completely eclipse some of the most heinous ones in history.
[04:51]
Jean Guerrero
We're joined by Jean Guerrero, award winning investigative journalist who reports on immigration and profiles Miller in her new book Hate Monger.
[04:58]
Andrea Pitzer
For Stephen Miller, this is not about national security. This is not about keeping out criminals. This is about re engineering the ethnic
[05:06]
Reporter/Journalist
flows into this country to keep brown
[05:09]
Andrea Pitzer
and black families out. And since at least 2019, Stephen Miller had talked at length about building massive tent cities along the border to facilitate the expansion of the existing immigration detention system.
[05:23]
Jean Guerrero
Who suggested that we send a quarter million US Troops to the border?
[05:28]
Andrea Pitzer
Yeah, Stephen Miller, during those first six months back in office to understand how
[05:33]
Reporter/Journalist
ICE wields So much power. We need to go back to Donald Trump's very first day back in the White House.
[05:39]
Andrea Pitzer
They didn't wait to lay further groundwork, but came right out of the box.
[05:43]
Reporter/Journalist
On January 20, 2025, Trump signed a key executive order. This text activated two major levers. It declared a state of emergency at the Mexican border and sharply hardened U.S. immigration policy.
[05:57]
Andrea Pitzer
In March and April, the government cut a multi million dollar, multi year deal to outsource detention to an infamous facility in El Salvador known as sicot.
[06:06]
Reporter/Journalist
We were in Sukkot last month, a
[06:08]
Jean Guerrero
place notorious for being an information dead zone.
[06:11]
Reporter/Journalist
There's no cell signal, no visitors. The inmates are locked up for life,
[06:16]
Jean Guerrero
despite many not being convicted.
[06:18]
Andrea Pitzer
Yet the president tried to seize wartime powers, only executed in limited circumstances, claiming the US Was facing actual invasion by immigrants.
[06:28]
Reporter/Journalist
That language that the Trump administration is trying to use, it refers to armed attacks, not metaphorical, quote, unquote invasions, not migration, not even narcotics trafficking.
[06:38]
Andrea Pitzer
The government defied judicial orders openly while resisting others, and in what appeared to be a collaboration with a foreign dictator to avoid complying with US Law and court decisions.
[06:51]
Nicholas Kristof
Judge James Boasberg ordered the planes to turn around while he considered a lawsuit. But the Justice Department argued the planes were already outside US territory and they kept flying to El Salvador.
[07:01]
Andrea Pitzer
That spring, the administration also began aggressively arresting and detaining immigrant students.
[07:07]
Jean Guerrero
Caroline Light, a senior lecturer in gender and sexuality studies at Harvard University, a
[07:11]
Andrea Pitzer
member of Harvard's aaup, seeming to focus on those who had protested, spoken, or even simply written about the massive death toll among Palestinians as retribution for the terror attack in October 2023.
[07:24]
Jean Guerrero
Administration claims that ideological deportations are necessary are part of their effort to fight anti Semitism and to keep Jewish people from harm.
[07:34]
Andrea Pitzer
Mahmoud Khalil spent months detained.
[07:37]
Jean Guerrero
Well, I'll tell you what harms Jewish people, and I can speak as a historian on this topic.
[07:44]
Andrea Pitzer
Leka Cordia spent more than a year in detention.
[07:48]
Jean Guerrero
It's the relentless assault on freedom of expression.
[07:51]
Andrea Pitzer
Ramesa Ozturk was detained over an opinion piece she wrote for a student newspaper at Tufts University.
[07:57]
Jean Guerrero
It's the language of us versus them.
[08:00]
Andrea Pitzer
These student arrests fused an attack on US Universities with the anti immigrant and anti Palestinian agendas of the administration.
[08:08]
Jean Guerrero
And it's the criminalization of our valued community members, our colleagues, and our students.
[08:14]
Andrea Pitzer
By June, Trump had seized control of 4,000 National Guard troops in Los Angeles, asserting a federal law and order role for them in circumstances that clearly violated federal law.
[08:27]
Reporter/Journalist
Federal Judge Charles Breyer says that Trump violated a 19th century law barring the use of soldiers as cops.
[08:36]
Andrea Pitzer
While this might seem extraneous to the question of concentration camp style detention and immigration enforcement, the ways that concentration camp regimes federalize control of law enforcement is consistent, making Trump's attempts to do so quite alarming.
[08:53]
Reporter/Journalist
The judge then warned the efforts to send troops into other cities could amount to, quote, creating a national police force with the president as its chief.
[09:01]
Andrea Pitzer
And before the first six months of Trump's second administration had ended, Congress finalized a budget providing $45 billion for immigrant detention.
[09:12]
Jean Guerrero
Much of the discussion around Trump's budget bill has focused on the massive cuts to Medicaid, the tax giveaways to the rich, and the impact on the national debt to the tune of $3 trillion. Meanwhile, Vice President Vance, who cast the tie breaking vote, was focused elsewhere on immigration.
[09:33]
Andrea Pitzer
$45 billion is a staggering sum, he
[09:35]
Jean Guerrero
wrote on social media. Quote, everything else, the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.
[09:51]
Andrea Pitzer
Unquote, more than 60% larger than the budget of the federal prison system.
[09:55]
Jean Guerrero
For more, we're joined by Aaron Reichland Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
[10:00]
Nicholas Kristof
We're talking nearly 20 years worth of detention funding to be spent only in a four year period for all that.
[10:07]
Andrea Pitzer
I often complain about the ways in which Democrats have failed to stand up for immigrants against the racism and violence from Republicans that have dominated immigration policy over the last four decades. In this case, not a single Democrat in the House voted for the creation and expansion of concentration camps nationwide.
[10:24]
Nicholas Kristof
You will see ICE now being the single largest federal law enforcement agency in the history of the nation, potentially with enough funding to hire more law enforcement agents than the FBI and more detention, potentially than the entire Federal Bureau of Prisons.
[10:42]
Andrea Pitzer
The rest of 2025 saw broader moves to implement this budget and an attempt to more systematically terrorize not just isolated immigrant communities, but the country as a whole.
[10:54]
Nicholas Kristof
Over the course of a month in the Chicago area, we found more than 100 people who'd been arrested as they participated in demonstrations or documented the immigration rates.
[11:03]
Andrea Pitzer
Before the end of July 2025, a plan leaked on how ICE intended to use this massive budget to expand detention capacity to more than 107,000 beds by the end of 2025. How were they going to do it using the kinds of tent style camps Stephen Miller had been talking about for years?
[11:24]
Nicholas Kristof
You have no idea. The dragon you have awakened the concentration
[11:28]
Andrea Pitzer
camp in the Everglades, which Trump and his allies officially named Alligator Alcatraz opened on July 3, 2025.
[11:36]
Reporter/Journalist
The temporary migrant facility known as Alligator Alcatraz is facing some major issues just weeks into operation. Problems range from leaks backed up, portable toilets and sewage needing to be removed from the site.
[11:48]
Andrea Pitzer
Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss in Texas, which was a site of Japanese American detention during World War II, opened at the beginning of August 2025.
[11:59]
Activist/Community Member
New allegations of severe abuse at Camp East Montana, an immigration detention tent city on the Fort Bliss army post in El Paso.
[12:07]
Andrea Pitzer
This was an attempt to put in place Miller's vision of tent cities to hold immigrants in horrific conditions on purpose to terrorize them into giving up their rights to due process.
[12:18]
Reporter/Journalist
The majority of the people that we interviewed were people who were detained following traffic stops. Nearly all of them told us that they had work permits or different forms of authorization to be in the United States.
[12:31]
Andrea Pitzer
Ad hoc judges without immigration experience, it was planned would be brought in to facilitate this whole process.
[12:38]
Activist/Community Member
They documented indiscriminate beatings by guards, including on ICE flights to the camp. Migrants suffering from lack of life saving medication and other medical neglect, physical and mental.
[12:50]
Andrea Pitzer
Both the tent cities and the ad hoc end run around normal processes of justice, no matter how problematic those everyday processes are, are both significant warning signs when you look at concentration camp history.
[13:05]
Activist/Community Member
The report says detainees can go weeks without recreation or seeing the sun, bathrooms get covered in human waste and living quarters sometimes flood.
[13:15]
Andrea Pitzer
Nasty or ineffective shelter and deliberately hostile locations has been a hallmark of the early stages of concentration camp systems before they expand and solidify into long term infrastructure.
[13:27]
Activist/Community Member
