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Sam Seder
The majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Tuesday, February 10, 2026. My name is Sam Seder. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Melissa Sanchez, Chicago based reporter on immigration and labor for ProPublica and Jody S. Cohen, senior editor for ProPublica. On that ice raid the Chicago building months ago kicked off a lot of what we're seeing from ice. Meanwhile, it is three days before a DHS shutdown and the White House insists on maintaining its warrantless secret police in Minneapolis. ICE ramps up targeting of legal observers. Meanwhile, ICE officials testify in front of Congress for the first time since the shootings of Preddy and Good. Under pressure from lawmakers, DOJ is unredacting more of the Epstein files but not nearly enough. This as is as Nutlik excuse me, Ludnick on the hot seat. Also in those Epstein files, six new likely incriminated men whose identities we don't know yet. White House pushing Republicans save act to include an end to mail in voting. Trump threatens to block the opening of a newly built bridge between Canada and Detroit. White House to cut $600 million in congressionally appropriated health funds to four blue states and Rubio blocking Trump from Cuba talks as Cuba's crisis continues under its full blockade from all goods and supplies in a huge regulatory cut. Trump EPA to gut climate policy this week and Trump's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau shutdown has cost Americans now $19 billion. 6,000 San Francisco teachers strike it's likely to go to its second day. And lastly, just breaking Tom Malinowski concedes to Analilia Mihayu I can't. I just botched it. Hey, in Jersey's 11th district. All this and more on today's Majority Report. I'm also just getting word that is that true Antonio Delgado just ended his campaign for lieutenant Governor. More on that in a moment. I don't know where I yes, Delgado just dropped out of that Democratic primary for New York governor. That may have been a fait accompli once Mamdani endorsed Hochul. He deserves a lot of credit though, because just his running in that race to the left of Hochul in the run up to Mamdani's election and in the weeks after convinced Hochul that she had to help Mamdani achieve at least some of his priorities early on. And so Delgado deserves some credit for that. Folks can go back and look at our interview with him that we did, I guess about six months ago. I can't quite remember. Maybe it was four or five. More on that later. In the meantime, lots is happening now both with these ICE hearings and the Democrats refusal at this point to fund dhs, at least permanently. We don't know if there'll be another continuing resolution. John Thune is out there making it sound like negotiations are going well in a way to encourage senators to vote for a continuing resolution to give it a little bit more time. But if Democrats hold strong, which again, I'm not sure what the poly market bet would be on that. Go Bills, but. Exactly. You can read the social media about that, but we'll see. The biggest issue is the Democrats requiring judicial warrants to enter into people's homes, which is basically like saying follow the Constitution. Don't know why that it would even be controversial, frankly, but that has to be one of the asks. I mean, would Republicans be happy with IRS agents being able to come into homes with just an IRS administrative warrant? Want to go in and see if you guys, you really are like, are you really as broke as you say you? Are you really declaring everything? Could we have aoc, CDC without warrants, go in to check and see if, like you've actually gotten your shots? I mean, it's absurd. It's absolutely absurd. The other ask, of course, is no masks. And then there's about eight others. The no mask one has a little wiggle room just so that it just can't be in an arbitrary or capricious. Yeah, don't wear a mask capriciously. Okay. That's what really upsets me. It's just have a little intention with your style. That's what I think the Democrats are saying. But we'll see. There would be a couple of hundred, perhaps up to 250, maybe 300,000 workers who would be put on furlough if the DHS shuts down. Now, of course, ICE has a big slush fund, but Trump seems to be afraid of a shutdown. So there is some leverage there. We'll see. Meanwhile, around the world, we're hearing daily of investigations of resignations of people in particularly in Europe resigning from government being investigated because of their association with Jeffrey Epstein. In this country, it, I don't know, it seems to get you just like a. I guess they make a documentary about you. But lawmakers are starting to see the unredacted Files. People are starting to get to go through these millions of files, and it is not lessening the pressure. Here is Representative Becca Ballant of Vermont yesterday, speaking of drop site news. She's been going through the unredacted Epstein files. Now, understand lawmakers have access to this. They have the ability to go on the floor of Congress and read off all this stuff. Remember, Mike Revel did this with the Pentagon Papers. They are protected by doing so. And frankly, I don't know why they don't do this. The fear that Gravel had about the Pentagon Papers was, am I actually revealing any US Military secrets that may put service members in harm at the end? Obviously, it did a huge service to anybody who was conscripted into that, that war because it helped bring it to an end. But I don't see what the danger is here. To go out, you don't have to. You don't have to name victims to the extent that they haven't already been exposed. So I'm surprised somebody hasn't already done this, although I'm not convinced we won't see it soon. But here is Representative Becca Balint. Just wanted to ask you, have you had a chance to review any of the unredacted files over at the doj, the Epstein files? I did.
Melissa Sanchez
You did?
Sam Seder
Yeah, I just came from there. What can you tell us? There's a bunch of sick. And, and, and I mean, anything more that we don't know, I feel like that's pretty well established.
Brian
I know.
Sam Seder
I think.
Jody S. Cohen
I think the part that is just so disgusting.
Sam Seder
Yeah. Is that so many people knew. Did he have any ties to any intelligence agencies? We've established some in our reporting, but wanted to know based on the fact I only had about a half hour, so. So I'm going to go back again tomorrow. So mostly today, I was just trying to go through a couple documents that was particularly interested in finding out. What were those. One was related to whether or not Trump, you know, had ever kicked Epstein out of Mar A Lago, as he claimed. What'd you find?
