How Trump's bungling turned his top issue into his greatest liability

Summary

The Rachel Maddow Show – May 4, 2026 Episode: How Trump’s Bungling Turned His Top Issue Into His Greatest Liability
Host: Rachel Maddow
Guest: Julia Ainsley, Senior Homeland Security Correspondent, NBC News
Theme: How the Trump administration’s mass deportation and immigration crackdown—intended as a political asset—has become a major political liability, sparking widespread public resistance, internal dysfunction, and scandal.

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Rachel Maddow explores the Trump administration’s harsh and chaotic approach to immigration enforcement during his second term, focusing on why this issue—once a winning political strategy—has become a liability. She draws extensively from new reporting by Julia Ainsley, whose book Undue Process: The Inside Story of Trump’s Mass Deportation Program offers a detailed and timely inside look at the operational failures, public backlash, and internal resistance within DHS.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Trump’s Miscalculation on Immigration Policy

• Opening premise: Maddow contends that, aside from foreign policy blunders, Trump’s biggest political misstep is the belief that Americans would support an extremely punitive immigration crackdown.
  • “He thought we would love that... But when he got back in power and he actually moved to put this kind of a policy in place, it turns out the American people did not like this movie. Not at all.” (Rachel Maddow, [01:03])
• Trump’s tactics have involved masked agents, family separations, and highly visible, violent raids, shocking much of the public and provoking some of the largest protests in U.S. history ([01:03–03:30]).

Widespread Resistance and Protest

• Americans from all walks of life are organizing to defend immigrant neighbors, including individuals with no prior activism experience ([03:30]).
• Several high-profile officials overseeing immigration enforcement (e.g., Gregory Bevino, Todd Lyons, Kristina Elm) have been demoted or fired following public backlash and allegations of corruption ([04:00]).
• Civil resistance has effectively stalled Trump’s plan to build massive “warehouse prisons” for immigrant detainees ([05:15]).
  • “It’s now really an open question as to whether any of these warehouse prisons will ever actually open... so far, they haven’t been able to get a single one of them open.” (Rachel Maddow, [05:15])

Internal Corruption and Contractor Scandals

• Bombshell reporting connects Corey Lewandowski—without a formal DHS role—with improper influence over contract awards, including reports of contractors being pressured to pay him for DHS contracts ([06:00]).
• Kristi Noem, former Homeland Security Secretary, was fired amid these contract scandals ([06:30]).

Policy Failures and Ad Hoc Governance

• Julia Ainsley’s book exposes the lack of planning and legal understanding behind mass deportations; “an iterative process of making stuff up as they went along” ([07:10], [19:31]).
• Deportation efforts targeted immigrants indiscriminately, including children and families with no criminal history, because the administration could not find enough “criminals” among the immigrant population to meet its quotas ([09:15]).
  • “...there aren’t enough criminals among America’s immigrants to get them the numbers they were after... Much easier just to sweep up any and every immigrant they could find. And the easiest ones to find turned out to be the people who’ve been following all the rules…” (Rachel Maddow summarizing Ainsley, [09:30])

Legal Resistance and Intimidation

• Trump’s tactic of intimidating law firms resulted in many refusing to represent immigrants or challenge the administration, even as others held firm and prevailed in court ([15:40]).
  • Notable quote from an immigration lawyer: “The first thing I did was try to get a big law firm on board. I called all my old ride or dies and they were all like, yeah, no I can’t, it’s not a good time...” (Julia Ainsley via Rachel Maddow, [16:30])

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Interview with Julia Ainsley

Reporting Challenges & Internal Resistance

• Source protection: Many DHS employees became “quiet resisters,” fearful of professional repercussions, sometimes communicating anonymously or cryptically out of concern for their own safety ([21:26]).
  • Example: A senior DHS official, publicly loyal to Trump, privately described Trump as a “domestic enemy of the Constitution” (Julia Ainsley, [21:26], [26:20]).
• Employees who objected to the harsh rhetoric or illegal actions (e.g., refusing to call immigrants “scumbags,” or insisting on warrants to break car windows) were swiftly reassigned or fired ([22:30], [28:53]).
• Internal resistance was tempered by economic realities; lower-paid ICE agents were less likely than DOJ attorneys to risk their jobs or pensions by resigning or blowing the whistle ([31:01]).

