Inside ICE’s Aggressive Approach to Arresting Migrants

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Journal
Episode: Inside ICE’s Aggressive Approach to Arresting Migrants
Release Date: June 10, 2025

---

Hosts:
Ryan Knutson and Jessica Mendoza
Produced by: Spotify and The Wall Street Journal

---

Overview

In this compelling episode of The Journal, hosts Ryan Knutson and Jessica Mendoza delve deep into the Trump administration's intensified immigration policies, particularly focusing on the aggressive strategies employed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to arrest and deport undocumented migrants. Through insightful discussions and expert interviews, the episode unpacks the ramifications of these policies on immigrant communities, law enforcement practices, and the broader socio-political landscape in the United States.

---

1. The Spark: LA Protests Erupting Over ICE Raids

[00:05] Introduction to the Protests
Jessica Mendoza sets the stage by highlighting the fifth-day protests in Los Angeles, ignited by President Trump's stringent immigration policies and the aggressive raids conducted by ICE.

[00:22] Details of the ICE Raids
Michelle Hackman, an immigration policy expert, explains that ICE initiated operations in LA targeting workplaces like garment factories and Home Depot’s parking lots in Latino neighborhoods. These raids aim to identify and apprehend undocumented workers seeking employment.

Notable Quote:
"Immigrants... will gather in the parking lot of a Home Depot looking for work. And so for ICE, it's like an easy target to go there and just figure out everyone's immigration status and arrest everyone who doesn't have papers."
— Michelle Hackman [00:49]

---

2. Escalation of Violence and Government Response

[01:18] Rise in Protests and Violence
As word of ICE's actions spread, protests swelled, particularly around the Federal Detention Center downtown. ICE's response escalated with the use of pepper spray and flashbangs, leading to chaotic scenes and increased law enforcement presence.

[01:38] Deployment of National Guard and Military
The situation intensified with the deployment of hundreds of National Guard troops and approximately 7,700 Marines to LA, signaling a significant government response to the unrest.

Notable Quote:
"Protests against immigration raids turning chaotic. Multiple Waymo cars lit on fire... there were 6,000 protesters in the streets."
— Michelle Hackman [02:03]

---

3. The Broader Strategy: National-Level ICE Raids

[02:07] Nationwide Raids
Michelle Hackman outlines that LA is just one of many hotspots, with ICE conducting similar raids across the country—from Martha's Vineyard to Puerto Rico—targeting various workplaces.

[02:23] Increasing Aggressiveness
The administration's push isn't just increasing the number of raids but also their aggressiveness, aiming to meet deportation quotas through highly visible operations.

Notable Quote:
"Immigration raids are... becoming more aggressive as the administration amps up its efforts to hit its deportation goals."
— Jessica Mendoza [02:23]

---

4. The Architect Behind the Policy: Stephen Miller

[05:16] Introduction to Stephen Miller
Michelle Hackman introduces Stephen Miller, a senior White House aide and the mastermind behind Trump's immigration agenda. Miller is portrayed as a relentless advocate for reducing the immigrant population in the U.S.

[05:42] Miller's Aggressive Tactics
At a pivotal ICE meeting in late May, Miller aggressively pushed for increased arrests without the need for targeted law enforcement lists, urging agents to raid commonplace locations like 7-Elevens and Home Depots.

Notable Quote:
"He was very aggressive with people... 'go out there, arrest illegal aliens.'"
— Michelle Hackman [06:32]

---

5. Challenges Faced by ICE

[07:19] Resource Constraints
Despite the aggressive directives, ICE faces significant staffing shortages. The government has had to redeploy agents from agencies like the FBI and DEA to meet the heightened demands.

[07:54] New Tactics at Immigration Courts
ICE agents have started arresting migrants immediately after they exit immigration court hearings, sometimes without presenting a warrant, creating fear and deterring participation in legal processes.

Notable Quote:
"They're going to restaurants and just saying, we're going to barge in, we're going to interview everyone in your kitchen..."
— Michelle Hackman [09:07]

---

6. Impact on Immigrant Communities

[08:21] Psychological Toll
The aggressive tactics have instilled fear within immigrant communities. Stories emerge of families being torn apart, with parents being arrested in public spaces while children watch, as illustrated by a harrowing account from San Antonio.

[12:55] Fear as a Deterrent
Beyond arrests, ICE employs fear-based strategies, such as promoting a self-deportation app that allegedly rewards migrants for leaving the country, aiming to reduce the undocumented population through intimidation rather than effective legal processes.

Notable Quote:
"I think some of these tactics are almost like a show that the Trump administration is putting on..."
— Michelle Hackman [11:33]

---

7. Public and Governmental Reactions

[14:01] White House Defense of ICE
Michelle Hackman shares insights from Tom Homan, who indicates that the White House views these aggressive ICE operations as standard law enforcement practices, justifying the militarized approach as necessary for safety.