Brian
That is not.
Sam Seder
It's not true. It's a lie. That's a big deal, because Trump's story up to this point has been like, I kicked him out, I did not have good relations with Jeffrey Epstein, etc. Etc. And if the Epstein files prove that that's a cover story, it becomes even worse because it's not like we don't know that he's associated with Jeffrey Epstein. If he's lying about what happened after whatever it was 2005 when he supposedly kicked him out. It raises real question as to what is there. Before we get to the number two, let's go to number seven. Glenn Maxwell was ostensibly testifying to the House Oversight Committee. And here's a split frame of what she said in 2010. It was Jeffrey Epstein, 2026. It's Ghislaine Maxwell. Have you ever socialized with Donald Trump in the presence of females under the age of 18? Though I'd like to answer that question at least today. Going to have to assert my 5th, 6th and 14th amendment rights. Are you aware of Donald Trump ever engaging in sexual activity with an individual introduced to him by you or Jeffrey Epstein?
Melissa Sanchez
I invoke my Fifth Amendment right to silence.
Sam Seder
Have you? It's obviously her right to invoke that, although, and I would imagine this would been brought up before if it was the case that you cannot exert this right once you have already spoken to it. Now, we don't know what she was spoken to with Todd Blanche, ostensibly Todd Blanche being the Assistant Attorney General who went to Ghislaine Maxwell and interviewed her for something like six hours, presumably asked all sorts of questions, did so in an official capacity. We should also mention again that that he was Donald Trump's defense attorney days before he was made Assistant Attorney General. After that interview, Ghislaine Maxwell was transferred against all Bureau of Prisons regulations to a minimal security facility where she was allowed to purchase or be given a puppy. Here is Ro Khanna talking about Ghislaine Maxwell giving Pleading the Fifth Amendment. Multiple times I submitted to comer a letter with six or seven questions. Things like who were the other co conspirators? Who were the other men who raped these underage girls? Did she have any conversations about a deal with Donald Trump? Now she's taken a blanket Fifth Amendment on any question. And my view is that many of my questions don't in any way incriminate her. So we'll see what she does. But there are seven questions that I have specifically asked and the assumption is she's pleading the Fifth to each one of those and the American people will see that there's an inconsistency. Why did she not plead the Fifth when Blanche asked her questions and now she's pleading the Fifth about things that don't implicate her but may implicate many of the other powerful people in the Epstein class that committed these crimes? I really don't know. I don't know the answer from a legal perspective as to where one can invoke Legitimately the Fifth and how this would be enforced. I would imagine the ability to compel testimony, regardless of someone pleading the Fifth is going to change if Democrats take control of Congress because they're going to have a little bit more leverage. I also don't know as a, as a legal matter whether you're allowed to take the Fifth after you've answered questions about it in the first place or ostensibly answered questions about it. Right. Because we don't really know what Todd Blanch asked. We just know what Todd Blanche said that he asked. We don't know what she answered. We just know what he claims she answered. There's. The more that people dig through this stuff, the more questions are, are raised rather than answers given to it. There, there was the DOJ writing up Epstein's suicide the day before it happened. You know, I got the date wrong yesterday at the beginning of the show. Happens doesn't give you a lot of faith in the competence level of. I mean, I do this every day. And so there's some days, particularly on a Monday, where I may get it wrong. But I'm not working at the Department of Justice, the chief law enforcement agency in the country and am not reporting on the supposed suicide of a guy who could have implicated the President of the United States and whose suicide just happened not to be caught on camera that night because of a bug in the system. It sort of feel like somebody be like, hey, this is a big deal. Let's just make sure everything you're writing here is okay. So it's like a two page document, dot your I's and cross your T's. Here is Representative Melanie Stansberry. And making the point, like right now the British government is going forward with an investigation as to whether Prince Andrew gave Epstein any type of sensitive information. Now it's quite possible that Jeffrey Epstein said to Bill Clinton and to Bill Barr and to Bannon and all his connections. Remember he had connections with the White House until essentially he was no longer living. It's quite possible that, that Epstein said, I only take information from Prince Andrew. The rest of you guys, that's not what this is about. Like a mafia hierarchy. Yeah, I don't, it's just I don't feel comfortable having our relationship be this transactional. Larry Summers. I don't want it to affect our friendship. Yeah. I just, that's for me and Prince Andrew. He and I have a different relationship than I have with all these other world leaders who would. Barack. So I just want you to know that's different. I Mean why is, why is there an investigation in England? They're former monarch and we have nothing in this country. Nothing. Here is Representative Melanie Stansberry making that argument.
Jody S. Cohen
Now we have a lot of questions for Ms. Maxwell with regards to what actually happened in Epstein's affairs. Who, who was directly involved in the sex trafficking, money laundering and influence peddling scheme that she and Jeffrey Epstein were involved in, how Donald Trump was involved and whether or not he committed any crimes himself as did his many associates who are named in the Department of Justice files. Let us be clear that Donald Trump is not only named thousands of times in the latest release from the Department of Justice, he has named over 38,000 times in the files that were released two weeks ago alone. And we know that that only represents half of the files that the Department of Justice has in its possession, including files that were used for direct investigations of perpetrators. People who committed crimes, people who were coconspirators in those crimes and individuals who knew of those crimes. We know that there are multiple administration officials including Howard Lutnick, Elon Musk who served as the appointee for the DOGE efforts in the White House. We know that the Secretary of Navy, we know that there that Steve Bannon, we know that there are more than three dozen associates, family members and individuals directly associated with Donald Trump named in those files. Now there are now at least nine or 10 other countries across the board world that have opened investigations or forced their leaders to step down because of their mere association with Jeffrey Epstein. And the United States government is engaged in an active cover up of the largest sex trafficking scandal and influence peddling scandal in the history of the United States. And Donald Trump is right at the center of it. And the person who is living to provide the evidence, who knows what is going on, is trying to invoke the fifth to buy her clemency.