Apparently a lot of these detainees would essentially give up their legal cases, say okay, you can go ahead and deport me. But then they say they would find out that the US government was sending them to third countries, unfamiliar places that they did not accept expect to go to, rather than simply going home.
[13:46]
Andrea Pitzer
In cases where they have been used. Public outcry over them has been horrific.
[13:50]
Reporter/Journalist
One former guard says the conditions at the facility upset her so much it led her to quit a week into
[13:56]
Andrea Pitzer
her job, two weeks after the Everglades camp opened. I wrote about the nasty ways that concentration camp administrators in the past had used mosquitoes in various systems from the 20th century and talked about how Florida was repeating this history.
[14:12]
Reporter/Journalist
Guards say they are given insect repellent their first day, but detainees are only sprayed once when they arrive.
[14:19]
Andrea Pitzer
Less than a week later, reports emerged of mosquitoes being weaponized in the same ways in the Everglades.
[14:25]
Reporter/Journalist
Detainees tell the Post they're concerned about contracting a mosquito borne illness as the bugs fill Bathrooms where people shower.
[14:33]
Andrea Pitzer
Along with tent cities, the other part of the expanding detention project could be seen on the streets in very public terror moves nationwide.
[14:44]
Nicholas Kristof
Greg Movino told congressional investigators a couple years earlier his model for immigration was President Eisenhower. That he really knew how to do.
[14:51]
Andrea Pitzer
Interior enforcement operations in Los Angeles and Chicago led to whole communities of non citizens and citizens alike being terrified to go to the store, to church and to school.
[15:01]
Nicholas Kristof
I didn't know what he was talking about, but it was Operation Wetback.
[15:04]
Andrea Pitzer
This is the morning prison train. It's cargo Mexican wetbacks who have sneaked
[15:10]
Donald Trump
across the border and are being deported.
[15:12]
Andrea Pitzer
Neighbors came together, however, and developed tactics, from cutting edge text alerts to old fashioned hardware like whistles.
[15:19]
Nicholas Kristof
The operation, which took its name from a racial slur, started on the border,
[15:24]
Historian/Expert
but eventually extended to major cities like
[15:26]
Nicholas Kristof
Chicago and Los Angeles.
[15:29]
Andrea Pitzer
People delivered food to those who were isolated.
[15:32]
Nicholas Kristof
They should not just be lined up on the border watching a wall. They should be in cities setting up checkpoints and just stopping people.
[15:38]
Andrea Pitzer
Those seeking to help support the detained kept vigils outside facilities to call attention to those who'd been seized by the government.
[15:45]
Nicholas Kristof
Over the next several years, we're going to go hard.
[15:47]
Andrea Pitzer
Gregory Bevino of the Border Patrol made himself the face of brutal operations, defying judges orders and encouraging his men to target protesters and immigrants alike.
[15:56]
Nicholas Kristof
Bavino really looks at Operation Wetback as the like the way that border patrol should be used.
[16:01]
Andrea Pitzer
Before the end of the year, he led Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities.
[16:05]
Reporter/Journalist
The Trump administration is deploying an estimated 2,000 federal agents to Minneapolis. That includes ICE agents.
[16:11]
Jean Guerrero
Go home to Texas, ass.
[16:14]
Andrea Pitzer
But the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Priddy galvanized the country against these operations in ways that some prior shootings and deaths hadn't yet.
[16:23]
Activist/Community Member
If the idea of killing Renee Nicole Goode was to make people afraid to protest or afraid to go out and be an observer of ICE operations. You know, following agents, blowing whistles, monitoring what they're doing, taking photos and video of what they're doing, that kind of thing.
[16:37]
Andrea Pitzer
Perhaps because more outlets paid attention to white casualties.
[16:40]
Activist/Community Member
If the idea was to scare people off doing things like that, it really seems to be having the opposite effect.
[16:47]
Andrea Pitzer
And perhaps in part because even those who might have accepted the racist framing of Trump and Miller could not find any way to justify killing protesters.
[16:56]
Activist/Community Member
If the idea was to make American cities and Americans who object to what ICE is doing back down, that very extra clearly is not working.
[17:03]
Andrea Pitzer
Specifically, in Minneapolis, Kristi Noem would soon be gone as head of Homeland Security. And Bavino would wind up in a premature retirement.
[17:13]
Reporter/Journalist
Protesters taunted Border Patrol Commander Greg Bevino outside his hotel as news broke that he has been booted out of Minneapolis by order of President Trump as the
[17:22]
Andrea Pitzer
government tried to play down the public terror in order to sidestep protests.
[17:27]
Donald Trump
That I say, that's a very unfortunate.
[17:31]
Reporter/Journalist
Even staunch supporters like Senator Ted Cruz
[17:33]
Nicholas Kristof
are expressing concern immediately when an incident like this happens, they come out guns blazing that. That we took out a violent terrorist. Hooray.
[17:44]
Reporter/Journalist
The first lady stepped into the fray today.
[17:47]
Jean Guerrero
I'm against the violence. So if, please, if we protest, protest in peace.
[17:53]
Andrea Pitzer
While quietly pursuing the same kinds of violence against immigrants, the president sent border
[17:58]
Nicholas Kristof
czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis.
[18:01]
Historian/Expert
I'm not here because the federal government has carried this mission out perfectly. President Trump and I, along with others in the administration, have recognized that certain improvements could and should be made.
[18:13]
Andrea Pitzer
Now, I want to pause for just a second to speak for a moment about trans folks.
[18:19]
Donald Trump
They want transgender for everybody, everybody transgender.
[18:23]
Andrea Pitzer
When I laid out these three big crises at the top of the episode, USAID deaths, climate change, and concentration camps, I have been keeping another one in mind as well. This demonization of trans folks.
[18:35]
Nicholas Kristof
Judge Ana Reyes has been overseeing one of the main lawsuits challenging the Trump administration's transgender service member ban, where the Pentagon has effectively argued that the cost and impact of hormone therapy harms the combat readiness of transgender soldiers.
[18:50]
Andrea Pitzer
I think the push to exclude and erase trans people is both hateful and
[18:55]
Nicholas Kristof
strategic, with the Pentagon at this point rolling out a new policy, including testosterone testing as well as hormone therapy across the military. Judge Reyes says she wants to understand why the Trump administration is treating transgender and cisgender soldiers differently.
[19:10]
Andrea Pitzer
And my sense is that it's bound up tightly with the demonization of immigrants, the targeting of the homeless, as well as the removal from power of black folks and women.
[19:19]
Nicholas Kristof
Last year, she said that the ban itself was unlawful and driven by animus, even though the Supreme Court allowed the policy to go forward. While those lawsuits moved through the courts,
[19:28]
Andrea Pitzer
each of these groups is targeted for removal from any existence with full rights, citizenship and agency.
[19:35]
Nicholas Kristof
Earlier this year, though, an appeals court upheld part of Reyes order, and she's now considering extending those protections from just the plaintiffs in the case to across the military.
[19:44]
Andrea Pitzer
My sense is that immigrants are the ones being attacked with the most open violence at present.
[19:49]
Donald Trump
Look, you have to stop illegal immigration in Europe. I know Europe better than anybody, better than the people that run it.
[19:55]
Andrea Pitzer
But the same dynamics that radicalized a significant minority of Americans against immigrants are in play now against trans people.
[20:03]
Donald Trump
The standards were so high, if you weren't transgender as an example, you didn't qualify.
[20:10]
Andrea Pitzer
We are just at an earlier stage of that demonization.
[20:13]
Donald Trump
They look all over for transgender people to run the company. Large portions. They couldn't find them.
[20:20]
Andrea Pitzer
A story out this week about U.S. army Captain Kai Pros shows the ways in which the Department of Defense is systematically removing trans people from through shameful hearings whose outcomes have been decided by top brass before the sessions ever began. So if you ever wonder how this process of where we're at now with immigrants starts, all you have to do is look at what's being done in legislatures and the halls of power in D.C. in your local communities against trans folks.
[20:50]
Donald Trump
They know that. They understand that.
[20:52]
Andrea Pitzer
But going back to our timeline, by the start of 2026 it was clear that tent cities like the Everglades Camp and Camp East Montana were dangerous enough that they could not freely operate without massive public resistance.
[21:07]
Nicholas Kristof
This place has faced legal challenge after legal challenge, and now, nearly a year after it was constructed, it is reportedly about to close.
[21:15]
Andrea Pitzer
In Florida, the environmental claims laid by the Miccosukee tribe also presented serious legal problems.
[21:22]
Nicholas Kristof
Is it a sign of a shift in the administration's approach to immigration? If it is, what does that mean? Comes next?
[21:28]
Andrea Pitzer