[14:34] Public Opinion on Mass Deportation
Despite initial support, public sentiment reveals a stark division. While many back deporting criminals, support diminishes significantly when it comes to deporting long-term residents without criminal records.

Notable Quote:
"I thought you were going after criminals. This really doesn't look like criminals if you're going to Home Depot and just arresting our hard-working neighbors."
— Michelle Hackman [15:57]

---

8. Future Outlook and Potential Developments

[16:27] Monitoring Ongoing Protests and ICE Strategies
Michelle Hackman anticipates continued protests in major cities like San Francisco, Oakland, Atlanta, and New York. She also suggests that ICE might refine its approaches to better meet arrest and deportation numbers, though tangible results remain uncertain.

[17:15] Conclusion
The episode concludes with the acknowledgment that while aggressive tactics have not yet translated into the mass deportations promised, the psychological impact and public unrest present significant challenges for the Trump administration's immigration policies.

---

Key Takeaways

• Aggressive ICE Raids: Targeting everyday workplaces and public spaces to identify and arrest undocumented immigrants.
• Stephen Miller's Role: As the chief architect, Miller drives the administration's hardline stance, pushing for higher arrest quotas.
• Resource Shortages: ICE's intensified efforts are hampered by staffing deficits, relying on inter-agency redeployments.
• Impact on Communities: Heightened fear and disruption within immigrant populations, with reports of family separations and public arrests.
• Public Opinion Shift: Initial support for deporting criminals wanes when policies affect non-criminal, long-term residents.
• Ongoing Protests and Resistance: Increased public demonstrations across multiple cities, with potential for further escalation.

---

Additional Reporting By: Elizabeth Findell, Ruth Simon, and Tarini Partee
Merchandise: WSJ Shop

---

This summary encapsulates the critical discussions and insights from the podcast episode, providing a comprehensive understanding for those who have not listened to the original content.

Transcript

[Jessica Mendoza]

Protests on the streets of Los Angeles are now on their fifth day Driving the demonstrations are President Trump's immigration policy and specifically raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ice.

[Michelle Hackman]

So ICE did this operation in LA starting on Friday. They raided a few workplaces. There was a garment factory and then, and the parking lot, surrounding areas of a Home Depot in this very Latino neighborhood.

[Jessica Mendoza]

That's our colleague Michelle Hackman, who covers immigration policy. She's been following the Trump administration's deportation efforts, which are now happening in places where undocumented folks go to look for work.

[Michelle Hackman]

Immigrants who are working in the country illegally, often, you know, day laborers, people who work in construction or being hired to help out with people's homes or gardening or whatever, will gather in the parking lot of a Home Depot looking for work. And so for ice, it's like an easy target to go there and just figure out everyone's immigration status and arrest everyone who doesn't have papers.

[Jessica Mendoza]

As news of the raid spread, people began to take to the streets in spots around LA county, including at the Federal Detention center downtown.

[Michelle Hackman]

As protesters gathered, ICE started escalating using sort of pepper spray and in some cases flashbangs. That made the protests bigger and more aggressive, which caused a larger law enforcement response, and so on and so forth. Protests against immigration raids turning chaotic. Multiple Waymo cars lit on fire. Again, these are driverless vehicles there. In downtown LA, at one point, there were 6,000 protesters in the streets. Hundreds of National Guard troops now on the ground deployed by President Trump. The US military is set to deploy about 7, 700 marines to the LA area in response to the protest.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The raids that kicked off the protests in LA are part of a larger push from the Trump administration.

[Michelle Hackman]

In recent weeks, I've really seen raids at workplaces like this, at Home Depots, at construction sites, happening all over the country. We're talking about, you know, all the way from Martha's Vineyard to Puerto Rico, just everywhere.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And these immigration raids aren't just increasing in number, they're also becoming more aggressive as the administration amps up its efforts to hit its deportation goals.

[Michelle Hackman]

President Trump promised to do a mass deportation, and they think a mass deportation is arresting and deporting a million people a year. And they're nowhere close to that. And so they want these ICE raids to be as public and visible as possible.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica mendoza. It's Tuesday, June 10th. Coming up on the show, inside the immigration strategy that sparked a backlash in Los Angeles.

[Tom Homan]

This episode is brought to you by US Bank. With US Bank Business essentials, you get more than just a bank. You get a dedicated partner that provides you a powerful combo of checking and card payment processing with quick access to the money you've earned, proving that there's nothing as powerful as the power of us. Visit usbank.com today to learn more. Member FDIC Copyright 2025 US Bank.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Trump talked about mass deportations all the time on the campaign trail.

[Michelle Hackman]

We are going to have the largest deportation effort in the history of our country. We're bringing everybody back to where they came from. We have no choice. We have no choice.

