Trump's Plan to Tank America

Summary

On the Media – “Trump’s Plan to Tank America”

Date: January 24, 2026
Hosts: Brooke Gladstone, Michael Loewinger
Featured Guests: Garrett M. Graff, Joseph Cox, Drew Harwell

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Episode Overview

This episode examines the dramatic shifts in American governance, foreign policy, and immigration enforcement during the Trump administration's second term. The hosts, alongside historian Garrett M. Graff and journalists Joseph Cox and Drew Harwell, explore how Trump's policies are unraveling longstanding pillars of American power and influence, reshaping global alliances, weaponizing immigration enforcement, and utilizing surveillance technology and recruitment propaganda in unprecedented ways. The episode provides historical context, investigative insights, and a critical look at the far-reaching consequences for democracy, civil liberties, and global order.

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1. The Collapse of American Global Leadership

[00:00–19:25]

Key Points & Insights

The Greenland Incident and NATO Rupture

• Trump abruptly backs off threats around Greenland after incoherent and aggressive rhetoric at Davos, destabilizing US-European relations.
• Denmark responds by militarizing Greenland; European leaders declare a permanent shift away from reliance on the US.
  • “This change is permanent.” – Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission President [03:09]

The Six Pillars of American Power (Garrett M. Graff, author and historian)

Graff explains that Trump is systematically dismantling what he views as six foundational pillars of US strength:

1. Welcoming Immigration/Education: Easy access for immigrants and appeal to international students [04:33]
2. Support for Research/Education: Government funding for research and higher education [04:56]
3. Open Trade: Broad trade engagement; low barriers with global markets [05:30]
4. Rule of Law: Unquestioned adherence domestically, now eroding under politicized justice [05:39]

   “The idea of a fascist government secret police, that a president would be using the Justice Department to punish political enemies… even just a year ago, seemed unthinkable.” – Garrett M. Graff [05:39]

5. Global Alliances: Bedrock security alliances, now under intentional strain [06:18]
6. Monetary/Financial Stability: Independent, prudent monetary policy and dollar hegemony [07:16]

Historical Parallels and Irreversible Damage

• There are precedents for empires falling due to strategic blunders, but “no country in modern history… has chosen to commit suicide by its own choice.” – Graff [08:00]
• Even if future presidents attempt to rebuild, the world has fundamentally changed; US trust is permanently shaken.

  “The United States is only one election away from a Donald Trump again.” – Graff [12:24] “Someday we will tell our children about this month… and they will not be able to fathom what we chose to do as a country to ourselves.” – Graff [00:00 / 14:52]

Can Europe Step In?

• Europe could build its own security and economic order, but, “Europe on its own will never be as powerful as Europe and the United States and North America was together.” – Graff [16:18]
• Rising risks: potential Europe-China alignment, US left on the sidelines.

Stakes and Legacy

• The episode draws a somber historical analogy to the end of Britain’s imperial era, suggesting 2026 is the American equivalent.

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2. The ICE Expansion: Surveillance, Overreach, and Civil Liberties

[20:51–38:16]

Key Points & Insights

Escalation of Immigration Enforcement

• ICE’s raids and detentions surge, including widely publicized cases of US citizens and children being swept up.
  • Example: A five-year-old used as bait during a Minnesota raid [22:11]
  • US citizens stopped and profiled: “What legal observers call a Kavanaugh stop…” – Michael Loewinger [22:36]
• Fourth Amendment Violations: An internal memo reveals ICE may enter homes without judicial warrants [23:54]

Technology and Surveillance Tools (Joseph Cox, 404 Media)

• WeBlock: Warrants not required; ICE buys mobile geolocation data originally harvested from commercial app advertising.

  “With WeBlock, they don't need a warrant at all. They're just buying the data.” – Joseph Cox [25:05]

  • Data from sources like Candy Crush and Tinder, enabling ICE to trace devices’ routes across the city.
• Mobile Fortify: Facial recognition app used in the field, overrides traditional forms of ID.

  “ICE believes a result from this app is definitive proof… and can override a birth certificate.” – Cox [30:13]

  • Notably misidentifies people, sometimes producing multiple, incorrect names.
• Elite (Palantir): Government-built tool integrating vast data sources (Health & Human Services, USCIS, Thomson Reuters ‘Clear’) to target and track potential deportation subjects.

Legal and Political Context

• The US lacks federal privacy laws to protect against government purchase of personal data.

  “The US just does not have that. Which is why… the country and agencies can just buy information on its citizens and residents.” – Cox [36:50]

• Congressional efforts to check these powers exist but are stalled and piecemeal.

Media Coverage and Public Reaction

• The technical and decentralized nature of surveillance tools hinders widespread journalistic coverage and public awareness.
  • “You have to show how this tech is impacting people… on the ground.” – Cox [37:08]

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3. Propaganda and Radicalization: ICE’s Wartime Recruitment Blitz

[40:17–53:05]

Key Points & Insights

Ballooning ICE Budget and Recruitment Strategy (Drew Harwell, Washington Post)

• ICE’s budget tripled in 2025 via the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” dramatically expanding tech and recruitment funds.
• $100 million directed to “wartime recruitment,” leading to nationwide, omnipresent advertising.

Extreme Advertisement Tactics

• Campaign styles mimic military propaganda and video games (“Halo”), deploying patriotic, action-movie, and meme aesthetics.
  • Ads cast non-citizens as alien invaders (“destroy the flood” [in Halo]).
• Targeted digital, TV, social media, and geofenced billboard ads at events (rodeos, UFC, NASCAR) [47:56]

Edgelord and Far-Right Influences

• Recruitment messaging features deliberate provocation, even appropriating pop songs and neo-Nazi-coded phrases (“We’ll have our home again”).
• Direct trolling of celebrities who denounce ICE content, amplifying virality—ICE officials see backlash as a feature, not a bug.