So in the first days of February, Pablo Manriquez, reporting for Migrant Insiders, showed that the Trump administration's new plan was already in progress and it was to use additional expeditionary contracts, this time through the US Navy, to quickly stand up a number of camps domestically. But this too quickly ran into problems because elected officials were uneasy over the arrangement. Within weeks, it became clear the government was going to attempt to re engineer ICE's entire detention system via another route. The idea was to buy existing warehouses and retrofit them into being concentration camps, although of course this was not the term that they used.
[22:10]
Reporter/Journalist
The Post cited an apparent ICE document as describing this as setting a feeder system where newly arrested detainees would be booked into processing sites before being funneled into one of the seven large scale warehouses that hold up to 10,000 people each.
[22:26]
Andrea Pitzer
The specs for these proposals recalled some of the worst moments from history.
[22:31]
Historian/Expert
I'd like to share a story from a local paper in Coldwater, Michigan, dated to 9 April 1945, and events from
[22:44]
Andrea Pitzer
the five months since those plans were made public have revealed how powerful local movements can be in stopping ice.
[22:52]
Historian/Expert
It tells how the U.S. army under General Patton, the U.S. third army, came onto what you might call a detention center just outside the Village of Ohrdruf, Germany.
[23:04]
Andrea Pitzer
After nearly a billion dollars spent to acquire these warehouses, as people found out what was planned for their communities, they rose up.
[23:12]
Historian/Expert
The US army brought the leading citizens of Ohrdruf to tour the facility, which turned out to be part of the Buchenwald network of concentration camps.
[23:22]
Andrea Pitzer
In some cases, they even garnered support from Republican elected officials, local to national.
[23:28]
Historian/Expert
A US army colonel told the German civilians who viewed the scenes without muttering a word that they were to blame.
[23:36]
Andrea Pitzer
In every case, they brought together people who did not want a concentration camp in their backyard.
[23:41]
Historian/Expert
One of the Germans replied that what happened in the camp was, quote, done by a few people and you cannot blame us all.
[23:50]
Andrea Pitzer
And as the people mounted effective resistance,
[23:53]
Historian/Expert
and the American, who could have been any one of our grandfathers, said this was done by those that the German people chose to lead them and all
[24:03]
Andrea Pitzer
are responsible, the government appeared to realize the broad re engineering that they had tried to move forward with couldn't be carried out according to plan.
[24:13]
Historian/Expert
The morning after the tour, the mayor of Ordruv killed himself. And maybe he did not know the full extent of the outrages that were committed in his community, but he knew enough. And we don't know exactly how ICE will use this warehouse, but we know enough now.
[24:35]
Andrea Pitzer
Both the tent cities approach and the warehouse approach to massively expanding ICE detention have been failures, though the former has harmed thousands at Camp East Montana and in Florida. And despite rumors of plans to close after deaths at Camp East Montana, including one homicide, that site is still open today and remains the largest immigrant detention site in the country. In the middle of July of this year, Project Saltbox reported on a call for proposals that had just gone out. The solicitation lays out a construction program worth up to $10 billion, what Saltbox refers to as a, quote, move to build and expand detention space on land the agency owns rather than lease it. Proposals are due in mid August, with a two year window in which to complete construction. If this plan goes into effect, I expect to see attempts to fight the government. But on land the government already owns and controls, it will, at least in some cases, be harder to prevail using the same tactics that were so successful in fighting the warehouse approach.
[25:41]
Reporter/Journalist
In national news, the National Guard's ongoing mission in Washington D.C. through the rest of the Trump administration will cost about another $1.4 billion.
[25:50]
Andrea Pitzer
We are now into almost a full year of National Guard troops being stationed in D.C. the Republican governors of some states have welcomed them. Elsewhere, leaders in some blue states have effectively regained control over their own National Guard forces through open defiance or legal cases. But the District, with its weirdly colonial role in the US political system, still faces a kind of second city status. And Republicans regularly can and do seek to control and punish the city at almost every turn.
[26:24]
Reporter/Journalist
Some have criticized the troops presence as an infringement on the city's autonomy and an expensive operation to militarize DC's streets.
[26:33]
Andrea Pitzer
So I don't know how soon we'll get rid of those troops.
[26:35]
Donald Trump
I think we need a ballroom and that's happening. It's going to be a beautiful ballroom.
[26:40]
Andrea Pitzer
But this fall in dc, we will see elections.
[26:43]
Nicholas Kristof
Do you think if Democrats were to take control of Congress again, they would immediately begin the impeachment process?
[26:48]
Andrea Pitzer
I think we should be motivated and work toward those elections in really serious ways, while understanding it will only be able to change so much for now. Even if by hard work or miracles, the Democrats manage to retake both Houses, they are not going to have a veto proof majority.
[27:04]
Donald Trump
You would have two states added. They'll terminate the filibuster immediately. Republicans should do that.
[27:11]
Andrea Pitzer
To do so in the Senate, they would have to hold every Democratic Senate seat. In addition to winning 20 of 22 Republican Senate seats, you'll have Washington D.C.
[27:21]
Donald Trump
and you'll have Puerto Rico as a state, which would be four Senate seats, tremendous numbers of Electoral College votes.
[27:30]
Andrea Pitzer
That's just not going to happen. Which means that Trump is going to retain a lot of power to block any new legislation through veto. But if the Democrats get control of one or both houses, if we were to lose the midterms, heaven forbid these Democrats, y'.
[27:46]
Historian/Expert
All.
[27:46]
Andrea Pitzer
Impeachment's not even the big concern. Their ability to launch investigations of ICE practices, DHS officials and corruption in federal contracts will expand tremendously. They will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body. And they'll go after the President's family,
[28:00]
Nicholas Kristof
the Cabinet, his donors and friends. Half of you in this room will be targeted.
[28:04]
Andrea Pitzer
And the ability to stop the government's objectives and goals will also go up exponentially. I run the protection program.
[28:11]
Activist/Community Member
I'll take care of you.
[28:12]
Donald Trump
Okay,
[28:16]
Andrea Pitzer
Bill, we shouldn't wait till November to act. There are so many examples and resources now of how to tackle icing abuses, illegal detention practices, and the very existence of detention facilities around the country. Look at the Project Saltbox rundown of the new, possibly $10 billion proposal in which ICE appears to be pivoting to a new style of detention. See if any of the sites referenced are in your state and begin planning now. See who's putting in bids organize against them now. The movement against Trump's concentration camps in 2026 is larger than, less naive and more powerful than it was two years ago. Public disapproval of Trump, of ISIS methods, and of this kind of arbitrary detention itself have all grown. The entire system of immigrant detention is in the process of being delegitimized. When the government can't find enough people to hire because ICE is unpopular, that buys more time for the people those agents would be rounding up to find other solutions. Each time the government has to pivot to a new approach, it buys more time in which to create a world in which that money is clawed back and put to better use. So many people have been harmed, but we, and by we I mean you, have done so much amazing work to stop that harm. Today there are existing movements in place involving those who have fought everything from the neighborhood roundups to facilities like Dilley and the Everglades campsite. People who have worked to end city and county collaborations with ice. Those opposed to Trump and Miller have created a network that is both local and national. However many specific suggestions I make on these episodes for how people can push back, I am always amazed at the new tactics and strategies that everyday people come up with and make work on their own, inventing the world that they want to live in. Thanks for listening to Next Comes what? Please share this with one person who's looking for ways to survive this mess. To support this podcast, please become a paid subscriber@Andreapitzer.com and consider giving Next Comes what? A five star review where you get your podcasts. A little news this week. Next comes what? Will have a normal schedule, but next week I will be out on vacation with family, which means that there will not be an episode and there will also be no Tuesday or Friday posts for the newsletter. We'll start back up as usual on August 18th for the newsletter and with the next comes what? Episode later that week and that's it.