Failed Guantanamo Plan & Military Expansion

• Trump’s push to use Guantanamo Bay for mass immigrant detention was stymied by deliberate bureaucratic resistance—ICE leadership would quietly send the least “suitable” detainees, making the plan unworkable ([33:20]).
  • “He tried to reason with people from the Pentagon about why this wasn’t safe...so he started to send down basically small numbers of people...really tried to make it the hardest group of people they could possibly have down there.” (Julia Ainsley, [33:20])
• The administration attempted to funnel defense contracts and resources into immigration enforcement, fueling a boom in government spending and attracting opportunistic private contractors ([35:59]).

Public & Political Blowback

• Initial public apathy gave way to massive protests following high-profile, violent raids and killings of U.S. citizens—shifting public opinion dramatically against Trump’s policies ([38:33]).
• “Inside the White House, there was a thought that maybe we’ve gone too far.... Especially if the American people can’t trust us at our word, when the statements coming out... didn’t align with what the American public could see in the videos. And that was the major catalyst that changed it.” (Julia Ainsley, [38:33])

The Warehouse Prisons Debacle

• Massive government-owned “warehouse” detention projects have faced bipartisan local resistance and legal pushback; none have opened to date, and the initiative is on hold ([42:15]).
• The warehouse concept emerged from the preferences of Noem and Lewandowski for in-house, government-run operations as punitive as possible ([43:30]).

The Erik Prince Proposal

• Erik Prince (Blackwater) pitched a proposal for a privatized, paramilitary deportation force of 10,000 armed deputies and 2,000 lawyers to deport 6 million people/year, seeking defense-like funding and contracts ([47:52], [49:46]).
  • “He spends a lot of the proposal talking about how immigrants are a drain on the social safety net, how they’re more likely to bring diseases, a lot of things that some people could define as racist toward the people who are coming over the border.” (Julia Ainsley, [49:46])
  • The proposal cited DHS’s rapidly ballooning budget, which jumped from $9 billion to $75 billion ([49:46]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Trump’s miscalculation:
  • “He thought we would love that... turns out the American people did not like this movie. Not at all.” – Rachel Maddow, [01:03]
• On internal resistance:
  • “There really became this quiet resistance within DHS. And I spoke to another woman... who told me she believes she was fired because... she did not call immigrants scumbags in a press release.” – Julia Ainsley, [21:26]
• On the legal community’s reluctance:
  • “One of the very largest law firms in Washington D.C. said to me, we could probably ghost write some briefs for you if that’s helpful. Indicating they were reluctant to sign their names to the case.” – Immigration lawyer via Ainsley, [16:30]
• On fear-based policy:
  • “To convince them to [self-deport], they needed to be scared of what would happen to them if they left it up to the government to deport them. Stephen Miller pressed this idea... Deportation would need to get much, much uglier.” – Julia Ainsley, quoting her book, [12:30]
• On warehouse project:
  • “Contractors who have this space said that they had 10,000 beds they could turn on in a second... But Noem and Lewandowski wanted time and time again to go a different route, to come up with their own ideas and in some cases come up with things that would be seen as the most punitive as possible.” – Julia Ainsley, [43:30]
• On Erik Prince’s paramilitary pitch:
  • “I held the document in my hand and I felt that it was important to include in the book because it shows how people were clamoring for these contracts at this time...” – Julia Ainsley, [49:46]
• On executive overreach:
  • “What I tell people is, no matter how you feel about immigration, if you’re worried about an expansion of executive power, you should read this book to understand just how far this went...” – Julia Ainsley, [35:59]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:03] – Maddow’s diagnosis of Trump’s immigration miscalculation
• [05:15] – Resilience and success of protest movement blocking warehouse prisons
• [15:40] – New revelations about law firm intimidation and its consequences
• [19:31] – Julia Ainsley joins the conversation
• [21:26] – Ainsley explains anonymous sources and internal dissent
• [26:20] – Backstory on DHS internal pushback, Miller’s rage, and fear-based tactics
• [31:01] – Differences in whistleblowers at DOJ vs DHS; financial and cultural factors
• [33:20] – Guantanamo plan and bureaucratic sabotage
• [35:59] – Cost and executive power implications
• [38:33] – The turning point: deaths in raids and public protest
• [42:15] – Warehouse prison project stalling and policy implications
• [47:52] – The Erik Prince private deportation force pitch and context

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Final Thoughts

Rachel Maddow and Julia Ainsley deliver a detailed, urgent breakdown of how the Trump administration’s brutal push for mass deportation has not only failed operationally but also backfired politically. Ainsley’s reporting illuminates both the public’s and insiders’ resistance to executive overreach, and the persistent danger of new bureaucratic machinery built for punitive purposes lingering for future use. The episode is essential listening for anyone seeking to understand the dynamics of immigration enforcement, governmental dysfunction, and the power of public protest in shaping policy.