Brian
So.
Sam Seder
That'S Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico. Here she was on what day was this last week. She was talking about Trump and his mention in the files about being subpoenaed in a trial involving a 13 year old girl. This is number six.
Jody S. Cohen
Be honest with you guys. I actually went through the files this weekend in depth. Donald Trump is not only named over and over in them he it is discussed, discussed this trial in which he was accused of raping a 13 year old at Epstein's house. There is extensive discussions about a subpoena of Donald Trump. In one of Jeffrey Epstein's cases in which he was accused for rape and sexual abuse, he was subpoenaed and gave a deposition in that case. There is extensive discussion between Donald Trump, Ghislaine Maxwell and Mr. Wolf about not only Trump coming to his house, but, you know, Epstein says in these emails that he has photographs of Trump with girls. To be honest with you guys, I actually went.
Sam Seder
I mean, look, there's. Obviously, you would think this would require an investigation and Republicans are refusing to investigate this. I mean, that's just the. The bottom line. The Republicans are refusing to investigate this. And I. Can we know if they are covering this up? I don't know. Can we go to Kalshee and see what the predictive markets think? Did Donald Trump engage in any of this? Here's the problem that the Republicans have is if Democrats continue to press, which I hope they will, and it's quite clear that, you know, and I will cop to having some measure of skepticism about how sort of like deep this ran through our, Our sort of government. At one point, I mean, prior to the release of these files, I was like, you know, Trump may be implicated. But this is, I mean, this is a pretty big deal. Yeah. And it's quite clearly bigger than Epstein and it requires investigation. And here is a little taste of, I think, what's going to happen to Republicans if they continue to stonewall and it's going to get much worse for them if the Democrats take control of Congress. But I think this type of stuff is going to certainly inhibit Republican chances in the fall. Unless, of course, Donald Trump rolls out ICE and starts collecting ballots, which I think is, again, check Kelsey, but that's not a bet that I would shy away from. Here's Laura Ingram. This is in July of 2025, and I gotta think it hasn't gotten better. This is at TPUSA back in July of 2025, and, you know, particularly now, I have a feeling it would be a little bit even more pronounced. How many of you are satisfied you can, you can clap. Satisfied with the results of the Epstein investigation? Clap.
Melissa Sanchez
Okay, I told you to clap.
Sam Seder
You guys aren't listening. I'm not going to grade you on a curve.
Melissa Sanchez
So I was going to get to that.
Sam Seder
How many of you are not saying. Dissatisfied with the results of the investigation? Not only is that not shocking, I would imagine that that level of dissatisfaction, if there is an ounce of integrity in any of those people's bodies who are sitting there, which up for debate, but if there's an ounce of integrity, if they had any sincerity in what they were talking about in that moment, I would imagine. I don't know how you can get more unanimous than that. But I would imagine that applause would be going on for about a half an hour. Yeah, no one's going to applaud. Yes, I'm satisfied. They might not boo as hardly, but it's really difficult to say yes. This is great. This is what I asked for. I feel deliberate for. In a moment we're going to be talking to Melissa Sanchez and Jody Cohen about that raid on a Chicago apartment building that happened in September where supposedly, as I think, they use Black Hawk helicopters and rappelling from helicopters to go after trend agua. And it turns out not so much. These guys have done a great report in ProPublica. We'll talk about that in a moment. First word from our sponsors. This first one is a product that I was using years before they came to us to sponsor the program and that's Delete Me. Delete Me makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. I mean, pretty obvious why this is a service I would have been using even over a decade ago now because there tends to be a little hostility towards people who do this, but that hostility is crossed. You don't need to be a host of a YouTube show to get that from online. Plus, with all the identity theft and phishing that goes on now, that type of information can be easily turned against you. Hackers will buy stuff on the dark web and then they'll combine it with information that they can buy from a data broker. Easy as spending, I don't know, $2.95 to find your name, your address, your phone number, your emails, relatives, past addresses, etc. Etc. A lot of times they'll use that information either to steal your identity or to go in and attempt phishing attempts, which have gotten a lot more sophisticated these days. But Delete Me does all the hard work of wiping you and your family's personal information from data broker websites. Delete Me knows that your privacy is worth protecting. You sign up, you provide Delete Me with exactly what information you want deleted and their experts take it from there. Delete Me sends you regular personalized privacy reports showing what they found, where they found it, and what they removed. And here's the key. Delete Me is not a one time service. These sites repopulate. Plus they seem to like just there just seems to be new ones every single day. Delete Me is always working for you. It's constantly monitoring, removing the personal information you don't want on The Internet. I want to thank Delete Me for sponsoring the Majority report. And I want to thank Delete Me for, frankly, the service. Take control of your data and keep your private life private. By signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our audience, you can get 20% off your delete me plan. When you go to JoinDeleteMe.com Majority, use the promo code Majority at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com Majority. Enter the code Majority at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com Majority code is majority. And we have a. And all that information will be in the podcast and YouTube descriptions as well. Got a new. A new sponsor, Rocket Money.