  “They like trolling the libs… smashing people in the face every day… to go viral.” – Drew Harwell [44:27]

Lowering Recruitment Standards and Oversight

• Aggressive incentives: $50,000 signing bonuses and student loan reimbursements.
• Reports of lax vetting: viral case of hiring an anti-ICE journalist by mistake [49:59]

  “If the agency would not look into the most superficial information about this potential recruit, what are they missing from everybody else?” – Harwell [50:48]

• ICE claims massive application surges (220,000 in 5 months) but faces quality issues—many recruits not passing fitness or background checks.

Broader Cultural Impact

• The normalization of violent, nativist, and hyper-online “4chan culture” tropes in government recruitment signals a dark shift in public discourse.

  “These are policies… life or death issues that one would hope would be discussed seriously… Maybe that's too much to ask… How much the 4chan culture and the edginess of the Internet… has consumed media and politics in this country.” – Harwell [52:10]

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4. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On self-inflicted decline:
  “No country in modern history… has chosen to commit suicide by its own choice, undermining its core sources of national strength.” – Garrett Graff [08:00]
• On alliances as trust:
  "That's all an alliance really is, Brooke. It's the promise that when you need me, I will be there." – Graff [15:22]
• On digital surveillance:
  “With WeBlock, they don't need a warrant at all. They're just buying the data.” – Joseph Cox [25:05]
• On the tone of policy discourse:
  “How much the 4chan culture… has bled into public affairs and… consumed media and politics in this country.” – Drew Harwell [52:10]
• Dark reflection on legacy:
  “Someday we will tell our children about this month… and they will not be able to fathom what we chose to do as a country to ourselves.” – Graff [14:52 / 00:00]

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5. Segment Timestamps

• [00:00-03:59] – US-European break over Greenland and Davos speech
• [04:00–08:34] – The six pillars of American power and Trump’s assault on them
• [08:35–19:25] – Irreversible foreign policy consequences, historical analogies, questions of repair
• [20:51–24:22] – ICE raids, domestic impacts, legal overreach
• [24:23–29:17] – Surveillance tech tools, WeBlock and Mobile Fortify explained
• [32:19–36:50] – Data collection, Palantir’s Elite, and lack of privacy law
• [40:17–47:56] – ICE recruitment campaign tactics and cultural implications
• [48:03–51:07] – ICE’s recruitment standards and impact
• [52:03–53:07] – Societal consequences and closing reflections

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Conclusion

This episode provides an in-depth, context-rich analysis of how drastic shifts in US policy under Trump are fragmenting international alliances, empowering domestic surveillance and deportation apparatuses, and eroding democratic norms. The show underscores the historical magnitude of these changes and raises urgent questions about the future direction of both American domestic governance and global influence.

Transcript

[Garrett M. Graff]

Someday we will tell our children about this month and they will not be able to fathom what we chose to do as a country to ourselves.

[Brooke Gladstone]

World leaders say that the US Europe relationship is forever changed. From WNYC in New York, this is ON THE media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

[Michael Oinger]

And I'm Michael Oinger. Also on this week's show, we dive into the surveillance tech ICE is using, like the Mobile Fortify app which scans faces.

[Joseph Cox]

ICE believes a result from this app is a definitive proof of someone's immigration status and can override a birth certificate.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Plus, ICE has launched a full throttle.

[Drew Harwell]

Recruitment drive that seemed exactly like the methods you would use if you were trying to sell Coca Cola but trying to carry out the biggest mass deportation in American history.

[Michael Oinger]

It's all coming up after this. On the media. Supported by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. From WNYC in New York, this is ON THE media. I'm Michael Loewinger.

[Brooke Gladstone]

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. On Wednesday, Donald Trump seemed to reverse course on Greenland.

[Michael Oinger]

The president tonight in the heart of.

[Garrett M. Graff]

Europe abruptly backing off two bold threats regarding his ongoing quest to control Greenland.

[Michael Oinger]

Tariffs and military action.

[Garrett M. Graff]

Posting he's reached a framework of a.

[Michael Oinger]

Future deal with the secretary general of NATO.

[Garrett M. Graff]

But when pressed, providing no further details.

[Brooke Gladstone]

This mere hours after Trump's address at the World Economic Forum in Davos in which he rambled on, sometimes incoherently, sometimes threateningly, about how the US Needs to own Greenland.

[Michael Oinger]

All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland.

[Drew Harwell]

We want a piece of ice for.

[Michael Oinger]

World protection and they won't give it.

[Joseph Cox]

They have a choice.

[Michael Oinger]

You can say yes and we will.

[Joseph Cox]

Be very appreciative, or you can say.

[Michael Oinger]

No, and we will remember.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Greenland is of course, part of Denmark, a US Ally and member of NATO. Thus, Trump, with his rumbling and whining, threatens to upend a mutual defense contract and solid alliance between the U.S. much of Europe and Canada. That's been a shield and a hedge against aggression since since 1949. Now Denmark has sent troops to the island in the high north to defend against Trump's imperial ambitions. And this week at Davos, we saw America's once staunchest allies basically say it's over.

[Garrett M. Graff]

We will only be able to capitalize.

[Brooke Gladstone]

On this opportunity if we recognize that.

[Announcer]

This change is permanent.

[Brooke Gladstone]

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen of course, nostalgia is part of our human story.

[Garrett M. Graff]

But nostalgia will not bring back the old order.

[Michael Oinger]

We knew the story of the international.

[Drew Harwell]

Rules based order was partially false.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney that the.

[Garrett M. Graff]

Strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that.

[Michael Oinger]

Trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied.

[Drew Harwell]

With varying rigor depending on the identity.

[Garrett M. Graff]

Of the accused or the victim.

[Michael Oinger]

This fiction was useful and American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes. This bargain no longer works.

[Garrett M. Graff]

Let me be direct.

