From 9/11 to Minneapolis: How ICE Became a Paramilitary Force

Summary

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Episode: From 9/11 to Minneapolis: How ICE Became a Paramilitary Force
Date: January 30, 2026
Host: Jane Mayer
Guests: Susan Glasser, Evan Osnos, Garrett Graff

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Episode Overview

This urgent episode convenes New Yorker political writers Jane Mayer, Susan Glasser, and Evan Osnos with journalist and historian Garrett Graff, to analyze the transformation of U.S. immigration enforcement agencies—ICE and Border Patrol—into what is described as a paramilitary force. Sparked by recent events in Minneapolis, where federal agents killed a second American citizen within three weeks, the conversation explores how post-9/11 security priorities, politicized mandates, and failed oversight culminated in the current climate of militarized federal crackdowns, civil unrest, and radical redefinitions of government force.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. A Threshold Moment in American Democracy

• The episode opens with the arrest of Don Lemon, a journalist, by federal agents—a moment seen as the criminalization of journalism.
  • “The idea of federal agents arresting a journalist is one of those threshold moments … I think about China describing how tyranny arrives … At first, your eyes adjust. It’s like twilight. Suddenly, that dynamic seems like how I have to think about this country.” — Susan Glasser, [00:28]
• The hosts express alarm: the deployment of ICE and Border Patrol in Minneapolis is seen as federal violence against citizens, a break from historical precedent.

2. Origins and Militarization of ICE & Border Patrol

• Garrett Graff provides a historical framework: Before 9/11, immigration enforcement (INS) was a small, poorly funded arm under the Justice Department. Post-9/11, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security turbocharged the ranks and resources of ICE and CBP, bringing rapid expansion, lower hiring standards, and endemic corruption.

  • “We reimagined immigration as part of Homeland Security. Then we turbocharged CBP ... doubled the size of the Border Patrol … They cut training standards, they cut background checks … This created huge management and corruption problems that CBP still struggles with today, 20 years after this hiring surge began.” — Garrett Graff, [10:42]

• Jane Mayer highlights a striking stat from Graff’s research:

  • “In 2018, there was an agent arrested every 36 hours, which is either equal to or more than the crime rate among undocumented immigrants.” — Jane Mayer, [13:51]

3. Policy Shifts to Quotas and Aggression

• Under Trump, with Stephen Miller setting new ambitions, ICE shifted from targeting “the worst of the worst” to meeting aggressive, arbitrary arrest quotas.
  • “Last spring, Stephen Miller sets the goal of 1 million deportations a year. The instant they changed that is the instant we began to see these incredibly aggressive tactics on America’s streets begin to play out." — Garrett Graff, [14:32]
• This shift has directly led to the militarized presence and violence seen in Minneapolis and elsewhere, targeting even American citizens and protestors.

4. Why ICE Is Not a Police Force – And the Dangers Thereof

• Border Patrol and ICE agents are not trained as police, nor in basic civil liberties or crowd control. Their traditional mindset is adversarial—unlike community police, nearly every interaction is assumed hostile.
  • “ICE and CBP are not police. They operate in incredibly narrow lanes around border security and immigration enforcement. They’re not trained in First Amendment freedoms, civil rights, civil liberties, or de-escalation. The mentality they bring is fundamentally different.” — Garrett Graff, [19:22]
• The expansion into American cities is described as unprecedented and dangerous:
  • “We should be as shocked to see Border Patrol rolling through American cities as if armored SUVs of the Coast Guard started driving through suburban cul de sacs tossing tear gas.” — Garrett Graff, [21:34]

5. Limits of Resistance and the Power of Protest

• Protests and court orders have hampered Trump’s ability to deploy federal agents everywhere—deployments have been limited geographically, and are increasingly unsustainable.
  • “Deployments are being driven out by court orders ... I think there’s this liberal fantasy about outright conflict, but our system isn’t set up for that. The real playbook is organized citizen resistance, legal action, and shining a press spotlight.” — Garrett Graff, [24:51]
• concern grows about what happens if the national spotlight fades, given the increased funding for ICE and massive buildout of new detention facilities.
  • “These civil detention facilities are being built almost with the express purpose of becoming concentration camps.” — Garrett Graff, [31:06]

6. Are We Already Living in Fascism?

• Graff and Glasser discuss the absence of a “bright line” dividing democracy from autocracy:

  • “There is no light switch that flips. It happens in little ways, in unequal ways, to different populations. If an American reporter described another country’s ICE, they’d call it a paramilitary force loyal to the regime.” — Garrett Graff, [31:59]

• Glasser, referencing historic Russian crackdowns, notes that America’s exceptionalism blinds citizens to the incremental abandonment of rule of law and civil liberties.