Brian
And.
Sam Seder
For me, I found something that I must have signed up for, I don't know, ages ago. It was really only a couple of bucks a month, but when you have that for, like, eight years, it. You start to realize, like, oh, that was hundreds of dollars. We'll talk about what Brian found when he signed up for Rocket Money, but what Rocket Money is, it's a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions. It monitors your spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Want to thank Rocket Money for sponsoring today's episode? It's super helpful in finding stuff. You'd be surprised. You'd be very surprised at what you forget you signed up for. Also, I am trying to sort of keep track and actually get on a budget. I'm. I'm several years away from, you know, retiring, but I want to get a sense of, like, what I'm spending, where I'm spending it. Maybe, maybe my kids won't be the same drain on me. They will be down the road. But. And Rocket Money is incredibly helpful. Brian, do you want to tell people what you found that you had signed up for that you were not aware of? So Julia emailed us and was like, hey, Rocket Money's offering us free Rocket Money subscription. So I was like, I'll do that. And I logged on, and I've been paying for rocket money since 2022. Well, so there you go. You'd be surprised, but it's super helpful to find out. Julie had used the service long before they became sponsors, and she loved it. And so when they came to us, it was an easy decision because Julia had great experience with Rocket Money. And I'm now working on, you know, budgeting, setting some goals, and it's. It's interesting to see what you spend your money on me, not clothes there that I had to find that out. But it gives you real time alerts for large transactions, upcoming bills, refunds and low balances. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Go to Rocket Money.com Majority to join. That's Rocket Money.com/ Majority. Rocket Money.com/ Majority. Quick break. When we come back, Melissa Sanchez, Jody Cohen right back after this.
Brian
It.
Sam Seder
We are back. Sam Cedar on the Majority Report. Emma Viglin out today. Joining me, Melissa Sanchez, Jody s. Cohen from ProPublica. And before we get to both of you, want to play this clip from ABC7 from back in September 30th of 2025 that interviewed residents of this Chicago apartment building the day after it was raided by ICE to one woman who.
Jody S. Cohen
Actually lives in this building and she says she was detained by ICE agents overnight. And she says they took everyone and then asked questions like they just treated.
Brian
Us like we were nothing.
Jody S. Cohen
Patishu Fisher said she came out to the hallway of her apartment complex on the corner of 75th and South Shore Drive in her nightgown around 10 Monday night, only to find ICE agents yelling police.
Sam Seder
It was scary because I've never had.
Melissa Sanchez
A gun put in my face.
Brian
They asked my name and my date of birth and asked me did I have any words. And I told them no, I didn't.
Jody S. Cohen
She says she was then handcuffed and released around 3am Fisher says she was.
Sam Seder
Told if anyone had any kind of.
Jody S. Cohen
Warrant out for them, even if it was unrelated to immigration, they would not be released. Citizen app video shows the chaotic scene overnight. Neighbors tell us there were dozens of ICE agents. Neighbors like Ebony Watson says they ducked for cover as they heard several flashbangs go off.
Sam Seder
They were terrified.
Melissa Sanchez
The kids were screaming.
Sam Seder
People were screaming.
Melissa Sanchez
They looked very distraught. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner because they was bringing the kids down too.
Sam Seder
Have them zip tied to each other.
Melissa Sanchez
That's all. I kept asking, where's the morality? Where's the human?
Sam Seder
One of them literally laughed.
Melissa Sanchez
He was standing right here, he said some kids, Watson says budget trucks and.
Jody S. Cohen
Military style vans were used to separate parents from their children. Other neighbors say they saw agents destroying property to get in the building.
Sam Seder
And they had a big 15 inch chainsaw with round blade on it, cutting it fenced out. We're under siege. We're being invaded by our own military.
Jody S. Cohen
The FBI did confirm this morning that they did help the U.S. border Patrol carry out a targeted immigration enforcement operation in this area. And they say they have been supporting these efforts at the direction of the US Attorney General.
Sam Seder
Okay, Melissa Sanchez, Jody Cohen, welcome to the program. So that was the report from, from September. And Melissa, give us a sense like how much of what that report discusses was actually the case and where can you fill in in terms of just like what happened that night? I mean, I'm particularly struck by the budget rent of trucks that were supposedly used to separate people. But talk to us about what you know about that night.
Melissa Sanchez
Sure. So most of what was in there is true. It was a really scary, massive operation. Unl anything seen in this country in a big city in recent memory, something like 300 federal agents were there, different immigration agencies, the FBI, ATF, et cetera, heavily armed. There was a Blackhawk helicopter. There was images of agents rappelling down onto the top of this five story building. It's 130 units. It's a huge building on the south side of Chicago. Pretty low income distressed area. And the publicly what the Trump administration said at the time and continues to say is that the building had been taken over by Trendidawa, the big scary Venezuelan bang that Trump has gone after over the past year. And what we found in reality is zero evidence that that was the case. There were dozens of Venezuelan families that lived there alongside US Citizen, mostly African American families. The vast majority of the people that we talked to and subsequently met were paying rent, apparently not necessarily necessarily to the landlord, but to other folks in the building who were, who were taking their rent and pretending they were the landlord. But the government claimed it was a big victory against terrorism. They claimed that they got two trendy Arawa members during this raid. Of the 37 people who they arrested who were immigrants, we haven't found any evidence that that was the case. There were zero criminal charges filed against anybody that night.