Transcript

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[Rachel Maddow]

Of all the things that Donald Trump has done or tried to do in his 15 months or so back in office, if you had to identify the thing he has been most wrong about, I mean, the. The biggest, at least political miscalculation of his second term, the thing he thought was going to be an obvious winner, and, boy, was it not a winner at all. I mean, honestly, there are a million things to choose from, maybe starting with the war in Iran, right? But thinking about things here at home, I think you could make a solid argument that the thing he has been most wrong about, the thing he has most miscalculated, is thinking that the American people would really, really love a brutal, bloody, sadistic, even murderous, gratuitously cruel campaign of physical attacks. Immigrants. He thought we would love that. I mean, you can kind of understand why Trump might have thought Americans would love such a thing. He was elected president twice with. With some sort of crackdown on immigrants as a central campaign promise, right? And particularly when he was campaigning for a second term. He decorated that campaign promise with lurid, almost pornographically violent fantasies about how immigrants were basically subhuman monsters and they were responsible for the bad things. And so you could see why maybe he thought this was his ticket, and politically, in terms of getting him elected, maybe it was. But when he got back in power and he actually moved to put this kind of a policy in place, it turns out the American people did not like this movie. Not at all. I mean Trump's federal agents in masks, grabbing people off the streets, smashing car windows, dragging terrified parents out of their vehicles while their kids sat in car seats in the backseat watching, snatching kids off the street and from the bus stop on their way to school. I mean, not only do the American people, turns out, not like any of this, they have fought back. The country has seen several of the largest days of protest in its history just in the past year. And while those protests have been about a lot of things Trump has done, if you had to pick the most prominent motivating issue for those protests, it probably is the whole masked secret police kidnapping people issue. It turns out that this just rubs Americans the wrong way. And so citizens all over the country have organized against Trump's immigration raids. People who have never before been part of any kind of activism have found themselves joining neighborhood rapid response groups and have found themselves, much to their own surprise, willing to put their bodies between immigrants and Trump's federal agents. And, of course, Americans have been killed trying to protect their immigrant neighbors, countries, excuse me. Companies that do business with ICE have been hounded about that, both from within their companies and in terms of external pressure. Also, in one of what I think is one of the most underreported success stories of the public resistance to the Trump administration thus far. Everywhere Trump has tried to build one of his warehouse immigration prisons, there have been sustained protests, pushback from local leaders of both parties, lawsuits that have halted plans for these prison camps. The pushback has been so effective and so complete, it's now really an open question as to whether any of these warehouse prisons will ever actually open. This is a $38 billion program by which Trump started to build himself a string of some of the largest prisons on Earth to hold people without trial. But so far, they haven't been able to get a single one of them open. And the performative, peacocking, sort of proudly violent field commander for Customs and Border Patrol, Gregory Bevino, has been demoted and retired. And the head of ice, Todd Lyons, has left. And the head of Homeland Security itself, Secretary Kristina Elm, has been fired. And so has the guy who was weirdly always around her while she was Homeland Security secretary, whom no one could seem to fire, but who kind of seemed to be running things. And no, I swear, they're not a couple. It was reporter Julia Ainsley at NBC News who had that bombshell reporting recently about several government contractors complaining to the White House that they had been asked to pay that guy. They had been asked to pay Corey Lewandowski as part of the process of getting a contract with Trump's Homeland Security Department, while Corey Lewandowski himself was reportedly exerting inordinate influence over which Homeland Security contracts were actually given out, while he wasn't even technically an employee of the department. Mr. Lewandowski denies all wrongdoing in connection with these allegations. But just a couple of weeks before that reporting dropped, that is when Kristi Noem was fired amid accounts that White House officials were troubled by allegations that Lewandowski was trying to cash in. Despite all of that, though, despite all of those people being ousted, despite anonymous administration officials now telling the press that the new guy, the new Homeland Security secretary, is going to do a kinder, gentler immigration crackdown, it has to be noted that in reality, the Trump administration seems to still be holding to, if not upscaling its plans to grab and arrest and deport more and more people. And we're not talking about, as they like to pretend, you know, specifically targeted, terrible, violent criminals. The whole worst of the worst thing has not been true at all throughout Trump's time back in office. But one of the things Julia Ainslie reports in her new book is that in particular, they're now targeting children. So does that make you feel safer? Right. Swarming a school bus stop in Mississippi with 10 unmarked cars to arrest Two Star High School basketball players, high school kids. This is supposedly the worst of the worst. Why is the Trump administration doing things this way? I mean, even setting aside the morality of this. Right, and how any of us will ever