7. Media, Narratives, and the Fragility of Freedom

• The Trump administration is intensely aware of narrative and tries to manage news cycles around ICE actions.
  • “Donald Trump’s deployments of CBP and ICE are actually incredibly limited … but the amount of force needed is increasing, and residents are resisting at a scale that’s unsustainable for ICE.” — Garrett Graff, [24:51]
• Judge William Young’s ruling on behalf of protestors’ rights is quoted:
  • “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance. It must be fought for and defended in every generation.” — Judge William Young (quoted by Graff), [36:11]

8. Heroism of Ordinary Americans

• The resistance in Minneapolis is compared to the civil rights era and historical moments such as Kent State.
  • “History remembers not the immediate reaction, but the horror and bravery of that young woman. Over time, it was the protesters who were right and the abuse of state power that was wrong.” — Susan Glasser, [47:33]
• The story of “the woman in pink,” who filmed the Alex Preddy shooting despite danger, exemplifies grassroots heroism.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the “Twilight” Before Tyranny:
  “Tyranny doesn’t arrive in an instant. At first, your eyes adjust. It’s sort of like twilight.” — Susan Glasser, [00:28]

• On ICE Becoming Paramilitary:
  “What we’re seeing in Minneapolis is like the black mirror version of how federal forces have been used in the past, where agents are coming to do the violence, not protect against violence.” — Garrett Graff, [07:22]

• On Quotas Driving Brutality:
  “All the prosecutorial discretion goes out the window when you’re trying to make quotas.” — Garrett Graff, [14:32]

• On the Danger of New Detention Facilities:
  “These civil detention facilities are being built almost with the express purpose of becoming concentration camps.” — Garrett Graff, [31:06]

• On the Nature of Fascism:
  “There’s no bright line between democracy and autocracy. It’s a spectrum. Not all the country will experience that switch at the same moment or in the same way.” — Garrett Graff, [31:59]

• On Freedom’s Fragility:
  “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction.” — Judge William Young, quoted by Garrett Graff, [36:11]

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Key Timestamps

• 00:28: Arrest of Don Lemon seen as criminalization of journalism; “threshold moment”
• 07:22: Garrett Graff explains how Minneapolis represents a new, dangerous use of federal force
• 10:42: Transformation and expansion of ICE and CBP post-9/11
• 13:51: High crime rates and poor vetting in Border Patrol history
• 14:32: Miller’s 1 million deportations quota and consequences
• 19:22: ICE & Border Patrol are not police, lack essential training
• 24:51: Limited effectiveness and resistance to Trump’s federal deployments
• 31:06: Buildout of new detention facilities deemed “concentration camps”
• 31:59: Discussion of American exceptionalism and fascism’s spectrum
• 36:11: Quoting Judge William Young on defending freedom
• 47:33: Reflection on Minneapolis heroism, parallels to Kent State

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Tone and Language

The conversation balances urgency, intellectual rigor, and personal testimony, with dire warnings leavened by admiration for civic resistance and reminders of historical precedent. The hosts raise alarms about “threshold moments,” fascism’s “spectrum,” and the “impunity” gripping law enforcement, yet conclude with hope and calls to witness, resist, and remember heroism in dark times.

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Summary Takeaways

• The deployment of ICE and CBP in American cities marks a fundamental departure from traditional uses of federal force.
• The paramilitarization of these agencies is rooted in post-9/11 policies and the rapid expansion—and weakening—of hiring and oversight.
• Today’s tactics and structures are not solely creations of Trump, but his administration’s escalation exposes the underlying rot and danger.
• Mass protests, media exposure, and legal challenges are proving resilient tools of resistance, though the Trump administration’s resources for enforcement continue to grow.
• The erosion of civil liberties and the “twilight” before tyranny are already present; Americans may not recognize they are living in an authoritarian moment until it is too late.
• The bravery of ordinary citizens—filming, protesting, demanding justice—is held up as the spark that can change history, provided the press and public stay vigilant.

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For listeners wanting a primer on how a bureaucracy becomes a paramilitary force—and why Minneapolis is a warning to the whole country—this episode delivers urgent lessons in American democracy’s fragility and the need for resistance, literally hour by hour.

Transcript

[A]

By the way, guys, did you see this morning that they arrested Don Lemon? I feel like it's this moment we've been bracing for where they're actually criminalizing journalism in America.

[B]

It is totally terrifying, honestly. And you remember what happened, which was Trump's people tried to get him arrested in Minneapolis, and the judges up and down the line said, no, we're not gonna issue an arrest warrant. So he goes to California and they arrest him there.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, the idea of federal agents arresting a journalist is one of those threshold moments. And I think one of the things that we're all thinking about right now is what are the threshold moments? And I'm keeping reminded of this. There was a quote that I wrote years ago about China describing how tyranny arrives. And I said, it doesn't arrive in an instant. At first, your eyes adjust. It's sort of like Twilight. And now all of a sudden, that dynamic seems like it's how I have to think about this country, which is pretty mind bending.

[B]

Welcome to the Political Scene from the New Yorker, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. I'm Jane Mayer, and I'm joined by my colleagues Susan Glasser and Evan Osnos. Hi, Susan.

[A]

Hey there. So great to be with you.

[B]

Hi, Evan.

[C]

Good morning, guys.