Sam Seder
Wow. So, Jodi, give it. And in the course of your reporting, I mean, this separation, at one point I saw reports that they were separating black people and I guess presumably Venezuelans or Latino people into separate like budget rental trucks and trying to determine, I mean, this was a complete fishing expedition. But is that the case?
Brian
That's what the residents told us, that there were separate vans, that the black residents were put in one van and those who they thought were immigrants were put in a different van. I mean, as Melissa said, this was an operation unlike any scene in this country in recent memory with helicopters and repelling agents. But also what made it different was that Border patrol had invited a camera crew to follow along and show images and make a movie out of this that they shared. So you could see the operation beforehand with Greg Bovino, the command Border Patrol commander, out there, saying, we are here. We are going to get Trend Narago members. We're here to make the community safer. And then you can see video of them parading out immigrants, in one case, you know, looking for tattoos, looking, you know, asking them questions right on. On camera. And that was all. And you can see people being, as you said, put into different vans.
Sam Seder
So, Jodi, give it. Give us a sense of like, of what the sort of genesis, I guess, of this raid was. It does not sound like it was. Well, maybe they got it. Maybe they were told that they got a tip that Trend Agua was there or what. But tell us what the genesis of this raid was.
Brian
Well, what they said the genesis of the raid was, what the government said the genesis was, was to get because they had intel that this building was occupied by gang members. Now, what was suspected from the beginning from the residents was that the landlord was involved in, and perhaps the property manager as well, were involved with talking to the government. But they. Neither of those individuals have talked publicly about it. And DHS and other federal officials have not addressed their involvement. But what we were able to show recently through arrest records for two of the men arrested that night, in the narrative of those arrest records, what Department of Homeland Security said was that they had intelligence that there were immigrants who were unlawfully occupying apartments or squatting. And that is the narrative of, in their words, why they focused on this building. And the narrative also says that the property manager and the landlord gave them verbal and written consent to enter the building.
Sam Seder
And what do we know about the history of that building, though?
Brian
So there could have been motivation for doing that, because the history of that building is that the company, the company that owns the building, had been in court trying to evict people, squatters from that building, that they're, you know, her company had obtained court orders throughout all of last year to. To evict people that the Cook County Sheriff's Office had been in that building carrying out those evictions just weeks before the raid that there were a lot of problems with the building, with the inspections. The company had failed almost every inspection for the past two years prior to the raid. The building was a real mess. I mean, there were wires hanging everywhere, water, electricity didn't work, the elevators didn't work. It was a dangerous building, and there was criminal activity in the building. There were many, many, many calls to emergency police, calls to the city.
Sam Seder
But Melissa, to the Extent that there was criminal activity in that building, no evidence of, like, gang activity. It was rather like. It just seemed like the Wild west there.
Melissa Sanchez
I think it was a little bit like the Wild west. And it might have depended. Floor by floor, there were some floors that were more clearly occupied by single men who may have not been paying rent, who may have been squatters. Both. Both African American and Venezuelan. And a lot of floors that were families that were people who were working, children who went to school right across the street. Like, Jody and I walked into that building a few times. Some of the apartments were really nice. Like, it's. It was. It was actually stunning. Some families paid $1,200 a month for their units. Others were squatting in places that you would not want to walk into, places that, like, Jodi described, like, the walls were falling apart, they smelled like urine. And yes, there was crime. I mean, want to say, like, some people told us that they saw men, both African American and Venezuelan, like, openly walk around with, like, guns. There was drugs, there was prostitution, there were parties. All of that stuff is true. And there was a murder there last summer. There was a murder of a Venezuelan man by presumably another Venezuelan who is now in custody. And that case may have been part of what triggered all of this, too, because there was an attempt by ICE to get custody of this guy from the Cook County Sheriff's Department. And this is a sanctuary city and state and county. And so we did not turn. Turn over this man to the feds. And there were. There was reporting from Breitbart afterward that then prompt, you know, there was kind of an escalation of attention from the right. About this place and accusations that the people involved in this murder were gang members. But nowhere in any of the police records that we have obtained is there evidence of this. I have interviewed 15 of them and 16 Venezuelans who live in that building, and not one referenced any gang activity. They acknowledge there's some young guys there who are in trouble, but people were not from the state of Arawa, this gang is from. And people were not. It was not where. There was not organized crime there. There was some drug dealing, There was some prostitution.
Sam Seder
And so where was. Where were the Chicago police? Where was the sheriffs? I mean, presumably they were called at various times if they were able to evict people. Presumably they were called like. And was there no representative? Like, was nothing getting fixed in that building by the landlord?
Brian
Melissa, Jody, I mean, I think that there were fixes from time to time, but it would fall back into disrepair. And the problems would continue even after the raid. The, that, you know, the. There was a judge in Cook county, the building is in, was in foreclosure. And there was. The judge said, okay, you need security there 24 hours a day because anybody could, could walk in there even after all the attention on this property. And so the property manager hired security, but within two weeks, the security was, was gone. He said they weren't doing their job. I had to fire them. It just. There was not a lot of. There were short term fixes that maybe the elevator would work for a couple days and then it wouldn't work again.