Summary7 min read

Next Comes What – "Breaking ICE" (August 6, 2026)

Host: Andrea Pitzer
Theme: Lessons from the global rise of strongmen and how these relate to confronting Trump’s expansion of the immigrant detention and concentration camp systems.

Episode Overview

Andrea Pitzer, author and historian, explores how the U.S. under Trump’s second administration has accelerated authoritarian and anti-immigrant policies, particularly the exponential expansion of ICE detention systems into what she explicitly calls concentration camps. Pitzer, joined by journalists, historians, activists, and commentators, discusses the roots, evolution, atrocities, and pushback against these measures, drawing parallels to global and historical examples of strongman rule. She urges listeners to act, highlighting growing movements of resistance and providing insight into what can be done locally and nationally.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Three Overlapping National Crises

[00:00–01:41]

Pitzer: Begins with urgent context: 18 months into Trump's second term, America faces multiple self-inflicted crises—war, public health, and government breakdown.
Three key crises:
- USAID Cuts: "We are on track for millions to die before the end of this second [Trump administration]." (Pitzer, 00:54)
- Climate Change: Exploding wildfires, air quality alerts, and climate devastation (Jean Guerrero, Nicholas Kristof, 01:26–01:33)
- War on Immigrants: Central focus is the rapidly expanding system of immigrant detention camps, described as concentration camps by Pitzer.

Quote:
"These are people shutting down an agency and having no clue the work that that is being done." — Nicholas Kristof, 00:44

2. The War on Immigrants and the Expansion of Concentration Camp Systems

[01:41–07:01]

Trump/Miller Goals: Remove 20+ million immigrants; build massive tent cities rapidly (Pitzer, Miller, Guerrero, 04:24–05:11).
Early 2025 Moves: On day one, Trump declares a border emergency, hardens policy (Reporter, 05:43).
Outsourcing Detention: March–April 2025, U.S. contracts El Salvador’s Sucot facility (Pitzer, Guerrero, 05:57–06:07).
Circumventing U.S. Law: Planes with detainees flown out of jurisdiction despite court orders, in collusion with foreign dictatorships (Kristof, 06:51).

Quote:
"They had regularly spoken publicly about deporting 20 million people or more... a population removal operation on a scale that would completely eclipse some of the most heinous ones in history." — Andrea Pitzer, 04:36

3. Targeting Students, Protesters, and Dissenters

[07:01–08:14]

Ideological Deportations: Detention of students and academics criticizing U.S. foreign policy in Palestine as retaliation for speech (Guerrero, 07:06–07:56).
Chilling Effects: Suppression of free speech, fusion of anti-immigrant and anti-Palestinian agendas.

Quote:
"It's the relentless assault on freedom of expression." — Jean Guerrero, 07:48

4. Militarization and National Guard Deployments

[08:14–09:11]

Federalizing Troops: Trump seizes control of 4,000 National Guard troops in L.A., violating legal norms (Pitzer, Reporter, 08:14–08:35).
Concentration Camp Parallels: Militancy and law enforcement federalization echo history's warning signs (Pitzer, 08:35-08:53).

Quote:
"The ways that concentration camp regimes federalize control of law enforcement is consistent, making Trump's attempts to do so quite alarming." — Andrea Pitzer, 08:35

5. Detention Budget and Unprecedented Scale

[09:11–10:41]

Congressional Funding: $45 billion allocated for immigrant detention, over 60% larger than the federal prison budget (Pitzer, Jean Guerrero, 09:32–09:54).
ICE Expansion: Rapid hiring and facility growth; anticipated capacity up to 107,000 beds by end of 2025 (Pitzer, 11:03).

Quote:
"More than 60% larger than the budget of the federal prison system." — Andrea Pitzer, 09:50

6. Implementation: Tent Cities, Mass Raids, and Atrocities

[10:41–14:32]

Camps Opened:
- "Alligator Alcatraz" in the Everglades (July 2025)
- Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss (August 2025)
Conditions: Deliberate squalor, medical neglect, violence by guards, lack of due process (Pitzer, Activists, 11:58–12:49).
Impact: Migrants deprived of rights, with some being expelled to random third countries (Activist, 13:14–13:45).
Mosquitoes Weaponized: Echoes past atrocities—mosquitoes deliberately used as deterrent (Pitzer, Reporter, 13:55–14:32).

Quote:
"Both the tent cities and the ad hoc end run around normal processes of justice... are both significant warning signs when you look at concentration camp history." — Andrea Pitzer, 12:49

7. Nationwide Terrorizing: Operation Metro Surge and ICE in Cities

[14:32–17:03]

Restoration of Operation Wetback Model: ICE and Border Patrol conduct mass raids in major cities, increasing community terror (Kristof, Pitzer, 14:43–15:28).
Resistance: Communities organize alert networks and support for detained neighbors (Pitzer, 15:12–15:44).
Notable Incident: The deaths of Renee Goode and Alex Priddy galvanize white Americans, amplifying resistance and forcing leadership changes (Pitzer, Activist, 16:14–17:03).

Quote:
"If the idea was to make American cities and Americans who object to what ICE is doing back down, that very extra clearly is not working." — Activist/Community Member, 16:56

8. Anti-Trans Policies and Intersectional Persecution

[17:12–20:49]

Trans Rights Under Siege: New Pentagon policies, discrimination lawsuits, and systematic removal of trans soldiers (Pitzer, Kristof, 18:13–19:34).
Broader Targeting: Andrea draws the connection between the demonization of immigrants, trans people, homeless, Black people, and women as part of a wider authoritarian project.

Quote:
"Each of these groups is targeted for removal from any existence with full rights, citizenship and agency." — Andrea Pitzer, 19:27

9. The Warehouse Plan and Local Resistance

[20:51–24:34]

Warehouses: After public backlash closes tent camps, ICE attempts to retrofit large warehouses as detention centers (Pitzer, Reporter, 21:27–22:25).
Historical Parallel: Historian recounts 1945 U.S. occupation of German concentration camp to stress collective responsibility and awareness (Historian/Expert, 22:31–24:13).
Community Pushback: Even Republicans join local efforts to stop camp construction and ICE’s expansion.

Quote:
"As the people mounted effective resistance... the government appeared to realize the broad re engineering that they had tried to move forward with couldn't be carried out according to plan." — Andrea Pitzer, 23:50

10. ICE’s Pivot and the Path Forward

[24:34–27:59]

ICE Shifts Strategy: New plan to build on government land with $10 billion budget, rendering community resistance more difficult (Pitzer, 24:34–25:40).
National Guard in DC: Continued militarization; DC’s unique vulnerability to federal control (Pitzer, Reporter, 25:50–26:33).
Upcoming Elections: Potential impact of Democrats retaking Congress; heightened investigative and oversight powers, if not full reversal of policies (Pitzer, Kristof, 26:40–27:59).