[Michael Oinger]

We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Garrett M. Graff is a journalist and historian and author of a recent piece in Wired titled We Are Witnessing the Self Immolation of an Empire.

[Garrett M. Graff]

Since he came to office a year ago, Donald Trump has set about consciously dismantling what to me are the six core sources of national strength and influence for the United States on the world stage.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Right, you call them the six pillars, just go through them all.

[Garrett M. Graff]

The first is easy access of immigrants to the United States and the pull of foreign students to our world class schools and universities.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Okay, now let's go to the second pillar, rich and steady government support of higher education, medical research and laboratories.

[Garrett M. Graff]

And of course, it's very related to that first pillar, how we have these world class schools and why they attract the very best talent from all over the world. And the third pillar, the whole story of growth of the economy in the last 50 years has been the story of broad trade, access to US Markets and reciprocally, a flow of US Products to the rest of the world, lowering trade barriers and making the global economy ever more frictionless.

[Brooke Gladstone]

The fourth one is an unyielding and unquestionable adherence to to the rule of law at home.

[Garrett M. Graff]

The rule of law in the United States had been so firmly established, the idea of a fascist government secret police, that a president would be using the Justice Department to punish political enemies, that business leaders would actually have to think about their standing with the president personally to decide whether they could move forward with a corporate merger or bribe the president personally in order to be able to continue doing business. This is something that until even just a year ago, seemed unthinkable to even mention.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Likewise, this would be the fifth pillar, a firm, unyielding and unquestionable network of geopolitical alliances that knit a security blanket.

[Garrett M. Graff]

Across the entire globe that has been really the bedrock of US Foreign Policy going back to the end of World War II emerged from that war in this moment where, like, we don't want a world war to ever happen again. And we are going to build the network of global institutions to help ensure that problems going forward are solved with diplomacy and not military might. And we stood up these institutions, like NATO, like the United nations, like the World bank and the International Monetary Fund, to try to make this world safer, more stable and more secure.

[Brooke Gladstone]

You have a sixth pillar.

[Garrett M. Graff]

Yes. And all five of these pillars come together to firm up another equally critical pillar, a politically independent and fiscally prudent monetary policy that established the US Dollar as the world's safest reserve currency, made US treasury bonds the savings bank for the entire world, and made US Banking networks and capital markets the place to be for any company looking for access to investors. You look at all six of these things and Donald Trump has done irreparable damage to all six of these.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Has this happened before in American history?

[Garrett M. Graff]

Countries have made mistakes. Empires rise and fall as technology changes, as geopolitics change. You can point to Napoleon making the disastrous decision to invade Russia. You can talk about the decisions of the Austro Hungarian Empire at the start of World War I. But no country in the modern history of the nation state has chosen to commit suicide by its own choice, undermining its core sources of national strength.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Can we stipulate, though, that this rules based order, as we call it, hasn't worked for everybody and America has played fast and loose with its tenets over and over again. This is something that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney emphasized in his speech, that there were a lot of things where participants in the rules based order just pretended not to see.

[Garrett M. Graff]

This World order has seen huge tragedy. The Cold War was felt acutely by people in countries like Vietnam and Cambodia. I mean, the United States has been a hugely destabilizing force in Latin America and Central America. There are all sorts of problems with America atop the world order.

[Brooke Gladstone]

The end of the Cold War weakened American power because nations didn't have to compromise their individual interests as much to get under America's security umbrella. I mean, we know that America did some awful things. Maybe we had it coming.

[Garrett M. Graff]

There is an entirely cogent argument that one could make that the world was due for a reshuffling of that world order. What to me is so stunning about this particular moment, though, is the idea that America is doing this of our own accord, that we are forcing this, these other countries to look elsewhere for peace, strength and stability, because we are seeding that ground to Europe, to China, to no one. You look at Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping and they just must be gleeful watching Donald Trump's actions over the last year. This week in Davos, China is right there pitching itself to Europe and the world beyond to help pick up the pieces of this broken American century and leadership role.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Trump is not entirely without friends. He on Thursday inaugurated his Board of Peace. He is the head of it for life. The countries that have joined 21 so far had to, I guess, kick in a billion dollars as a kind of membership fee. Among the 21 countries are Belar, Hungary, Israel, Pakistan, Turkey.

[Garrett M. Graff]

It is a stunningly unimpressive list of the countries that historically, America has most held its nose while doing business with. These are sort of, for the most part, our most uncomfortable allies.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Not to Trump personally.

[Garrett M. Graff]

Not to Trump personally. That's the one uniting characteristic of everything that we are watching Donald Trump do, from tearing down the East Wing and building a ballroom to building the Trump.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Arch in Washington, not to mention the Kennedy Center.

[Garrett M. Graff]

All of these things are about trying to build a legacy that so changes the arc of the world that it cannot be undone.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Which brings us inevitably to the question, can this be undone or is it? As many European leaders said this past week, it's just over. You know, as Gramsci famously said, the old world is gone, the new world is yet to begin. And in the interregnum, there is much morbidity.

[Michael Oinger]

Is it just over?

[Garrett M. Graff]

That's the heartbreak of this, Brooke. I think that this world is gone. We could elect a whole string of presidents going forward who believe in NATO and invest in NATO, who try to restart usaid, who try to lure the best foreign students back to the United States to do research at our universities, to rebuild the trust in the Justice Department. And I think whether you're a potential immigrant to the United States, whether you're a corporate leader in the United States or abroad, or you're the head of state of a foreign country, in the back of your mind is always going to be the United States is only one election away from a Donald Trump. Again. You know, I closed my Wired piece talking about the famous opening of historian Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August book about World War I. She opens with the grand funeral of England's Edward VII in May of 1910, this fabulously colorful parade of mourning that brought together nine kings, seven queens, and 40 more imperial and royal highnesses. And what none of them realized in that moment was that was really the high point and last gasp of the grand era of geopolitical dominance and sort of the peak of the colonial powers of Europe, which over the rest of that decade, you know, destroyed itself in the trenches and poppy fields of the First World War and ceded control of that world that they had inherited and led for a century to, to the upstart America across the Atlantic Ocean. That was the moment that our century really began. And someday we will tell our children about this month of January 2026 in world politics, and they will not be able to fathom what we chose to do as a country to ourselves. And, and they will never be able to contemplate what the United States once meant to the world beyond. Because the relationship of the United States to the rest of the world has been so fundamentally altered by this last year.