Melissa Sanchez
And the consequences were horrendous. I mean, Jody and I, one of the times we went, it might have been three weeks after the raid. I think we were on the third floor of this building and we met an African American woman who I think had section 8 and she lived there. She didn't have any legs, they'd been amputated. And she couldn't leave her unit. She couldn't leave the building because the elevator hadn't been fixed in weeks. And so there were just serious consequences for the people who lived there.
Sam Seder
Yeah, Speak more to that, like, where are these people who are living there now? I mean, I saw footage, the place looked completely ransacked. And if there was no repairs happening beforehand, I imagine some people were able to like, you know, pay for their own repairs or do their own repairs. What is the state of the building now and like, what happened to the people who were living there?
Brian
So after the raid, there were about two dozen, I think people who were still on the rolls for paying rent. They were still. There were still rent paying tenants. Either they were paying or they were.
Sam Seder
Out of how many units?
Brian
130, I think there were. 130 total. How many were occupied after the raid by rent paying people and probably about two dozen. And eventually in December, the judge who was overseeing this foreclosure case said that everyone had to be out of that building, that it was no longer safe. She ordered everybody else. She appointed a receiver for the building, a new property management company and gave the. Each of the remaining tenants had some stipends. I don't think they were all that. I think they thought they were not all that much and they were forced to leave.
Melissa Sanchez
And that's the US citizens. The African Americans lived there. The Venezuelans, the immigrants. It was mostly Venezuelan. There was a Nigerian man, there was maybe a Mexican man or two. Almost all of those people were deported. They were either deported back to Venezuela you know, we have complicated relations with Venezuela. Some were sent to Mexico, and I talked to one today who's still making his way down. He's in Panama right now. Some other Venezuelans, women with US Born children, were released in the US with ankle monitors. One of them, her husband, was deported to Venezuela. She's got three little girls all in diapers, and she's living in a homeless shelter. So people's lives have just been turned totally upside down since this happened.
Sam Seder
And at one point, you write about a consent decree that may have been violated. Jodi, what can you tell us about that consent decree?
Brian
So that's how these arrest records became public was there's this ongoing consent decree, it's been many years now that limits when federal agents can carry out warrantless arrests. It sets limits on when they can do that. There has to be probable cause that they would flee. For example, is this a consent decree.
Sam Seder
That is applicable in. In Chicago or is this nationwide?
Brian
It's Chicago and the area around Chicago.
Sam Seder
Okay.
Brian
And this predates this current administration. It predates the Operation Midway Blitz, which was the deportation program that the administration was carrying out in Chicago. That predated what's happening in Minneapolis now. And so, yes, this consent decree goes back a while, but it is being enforced now by immigrant rights lawyers who are saying that these recent arrests were in violation of the decree. And they're working to get. Those lawyers are working to get people released. Now, as Melissa said, not just with this raid, but with so many of the people who were arrested over the past six months or so, they are not here anymore. They've been deported, they've left. And what the lawyers are working on now is trying to get relief for the people who are still here in the United States, either to get them out of jail, out of the detention that they're in, or to loosen the restrictions that they're on if they're already out.
Sam Seder
Melissa, are those people, those are presumably immigrants, or are they US Citizens that have been detained? And those folks, to the extent that they're immigrants, why have they not been just summarily deported? Cuz that's what it seems like ICE is doing is they're deporting people before things can actually work their way through the court. And so by the time the judge says, where is this person? They're like, we don't know. They're gone. They're not in our custody anymore.
Melissa Sanchez
Yeah, I mean, the people we're referring to who are affected by this consent decree are immigrants. So they're the Immigrants who were arrested and detained. Some US Citizens were detained. The US Citizens were detained, too, that night, but just for a couple of hours and for the most part, released. No, that's exactly what happened. But the problem with this is it's Venezuelans, and we have a problem with Venezuela. We're not regularly deporting people to Venezuela the way we can to Mexico or Honduras or some other country. And so a lot of these guys were either.
Sam Seder
That's why we sent them to seekot.
Melissa Sanchez
The first time we sent them to Seekot, unfortunately. And, I mean, I did start taking back some deportations after the whole seekot thing, but not at the same level that we were putting people into detention. And so some of these men were accepting deportation or they were given voluntary departure, what you give to good immigrants. But they were languishing in the facilities, and sometimes they would be waiting weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks just to see a judge, because they'd be getting bounced around from jail to jail. And every time they get bounced around, they have to see a new judge in a new district. And so their cases were getting prolonged, and they were getting sick and tired. And they would call me from these facilities in Texas, in Kentucky and Indiana, like, crying sick. They couldn't see doctors. One of them told me he was losing his mind. The guy who just called me from Panama, who spent, I think, close to four months in jail before he finally got deported to Mexico. And he could have been one of the people who was helped by this, by the. By this recent action on the consent decree, but he was just so sick of being in jail that he gave up. Most of these people just gave up and went back home, even though they were going back to a country that is, like, on the brink of. I don't know what with this country, given that we just went and arrested the president of Venezuela. So they're going back to a country that they had fled years ago. The economy in that country is still on the floor. There's no stability. A lot of the people who were deported from this raid have actually already left Venezuela and are living in Colombia or in Chile, because that's the only place they can go to make some money to survive.
Sam Seder
Okay, so the story of this person you spoke to today or yesterday and endured those four months. Can you tell us about a little bit about what he said about the conditions there? Because we're starting to hear more and more reports, reports particularly out of that facility in Texas. But I've also heard about it as far north as Berlin. New Hampshire, that. No heat, barely any food, no sleeping accommodations. Basically, I don't know, low grade torture. I don't know if there's grades of torture, but as a way of basically having these people say I forfeit whatever rights I had to any type of legal process and to go. What, what, what can you tell us about what you've heard about the, the conditions in these facilities?