[B]

So we had planned to be off this week, but what's happening just felt too consequential to sit out. America's, and in fact, the world's eyes are on Minneapolis. Last weekend, the federal agents that Trump sent to Minneapolis killed a second American citizen in less than three weeks. Alex Preddy. The streets of the city are now surging with armed and masked ICE and Border Patrol agents as protesters turn out in droves to resist the unprecedented federal paramilitary presence there. The surge has thrust ICE and Border Patrol into the national spotlight. And a lot of Americans are asking, who are these agents beneath these masks? How did we get into this and how do we get out? So, Susan, start with you. How are you feeling, and how are you reading this moment?

[A]

Well, I mean, in some ways, right, It's a sort of chronicle of a tragedy foretold. Donald Trump went searching for battles to fight and dragons to slay. And in launching this kind of unprecedented surge of thousands of federal agents in into Minneapolis, he sort of got the war that he was looking for. And what's been remarkable to me is to sort of try to track the political fallout from this moment and to see kind of the Trump damage control playbook kicking into gear here, including, by the way, all of the kind of oh, actually, we're de escalating and we're dialing it down. You know, there's a headline yesterday that just, you know, in the gut you wanted to scream, right? It was like, oh, the calming, the calming. Presidents followed and hours later we're having this conversation. On Friday morning, we wake up to Donald Trump. Is he dialing it back? Is he pivoting? No, of course not. He's calling the dead person an agitator and perhaps insurrectionist. And I just, I feel like here we are, Donald Trump, he's got the January 6th playbook. And by the way, that's his Superman armor, right? The man who could come back from January 6th, who could say and do anything to wiggle out of that and to be reelected after that, you know, he believes that there's essentially no scandal that will take him out, no matter how horrible.

[B]

Evan, how are you feeling about this?

[C]

Look, I think what we are seeing right now is a clash of systems, and I use the word systems deliberately because it's not individuals, it is networks of ideas and people that have developed over time. On one side, you've got this kind of amazing improvisation on the ground in Minnesota, or what frankly can look like an improvisation by regular people who have decided that they simply can't abide this anymore. And it turns out that there is a level of impressive coordination, and let's call it what it is, courage of people getting up and standing in front of extraordinary harm and risk to themselves. People who never imagined themselves as political activists. And some of the reporting that I think has been coming out of Minneapolis that evokes that reporting by Emily Witt and the New Yorker and others is really important to understand. The other system that they're clashing with is this bizarre and opaque creation that we call ice, but is in fact this combination of federal agencies that is essential for us to begin to understand. And then there's a third piece of this, the third system, and that is the federal government and its clash with local and state governments. Cuz that's another thing that's being tested here is the relationship between different parts of the government. So all of this is playing out almost hour by hour, and it's excruciating, frankly, because the stakes are so high. I can't remember a moment when it feels to me as if we're learning as much about the anatomy of the actual Trump era state than we have recently in watching the power that it has to kill people on the street and then pretend nothing happened. And we had a thought about really the perfect person for this. While I'm on the road this week, you guys have interviewed a friend of ours, Garrett Graff, who, as some people will know, is a terrific journalist and happens to be really expert on the subject of ice and how these agencies came to be. Susan, you guys have worked together in the past on this topic, I gather.

[A]

Yeah, well, very unintentionally, I guess. Back when I was editor of Politico magazine, we set Garrett on this path of expertise. The very first piece he wrote for me as a writer on that magazine back in 2014 was a, I think almost 10,000 word investigation of the history of the Border Patrol and really its modern incarnation, which began after 911 with an enormous surge, kind of like the enormous surge in hiring we're seeing today. So I'm really glad we're having this important conversation with Garrett today. He's now, more than a decade later, expert on the subject, actually testifying before public commission in Illinois convened by Governor Pritzker after I surged to great controversy into Chicago.

[B]

Welcome, Garrett Graf. I'm so glad you could join us today.

[D]

Thank you.

[B]

I think we have to start with Minneapolis. And you have written a piece recently in Wired saying that we have never seen anything quite like this in America's history. So I'm hoping you can just lay out, as someone who really knows the history of immigration enforcement in the country, what exactly is different that's going on there? What are you seeing?

[D]

Yeah, to me, as someone who covers federal law enforcement and has written a lot about sort of modern American political history, what stands out in Minneapolis and Minneapolis is the worst, but it's just the latest in a string of cities that we have seen, you know, going back through Chicago and Portland and Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. where you all are. This is the first time in modern American history where we are seeing federal force being deployed to abuse the civil rights and civil liberties of American citizens and not to protect them. That when you look at the entire modern history of federal law enforcement and, you know, National Guard deployments and the deployments of, you know, military elements of the 82nd Airborne or the 101st Airborne, it has always been used as a force of last resort to protect civil rights and civil liberties when local and state officials fail to do so. And I'm thinking of moments like John F. Kennedy sending federal marshals in to Alabama to protect civil rights protesters after they've been attacked. You know, I'm thinking of Dwight Eisenhower when in 1957 they were trying to integrate Little Rock Central High school. And the Arkansas governor, a notorious racist, deployed the Arkansas National Guard to block the integration. And Dwight Eisenhower then had to federalize the National Guard, deploy it to protect the students, integrating the school. And that what we're seeing in Minneapolis is really like the black mirror version of how federal forces have been used in the past, where the federal agents are coming to do the violence, not protect against violence.