[Brooke Gladstone]

I want to go back and ask you a couple of things that I sort of skipped over.

[Garrett M. Graff]

The complete collapse of the world order and we missed a subject or two. I don't believe it.

[Brooke Gladstone]

How much of NATO's power rested on belief in the liberal rules based order that is crumbling.

[Garrett M. Graff]

That's all an alliance really is, Brooke. It's the promise that when you need me, I will be there. The moment that Denmark or any of these other European nations is now facing down Russia in Europe and has to sort of every so often start to turn around and check over its shoulder whether the US Is an adversary or an ally, the whole promise collapses.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Can Europe recreate a system of stability that the world can rely on the way that the US Once did?

[Garrett M. Graff]

I think it could, absolutely. This is what the grand European experiment of the last 80 years has been. You know, the creation of the European Union, the creation of the euro, the European Commission, and the European global market.

[Brooke Gladstone]

It certainly hasn't been smooth sailing.

[Garrett M. Graff]

It has not been smooth sailing, but it has been a world struggling to be born. You know, a vision for a future for a united Europe. But even that is under its own threat. I mean, we saw Brexit the same time that Donald Trump was elected, the first time we've seen how devastating that has been politically and economically to the United Kingdom. So that's not to say that Europe can't pull it together and build something new. But Europe on its own will never be as powerful as Europe and the United States and North America was together. And from the US Perspective, one of the things we really need to worry about is when Europe looks around for its partners going forward, Europe and China could be an incredibly powerful partnership for the 21st century. That leaves the US sitting on the.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Sidelines Europe could take the opportunity to say, wow, that was 80 years of bullying. To hell with you guys.

[Garrett M. Graff]

A lot of my work is as a World War II historian, and to me, part of this is the story of where we are exactly 80 years after the end of World War II, that we are losing the last of the greatest generation who fought and won World War II, the last of the generation who understood how hard this world was to build the first time to fight against fascism and to root out fascism once it took hold in the continent of Europe and how much work it took to build these international institutions. The baby boomers have spent effectively all of their lives growing up under the umbrella of peace, security, stability and economic success given by this policy recipe. What I really worry about is these decisions being made by policymakers who don't understand the high cost it took to achieve this level of peace, security and economic prosperity and are willing to burn it all down now for Donald Trump's own ego and narcissism without worrying about what comes next.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Garrett, thank you very much.

[Garrett M. Graff]

I would say, Brooke, it's always a pleasure, but this is a pretty depressing conversation.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Garrett M. Graf is a journalist and historian and author of the newsletter Doomsday Scenario. His recent piece in Wired is called We Are Witnessing the Self Immolation of a Superpower.

[Michael Oinger]

Coming up, Minnesotans are bundling up against the cold and ice.

[Brooke Gladstone]

This is OnTheMedia.

[Announcer]

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[Michael Oinger]

From viral moments to cultural revolutions, celebrity deep dives to social commentary, basement open mics to comedy legends spilling the tea.

[Announcer]

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[Michael Oinger]

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[Announcer]

Just download the Amazon Music app and start listening.

[Brooke Gladstone]

This is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

[Michael Oinger]

And I'm Michael Oinger. There was news out of Congress this.

[Joseph Cox]

Thursday to Washington, D.C. tonight, where the.

[Drew Harwell]

House passed a package of spending bills.

[Joseph Cox]

To keep the government open.

[Drew Harwell]

In the end, seven Democrats crossing party lines to vote with Republicans to fund the Department of Homeland Security, which of course includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ice.

[Michael Oinger]

And out of the North Star State on Friday in Minnesota, organizers of a statewide economic blackout are urging people to.

[Garrett M. Graff]

Stay home from work and school and to close businesses in protest of the.

[Michael Oinger]

Ongoing immigration enforcement surge happening there. Lawful law enforcement operations. That's what's been happening on the ground in Minnesota. Press secretary Caroline Levitt responding to anti ICE narratives earlier this month. These are illegal alien, criminal pedophiles, murderers.

[Garrett M. Graff]

Rapists, some of the worst of the worst criminals who.

[Michael Oinger]

According to a new poll from CBS last week, the majority of Americans, 56%, do not believe that ICE is prioritizing criminals for deportation. And while there's not much recent data, arrest records reviewed by the New York Times in 2025 are clear. Only about 7% of ICE detainees have a violent conviction. And about two thirds have no criminal record at all. On Tuesday, a child was picked up by ICE agents in his family's driveway.

[Announcer]

Five year old Liam Ramos is seen wearing a Spiderman backpack near his home.

[Michael Oinger]

As a masked agent stands behind him. The agent took the child out of the still running car, led him to.

[Brooke Gladstone]

The door and directed him to knock.

[Garrett M. Graff]

On the door, asking to be let in in order to see if anyone else was home.

[Michael Oinger]

Essentially using a five year old as bait. But of course, the cruelty is not limited to non citizens.

[Announcer]

Not allowed.