[Jessica Mendoza]

But our colleague Michelle Hackman says that during Trump's first months in office, the actual number of arrests and deportations hasn't matched the tough talk.

[Michelle Hackman]

External critics were angry that not enough people were being arrested and deported. And so pressure has sort of been mounting on the administration, even it has gone all the way up to President Trump. Apparently, in White House and Oval Office meetings, he will yell at people and say, why aren't arrests higher? Why aren't deportations higher? And so that pressure has trickled down through the Department of Homeland Security and to ice, where people have now been handed daily arrest quotas. And the arrest quotas started pretty early in the administration, but they've only gone up. So, you know, they started at 1,200 a day. They've risen in May to about 3,000 a day, which ice is nowhere close to meeting.

[Jessica Mendoza]

To reach those quotas, the administration needed to do more. And the person who stepped up is one of Trump's most senior aides and the architect of the president's immigration agenda.

[Michelle Hackman]

The person who is the visionary behind Trump's immigration policy is a guy named Stephen Miller. He's now the deputy chief of staff at the White House. And he is one of the most nitty gritty people I have ever spoken to on immigration. And it should be as simple as, are you lawfully in the United States? No. If you are not, then you should go home. In a sane country, that would be the system.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And what does he want when it comes to immigration? What are his goals?

[Michelle Hackman]

Ultimately, his goal is to reduce the population of immigrants in America. He is a really, really fervent believer that immigration is the cause of a lot of the nation's ills. And I would say that that is really motivational for him in a way that is rare to encounter.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Miller sent a message to the leadership at ICE to boost daily arrests.

[Michelle Hackman]

And in late May, Stephen Miller basically summoned a meeting at ICE where he had the leadership from around the country come into D.C. and he was there basically to read them the riot act.

[Jessica Mendoza]

So, yeah, what happened at that meeting? Can you tell us what was said, what you've learned?

[Michelle Hackman]

Yeah, so according to people who were in the meeting, he was very aggressive with people, was saying, you don't need to go develop law enforcement target lists, just go out there, arrest illegal aliens. That's exactly what he said. Go to 7Elevens, go to home Depots. And he looked around at the room and he said, I bet if I grabbed a few of you guys right now, we could go outside on the street and make 30 arrests right now. And he even did a show of hands. You know, who here thinks they can do this? And it was made really clear to people that not only were they being exhorted to sort of implement the President's agenda, but if they don't, that their jobs were on the line.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Did ICE have the resources to immediately scale up raids in this way?

[Michelle Hackman]

No, they didn't. ICE is really short staffed. And so the government has sort of been redeploying agents from across the entire federal government, from the FBI, the dea, to form teams to go out and do these arrests.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Michelle says that ISIS started doing a bunch of new things to arrest more people. For instance, ISIS started showing up at immigration courts around the country. After hearings have finished and migrants walk out of the courtroom, agents arrest them.

[Michelle Hackman]

So there was one case that my colleague spoke to this lawyer who has a client who had actually entered the country legally under a Biden administration program, had applied to enter the country. Once his legal status expired, he was in a court process. And what happened was the court, as soon as it was dismissed and he walked outside of the courtroom, agents were there to arrest him.

[Jessica Mendoza]

In that particular case, Michelle says the ICE agents refused to show a warrant.

[Michelle Hackman]

This is kind of alarming for immigrants and immigrant advocates because for the longest time, the message has been, follow the process, go to your court hearing. You know, follow the law. And so if people are following the law, showing up at their hearings, getting arrested there, that is almost certainly going to deter some people from going to court, going to government interviews, things like that.

[Jessica Mendoza]

In addition to making arrests at courthouses, ICE agents are conducting raids in other types of public spaces, like that Home Depot parking lot in LA, or a Mexican restaurant in Missouri where agents arrested 12 workers.

[Michelle Hackman]

They're going to restaurants and just saying, we're going to barge in, we're going to interview everyone in your kitchen, we're going to take anyone who doesn't can't immediately prove to us, you know, that they are a US Citizen.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And the tactics that agents are using are becoming more forceful.

[Michelle Hackman]

Routinely, you see ICE agents covering their faces, not identifying themselves, dressed in sort of militaristic gear like they're going to war. You know, rather than arresting people, we've seen more aggressive tactics. You know, they ask someone to get out of their car, they immediately go and smash someone's car window. That's new.

[Jessica Mendoza]

ICE agents have also detained people without warrants.