have to answer for this behavior by our country in our time when we were citizens here, I mean, just setting aside that existential dilemma for a moment, even just looking at the politics of it, how did this president take his most potent, most popular political issue and in the space of less than a year, turn it into a huge liability and then just keep doubling down on that? Even after the polling and the public opinion turned, there are few people better equipped to answer those questions than Julia Ainslie. She is the senior Homeland Security Correspondent for NBC News. She's covered immigration in the Homeland Security Department for more than a decade, first at Reuters and then for years for NBC. Julia Ainslie is one of the best source reporters in Washington when it comes to covering this massive, troubled, sprawling agency. And Julia Ainslie, I am pleased to say, has just written a new book. It's a short book. It's less than 200 pages. It is totally full of hard news and original reporting about what has happened at Homeland Security. What has happened in Trump's signature massive attack on immigrants since he has been back in office. The book is called Undue the Inside Story of Trump's Mass Deportation Program. I'm telling you right now, this is a book that is going to win a bunch of awards. It is really well written, it is short and super easy to read. I recommend it. Like I said, it is chock full of new reporting. Again, Undue Process the Inside Story of Trump's Mass Deportation Program by Julia Ainslie. I read it in two sittings. It just rips along. But what Julia Ainsley shows, among other things in this new book, is that when Trump got back into office for the second term, their first months in office on the immigration issue were not some sort of well laid out plan that they, you know, had worked out in advance and then walked through. Rather, what they did on immigration in the first few months when Trump was back in office, and indeed, over his first sort of year back in office seems to have been kind of an iterative process of making stuff up as they went along. More specifically, Ainsley describes a cascade of failures as they tried to actually do this mass deportation thing that Trump had promised Republicans would be the consequence if he got back into the White House. He said we'd have mass deportations. But the picture Julia Ainsley paints is of an administration that is committed to huge numbers of people being arrested, huge numbers of people being deported, but they don't actually have a realistic idea of how to do that, certainly not a realistic idea of how they can do it legally. And so the evolution of their policy, what we've all seen unfold over the past year, was effectively just a series of ad libs, sort of seat of their pants, quick fixes with some of the disastrous results that we have since seen. Why are they arresting so many people with no criminal record at all, even though they said they were going to go after the supposed worst of the worst? Right? Well, it's because Trump administration officials, first and foremost shadow President Stephen Miller, discovered quickly that frankly, there aren't enough criminals among America's immigrants to get them the numbers they were after. But more pressingly, despite the fact that there just aren't the numbers of criminals to go after, what they quickly found was that tracking down and arresting and deporting criminals is a hard thing to do. It is harder to find criminals, it turns out, than it is to find law abiding people. Much easier just to sweep up any and every immigrant they could find. And the easiest ones to find turned out to be the people who've been following all the rules and checking in with the government regularly. And that means especially immigrant children. Barely a month after Trump was sworn in, Julia Ainslie writes this, quote, ICE field officer directors were told to start targeting for arrest and deportation families as well as children who had previously crossed the border unaccompanied. Previously seen as the lowest priority for deportation, children were now targeted because the addresses of their adult sponsors were easy to find in databases when they were discharged from U.S. custody at the border. But, quote, even with all of these sweeping changes put in place throughout the month of February 2025, the deportation numbers delivered unsettling news at the White House. ICE deported 11,000 immigrants in the month of February, the first full month Trump was in office, compared to 12,000 deported in February 2024 under Joe Biden. So they never publicly acknowledged the number of deportations nor the number of criminals deported. Julia Ainslie reports, quote, what I found through internal data was that of 11,000 deported in February, nearly half of those had no pending criminal charges or convictions. As Trump border czar Tom Homan told me, finding the worst of the worst was much harder and more expensive than finding non criminal undocument immigrants going about their daily lives, working in public and taking their kids to school. Julia describes, quote, a realization by Trump and Stephen Miller that the methods deployed so far to boost deportations were not achieving the desired results. Miller raised the arrest quota from 1200 a day to 2000 per day. Once again, he wasn't getting the numbers he demanded. Miller had begun to acknowledge internally that the US government was never going to arrest 1 million immigrants living inside the US and deport them within a year, people had to decide to deport themselves. Listen to this. Julia Ainslie's new book. Quote, to convince them to do that, they needed to be scared of what would happen to them if they left it up to the government to deport them. Stephen Miller pressed this idea on his multiple daily phone calls with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Deportation would need to get much, much uglier. That is just some of the new reporting in Julia Ainslie's new book, Undue Process. Julia Ainslie joins us here next. Stay with us.