[Michael Oinger]

This is private property. You're not allowed. I'm from this country. That's US citizen Ramon Minera, a resident of Columbia Heights, Minnesota who was detained last week by ice. You know what, sir? Now talking to you, seeing, hearing that you have an accent, I have recently to believe that you are not born of this country. So you, you just visit the country. Look, sir, you're going to do this the easy way or are we going to take you in? This is what legal observers call a Kavanaugh stop, a term named after the Supreme Court justice who wrote an opinion in September, essentially greenlighting ISIS power to racially profile suspects. What we're hearing is they're being stopped in traffic stops or on the street with no cause and being forced to demand paperwork to determine if they are here legally. Police Chief Mark Brulee of Brooklyn Park, a city in Minnesota, we started hearing from our police officers the same complaints as they fell victim to this while off duty. Every one of these individuals is a person of color who has had this happen to them. If it's happening to cops, you know it's bad. And there's reason to believe that it's even worse than we thought. This week we learned that ICE agents had been secretly instructed that their work doesn't need to follow the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable search and seizure by the government.

[Garrett M. Graff]

According to a memo from the acting ICE director obtained by the Associated Press.

[Michael Oinger]

Immigration officers can enter homes without a judicial warrant, which helps explain what happened to US Citizen Chong Li Tao, a Hmong immigrant earlier this week.

[Brooke Gladstone]

An Asian American grandfather who was speaking.

[Joseph Cox]

Out after being dragged out of his.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Home by federal officers Sunday in St. Paul without any clothes on into the.

[Garrett M. Graff]

Freezing cold after agents broke into his.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Home without a warrant.

[Michael Oinger]

ICE officers say they detained Tao while searching for two registered sex offenders. But as the Associated Press reported, according to a public registry, Tao has no such record, nor does anyone living on his block. Considering how violently and, well, erroneously federal agents have targeted people, it's worth digging into how exactly ICE chooses which homes to raid. According to Joseph Cox of 404 Media, an independent tech outlet, the agency has been quietly amassing an arsenal of surveillance tools. He began by telling me About Tangles and WeBlock, two applications made by a company called Penlink, which now help guide officers around cities like Minneapolis.

[Joseph Cox]

The one that's a lot more interesting to me is the one called WeBlock. And this allows ICE to look at all of the phones it may have data on in a particular neighbourhood. Now, usually when ICE would need phone location data, maybe they would get a warrant and they would go to AT&T or Verizon or T Mobile and get the data. That way, with Weblock, they don't need a warrant at all. They're just buying the data.

[Michael Oinger]

From what I understand, an app like WeBlock can basically purchase data that people are maybe unknowingly already giving to apps that they use for very pedestrian things like Candy Crush or Tinder or MyFitnessPal. How does that work?

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah, unknowingly is the key thing here, because I doubt that many people know this is going on. So whenever an ad is about to be placed in front of you inside an app, there is this near instantaneous and pretty much invisible process going on where all of these companies are trying to outbid one another to get their ads in front of a certain demographic. So males who are 18 to 35 who live in this part of Los Angeles or whatever. That's very normal. That is just how online advertising works, especially in the United States. A side product is that you have these companies such as Penlink, hoovering up all of that data. And that can include the location data of mobile phones. Sometimes spy firms will buy an advertising company to gain access to this. Sometimes they will take one over, other times they'll misrepresent and gain access to the data that way. But the result is that they hoover up all of this information, they add additional information to it to make it more useful to the authorities, put it in a very nice searchable interface, and then sell it to ICE.

[Michael Oinger]

So then, when ICE is using WeBlock, what are they looking at?

[Joseph Cox]

You'd say, I want to see all of the phones in this part of Los Angeles at this time and this date. From there, a map will appear on their screen. They will then draw a shape like a circle, and it will immediately show all of the phones that WeBlock has data on for that location at that time. They can then click these interesting and novel features such as the route button, which will show the exact path a phone took to either get to that location or to leave it. You could see the exact highway that that phone took to get to where the person presumably lives.

[Michael Oinger]

How does this not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment, which requires law enforcement to warrants before searching?

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah, this is a basic tenet of the US justice system in that law enforcement have to get a warrant or potentially some sort of other court order to protect people from unreasonable search and seizures. That's why law enforcement need to get a warrant to go to AT&T or Verizon to get location data. That changes when the government buys the data, essentially. And this is according to an internal legal analysis from inside ICE that was shared with me by the aclu. ICE believes that people are willingly giving up this location data from their phone because they could turn off location services, they could uninstall the apps which are selling their location data, and that's the legal basis they have.

[Michael Oinger]

That feels like such a technical cop out. It's like, well, the terms of service were there. You just didn't read 30 pages of legalese before you downloaded Tinder. It's maybe technically true, but I mean, give me a break.

[Joseph Cox]

But even then, some companies who harvest and sell location data say, yes, we will opt you out. And even when you do that, they still gather location data and they still sell it. So even if somebody is Very well informed. And even then, the location data may still be gathered and these people have not provided informed consent.

[Michael Oinger]

Okay, let's talk about another app that ICE has been using, Mobile Fortify. This is facial recognition software that allows the user to take a picture of someone and then real time, bring up some of their information. It's the same tech that Customs and Border Patrol use at the airport.

[Joseph Cox]

So I first learn about Mobile Fortify last June through emails, links from inside ice. I'm then trying to find evidence of it actually being used on American streets. And slowly I get this trickle of videos on social media. And it's not always clear what is going on, but ICE or Customs and Border Protection officials will point their phone directly at someone's face and then they'll go look at the screen. Now you may think, well, they could just be taking that person's photo or.

[Michael Oinger]

Something like that, recording a recruitment reel or something. Right, exactly.

[Joseph Cox]

But then in some of the videos, I started to notice the officers saying something explicit.

[Announcer]

An id. You got something that you can show?

[Garrett M. Graff]

I mean, I have school id.

[Joseph Cox]

Let me see that.

[Drew Harwell]

I was born here, but I don't got an id.

[Joseph Cox]

You don't have no idea?

[Michael Oinger]

No.