Melissa Sanchez
I mean, everything you just described. I mean, Gabriel would call me and, you know, somehow somebody snuck in a phone at one point into one of the facilities, I think in Arizona. And they would show me videos or he'd call me on video calls, and I'd see, like, there weren't enough beds to sleep on. The beds didn't have mattresses. It was very cold. They were hungry. The food wasn't good. The food was. The water was contaminated. People. People were afraid that if they drank the water, they would get sick. They would get sick, they'd get. They get fever. We talked to one guy who got tb, he thinks in the facility, but he. In a facility in Indiana, but it's unclear.
Sam Seder
There are reports now of TB going around in some of these facilities.
Melissa Sanchez
I think in Texas there was. I mean, at one point, Gabriel. I mean, they would get bounced around, which made it really hard. I mean, like just the. Gabriel, I think might have been passed around to 12 or 13 facilities or back and forth to some of them. They would lose belongings in the transfer. They might have had like a gold chain when they, when they went in. And then when they left, nobody could find the gold chain. It would cost money to see a doctor. They wouldn't get medicine. They would get like a pill. Everybody got the same pill. It was unclear what the pill was. It's really hard to verify these allegations. There were plenty of allegations. The last place that Gabriel was in was in Texas. I think it was east Montana. And I think that's where somebody got killed. There was talks about somebody who committed suicide, attempting to commit suicide, hunger strikes. It's like, you name it, it was happening. But I mean, it wasn't seekot. We also have interviewed people who spent time in ccot, so they weren't getting beat up and tortured in the same kind of way as maybe we saw in El Salvador. But the conditions were miserable. And the conditions were so much that people did give up on good cases, good asylum cases, because it wasn't worth staying here any longer. And some of the people who gave up too, like, faced like, potential imprisonment in Venezuela because they left for political reasons. But even that was preferable than staying here in this country.
Sam Seder
Yeah, I wanted to ask you specifically about that in terms of, like, their status. So if you are in an asylum process, you are here legally, you are here lawfully. Right? I mean, you are. You're in process. You don't have permanent residency. You don't have any type of permanent legality, but you're not undocumented because you're specifically documented. The court knows where you are, the authorities know where you are, and you're going through the process that we have to determine your eligibility to stay here longer. How many of those 37 that were charged, how many were in one or that process or a different type of process?
Melissa Sanchez
So, I mean, we don't know the story. For every single one of the ones that I've spoken to, I'd say all of them entered the country kind of in the same way, either through an app that gave them an appointment to go to the border and say, I want to ask for asylum, and they came in through that process, or they crossed illegally and then found the nearest border patrol agent and said, hey, I'm here. I'm here seeking asylum. And so, yes, they're, like, technically here illegally, but they do have this permission to wait out their case. And maybe half of them were in the process and still going to their court dates and doing all the things like they were supposed to. Some of them might have missed court dates. So they became more. They already had orders of deportation. Some of them didn't, and a lot of them didn't have court dates yet. So they were still kind of in the middle. And it's unclear whether they would have gone to those court dates because a lot of people were now afraid of going to court and getting arrested.
Sam Seder
Right.
Melissa Sanchez
But, yeah, a lot of the people did have work permits. Some of those had gotten suspended in some point last year, but they thought they were doing things the right way. One man I'm thinking about, Yan Carlos, who was a former paratrooper in Venezuela, he told me that the night that the border patrol burst down his door and grabbed him, he's like, my papers are right there. My papers are on top of the tv, trying to point to where his papers were, and nobody cared. He got swept up like everybody else. A lot of them said that when they saw the film crews, like, taking, you know, taking video of them as they were getting marched out, hand, zip, tied behind their backs, they're like, I'm here legally. I have asylum. My papers are inside. And, like, none of that was aired publicly. That wasn't talked about. And Jody and I went to maybe 8 or 9 of their hearings in immigration court. And like, there were, like I said, a couple of them who did have deportation orders prior to all of this, but most of them, the fact that they had immigration court, they spent weeks in immigration court because they still had cases that had to get resolved. So, I mean, I think you're entirely right, but it's complicated because they're sort of in this gray area of like, legal and not legal, and they're in this system where, like, everything is just pressuring them to just abandon their case and leave the country.
Sam Seder
Jody, is there anything that we haven't discussed? Do you think that folks should know about this story? It's great reporting and really important to be able to contextualize what, what we saw, because I don't know that we've ever had a raid like that for, For. Without a knowledge of, like. I mean, I sort of feel like in Philadelphia, you know, maybe we saw like, you know, the, the raid on the. I think push. Was it the. Where the. The, you know, attempted to. Because they thought there was like a bomb making happening or something. But. But they had no idea who any of the individuals were in this building, and they just rated it as if it was like some type of military operation.
Brian
Right. And I think one thing I was going to say is just to expand what Melissa just said about the court hearings. I mean, before they were deported, we did go to, I think it was eight, eight or nine different hearings for men who were detained that night. And not once did during those court hearings, they asked the lawyer for the government whether they're, you know, what the criminal history is. And there was no criminal history for any of. Any of these individuals. And as part of the consent decree, the government did have to produce a list and there were hundreds of names on it of people who had been arrested during a period of time in Chicago. And, and they listed their safety risk and their public safety risk, and in almost all cases it was low. There was not a public safety risk for the people that they were detaining here in Chicago.