[A]

You know, Garrett, you and I have been talking about this for many years. As it turns out, you know, both of us immediately thought back to this article that you wrote when we worked together at Politico magazine, looking at the history of how did we end up with Border Patrol and ice, which has now become shorthand for the people at the center of this crisis. Tell us a little bit about how we got there, because I think it's remarkable, I had forgotten, until rereading this remarkable piece of yours, the extent to which our modern Immigration and Border Patrol agencies are a creation of the post 911 sort of panic over the idea of terrorism and that we didn't have control of our borders. And the result was something which was a massive, huge hiring increase that led to all sorts of problems and nightmares. And now that we're spending billions of dollars on a massive, huge increase that's leading to all sorts of problems, it seems like this is the kind of history we might want to pay attention to.

[D]

Susan, you and I have talked about this over the last decade. That Donald Trump to me has always been a symptom of what is wrong in American politics and not the underlying disease. And I think that there is nowhere that that is more clear than on the issue of immigration. And that in some ways Donald Trump is president. And the transformation of CBP and ICE into a presidential fascist masked secret police on America's streets feels very much to me an almost entirely foreseeable and natural outcome of the shift that we saw after 911 about how we approached immigration in the United States, where we moved immigration from the Justice Department where it had sat for 60 years, sort of under funded and under resourced in what was then known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which let me be very clear up front here, INS was nowhere near a perfect or good or even well run organization, but that we reimagined immigration as part of the Department of Homeland Security. Then what we did was we turbocharged cbp, which of course includes the Border Patrol. And the Bush administration set this incredibly ambitious hiring surgeon goal of doubling the size of the Border Patrol as fast as it could. Now, anyone who was paying Attention, over the last year, this might ring some bells about ice. So the first sort of mission of DHS was to double the size of the Border Patrol. Take it from 9,000 agents up to 19,000 and then 21,000 at its Obama era peak. And what they did were all of the things a law enforcement agency shouldn't do when it is rushing to hire people. They cut training standards, they cut background checks. They did this hiring, most of this hiring, without the polygraph, that sort of other federal law enforcement agencies like the FBI or the Secret Service use as a routine part of the hiring process. And it was a notable problem when the Border Patrol began to use polygraphs and they started washing out 70% of the applicants who would have been previously hired under the pre polygraph roles. So they brought in thousands of new agents. This created huge management problems, supervision problems, training problems, and kicked off this tidal wave of crime, misconduct and corruption that CBP still struggles with today, 20 years after this hiring surge began.

[B]

I'd love to just add a statistic from one of the pieces you've written where you say that in 2018, there was an agent arrested every 36 hours, which is either equal to or more than the crime rate that has taken place among undocumented immigrants. There were so many crimes committed by these, these agents. And I loved a phrase you used, which was, you said they were hired by the pound from the pound. So, okay, so you've got this thing. It pre existed Trump's presidency, but something has really changed now. There's a sense that it's evolved into something far darker.

[D]

Yes, I mean, obviously a lot has changed, but there are a couple of policy choices that we have made that I think are worthy of highlighting here. The first is, you know, again, ICE is not some brand new agency that Donald Trump created, you know, at noon on January 20 last year. ICE has been around for 20 years, and it has managed to do its job for 20 years in a way that it was not a social pariah, nor did it regularly endanger the lives of ordinary Americans in the course of doing business. And in fact, actually for much of its history, ICE deported more people from the United States with criminal records than Donald Trump is able to do today. You know, for all of the attention that we hear about Donald Trump's getting the worst of the worst off the streets, they have actually changed the way that ICE operates in a way to actually decrease the number of people being deported with criminal records. And what I mean by that is, for most of its modern history, ICE has operated Under a strategy of what was called prosecutorial discretion. This is actually a policy that the Obama administration came up with. And what the idea was was a very straightforward fact that is still true today, which is Congress funds a certain number of deportations per year. This is a choice that Congress makes, not ice, not an administration. And so the idea was, let's focus on the biggest bang for the buck for the American people, and let's go after the actual worst of the worst. Let's go after the gang members, drug dealers, human smugglers, the sex traffickers, the people with records of violent crime. Last spring, according to sort of what we can understand transpired in the Trump administration, Stephen Miller shows up at DHS and sets the this entirely arbitrary goal of 1 million deportations a year, which, if you do your math, works out to be ICE and CBP need to be making 3,000 arrests a day to meet Stephen Miller's completely arbitrary quota. The instant they changed that last May is the instant that we began to see these incredibly aggressive tactics on America's streets begin to play out. Because all of the prosecutorial discretion goes out the window when you're trying to make quotas. And so what we've seen is ICE and cbp, you know, in these high profile deployments, but also sort of all across the rest of the country, switch from going after the worst of the worst to the literal lowest hanging fruit that they can find. This is how you have CBP SWAT teams in sort of full invading Fallujah gear, rolling into Home Depot parking lots to roust a bunch of day laborers.