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here's another revelation from Julia Ainslie's new book, Undue Process the Inside Story of Trump's Mass Deport Deportation Program. This is new reporting from her, and it's the kind of reporting that, just to be honest, little peek behind the curtain here kind of makes me feel like I'm going to spontaneously combust. This just like absolutely gets me. But here I will explain. We'll see if it gets you too. You may recall from the very first days of Trump being back in office in this term, one of the things he did is he launched a big intimidation campaign against big law firms, right? You may recall the resultant decision by many of the most cowardly and craven firms to cave to that intimidation to do deals with Trump, to accede to his demands. Now, I say that was cowardly and craven in part because of what we know happened next. Other firms that didn't do that, other firms that challenged Trump's assault on them, his demands of them won when they when they took him to court. And those firms kept their reputations and their dignity intact. Those firms, not for nothing, also did their part to help the American legal system stand up against intimidation and frankly, corruption imposed from the Oval Office. But a bunch of firms caved. And one of the consequences of that whole episode, one of the sort of big picture and most important consequences of that despite the shame of the firms that caved, right? Despite the triumph of the firms that did not cave. One of the things that Julia Ainslie reports in her new book is is how that effort by Trump, how Trump's intimidation campaign did have the effect he wanted on the people in the country who have the most to lose. Julia Ainslie in her new book describes one scrappy, very capable immigration lawyer who went looking for help. He was representing Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who Trump deported to El Salvador, admittedly by mistake and in violation of a court order. That immigration lawyer tells Julia Ainslie in her new book, quote, the first thing I did was try to get a big law firm on board. I called all my old ride or dies and they were all like, yeah, no I can't, it's not a good time. One of the very largest law firms in Washington D.C. said to me, we could probably ghost write some briefs for you if that's helpful. Indicating that they were reluctant to sign their names to the case. He said, quote, another one who I've done many, many cases with a particular partner there who I always work with was like, I would have to quit job for me to do this case with you. Let me know if you want me to do that. The lawyer told that partner to keep his job. The reason this gets me is that this is a portrait of some of the best off best resourced people and institutions in the whole country who happen to be uniquely positioned to be able to provide material and immediate help to people who really need it. And they are refusing to do so for the least possible risk to themselves, but the most possible harm to the people they won't help. People in real need who really could have benefited from just a few minutes of those firms time, who might have gotten it in a different political climate, who in fact did get it in a different political climate. But now instead those people are being left out to dry. There are tons more jaw dropping and infuriating moments like that in this new book from Julia Ainslie, who is the senior senior Homeland Security correspondent for NBC News. The book is called Undue the Inside Story of Trump's Mass Deportation Program. Julia, it's really nice to see you. Thank you for being here and congratulations on this book.

[Julia Ainsley]

Thank you Rachel. It's so good to be here with you and to talk about this book. It was a labor of love. I know it's short, but that's because as a journalist I really like to pack everything in, economize my words. As my husband said, while you didn't leave a lot of room for fluff in here, it jumps out at you. But that's because it's Covering this for the past year was unlike anything I had ever covered before. And I've covered immigration since 2014, as you said. But what happened even in the first hundred days of this administration as they threw policy after policy at the wall and expanded executive power in a way that hadn't been done before on this particular issue was dizzying. And I thought that it was worth writing this down because even if we're in a calmer moment on immigration now, it's a machine that has been built that can quickly be turned back on.