Sam Seder
Unbelievable. Well, Melissa Sanchez, Jody Cohen, we will link to your piece at Majority FM and in our podcast in the YouTube description. Thanks so much for your Your time today. Really appreciate it.
Brian
Thank you.
Sam Seder
All right, folks, we're gonna take a break. Did I mention up top that. That Emma wasn't here? No, I totally forgot. Yeah, she's a little under the way. I didn't know if you were just trying to Be mysterious. Just trying to create a little suspense with the show.
Melissa Sanchez
Tonight.
Sam Seder
It was move that was bombed in Philadelphia in 85. I said push. I knew there was. I knew there was some kinetic quality to it. We're getting old. City just dropped a bomb into a block in Philadelphia. Unbelievable. People that that era in the 80s, there was a lot of that type of stuff. All right, folks, we're going to take a break. Head into the fun half. Just a reminder, it's your support that makes the show possible. You can become a member. I joined the Majority Report. When you do, you not only get the fun half, but you also get the free show free of commercials. Plus you can IM us. And perhaps most importantly, you help this show survive and thrive. Not rely on tech advertising owned by tech people. Listen, I don't want to make a prediction about if we would ever do that, but there are predictive markets that will help you determine that. Will the majority part business model ever collapse? Was there ever a majority part business model? We spent a lot of time today on the chances of Jesus coming back in 2027. And believe me, we there's really no way for you to make a lot of money on it unless you already have a lot of money or if Jesus does come back before 2027, the flip side is you could also vote. You could also bet that he if you have any inside info, hey, Jesus, do me a solid and give me a heads up because send me a sign. Jesus came to me at the end of my bed and said take the bet. It's going to be September 1, 2027, all in. It's definitely happening. Also, don't forget, just coffee, co op, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate. Use the coupon code. Majority get 10% off in the fun half. Incidentally, we're going to be talking about the jobs numbers that they are, the administration appears to think is going to be quite bad and are already providing pre battles for. But before we get there, Matt, what's happening in the Matt Leckian media universe? Yeah, right after the show today, left reckoning, we got two Texas candidates, Etienne Rosas and Greg Stoker talking with David Griscom about running for Congress in Texas and Robert Skvarla talking about the Epstein files. So check that out coming up right after the show today. All right folks, see you in the fun half.
Melissa Sanchez
You are in for it.
Sam Seder
All right folks, 646-257-3920. See you in the fun half. Are you ready? Who sent us this? Alpha males are back, back, back, back, back. Boy, Is back. And the alpha males are back, back Just as delicious as you could imagine the alpha males are back, back, back, back, back and the alpha males are back, back, back, back Just want to degrade the white man. Alpha males are back, back I take all of it. Alpha males are, are back, back, back, back Snowflake says what? The alpha males of you are a madman. And the alpha males are back, back. Oh, no. Sam Cedar.
Brian
What a. Wow.
Sam Seder
What a nightmare. Nightmare. Yeah. Or a couple of them. Just put them in rotation. DJ, dinner. Well, the problem with those is they're like 45 seconds long, so I don't know if they're enough breaks. That's nonsense. See, white people doing drugs. They look worse than normal white people. And all white people look disgusting. And the alpha males psych them them. Snowflake says, what? What, what? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What, what, what, what, what? What? A hell of a lot of banks. Hell of a lot of banks. A hell of a lot of banks. Okay, I'm making stupid money. Hell of a lot of bank. A hell of a lot of bank. All lives matter. Have you tried doing an impression on a college campus? I. I think that there's no reason why reasonable people across the divide can't all agree with this. Psych. And the alpha males are back, back, back, back, back, back and the Africans are black, black, black, black, black, African. And the alpha males are black, black, black, black, black, black and the Africa. When you see Donald Trump out there, doesn't a little part of you think that America deserves to be taken over by jihadis? Keeping it 100. Can't knock the hustle. Come on.
Brian
Them.
Sam Seder
Them things I do for the bigger game plan. By the way, it's my birthday. My birthday. Happy birthday to me, Jew boy. I have a thought experiment for you. And the alpha males are back, back. Africa's black, black alpha males are black Black Africans are back, back. Come on, come on, come on. Someone needs to pay the price for blasphemy around here. I am a total.
Episode 3577: Epstein Cover Up Falling Apart; True Story of Chicago ICE Raid with Melissa Sanchez & Jodi Cohen
Date: February 10, 2026
In this episode, Sam Seder dives into two major stories: the continued unraveling of the Jeffrey Epstein cover-up—examining newly unredacted files, congressional hearings, and astonishing revelations involving Trump—and a long-form investigative interview with ProPublica’s Melissa Sanchez and Jodi Cohen about a notorious September 2025 ICE raid on a Chicago apartment building. The conversations combine breaking political news, outspoken analysis, and in-depth journalism, highlighting the intersection of government accountability, immigration, and abuses of power.
This episode provides a densely packed, unflinching look at two major stories: the continued obstruction of justice in the Epstein saga—implicating high-profile figures and U.S. institutions—and the raw reality of federal immigration enforcement on the ground, shattering lives and communities in the name of security theater. The reporting from ProPublica’s Melissa Sanchez and Jodi Cohen adds rare detail and human depth, exposing the gulf between official narratives and lived experience.
For further details, find ProPublica’s reporting linked at Majority.FM and in the show’s YouTube description.