[Joseph Cox]

Can you do facial? Can we do facial? Which to me was a clear acknowledgement that they were doing facial recognition.

[Michael Oinger]

Last year in Oregon, an agent took two pictures of a 45 year old woman ICE had detained after a raid. The app came back with two different names for this woman and they arrested her anyway.

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah, the first thing you learn about facial recognition is that it's not always accurate. And in fact, with people of color, especially black people, we've seen multiple cases of that. It can repeatedly misidentify people who have been arrested and detained, even charged, even though there was a mistake in the facial recognition technology. This case you're referring to, it's a woman who goes by the initials mjma. In the court transcript that I obtained, she was swept up in an immigration raid in Oregon. Her and around 30 other people were detained. And in this testimony from a Customs and Border Protection official that I got, the official admits that they took two different photos using the Mobile Fortify app of this woman. Both times it returned different names. Now, logically, I'm thinking, well, at least one of those has to be wrong. People do not have two names. So we were gonna publish an article on that. And then I managed to get in touch with the lawyer representing her, and he said that both of the names were incorrect.

[Michael Oinger]

And yet they still detained her?

[Joseph Cox]

Yes. I would Say, though they were detaining her probably. Anyway, it was part of this larger sweep of this apartment complex and there was a van involved and she was in the driver's seat and that sort of thing. So from my read of the testimony, she was probably gonna be detained anyway. That being said, this app, Mobile Fortify, this is what ICE is using to identify people in the field. We've seen multiple videos on social media of ICE or other DHS officials going up, pointing their phone at people. ICE believes a result from this app is a definitive proof of someone's immigration status and can override a birth certificate. I don't know how the agency can say that when it's giving a woman two different names.

[Michael Oinger]

Each one of these examples is like raising my blood pressure even more. But let's talk about another tool that ICE is using called Enhance Leads Identification and Targeting for enforcement, or elite. WeBlock and Tangles were already in existence that not just the government are using, But Elite is an app that was created specifically for use by the government by Palantir. This is the surveillance company co founded by Peter Thiel. What does Elite? You actually looked at an official handbook for the app.

[Joseph Cox]

It is again, a map interface and it will show icons signifying all of the potential immigrants in that area. You then click on a particular person, it will bring up their individual dossier, their name, date of birth, a photo, if they have it, and crucially for ice, their address and an address confidence score. Addresses to them are gold because it gives them a specific location to raid. And even if they don't necessarily find the specific person there, they're also doing it just to find densely populated neighborhoods where they think a lot of people they might be able to detain will be located.

[Michael Oinger]

You said that Elite will note the source of the address, such as the government agency that supplied it. Which government agencies do we know are giving addresses and similar data to ice?

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah. So the user guide I obtained for Elite lists a few different government agencies. The first is the Department of Health and Human Services. There is also mention of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Uscis, obviously part of dhs. There is a mention of something called Clear in all capital letters. I believe that may relate to a data product from Thomson Reuters. That company has not responded to my request for comment, but they have contracted with ICE repeatedly and sold them data before.

[Michael Oinger]

Is this the parent company of the news organisation Reuters?

[Joseph Cox]

Yes. As well as being a news organisation, Thomson Reuters has a data product that they will sell to private industry and many government agencies as well. And we've reported before that ICE is able to take say license plate data from Motorola, for instance, and it pairs it or it can pair it with data from Clear and that can be people's addresses, personal information, all of that sort of thing. But I would stress that this user guide is not an exhaustive list of all of the data sources that elite may be getting. It just says somewhere around the end of the list it's integrating new data sources. So I fully expect that there could be more that we just don't know about.

[Michael Oinger]

The fact that this rogue agency is using shady and at times frighteningly inaccurate apps to skirt laws that feels like it should be a very big concern for lawmakers, at least the ones who still care about basic civil liberties. If and when Congress were to do something about it, what would be the first step towards new privacy legislation?

[Joseph Cox]

Well, there's a few things. Democratic lawmakers have acted on this in some capacity or they have tried to act on it. You have Senator Ron Wyden introduced the fourth Amendment Amendment is not for Sale Act a while ago and that would have banned agencies from simply buying data. They would have to get a warrant or some other legal mechanism. So that would stop the stuff like WeBlock and Tangles and that sort of thing. Another one, Rep. Thompson, who recently with other Democratic lawmakers, I think a group of six of them introduced potential legislation that would rein in mobile fortify the ICE facial recognition app, saying it can only be used at ports of entry. You can't roll it out to local police, which is why what DHS was trying to do as well. So potentially there's some room there for legislative action as well. But more fundamentally, the United States does not have a federal privacy law. You have a law in California doing its thing. I think you have one in Illinois around biometric data. Of course in the EU you have gdpr, a very overarching all encompassing data protection regulation. The US just does not have that. Which is why partly allows the country and agencies to just buy information on its citizens and residents.

[Michael Oinger]

You and Your team at 404 Media have done incredible work on this story on this beat. I am surprised it's not being covered more frankly. Why do you think these surveillance efforts are so poorly understood to this point?

[Joseph Cox]

The coverage question is a really interesting one. When you cover this, there is a danger that you present it to the reader. Some abstract problem over there with some tech company making some tool in the distance. That is why I think there is relatively little coverage around the tech powering ice. You have to show this is how this technological product is impacting people in this city or on the ground. But I think we're breaking through with a few overarching stories. After I first revealed that Fortify existed last June, we eventually found all those social media videos of ICE actually using it. And now it was concrete and people could understand it. They could literally see with their own eyes. And the other one is this new Palantir system called Elite, where I think that is finally providing a through line in between Palantir, the obscure, strange tech company that everybody has heard of but nobody really knows what it does and what is actually happening on the ground with ice. I think we've made that link and I'm sure many other journalists will as well.

[Michael Oinger]

Joseph, thanks for doing this work.

[Joseph Cox]

Absolutely. Thank you.