[Rachel Maddow]

Yes. And first of all, I commend you for writing the book quickly, for getting this reporting turned around. I'm sure you're aware lots of people get frustrated with, you know, hard news reporters who kind of save all the good stuff for a book and don't put it out until the people who did all that stuff are well out of office. I mean, this is really urgent, really contemporaneous reporting. And the fact that it's short, I actually think will invite a lot more people to read it. You're not committing to an 800 page tome. I really did rip through the book in two sittings. It's really, it's really urgent and tight. But one of the things that struck me was the way you write about your sourcing with, with some heart in a way that I think doesn't. You don't necessarily have space to do in your regular day to day news reporting. I mean, you write about how Homeland Security Department employees have faced some unprecedented restrictions and pressures against their ability to talk to reporters like you, including, like being forced to take lie detector tests and stuff. How did that affect your ability to report over the course of this year and for this book?

[Julia Ainsley]

Well, I'm so glad that stood out to you, Rachel, because I really want this book to also be a place to lift up some voices who can't come out and speak openly about what they've experienced. And so I took my sourcing very seriously in terms of protecting the people in the book. And so if readers get frustrated with anonymous sources, it's because that's the environment that we're living in now. But I spoke to some people who shared some really important stories, really, about a quiet resistance that was building within DHS from day one, even people who were vocally loyal to President Trump. There's a line in there. I got a strange text message. Just one night I was bathing my kids before bed and I get a text message with someone giving me the oath of office. And they said, protect against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And they replied again and domestic. And I thought they meant immigrants based on this person and what they say very publicly, but they actually meant President Trump because they were so worried about the encroachment on the Fort fourth Amendment, which protects people against unreasonable search and seizures, and the First Amendment. As more people were having their social media surged for speaking out against Trump, even if they were legally in the United States, that there really became this quiet resistance within dhs. And I spoke to another woman who had a long career in the military and at DHS who told me she believes she was fired because of an incident where she did not call immigrants scumbags. In a press release, she was actually walked out of DHS with all of her things in a box with armed guards. And she says that it's because she asked in a meeting when she was about to call immigrants scumbags. What if we're wrong? What about if the people we've arrested aren't in fact the gang members we say they are? Remember, there was a lot of emphasis on people who could be members of Train Day Aragua about a year ago. What if we're wrong? What if we don't have all of that? And those were the kind of people who were silenced and were pushed out of dhs. And so what that left was a cadre of people who said yes. And what all of this amounted to is what we saw starting in Los Angeles this summer and ending in Minneapolis this winter. All of that because they didn't have the people left saying, what if we're wrong?

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[Rachel Maddow]

Let me stick with you on this point for a little bit because this is actually, I think, a really important takeaway from your reporting. I mean, there's what happened in the administration, what has been motivating them, what drove the policy and the way the policy evolved. You're portraying that in a way that I don't think anybody else has been able to portray that before. And I'm really interested in that. But this piece that you're talking about right now is also really important. And that incident you're talking about, you're bathing your kids, getting them ready to go to bed, and you get this dramatic encrypted text from a person who you describe as a relatively senior person in the administration, who publicly is a real Trump loyalist. They essentially send you this text describing the president as a domestic enemy of the Constitution. Do you know whether there was a specific catalyst for that or a specific scandal or issue or policy that drove that person? Also, do you know if that person ever did anything other than sending you this alarming text to try to assuage their own conscience on this?

[Julia Ainsley]

Well, I can tell you that this person is still in the administration and very much still with dhs. But that aside, the, the context around this was this May meeting. There are really three flashpoints of anger that drove most of the policies that we saw come out of this administration. And this was after the third flashpoint. It's in mid May. It's after Trump's first 100 days in office. And they are nowhere near the numbers they need if they're gonna get a million in a year, if they're going to even beat Obama's deportation record of 435,000 in a year. And I get into why Obama did have that record for some policies from that era. And Miller is angry. And so he calls all of ICE leadership together in Washington, reams them out, says they need to start arresting 3,000 people a day or people are going to start to be fired. And he's going to start with the field office leaders of those performing in the bottom 10%. Kristi Noem is in. She introduces Corey Levandowski, her right hand man, and says, this is Corey, he'll rip your face off. This is the kind of rhetoric that was in DHS at that time. It was a time they wanted to instill fear on the workforce and then have that workforce, of course, instill fear in the country because they were worried that if we can't arrest our way out of this, maybe we can, as you pointed out, put people into such a state of fear that they might self deport and then we'll count those as deportation numbers as well. And so this was someone who was walking out of a meeting like that, who was really worried that this issue of immigration that was seen as such a political asset was actually going to be much costlier in the end. And someone who even went on the record at this exact same time was Tom Homan, who told me he worried. This was in June, right when la, right when we saw the enforcement, the raids in the garment district get started. He said, I worry with the direction we're going now, and he meant just arresting people with no criminal records. I worry we could lose the faith of the American people. That's Tom Homan. I never thought I would hear Tom Homan say something like that to me on the record. And now we've seen him step into this role where he wants to focus on the worst of the worst as they're going forward. But at the time, really under Kristi Noem and under the leadership with Corey Lewandowski with her too, there was such a moment of wanting to instill fear and to try to strip away rights of immigrants who were here both legally and illegally, that I think there were some people who thought, I don't know what to do but talk to the media about this.