Quote:
"The entire system of immigrant detention is in the process of being delegitimized. When the government can't find enough people to hire because ICE is unpopular, that buys more time for the people those agents would be rounding up to find other solutions. Each time the government has to pivot... it buys more time..." — Andrea Pitzer, 28:15

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

On the scale of the threat:
"They had regularly spoken publicly about deporting 20 million people... a population removal operation on a scale that would completely eclipse some of the most heinous ones in history." — Andrea Pitzer, 04:36
On concentration camp warning signs:
"Both the tent cities and the ad hoc end run around normal processes of justice... are both significant warning signs when you look at concentration camp history." — Andrea Pitzer, 12:49
On resistance:
"The movement against Trump's concentration camps in 2026 is larger than, less naive and more powerful than it was two years ago." — Andrea Pitzer, 28:12

Key Segments & Timestamps

00:00–01:41 — Crisis Overview
01:41–04:51 — Introduction to the War on Immigrants
04:51–07:01 — Trump and Miller’s Plans for Mass Deportation
07:01–08:14 — Suppression of Protest & Academic Dissent
08:14–09:11 — National Guard Militarization & Federalization
09:11–10:41 — Appropriations for Detention and ICE Expansion
10:41–14:32 — Execution: Tent Camps, Atrocities, and Resistance
14:32–17:03 — Urban ICE Raids, Deaths Spark Broader Opposition
17:12–20:49 — Trans Rights, Intersectionality of Persecution
20:51–24:34 — ICE Pivot to Warehouses, Historical Parallels
24:34–27:59 — New ICE Expansion Plan and Electoral Outlook
28:03–End — Calls to Action and Hope for Resistance

Tone & Calls to Action

Urgent, factual, but strongly activist: Pitzer blends historical analysis, investigative reporting, and mobilization.
Emphasis on organized resistance: Local-national networks, effective public outrage, proactive organizing.
Hope: Despite harm, coordinated efforts are growing in size, skill, and impact.

Final Call:
"However many specific suggestions I make on these episodes for how people can push back, I am always amazed at the new tactics and strategies that everyday people come up with and make work on their own, inventing the world that they want to live in." — Andrea Pitzer, 28:15

Episode Takeaways

The Trump administration’s escalation of immigrant detention—using both camps and warehouse conversions—is a calculated, historic-scale assault echoing the darkest moments of the 20th century.
Attempts to rapidly implement these systems have met significant resistance at local and national levels, sometimes even forging bipartisan opposition.
The show draws critical parallels with other marginalized groups facing escalating persecution and highlights the strategy of “divide and conquer” in authoritarian regimes.
Pitzer encourages listeners to mobilize for local action, monitor procurement and construction in their regions, and stay involved in the political fight, especially with critical midterm elections ahead.