[Michael Oinger]

Joseph Cox is an investigative reporter and co founder of 404 Media.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Coming up, it's hard to avoid seeing those ICE recruitment ads your tax dollars are paying for.

[Michael Oinger]

This is on the media.

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[Michael Oinger]

From viral moments to cultural revolutions, celebrity deep dives to social commentary, basement open mics to comedy Legends spilling the tea.

[Announcer]

Amazon Music's got something for everyone.

[Michael Oinger]

With millions of podcast episodes.

[Announcer]

Just download the Amazon music app and start listening.

[Brooke Gladstone]

This is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

[Michael Oinger]

And I'm Michael Oinger. Ice's ability to upgrade their technology in part came from a dramatically upgraded technology budget. Last July, in the so called One Big Beautiful Bill act, Congress tripled ICE's annual budget from about 10 billion to roughly 30 billion. Another line item for those expanded coffers, what the agency calls wartime recruitment, a task granted roughly $100 million. Drew Harwell is a technology reporter for the Washington Post. He and his colleagues obtained a variety of files from ICE employees about the effort, including one called a surge Hiring Marketing Strategy Document, which lays out in very precise detail all the ways ICE wants to solicit new recruits, including producing a ton of ads.

[Drew Harwell]

The ads are broken up a couple different ways. One, you have the classic kind of Americana nostalgia ads that basically read like propaganda From World War I, you know, white people on the frontier fighting these invaders. Uncle Sam features prominently. Then you have this other kind of mix that's this very modern meme y edgy kind of campaign that's all action movie posters, video games. The Halo video game features prominently. It makes this policy issue of immigration into this game, this battle.

[Michael Oinger]

But just to like zoom in on the Halo ad, on the Department of Homeland Security's Instagram, we saw an image with the words destroy the flood. For those who haven't played Halo, which is a hugely popular video game series, humans are basically fighting a parasitic alien called the flood that takes over living things and turns them into zombies. I mean, this is like an extremely dehumanizing lens through which to talk about non citizens. And I want to get to who these ideal recruits are. But it's not just Gen Z and it's not just on Instagram. Up until recently, you could hear ads running on Spotify.

[Garrett M. Graff]

In too many cities, dangerous illegals walk free as police are forced to stand down. Join ICE and help us catch the.

[Michael Oinger]

Worst of the worst. You can see recruitment ads on local TV across the country.

[Garrett M. Graff]

Join the mission to protect America with bonuses apply of $50,000 and generous benefits.

[Michael Oinger]

You can find similar ads on Hulu, HBO, Max, Snapchat, YouTube.

[Drew Harwell]

Yeah, and I remember growing up seeing the military army of One ads that made a similar point where you could be the knight on the front lines. And there were TV commercials. Now, you know, these ads are everywhere.

[Michael Oinger]

So pervasive that SNL did a sketch last October with Tina Fey as Kristi Noem and Amy Poehler as Pam Bondi. Do you need a job now?

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah.

[Michael Oinger]

Are you a big, tough gu.

[Drew Harwell]

Yeah.

[Michael Oinger]

Tough enough for the army or police?

[Announcer]

No.

[Michael Oinger]

But do you take supplements that you bought at a gas station daily?

[Brooke Gladstone]

Do you like to use zip ties.

[Michael Oinger]

Because people in your life don't trust you with keys?

[Joseph Cox]

You know it.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Then buckle up and slap on some Oakley's Big Boy. Welcome to ice.

[Michael Oinger]

I think it's worth mentioning that after that sketch, the DHS X account clipped like the first 10 seconds of it to make another ad. Which raises something kind of odd about what ICE is up to. The New Yorker reported this month that the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly used pop songs over some of its recruitment ads by artists like Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, and even a SZA parody song from an appearance on snl. You'll hear this music over footage of ICE arrests. Rodrigo Carpenter and SZA have denounced these videos as hateful, evil, and quote, unquote, peak dark, respectively. But it kind of seems like ICE is thriving off of these responses, intentionally trolling famous people to try to drive more headlines and virality.

[Drew Harwell]

Clearly. And, you know, we had gotten some internal messages from ICE where they talk about, well, we don't really have the rights to this music. Maybe it's not the best idea. And members of the ICE team putting these out basically say they don't care. This has been something that administration has been very clear about. They like trolling the libs. They like being out there smashing people in the face every day they want to go viral. People who agree with it tend to share it because they think it's funny. People who hate it and despise it share it as well to show their disgust to the algorithm. It's all the same. I think the big question is whether any of this actually works. General polls of people's sentiment toward Trump's immigration policy. He's way underwater. The social media campaign of being very aggressive and in your face, it hasn't reversed that. Right? It hasn't made people as a whole support Trump's immigration policy. Maybe the strategy is being driven by very online people who love trolling. People love being edgy. But is that actually good policy for government?

[Michael Oinger]

And. And what are the implications here? It kind of feels like 4chan marketing for people who also grew up on 4chan. I'm thinking of one of these ads the Intercept reported on that ICE posted just two days after Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Goode in Minneapolis. It's an image on the Department of Homeland Security's. Instagram that reads we'll have our home again, which is just innocuous nativist language until you realize that that phrase is the title of a song by a group called Pine Tree Riots that's been embraced in neo Nazi spaces online for quite some time. And the lyrics to that song were the opening to a manifesto posted by a white supremacist who in 2023 shot up a Florida Dollar General and killed three black people. Why post that dog whistle if you're not trying actively to recruit white supremacists?