[A]

That's exactly the point I want to get to now, Garrett, because it's this militarized presence in American cities. So quotas are part of it. The other thing that strikes me as a change that has led directly in some ways to these tragic killings of both Alex Preddy and Renee Good in Minneapolis, is they've gone after American citizens who are protesting this militarized presence in our communities, and they have used aggressive tactics. You know, I mean, America has a long history of dealing with first of bedbid protest, right? You know, crowd control, basic 101. It seems like the Border Patrol and the ICE agents are violating every known rule of how to treat American citizens in their own communities. Literally on the streets where they live, they are actually beating the shit out of Americans who dare to protest with words, what they're doing. How did that come about? Are there any precedents for this? Is this just because we've given a bunch of poorly trained macho guys Guns and an unlimited mandate or is there some actual order that they think they're following in treating American citizens this way?

[D]

This is a great point and I'm really glad you raised this, Susan, because it's the other thing that really stands out, which is we see all of these viral videos and pictures of these agents leaping out of unmarked vans wearing these big tactical vests that say police on them. ICE and CBP are not police. They are very specifically actually not police. They operate in these incredibly narrow lanes focused around border security and immigration enforcement. They are not trained in the way that we would expect even mid size American police department to be trained in first Amendment freedoms, in civil rights, in civil liberties, in basic due process. They are not trained in de escalation tactics. And a lot of this has to do with a mentality that the Border Patrol specifically brings to their jobs, which is most American cops. If you are a small town cop, a big city cop, a deputy sheriff, if you're a state trooper, you spend most of your time interacting with people who are not criminals. And that changes the mentality that they approach their day to day life with. They spend most of their time in non hostile environments, walking into convenience stores, walking into grocery stores, you know, interacting with random motorists. The Border Patrol doesn't. The Border Patrol is used to a situation where they are operating usually by themselves or with very limited backup in very remote regions of the country where every single person that they interact with on a shift is at least guilty of crossing the border illegally. And that's not a major crime. You know, a lot of them are asylum seekers at this point who are trying to find Border Patrol agents to turn themselves into, et cetera, et cetera. But they are trained to approach their day to day interactions with people in a different way. And the Border Patrol has never been intended to be a force that is routinely interacting with American citizens full stop, period. Let alone routinely patrolling American cities. Like we should be sort of as shocked and surprised at the idea of like Border Patrol convoys rolling through American cities and doing policing as we would be if armored SUVs of the US Coast Guard started driving through suburban cul de sacs and tossing tear gas canisters out the window. Like this is a paramilitary border security force that is not meant to be a police force on America's streets.

[B]

We're going to take a quick break and when we come back, more of our conversation with the journalist and historian Garrett Graf. This is the political statement scene from the New Yorker. If you've been enjoying the show. Please leave us a rating and review on the podcast platform of your choice. And while you're there, don't forget to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. Thank you so much for listening. Right now we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Charlamagne, tha God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts. You know, we've all watched the tremendous pushback, the civil unrest and protests taking place in Minneapolis in sub, you know, zero freezing weather. And we've seen that Senate Democrats have said that they're going to try to hold the, the funding hostage in order to get some reforms in ice, you know, masks and maybe body cams and, you know, some sort of badges that reveal the identity of the officers. But you've also written, and I was interested in this, that there really is very little leverage that opponents of this have structurally in the way that the Constitution is designed. And so I wonder, do you think that the protests have been effective? And, and can you explain, is there a sort of a limited amount of power that opponents of this have?

[D]

Yes, in some ways. No, in other ways. But to answer the broader question first, what is actually really striking to me is I think Donald Trump's experiment in creating a fascist secret police to terrorize America is actually failing. There's a lot to worry about, about what's to come over the next year or two. As you know, the one big beautiful bill turbocharges, doubling the force of ICE officers, adding more CBP officers, et cetera, et cetera. But putting that aside for a moment, Donald Trump's deployments of CBP and ICE are actually incredibly limited, that he has really been able to only pull this off in one or two cities at a time, two or three cities at a time across the country. This is not me downplaying the actual terror and trauma of these deployments against these cities, which is real. But that what we're also seeing is that the amount of force that he needs to bring to achieve these ends is increasing. That in Chicago, you know, that deployment Midway blitz in the fall was like a thousand agents. Minneapolis is smaller than Chicago and they are now having to deploy 3,000 agents there. And those agents are losing. The residents of Minneapolis are resisting them at a scale that is unsustainable for the Border Patrol and ICE deployments. And they are creating a playbook for how this is also unfolding in other cities. I actually think, again, I want to be clear, there's real trauma, there's real violence. There are American citizens being shot dead in the streets by these agents. Like, this is not me downplaying any of that, but that I think that there has been almost a nuclear half life decline in the effectiveness of these deployments as a terror campaign city to city over the last six months. And that what you are seeing is the creation of this playbook where you have, you know, massive organized resistance on the street level, court lawsuits that end up for now at least, being pretty effective at circumscribing the behavior of ICE and CBP officials in the states. Like when Greg Bevino and his CBP cavalry pulled out of Chicago, it was basically because like they had been driven out by court orders. So I think that there's this sort of like liberal fantasy that like Tim Walls is going to call out the Minnesota National Guard for like armed conflict with ICE officers in the streets. And that's just not going to work in our system of federalism. But I think this playbook of sort of organized citizen resistance, judicial orders, and really terrible, the terrible press that comes out of these deployments. I saw one report this week that like Melania Trump intervened over the weekend because she's concerned about how the CBP headlines are washing out the triumphal news of her new movie. I don't know whether that's true, but, you know, like the Trump administration realizes that this is not looking good for them on America's streets.