Loading summary

Transcript200 lines

[00:00]
Andrea Pitzer
Please, can we talk at this point? We are over 18 months into the second Trump administration officials have unleashed countless crises in health, science, medicine, government services, military affairs, foreign affairs, and more. We are now in a totally unnecessary and unbelievably dangerous war. In addition to the war, there are in my mind, three competing horror shows that are particularly significant. But I think those are sometimes easier for Americans to ignore.
[00:35]
Donald Trump
And I said, yes, we can talk.
[00:38]
Andrea Pitzer
The first, which I try to mention almost every week, is the ongoing death toll of the cuts to usaid.
[00:44]
Nicholas Kristof
What's happening right now is dangerous for the United States and humanity. These are people shutting down an agency and having no clue the work that that is being done.
[00:55]
Andrea Pitzer
We are on track for millions to die before the end of this second
[00:59]
Reporter/Journalist
Trump administration budget for USAID was 0.6 to 0.7% of our budget every year. That is such a small amount of money. And the predictions of how many people will die as a result is in the tens of millions.
[01:16]
Andrea Pitzer
The second area, which is also easy to miss despite current conditions outside New
[01:22]
Jean Guerrero
York, Statue of Liberty, hidden in a
[01:24]
Andrea Pitzer
thick haze of smog, is climate change.
[01:27]
Jean Guerrero
Millions of Americans now under air quality alerts from Minnesota to Massachusetts.
[01:32]
Andrea Pitzer
We'll address that at another episode.
[01:34]
Nicholas Kristof
Those temperatures that helped to start these wildfires would have been almost virtually impossible without the influence of human caused climate change.
[01:41]
Andrea Pitzer
But the third, which is the one that I talk most often about and the one that I'm going to focus on today, the only thing that matters is action. Is the war on immigrants and the concentration camp system that Trump and Stephen Miller have prioritized expanding exponentially as quickly as they can.
[01:58]
Reporter/Journalist
Internal agency data obtained by CBS News shows ICE is making arrests at airports, immigration check in offices and communities across the country.
[02:13]
Andrea Pitzer
But before I get into all that, I do want to take a moment to say that we do have a lot of good news.
[02:19]
Donald Trump
The strait's going to be open very soon, or they're going to get hit very hard, and then the strait's going to be open.
[02:25]
Andrea Pitzer
As each new case comes forward, judges continue to rule in favor of states not being required to turn over their voter rolls to the federal government.
[02:34]
Historian/Expert
As you point out, they have filed 30 cases.
[02:36]
Nicholas Kristof
They are now owing 20 of those 20, 12 of them were decided by Republican appointees.
[02:41]
Historian/Expert
Of the 12, eight of them were by judges appointed by Donald Trump himself. Okay, so they are not winning anywhere.
[02:48]
Andrea Pitzer
Trump's approval rating is in the toilet.
[02:50]
Reporter/Journalist
60% of Americans overall disapprove of Trump's economic approach, lower than what former President Joe Biden experienced as a point of reference right before Trump left office in December 2020, half of Americans approved of how he was handling the economy.
[03:03]
Andrea Pitzer
Unfortunately, two of the three crises already underway.
[03:06]
Nicholas Kristof
Well, can we at least see a few kids?
[03:08]
Andrea Pitzer
Like, where are they deaths from USAID cuts.
[03:11]
Reporter/Journalist
You never forget the sight of children starving to death. So I wish White House officials could have been with me on this trip to south Sudan where 70% of nutrition assistance has come from the United States. I want to bring in New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.
[03:27]
Andrea Pitzer
In the worsening climate devastation, we protect
[03:30]
Nicholas Kristof
America from viruses, from pandemics in part by acting abroad. It's a lot easier to fight Ebola in Uganda, to monitor avian flu around the world, to keep polio at bay in Pakistan than it is to fight these diseases at home.
[03:44]
Andrea Pitzer
Have enough momentum to continue on their own unless we interrupt their downward cycle of devastation and death.
[03:51]
Nicholas Kristof
And as we shut this down, that will mean more Americans getting sick and dying.
[03:55]
Andrea Pitzer
But if we turn back to the focus on detention, we're having very good discussions.
[03:59]
Donald Trump
They don't like to admit that, but
[04:01]
Andrea Pitzer
so many major shifts have happened over this last year and a half.
[04:04]
Donald Trump
We were going to a tremendous attack, the biggest since World War II.
[04:08]
Andrea Pitzer
That I'm going to use today to review a timeline of the second Trump administration's actions attacking immigrants. Note the big developments and major shifts that have brought us to where we are now and think a little about what is on the horizon.
[04:21]
Donald Trump
This whole world would be a different
[04:23]
Andrea Pitzer
place if they back out again.
[04:24]
Nicholas Kristof
Are they done?
[04:25]
Andrea Pitzer
By the time Donald Trump and Stephen Miller returned to Washington, D.C. in 2025, several goals were already apparent.
[04:32]
Nicholas Kristof
Joining me now is Stephen Miller, the White House veteran and current Trump campaign surrogate.
[04:36]
Andrea Pitzer
They had regularly spoken publicly about deporting 20 million people or more, 20 million foreign aliens, a population removal operation on a scale that would completely eclipse some of the most heinous ones in history.
[04:51]
Jean Guerrero
We're joined by Jean Guerrero, award winning investigative journalist who reports on immigration and profiles Miller in her new book Hate Monger.
[04:58]
Andrea Pitzer
For Stephen Miller, this is not about national security. This is not about keeping out criminals. This is about re engineering the ethnic
[05:06]
Reporter/Journalist
flows into this country to keep brown
[05:09]
Andrea Pitzer
and black families out. And since at least 2019, Stephen Miller had talked at length about building massive tent cities along the border to facilitate the expansion of the existing immigration detention system.
[05:23]
Jean Guerrero
Who suggested that we send a quarter million US Troops to the border?
[05:28]
Andrea Pitzer
Yeah, Stephen Miller, during those first six months back in office to understand how
[05:33]
Reporter/Journalist
ICE wields So much power. We need to go back to Donald Trump's very first day back in the White House.
[05:39]
Andrea Pitzer
They didn't wait to lay further groundwork, but came right out of the box.
[05:43]
Reporter/Journalist
On January 20, 2025, Trump signed a key executive order. This text activated two major levers. It declared a state of emergency at the Mexican border and sharply hardened U.S. immigration policy.
[05:57]
Andrea Pitzer
In March and April, the government cut a multi million dollar, multi year deal to outsource detention to an infamous facility in El Salvador known as sicot.
[06:06]
Reporter/Journalist
We were in Sukkot last month, a
[06:08]
Jean Guerrero
place notorious for being an information dead zone.
[06:11]
Reporter/Journalist
There's no cell signal, no visitors. The inmates are locked up for life,
[06:16]
Jean Guerrero
despite many not being convicted.
[06:18]
Andrea Pitzer
Yet the president tried to seize wartime powers, only executed in limited circumstances, claiming the US Was facing actual invasion by immigrants.
[06:28]
Reporter/Journalist
That language that the Trump administration is trying to use, it refers to armed attacks, not metaphorical, quote, unquote invasions, not migration, not even narcotics trafficking.
[06:38]
Andrea Pitzer
The government defied judicial orders openly while resisting others, and in what appeared to be a collaboration with a foreign dictator to avoid complying with US Law and court decisions.
[06:51]
Nicholas Kristof
Judge James Boasberg ordered the planes to turn around while he considered a lawsuit. But the Justice Department argued the planes were already outside US territory and they kept flying to El Salvador.
[07:01]
Andrea Pitzer
That spring, the administration also began aggressively arresting and detaining immigrant students.
[07:07]
Jean Guerrero
Caroline Light, a senior lecturer in gender and sexuality studies at Harvard University, a
[07:11]
Andrea Pitzer
member of Harvard's aaup, seeming to focus on those who had protested, spoken, or even simply written about the massive death toll among Palestinians as retribution for the terror attack in October 2023.
[07:24]
Jean Guerrero
Administration claims that ideological deportations are necessary are part of their effort to fight anti Semitism and to keep Jewish people from harm.
[07:34]
Andrea Pitzer
Mahmoud Khalil spent months detained.
[07:37]
Jean Guerrero
Well, I'll tell you what harms Jewish people, and I can speak as a historian on this topic.
[07:44]
Andrea Pitzer
Leka Cordia spent more than a year in detention.
[07:48]
Jean Guerrero
It's the relentless assault on freedom of expression.
[07:51]
Andrea Pitzer
Ramesa Ozturk was detained over an opinion piece she wrote for a student newspaper at Tufts University.
[07:57]
Jean Guerrero
It's the language of us versus them.
[08:00]
Andrea Pitzer
These student arrests fused an attack on US Universities with the anti immigrant and anti Palestinian agendas of the administration.
[08:08]
Jean Guerrero
And it's the criminalization of our valued community members, our colleagues, and our students.
[08:14]
Andrea Pitzer
By June, Trump had seized control of 4,000 National Guard troops in Los Angeles, asserting a federal law and order role for them in circumstances that clearly violated federal law.
[08:27]
Reporter/Journalist
Federal Judge Charles Breyer says that Trump violated a 19th century law barring the use of soldiers as cops.
[08:36]
Andrea Pitzer
While this might seem extraneous to the question of concentration camp style detention and immigration enforcement, the ways that concentration camp regimes federalize control of law enforcement is consistent, making Trump's attempts to do so quite alarming.
[08:53]
Reporter/Journalist
The judge then warned the efforts to send troops into other cities could amount to, quote, creating a national police force with the president as its chief.
[09:01]
Andrea Pitzer
And before the first six months of Trump's second administration had ended, Congress finalized a budget providing $45 billion for immigrant detention.
[09:12]
Jean Guerrero
Much of the discussion around Trump's budget bill has focused on the massive cuts to Medicaid, the tax giveaways to the rich, and the impact on the national debt to the tune of $3 trillion. Meanwhile, Vice President Vance, who cast the tie breaking vote, was focused elsewhere on immigration.
[09:33]
Andrea Pitzer
$45 billion is a staggering sum, he
[09:35]
Jean Guerrero
wrote on social media. Quote, everything else, the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.
[09:51]
Andrea Pitzer
Unquote, more than 60% larger than the budget of the federal prison system.
[09:55]
Jean Guerrero
For more, we're joined by Aaron Reichland Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
[10:00]
Nicholas Kristof
We're talking nearly 20 years worth of detention funding to be spent only in a four year period for all that.
[10:07]