[Drew Harwell]

There's been enough of these examples now that it's impossible to say that this is all coincidental. DHS and ice, when we have brought this stuff up to them, they have said, oh, you're going to the Nazi thing again, how tiring. But it doesn't really explain why this keeps you don't just accidentally use Nazi songs, trip over your feet and accidentally use far right dog whistle memes. I think part of it is that some of these people come from Republican policy shops, Republican press shops that were very online. They came up into this environment where they were young edgelords. Right. Part of what this document suggested also was that they were going to be going to pro ice influencers. So creators on Rumble and Snapchat and YouTube and Instagram paying them money to get the message out about recruiting. So there's definitely a big online component. The part that really jumped out to me and felt interesting was how they've moved into the real world where they're using techniques like geofencing, where they look at a real world place like rodeos, gun shows, UFC fights, NASCAR races, hunting shows. They're drawing basically a circle around these these areas. Anybody who sets foot into those events is going to get a pop up ad on their phone. They're also doing billboards and bus stops. So it really struck me as a pretty sophisticated effort. I talked to marketing experts who do this for real companies and they felt it seemed exactly like the kinds of methods you would if you were trying to sell Coca Cola. But they're applying it to this government agency that's trying to carry out the biggest mass deportation in American history because.

[Michael Oinger]

They believe that the people attending these types of events are their prime demographic.

[Drew Harwell]

Yeah, in the document they talk about their target market being people who are conservative, people who see themselves as patriots, people who listen to patriotic right wing podcasts, but also people interested in military affairs, guns and tactical gear, people who are really into watching fitness influencers. Some of this is not super new ice has traditionally, when they've wanted to backfill positions at the they've lost to attrition or retirement. They've often got people who have trained as cops and local police departments and sheriff's offices who want a federal job. But they need so many people now. They're trying to cast a really wide net and going after people who may not have the training and may just be some guy scrolling social media.

[Michael Oinger]

What evidence do we have that DHS is not being so judicious in who they allow into the ranks?

[Drew Harwell]

There has been some reporting on this, especially by people like Nick Miroff at the Atlantic where they've said they're getting a lot of applications, applications in and they're getting a lot of people who are expressing interest in these jobs specifically because ICE is offering $50,000 signing bonuses.

[Michael Oinger]

And help with student loans, student loan reimbursement programs.

[Drew Harwell]

They're basically throwing money at new applicants. And ICE is telling us this advertising campaign is working. They're getting all the applications they need, 100,000 or more applications. And yet the reporting from people like Nick Miroff and the Washington Post as well has found that people are coming in, they're not able to pass the fitness requirements. They're hitting all kinds of roadblocks. In of the testing. We talked to people who are former dhs, ICE officials. They've said they're shifting the bar to a point where they're bringing in people who are not going to be great candidates.

[Michael Oinger]

In fact, there was that viral story from independent journalist Lara Jadeed, who wrote about how she was allegedly hired by ICE after visiting a career fair in Texas last summer. Here she is on Democracy Now. I went in, I handed in my.

[Drew Harwell]

Resume, which was, I did a skills based resume. I'm a veteran.

[Michael Oinger]

I served two tours in Afghanistan. So on the surface, their resume looked pretty good. Had a very brief interview, took all of six minutes, then I left, assuming I would never hear back because I'm a very Googleable person. I'm the only Laura Judit on the Internet and I make no secret of.

[Drew Harwell]

How I feel about ICE and Trump.

[Michael Oinger]

She goes on to say that she initially missed the email from ICE and never filled out the paperwork that they requested with that offer. Stuff like a background check or an affidavit saying she'd never committed domestic crimes. But then a few weeks later, she says, I got a message from LabCorp saying that ICE wanted me to do a drug test. And then nine days after that, I was curious, had they processed the drug test yet? So I Logged onto the ICE hiring portal. And not only did the drug test not seem to be relevant, I was.

[Drew Harwell]

Listed as having joined ICE as of three days earlier, which is wild to me because she has reported critically on this agency for a long time. So if the agency would not look into the most superficial information about this potential recruit, what are they missing from everybody else?

[Michael Oinger]

You mentioned that poll numbers would have us believe that there's actually a sizable backlash to ICE's activity across the country. That said, DHS is claiming big new numbers. Upwards of 220,000 job applications in five months. Does that seem legit to you?

[Drew Harwell]

You know, it's their numbers. I don't have any reason not to trust them. You know, number of applications is not necessarily a proxy for perfect candidates who are being hired. Right. Some of these might be repeat applications. Some of these might be applications that don't work. And again, some of this is probably a reflection of the $50,000 signing bonuses. I mean, some of these deportation or jobs pay $50,000 salary. So you're basically doubling the salary year one. I think it's impossible to disentangle the success of this kind of recruitment strategy from the actual advertising. We just don't know if one is connecting to the other.

[Michael Oinger]

So many of these examples are incredibly dark. I guess I'm trying to make sense of what it means exactly.

[Drew Harwell]

I think for me, what I'm left with is just this shifting on what we find is acceptable as a way to talk about about these things, like the tone with which the government is discussing getting shock troopers in to enforce the border laws and kick people out of the country. These are policies that are again, life or death issues that one would hope would be discussed seriously in a sober way. Maybe that's too much to ask. How much the 4chan culture and the edginess of the Internet, how dark it is and nihilistic, how much it has bled into public affairs and how much has consumed media and politics in this country. If we're talking about deportation in this way on the Internet, the people who are setting policy are going to be seeing this and they're going to be finding it acceptable to talk about the job in this way. I just think it's a leading indicator of how this policy is shaped in our country.

[Michael Oinger]

Drew, thanks for doing this reporting.

[Drew Harwell]

Thanks for having me.

[Michael Oinger]

Drew Harwell is a technology reporter for the Washington Post. That's it for this week's show on the media is produced by Molly Rosen, Rebecca Clark Callender and Candace Wong. Travis Manon is our video producer.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Our technical director is Jennifer Munson with engineering from Jared Paul. Eloise Blondio is our senior producer and our executive producer is Katya Rogers. On the Medium is produced by wnyc. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

[Michael Oinger]

And I'm Michael Lowinger.

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