[A]

I'm just curious. We know this is the policy. Donald Trump loves these spectacles of militarized force. Stephen Miller does. I'm a little bit worried here going forward, Garrett, that what's going to happen is they understand the messages. Don't screw with well intentioned liberal white bystanders to your crackdown on poor brown skinned immigrants. And we don't know what's happening inside of these facilities if these are the violent acts that CBP and ICE have been willing to undertake while being filmed. You know, I guess my concern is that what happens when the spotlight goes away or they become savvier about targeting people with less publicity.

[D]

Yeah. And I think there's a lot of reason to be concerned about that. And let me give you one very specific example about that. Which is the one big beautiful bill, pours a tremendous amount of money into ICE for new personnel, doubling the size of ice. A lot of reasons to be concerned about the trends that we're going to see coming out of who those officers actually are, the training they receive, and what behavior they will have on the streets in the months and years ahead. Given our history of that hiring surge, with the Border Patrol going so poorly, it also pours $45 billion into detention facilities.

[A]

What a number.

[D]

What a number. Taking the number of detention facility beds in the United States from in sort of round numbers, about 45,000 beds a night up to somewhere around and north of 110,000 detention beds a night. What they didn't put money into was the actual legal process around immigration, dealing with the already months and years long immigration case backload dating to the Biden administration. And so what I worry about is that we are building these detention facilities which are, by the way, supposed to be civil facilities. They are not and expressly intended not to be criminal prisons because the immigration detentions are a civil proceeding. That these civil detention facilities are being built almost with the express purpose of becoming concentration camps.

[A]

That is a terrifying sentence.

[B]

It totally is. And Garrett, I just to close, I wanted to give you a chance to make a point that you have made in your substack very, I think eloquently, which is, and I'm just going to try to read a little bit from it, that this is what fascism looks like. There's no bright line between democracy and autocracy. It's a spectrum. And not all of the country will experience that switch at the same moment or in the same way. But, but let's be clear. There is a US City living under occupation by fascist presidential secret police right now. So have we arrived at this moment? I mean, people keep saying, are we at inflection moment where we're going to change away from it, or are we in fascism? How do you see it at this point?

[D]

I think so. And I wrote a column actually in August of last year as we watched the National Guard be deployed to Washington D.C. that said that, that I think Americans misunderstand how this happens. And you know, Susan, I know you lived in Russia basically like as this happened, but there is no light switch that turns from like democracy to autocracy. And then everyone wakes up the next morning and they're like, all right, we're now in an authoritarian totalitarian state. It's a spectrum. And it happens in little ways, sort of here and there, and it happens in unequal ways in different places and to different populations. If this was any foreign correspondent from the United States writing about a foreign country, they would absolutely label ICE or CBP as a paramilitary force loyal to the regime or a masked right wing militia on the streets in Minneapolis. I think we in America, because of our sense of American exceptionalism and this sort of sense like it can't happen here, that blinds us to the realities of our current political life.

[A]

Yeah, Garrett, that is so powerfully well said. I think the thing that's very painful, having seen this play out elsewhere, is that, you know, there's always a point of argument, right? So rather than saying, wow, you know, they didn't flip the switch yet, you know, it's not, you know, I still feel free. Or people say, well, look, you know, it's so great. These people in Minnesota, they came out and they protested. And it's true that as Americans, right, we feel like, wow, well, this is it. We're pushing back. Except that it's the impunity and the fact that it happened in Minneapolis or Chicago and it can happen somewhere else tomorrow. That's already made it. Not the American system of the rule of law. There was a judge's ruling by the chief judge of Minnesota this week in which he pointed out that ICE had defied, just in the month of January, more court orders than most federal government agencies have defied in their entire existence. And that's where sort of the rule of law disappears. And, you know, it's just this constant balance. I remember when Putin's government was first coming to power, literally, actually, it was like the same month that he became inaugurated as Russia's president back in 2000. And they start going after the only independent television network and media company that really ever existed in Russia in its entire history. And they raided the offices of it, and then they arrested the owner. And again, what I heard from my liberal Russian friends is, well, but it's not the Soviet Union, or it's not this, or we just got a chance to vote. And as this kind of ignorant outsider, the foreign correspondent, I said, okay, well, I'm sure that that guy is a bad guy, the oligarch. He's a problematic businessman. But it looks to me like the government, in the same week that Vladimir Putin was inaugurated as president, took over the only independent media company and drove the owner out of the country.