Andrea Pitzer
I often complain about the ways in which Democrats have failed to stand up for immigrants against the racism and violence from Republicans that have dominated immigration policy over the last four decades. In this case, not a single Democrat in the House voted for the creation and expansion of concentration camps nationwide.
[10:24]
Nicholas Kristof
You will see ICE now being the single largest federal law enforcement agency in the history of the nation, potentially with enough funding to hire more law enforcement agents than the FBI and more detention, potentially than the entire Federal Bureau of Prisons.
[10:42]
Andrea Pitzer
The rest of 2025 saw broader moves to implement this budget and an attempt to more systematically terrorize not just isolated immigrant communities, but the country as a whole.
[10:54]
Nicholas Kristof
Over the course of a month in the Chicago area, we found more than 100 people who'd been arrested as they participated in demonstrations or documented the immigration rates.
[11:03]
Andrea Pitzer
Before the end of July 2025, a plan leaked on how ICE intended to use this massive budget to expand detention capacity to more than 107,000 beds by the end of 2025. How were they going to do it using the kinds of tent style camps Stephen Miller had been talking about for years?
[11:24]
Nicholas Kristof
You have no idea. The dragon you have awakened the concentration
[11:28]
Andrea Pitzer
camp in the Everglades, which Trump and his allies officially named Alligator Alcatraz opened on July 3, 2025.
[11:36]
Reporter/Journalist
The temporary migrant facility known as Alligator Alcatraz is facing some major issues just weeks into operation. Problems range from leaks backed up, portable toilets and sewage needing to be removed from the site.
[11:48]
Andrea Pitzer
Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss in Texas, which was a site of Japanese American detention during World War II, opened at the beginning of August 2025.
[11:59]
Activist/Community Member
New allegations of severe abuse at Camp East Montana, an immigration detention tent city on the Fort Bliss army post in El Paso.
[12:07]
Andrea Pitzer
This was an attempt to put in place Miller's vision of tent cities to hold immigrants in horrific conditions on purpose to terrorize them into giving up their rights to due process.
[12:18]
Reporter/Journalist
The majority of the people that we interviewed were people who were detained following traffic stops. Nearly all of them told us that they had work permits or different forms of authorization to be in the United States.
[12:31]
Andrea Pitzer
Ad hoc judges without immigration experience, it was planned would be brought in to facilitate this whole process.
[12:38]
Activist/Community Member
They documented indiscriminate beatings by guards, including on ICE flights to the camp. Migrants suffering from lack of life saving medication and other medical neglect, physical and mental.
[12:50]
Andrea Pitzer
Both the tent cities and the ad hoc end run around normal processes of justice, no matter how problematic those everyday processes are, are both significant warning signs when you look at concentration camp history.
[13:05]
Activist/Community Member
The report says detainees can go weeks without recreation or seeing the sun, bathrooms get covered in human waste and living quarters sometimes flood.
[13:15]
Andrea Pitzer
Nasty or ineffective shelter and deliberately hostile locations has been a hallmark of the early stages of concentration camp systems before they expand and solidify into long term infrastructure.
[13:27]
Activist/Community Member
Apparently a lot of these detainees would essentially give up their legal cases, say okay, you can go ahead and deport me. But then they say they would find out that the US government was sending them to third countries, unfamiliar places that they did not accept expect to go to, rather than simply going home.
[13:46]
Andrea Pitzer
In cases where they have been used. Public outcry over them has been horrific.
[13:50]
Reporter/Journalist
One former guard says the conditions at the facility upset her so much it led her to quit a week into
[13:56]
Andrea Pitzer
her job, two weeks after the Everglades camp opened. I wrote about the nasty ways that concentration camp administrators in the past had used mosquitoes in various systems from the 20th century and talked about how Florida was repeating this history.
[14:12]
Reporter/Journalist
Guards say they are given insect repellent their first day, but detainees are only sprayed once when they arrive.
[14:19]
Andrea Pitzer
Less than a week later, reports emerged of mosquitoes being weaponized in the same ways in the Everglades.
[14:25]
Reporter/Journalist
Detainees tell the Post they're concerned about contracting a mosquito borne illness as the bugs fill Bathrooms where people shower.
[14:33]
Andrea Pitzer
Along with tent cities, the other part of the expanding detention project could be seen on the streets in very public terror moves nationwide.
[14:44]
Nicholas Kristof
Greg Movino told congressional investigators a couple years earlier his model for immigration was President Eisenhower. That he really knew how to do.
[14:51]
Andrea Pitzer
Interior enforcement operations in Los Angeles and Chicago led to whole communities of non citizens and citizens alike being terrified to go to the store, to church and to school.
[15:01]
Nicholas Kristof
I didn't know what he was talking about, but it was Operation Wetback.
[15:04]
Andrea Pitzer
This is the morning prison train. It's cargo Mexican wetbacks who have sneaked
[15:10]
Donald Trump
across the border and are being deported.
[15:12]
Andrea Pitzer
Neighbors came together, however, and developed tactics, from cutting edge text alerts to old fashioned hardware like whistles.
[15:19]
Nicholas Kristof
The operation, which took its name from a racial slur, started on the border,
[15:24]
Historian/Expert
but eventually extended to major cities like
[15:26]
Nicholas Kristof
Chicago and Los Angeles.
[15:29]
Andrea Pitzer
People delivered food to those who were isolated.
[15:32]
Nicholas Kristof
They should not just be lined up on the border watching a wall. They should be in cities setting up checkpoints and just stopping people.
[15:38]
Andrea Pitzer
Those seeking to help support the detained kept vigils outside facilities to call attention to those who'd been seized by the government.
[15:45]
Nicholas Kristof
Over the next several years, we're going to go hard.
[15:47]
Andrea Pitzer
Gregory Bevino of the Border Patrol made himself the face of brutal operations, defying judges orders and encouraging his men to target protesters and immigrants alike.
[15:56]
Nicholas Kristof
Bavino really looks at Operation Wetback as the like the way that border patrol should be used.
[16:01]
Andrea Pitzer
Before the end of the year, he led Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities.
[16:05]
Reporter/Journalist
The Trump administration is deploying an estimated 2,000 federal agents to Minneapolis. That includes ICE agents.
[16:11]
Jean Guerrero
Go home to Texas, ass.
[16:14]
Andrea Pitzer
But the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Priddy galvanized the country against these operations in ways that some prior shootings and deaths hadn't yet.
[16:23]
Activist/Community Member
If the idea of killing Renee Nicole Goode was to make people afraid to protest or afraid to go out and be an observer of ICE operations. You know, following agents, blowing whistles, monitoring what they're doing, taking photos and video of what they're doing, that kind of thing.
[16:37]
Andrea Pitzer
Perhaps because more outlets paid attention to white casualties.
[16:40]
Activist/Community Member
If the idea was to scare people off doing things like that, it really seems to be having the opposite effect.
[16:47]
Andrea Pitzer
And perhaps in part because even those who might have accepted the racist framing of Trump and Miller could not find any way to justify killing protesters.
[16:56]
Activist/Community Member
If the idea was to make American cities and Americans who object to what ICE is doing back down, that very extra clearly is not working.
[17:03]
Andrea Pitzer
Specifically, in Minneapolis, Kristi Noem would soon be gone as head of Homeland Security. And Bavino would wind up in a premature retirement.
[17:13]
Reporter/Journalist
Protesters taunted Border Patrol Commander Greg Bevino outside his hotel as news broke that he has been booted out of Minneapolis by order of President Trump as the
[17:22]
Andrea Pitzer
government tried to play down the public terror in order to sidestep protests.
[17:27]
Donald Trump
That I say, that's a very unfortunate.
[17:31]
Reporter/Journalist
Even staunch supporters like Senator Ted Cruz
[17:33]
Nicholas Kristof
are expressing concern immediately when an incident like this happens, they come out guns blazing that. That we took out a violent terrorist. Hooray.
[17:44]
Reporter/Journalist
The first lady stepped into the fray today.
[17:47]
Jean Guerrero
I'm against the violence. So if, please, if we protest, protest in peace.
[17:53]
Andrea Pitzer
While quietly pursuing the same kinds of violence against immigrants, the president sent border
[17:58]
Nicholas Kristof
czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis.
[18:01]
Historian/Expert
I'm not here because the federal government has carried this mission out perfectly. President Trump and I, along with others in the administration, have recognized that certain improvements could and should be made.
[18:13]
Andrea Pitzer
Now, I want to pause for just a second to speak for a moment about trans folks.
[18:19]
Donald Trump
They want transgender for everybody, everybody transgender.
[18:23]
Andrea Pitzer
When I laid out these three big crises at the top of the episode, USAID deaths, climate change, and concentration camps, I have been keeping another one in mind as well. This demonization of trans folks.
[18:35]
Nicholas Kristof
Judge Ana Reyes has been overseeing one of the main lawsuits challenging the Trump administration's transgender service member ban, where the Pentagon has effectively argued that the cost and impact of hormone therapy harms the combat readiness of transgender soldiers.
[18:50]
Andrea Pitzer
I think the push to exclude and erase trans people is both hateful and
[18:55]
Nicholas Kristof
strategic, with the Pentagon at this point rolling out a new policy, including testosterone testing as well as hormone therapy across the military. Judge Reyes says she wants to understand why the Trump administration is treating transgender and cisgender soldiers differently.
[19:10]
Andrea Pitzer
And my sense is that it's bound up tightly with the demonization of immigrants, the targeting of the homeless, as well as the removal from power of black folks and women.
[19:19]
Nicholas Kristof
Last year, she said that the ban itself was unlawful and driven by animus, even though the Supreme Court allowed the policy to go forward. While those lawsuits moved through the courts,
[19:28]
Andrea Pitzer
each of these groups is targeted for removal from any existence with full rights, citizenship and agency.
[19:35]
Nicholas Kristof
Earlier this year, though, an appeals court upheld part of Reyes order, and she's now considering extending those protections from just the plaintiffs in the case to across the military.
[19:44]
Andrea Pitzer
My sense is that immigrants are the ones being attacked with the most open violence at present.