[Michelle Hackman]

So ice, typically when they make an arrest, they have what's called an administrative warrant. So that means they have someone's name, they're looking for someone specific, they go to their house. And administrative warrants are not criminal warrants. So it doesn't allow you to knock down someone's door and barge into their house. You have to kind of wait for someone to leave their house, which is often why ICE is arresting someone when they leave to go to work or taking their kids to school or something like that. You know, one of my colleagues actually did a ride along with some ICE officers in San Antonio, and she witnessed this man that they wanted to arrest, and they decided that the best way to do it was while he was driving his kids to school with his wife in the car. You know, they decided they wanted to do it then because his wife was in the car, so maybe the wife could stay with the kids. And so they just did it. And the wife actually started yelling at the officers, like, I can't believe you did this in front of our children. She asked if she could kiss her husband, and they didn't even respond to her. They just took him.

[Jessica Mendoza]

All these aggressive new tactics have led to fear among immigrant communities, and the Trump administration is hoping that that fear will encourage migrants to leave the country on their own. That's next, Michelle. So all these efforts, are they working? Is the Trump administration arresting and deporting more people? Yeah.

[Michelle Hackman]

So the really interesting thing is, you know, we've seen all these really aggressive tactics from ice, but the tactics themselves are not boosting arrests. And so, to me, what it's saying is some of these tactics are almost like a show that the Trump administration is putting on to broadcast to its supporters and opponents alike. Like, look, we're doing immigration enforcement. We're serious about this, even if it's not showing up in the numbers.

[Jessica Mendoza]

So just to be clear, both arrests and deportations are not necessarily up.

[Michelle Hackman]

They are up somewhat, but not nearly the levels that Trump promised. Trump has talked about a mass Deportation being a million deportations in a year, they are nowhere close to that. I think the best number I've been able to surmise is that They've made about 100,000 arrests since they've taken office, which is a higher pace than Biden. But listeners have to remember that every arrest doesn't turn into a deportation. It's hard to deport someone. A lot of those people actually end up getting released.

[Jessica Mendoza]

ICE has stopped regularly publishing arrest data. Although the agency's new tactics haven't made a huge dent in arrests or deportations, Michelle says they are having a different effect.

[Michelle Hackman]

They want people to be scared and self deported. So they've done multiple things. They have set up a program where people can report their self deportations through an app, and they're even claiming that they're paying people $1,000 once they've successfully left the country. It's not clear to me how many people have actually received that money. They're trying to make this specter of your arrest, your detention and your deportation so scary and unpleasant. And to some extent, it's having an effect. You know, I speak to immigration attorneys and to community groups who say that people are choosing to leave or people are, you know, making plans for what happens to my US Citizen children if I get arrested and deported. So I think some of these fear tactics, at least for now, are working.

[Jessica Mendoza]

What does the White House or ICE say about all of these techniques?

[Michelle Hackman]

So I actually spoke to Tom Homan. The White House's borders are. And people say unofficially that he is the person sort of directing ICE operations. And he says, you know, this is law enforcement doing its job. You know, this is not anything out of the ordinary. And he said, you know, if you're seeing someone cover their face, it's because they're under pretty severe threat. You know, anyone who is out there doing an arrest with their face visible is risking having their face broadcast on social media or on the Internet.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The Trump administration defends its tactics for arrests. A White House spokesperson said that, quote, keeping President Trump's promise to deport illegal aliens is something the administration takes seriously. What do all these protests say to you about how Trump's immigration policy is going so far?

[Michelle Hackman]

You know, it's interesting because polling shows us that overall, immigration is one of the areas where voters still approve of President Trump's performance. And when we've polled on this question of do you support mass deportation? A small majority of people support the idea. But when you drill down, and this is where I find it interesting, is that if you ask, do you support deporting criminals? Yep, Most people do. But if you ask the question, and I think this is the way the Wall Street Journal poll has asked it, do you support deporting people with no criminal record who have lived in this country at least 10 years, support really, really plummets. And so what people are saying is, I thought you were going after criminals. This really doesn't look like criminals if you're going to Home Depot and just arresting our hard working neighbors. And that's what's angering people in California and could be something that turns people against Trump's immigration policy.

[Jessica Mendoza]

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was called before Congress for questioning. He defended the deployment of active military to LA and said that the plan is to keep troops there for 60 days. Meanwhile, public unrest is spreading to other parts of the country. Violence broke out in San Francisco on Monday night and protests are being planned in Oakland, Atlanta and New York City. So what are you going to be looking at next? What are you expecting to see?

[Michelle Hackman]

I'm going to be watching these protests for sure. Do the protests expand? How severely does the government try to quash them? You know, so far in la, the National Guard is there, but they haven't actually really intervened in any way. So that could get ugly or it could end, you know, in a fizzle. I'm also going to be looking at whether ICE becomes more sophisticated in actually bringing up its numbers and how it's going to translate those into more deportations.

[Jessica Mendoza]

That's all for today. Tuesday, June 10th. The Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Elizabeth Findell, Ruth Simon and Tarini Partee. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.