[B]

This is an argument that we have a lot, and we've gone back and forth, and I think it's an argument that the country, a conversation the country's having in that we do have a different culture than the Soviet Union or Russia. And there's not just one independent news organization. There are zillions of them. And that's our history. And we're seeing an uprising and a pushback in the community in Minneapolis that, as Garrett, you've said, is a playbook. I'm wondering, Garrett, where do you think this is leading?

[D]

Yeah. So there are two things, as I'm listening to you, that stand out for me. One is this culture of impunity like it is a real problem. And I don't know where this goes because we are, you know, ICE cannot continue to operate like this. CBP cannot continue to operate like this and us to consider that we have a free society. And I think there is something, Jane, to your sense that we have a different tradition, which is part of it. I think the other thing the Trump administration didn't quite factor into their realization and sort of strategy around this. We saw how quickly DHS's lies about the Renee Goode shooting and the Alex Pretty shooting fell apart because there were all sorts of freely available and instantly available videos contradicting the administration's lies. And that to me, is another part of sort of hoping that we are going to be able to hold strong as a free and small d democratic society in this moment because media gives us a chance to expose these outrageous abuses and also the lies of the administration. But I think, you know, Susan, you quoted from one federal judge about this. There was another quote from this last week that really stood out for me from another federal judge who was a Reagan appointee, 85 years old judge William Young, who was ruling against and invalidating basically Trump's policy of arresting and deporting students for pro Palestinian advocacy, basically saying like, these guys still actually have First Amendment rights and freedoms in the United States. And what he wrote as sort of his concluding thought, in his judgment, I think is an important line for all of us to remember, which is, you know, we may come from a different tradition culturally, but as he wrote, freedom is a fragile thing and it's never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance. It must be fought for and defended in every generation, for it only comes once to a people. And I hope that we can all carry that forward. And I hope that the rest of us find the courage that we are seeing on the streets of Minneapolis to be contagious for the rest of us as a nation.

[A]

You're here.

[B]

That is a wonderful way to wrap up this conversation. Garrett Graff, thank you. Thank you so much for joining us today.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, hear, hear, Garrett. That's powerful stuff.

[B]

The political scene from the New Yorker will be back in just a moment.

[D]

Come see Critics at large live. On February 19th, we're gonna be at the 92nd Street Y in New York City for a conversation about Wuthering Heights. There's a new adaptation coming up starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, and we will certainly be getting into that, but we'll also do what we humbly, I'll say what we do best. Returning to the text, we're gonna go deep on the gothic. And Emily Bronte. Join me, Vincent Cunningham and my co hosts Alex Schwartz and Nomi Frye for the discussion. And crucially, if you buy a VIP ticket, you'll join us for an after party, too. Go to 92ny.org for more information. That's 92ny.org hope to see you there.

[B]

Evan, what, what are a couple of your takeaways from this?

[C]

You know what I think is amazing to hear is how the world that we are living in now, the world of ICE and cpb, really is an outgrowth of a mindset that began Right after 9 11, this idea that it created this shift in something within us, both politically and as a political sensibility, as a kind of panic, as Garrett put it, so well. And that led to the creation of, of this bizarre super agency, the Department of Homeland Security, which is now just a part of the furniture in Washington, but is, in fact, this strange conglomeration in which it has the aspirations of being law enforcement, but is, in fact, a sort of paramilitary element. And I was just astonished to hear the story of how they relaxed the standards in order to bring people in. And then I think this is a date that really should go into the chronology of American history. You then had Stephen Miller go in and set the arbitrary quota of a million deportations in a year. And that right there was kind of the big bang of the universe we're in now. And I hate to use the following word because it's overused, but narratives, narratives are essential in this moment because what you have on one side is a cascade of false narratives that the Trump administration has put forward about not only about the people that they are rounding up, but also about the people who have been killed on the street. You remember the effort to smear Alex Peretti, and then later when there was a video of him as a protester in this other confrontation with ice. What did Trump say? I mean, it's really kind of this amazing phrase. He said that Freddy's stock has fallen, as he said, as if it was like some kind of candidate on a reality show. And I think what's really important to see here, too, is that we started this conversation talking about the arrest of Don Lemon for committing journalism. There has been this extraordinary narrative building exercise on the part of people using their First Amendment. So the people who are there on the street taking pictures, taking video, the reporters who are there following this effort on the ground, it is, you know, the reason why I hesitate to talk about it is that I find that when we reduce politics to a competition of narratives, that can sound like it's making it superficial. Unfortunately, it is also how this issue is evolving in terms of shaping decision making. Donald Trump's brief flirtation with, you know, if you even want to call it de escalation was shaped partly by his understanding that the public was seeing and hearing things that they don't abide, that they don't accept. And that's why this continues hour by hour.

[B]

Well, it was causing him a slight political problem for a second or two there because there were few Republicans who were making a little bit of noise, and the Democrats stood up and said they weren't going to just blindly vote for the budget for the Homeland Security Department. And so, Susan, do you see this as any kind of political problem for Trump?