[19:49]
Donald Trump
Look, you have to stop illegal immigration in Europe. I know Europe better than anybody, better than the people that run it.
[19:55]
Andrea Pitzer
But the same dynamics that radicalized a significant minority of Americans against immigrants are in play now against trans people.
[20:03]
Donald Trump
The standards were so high, if you weren't transgender as an example, you didn't qualify.
[20:10]
Andrea Pitzer
We are just at an earlier stage of that demonization.
[20:13]
Donald Trump
They look all over for transgender people to run the company. Large portions. They couldn't find them.
[20:20]
Andrea Pitzer
A story out this week about U.S. army Captain Kai Pros shows the ways in which the Department of Defense is systematically removing trans people from through shameful hearings whose outcomes have been decided by top brass before the sessions ever began. So if you ever wonder how this process of where we're at now with immigrants starts, all you have to do is look at what's being done in legislatures and the halls of power in D.C. in your local communities against trans folks.
[20:50]
Donald Trump
They know that. They understand that.
[20:52]
Andrea Pitzer
But going back to our timeline, by the start of 2026 it was clear that tent cities like the Everglades Camp and Camp East Montana were dangerous enough that they could not freely operate without massive public resistance.
[21:07]
Nicholas Kristof
This place has faced legal challenge after legal challenge, and now, nearly a year after it was constructed, it is reportedly about to close.
[21:15]
Andrea Pitzer
In Florida, the environmental claims laid by the Miccosukee tribe also presented serious legal problems.
[21:22]
Nicholas Kristof
Is it a sign of a shift in the administration's approach to immigration? If it is, what does that mean? Comes next?
[21:28]
Andrea Pitzer
So in the first days of February, Pablo Manriquez, reporting for Migrant Insiders, showed that the Trump administration's new plan was already in progress and it was to use additional expeditionary contracts, this time through the US Navy, to quickly stand up a number of camps domestically. But this too quickly ran into problems because elected officials were uneasy over the arrangement. Within weeks, it became clear the government was going to attempt to re engineer ICE's entire detention system via another route. The idea was to buy existing warehouses and retrofit them into being concentration camps, although of course this was not the term that they used.
[22:10]
Reporter/Journalist
The Post cited an apparent ICE document as describing this as setting a feeder system where newly arrested detainees would be booked into processing sites before being funneled into one of the seven large scale warehouses that hold up to 10,000 people each.
[22:26]
Andrea Pitzer
The specs for these proposals recalled some of the worst moments from history.
[22:31]
Historian/Expert
I'd like to share a story from a local paper in Coldwater, Michigan, dated to 9 April 1945, and events from
[22:44]
Andrea Pitzer
the five months since those plans were made public have revealed how powerful local movements can be in stopping ice.
[22:52]
Historian/Expert
It tells how the U.S. army under General Patton, the U.S. third army, came onto what you might call a detention center just outside the Village of Ohrdruf, Germany.
[23:04]
Andrea Pitzer
After nearly a billion dollars spent to acquire these warehouses, as people found out what was planned for their communities, they rose up.
[23:12]
Historian/Expert
The US army brought the leading citizens of Ohrdruf to tour the facility, which turned out to be part of the Buchenwald network of concentration camps.
[23:22]
Andrea Pitzer
In some cases, they even garnered support from Republican elected officials, local to national.
[23:28]
Historian/Expert
A US army colonel told the German civilians who viewed the scenes without muttering a word that they were to blame.
[23:36]
Andrea Pitzer
In every case, they brought together people who did not want a concentration camp in their backyard.
[23:41]
Historian/Expert
One of the Germans replied that what happened in the camp was, quote, done by a few people and you cannot blame us all.
[23:50]
Andrea Pitzer
And as the people mounted effective resistance,
[23:53]
Historian/Expert
and the American, who could have been any one of our grandfathers, said this was done by those that the German people chose to lead them and all
[24:03]
Andrea Pitzer
are responsible, the government appeared to realize the broad re engineering that they had tried to move forward with couldn't be carried out according to plan.
[24:13]
Historian/Expert
The morning after the tour, the mayor of Ordruv killed himself. And maybe he did not know the full extent of the outrages that were committed in his community, but he knew enough. And we don't know exactly how ICE will use this warehouse, but we know enough now.
[24:35]
Andrea Pitzer
Both the tent cities approach and the warehouse approach to massively expanding ICE detention have been failures, though the former has harmed thousands at Camp East Montana and in Florida. And despite rumors of plans to close after deaths at Camp East Montana, including one homicide, that site is still open today and remains the largest immigrant detention site in the country. In the middle of July of this year, Project Saltbox reported on a call for proposals that had just gone out. The solicitation lays out a construction program worth up to $10 billion, what Saltbox refers to as a, quote, move to build and expand detention space on land the agency owns rather than lease it. Proposals are due in mid August, with a two year window in which to complete construction. If this plan goes into effect, I expect to see attempts to fight the government. But on land the government already owns and controls, it will, at least in some cases, be harder to prevail using the same tactics that were so successful in fighting the warehouse approach.
[25:41]
Reporter/Journalist
In national news, the National Guard's ongoing mission in Washington D.C. through the rest of the Trump administration will cost about another $1.4 billion.
[25:50]
Andrea Pitzer
We are now into almost a full year of National Guard troops being stationed in D.C. the Republican governors of some states have welcomed them. Elsewhere, leaders in some blue states have effectively regained control over their own National Guard forces through open defiance or legal cases. But the District, with its weirdly colonial role in the US political system, still faces a kind of second city status. And Republicans regularly can and do seek to control and punish the city at almost every turn.
[26:24]
Reporter/Journalist
Some have criticized the troops presence as an infringement on the city's autonomy and an expensive operation to militarize DC's streets.
[26:33]
Andrea Pitzer
So I don't know how soon we'll get rid of those troops.
[26:35]
Donald Trump
I think we need a ballroom and that's happening. It's going to be a beautiful ballroom.
[26:40]
Andrea Pitzer
But this fall in dc, we will see elections.
[26:43]
Nicholas Kristof
Do you think if Democrats were to take control of Congress again, they would immediately begin the impeachment process?
[26:48]
Andrea Pitzer
I think we should be motivated and work toward those elections in really serious ways, while understanding it will only be able to change so much for now. Even if by hard work or miracles, the Democrats manage to retake both Houses, they are not going to have a veto proof majority.
[27:04]
Donald Trump
You would have two states added. They'll terminate the filibuster immediately. Republicans should do that.
[27:11]
Andrea Pitzer
To do so in the Senate, they would have to hold every Democratic Senate seat. In addition to winning 20 of 22 Republican Senate seats, you'll have Washington D.C.
[27:21]
Donald Trump
and you'll have Puerto Rico as a state, which would be four Senate seats, tremendous numbers of Electoral College votes.
[27:30]
Andrea Pitzer
That's just not going to happen. Which means that Trump is going to retain a lot of power to block any new legislation through veto. But if the Democrats get control of one or both houses, if we were to lose the midterms, heaven forbid these Democrats, y'.
[27:46]
Historian/Expert
All.
[27:46]
Andrea Pitzer
Impeachment's not even the big concern. Their ability to launch investigations of ICE practices, DHS officials and corruption in federal contracts will expand tremendously. They will turn every committee of Congress into an investigative body. And they'll go after the President's family,
[28:00]
Nicholas Kristof
the Cabinet, his donors and friends. Half of you in this room will be targeted.
[28:04]
Andrea Pitzer
And the ability to stop the government's objectives and goals will also go up exponentially. I run the protection program.
[28:11]
Activist/Community Member
I'll take care of you.
[28:12]
Donald Trump
Okay,
[28:16]
Andrea Pitzer
Bill, we shouldn't wait till November to act. There are so many examples and resources now of how to tackle icing abuses, illegal detention practices, and the very existence of detention facilities around the country. Look at the Project Saltbox rundown of the new, possibly $10 billion proposal in which ICE appears to be pivoting to a new style of detention. See if any of the sites referenced are in your state and begin planning now. See who's putting in bids organize against them now. The movement against Trump's concentration camps in 2026 is larger than, less naive and more powerful than it was two years ago. Public disapproval of Trump, of ISIS methods, and of this kind of arbitrary detention itself have all grown. The entire system of immigrant detention is in the process of being delegitimized. When the government can't find enough people to hire because ICE is unpopular, that buys more time for the people those agents would be rounding up to find other solutions. Each time the government has to pivot to a new approach, it buys more time in which to create a world in which that money is clawed back and put to better use. So many people have been harmed, but we, and by we I mean you, have done so much amazing work to stop that harm. Today there are existing movements in place involving those who have fought everything from the neighborhood roundups to facilities like Dilley and the Everglades campsite. People who have worked to end city and county collaborations with ice. Those opposed to Trump and Miller have created a network that is both local and national. However many specific suggestions I make on these episodes for how people can push back, I am always amazed at the new tactics and strategies that everyday people come up with and make work on their own, inventing the world that they want to live in. Thanks for listening to Next Comes what? Please share this with one person who's looking for ways to survive this mess. To support this podcast, please become a paid subscriber@Andreapitzer.com and consider giving Next Comes what? A five star review where you get your podcasts. A little news this week. Next comes what? Will have a normal schedule, but next week I will be out on vacation with family, which means that there will not be an episode and there will also be no Tuesday or Friday posts for the newsletter. We'll start back up as usual on August 18th for the newsletter and with the next comes what? Episode later that week and that's it.