[A]

Well, look, I mean, he believes, to Evan's point about narratives, Donald Trump believes a core, core assumption is that immigration is the reason he is the President of the United States. It's the reason he won in 2016, and it's the reason he won in 2024. And so he thinks, and I think he's largely correct about that, that the core MAGA faithful, that part of their attraction to him is this rhetoric that you find so, and I find so repulsive from Trump about demonizing migrants and saying they're gonna be criminals and we gotta get them out of our country. So he thinks that's actually a political benefit to him. So Donald Trump, though, he has a playbook. This is not the first scandal that would be career ending for any other politician that he's been through. And so, remember, this is a guy who will literally do and say anything in the moment to get out of it. I think people have forgotten that on January 7th of 2021, Donald Trump went in front of the cameras and he said that the violent rioters who had invaded the US Capitol at his behest were disgracing and desecrating the country that they should be prosecuted. And he will say and do anything to get out of a hole, but he has incredible confidence that his people are gonna stick with him. And by the way, to anybody who thinks Donald Trump is pivoting away from the war that he himself started, go and look at Stephen Miller's X feed if you can bear to do so. And what you will see is he hasn't moved away from this rhetoric. He hasn't taken down any of these posts. He hasn't apologized. They're all there. They're all there, and it's very painful. But unfortunately, this is a war that Trump and Miller wanted.

[C]

Evan, I think all of that, that can be true. And it doesn't take away from the significance of describing and acknowledging what has been happening on the ground by people in Minneapolis. And the work that is going into this. Civil resistance is extraordinary in the same way that the development of the civil rights movement, even when it was not winning, is something that is a piece of our history and how we understand what's possible in politics, how one bends the curve of history. You know, I am, I've been really amazed at some of the. Just the minor details of people on the ground in Minneapolis who never wanted to find themselves in a confrontation with an armed federal agent. You know, we're talking about kind of quiet, middle class, churchgoing folks who realized, I just can't be a part of this. I can't sit by.

[B]

For me, the interview that was done with the woman they call the Woman in Pink, who filmed Pretty being shot to death, was so moving. She is just. It was just, this is an interview.

[A]

On CNN with Anderson Cooper.

[B]

It was the voice of the people that I thought were out there and would stand up. And it was just an ordinary person. She makes her living doing children's birthday parties, face painting. And she said, I just had to keep filming. And I just knew I had to be there.

[A]

You know, when we walk around with the whistles around our neck, it's not that we have, like, we know we can't do much, but what we do know is that we can let our community at large know when we're walking around, like, I see you, and if you're stuck in your apartment, I want you to see me. I'm another person walking around who is here to protect you as best I can with my whistle and my phone, which really feels not great.

[D]

And yet you stood there with a phone and you documented this. You didn't run away.

[A]

I am not one to run.

[B]

It was Incredible. And she cried, but she. She was just so real.

[A]

Can I. I so agree with that, Jane. And I. I actually want to make the point that Evan is touching on about history because, you know, we're in the moment right now, and I do think history is not only going to remember these people in Minneapolis, but is going to admire them and to see them as a model, whatever Donald Trump's approval ratings are, whatever the Republican senators abjectly do to sort of weasel out of this moment. I've been thinking a lot about that incredible image of the young woman screaming in horror after the Kent State shootings during the Vietnam War protest. And here's the interesting thing that people may not realize in the immediate aftermath of that, actually, a majority of Americans did not support the protesters, and they believed that it was a terrible incident, but it was necessary to restore law and order. And, of course, Richard Nixon, this was the issue that he demagogued very successfully in his 1968 campaign and throughout his presidency. This idea of law and order, an idea that has gripped the mind of Donald Trump ever since he entered politics. I just want to point out that history remembers not the immediate reaction. What they remember is the horror and bravery of that young woman and the fact that over time, it was the protesters who were right and the abuse of state power that was wrong. And I want to believe, and I do believe that we will remember the heroism of these people on the ground in Minnesota.

[B]

I just have to add as a postscript about Kent State, that there was something that happened afterwards that helped change public opinion, which was there was a serious investigation and a report that criticized the government, and eventually the government apologized. Okay. That's how history gets changed, too. And so we really have to just keep pushing for accountability. And I think as journalists, we have to be the accountability to some extent.

[C]

Yeah. This week started in a way. Yeah. Hear, hear to that. I think when you put this all together, this week started at a moment when people felt utterly powerless. You know, the sight of another civilian on the street being killed within seconds of encountering ICE agents. And as we move through the week, I am not. I don't want to overstate things, but I think people have been reminded that they're not entirely powerless. There is. There are tools that people have to be able to register their anger, their resistance, their fury, and that's what I take away right now.

[B]

Well, thanks so much, you guys, for joining us today, despite the fact that we thought we were off this week. And thanks to Garrett Graf for joining us too this was an amazing conversation. To be continued.

[C]

Thank you, Jane. Thanks, Susan.

[B]

This has been the Political Scene from the New Yorker. I'm Jane Mayer. We had research assistance today from Alex d'. Elia. Our producer is Nora Richie. Mix producing by Mike Kochman, edited by Rhiannon Corby. Steven Valentino is our executive producer. And our theme music is by Alison Layton Brown. Thanks so much for listening.

[A]

From prx.