[Rachel Maddow]

And there's, you know, there's that incident that you talk about, there's the press officer who you just mentioned who gets forced out of the job because she's refusing to call immigrants scumbags without, I mean, I don't know what evidence proves someone is literally a scumbag. That's a little weird. But without having some reason to make that sort of a disparaging comment. There's also a lawyer who you describe who's involved in training ICE recruits, who tells you that if a federal agent is going to break somebody's car window, they need to have a warrant before they do that. That person is then removed from their job for having told you that thing. The reason I wanted to sort of stack all these together, Julia, is because I feel like over this past 15 months or so, like in an agency like DOJ, when we have seen so many people forced out, when there have been so many principled conflicts, when people have been fired or resign because they wouldn't do something that they couldn't stomach, essentially from what higher ups in the Trump administration were telling them to do, there's been, at least in some cases, kind of a lot of cases, people sort of jumping to the other side, becoming defense attorneys for people who Trump was persecuting, or becoming officially a whistleblower, or doing revealing interviews about what they were asked to do and what they think is wrong, or joining organizations that are helping other people who are being forced out on matters of conscience. We're seeing that in places like doj. And I feel like when it's happening at Homeland Security and your reporting is the place, I've seen more about this than anywhere else, I feel like there isn't sort of a similar tide of people who wouldn't do it, who felt, who felt like it was wrong, who felt like they had to go, or who were pushed out for not being a team player, who then decided to become a truth teller and let us all know what's happening. I mean, there's. There's some, but there isn't. That doesn't seem like there's that same culture of trying to get right with the American people about what's happening. Is that fair or is that just my sort of perception from outside this the closest of the reporting that you've had?

[Julia Ainsley]

I think that is fair. And I think you're right to mention that professor who was training, who was doing training in Georgia, and I asked the question, what about breaking car windows? Because it was happening in Chicago over and over again. Someone wouldn't open a car door and they would smash a window. And he said, you can't do it without reasonable suspicion. This person is an illegal immigrant. And also, you need a warrant before entering someone's personal space. And he was reassigned that very day for that. But when you look at DOJ versus dhs, and I've covered both of those agencies, I think there's a real difference here in what these employees are paid. And I think we can't look past that. Someone who is an attorney is getting paid at a different level than someone who is out on the streets making arrest with ice, first of all. So there are a lot of people who say, I need this job. And then there are retirements that people feel that they want to stick with so they can get their pensions. I heard that be brought up again and again that they want to make it to a certain point so they can retire. You could argue about whether or not that is a morally acceptable thing or not, but there are some financial reasons why people felt that they needed to stick with this. But I will say just based on the people that I've spoken to, people at DOJ who were in the Office of Immigration Litigation who felt that they had to leave, people at DHS who did eventually stand up and say, no, we can't call immigrants scumbags, or people like Caleb Vitello. And there's a lot about Caleb Vitello in the book, and we can get into that. He was the first ICE director who pushed back. Back on a master plan for deportations that he thought went too far and was reassigned for that. There is a quiet resistance with inside DHS that I think a lot of people are not aware of.

[Rachel Maddow]

Hmm. Well, let's talk a little bit about the. In terms of the pushback, talk a little bit. Sort of explain what happened with Guantanamo. They had this plan that they wanted to put tons of immigrants at Guantanamo. We saw early on them using military aircraft, really trying to not just use military assets and military contracting techniques is another thing that you talk about that's really important here. But really they wanted the trappings of the military, and they liked the idea of it seeming like there was essentially sort of a wartime action or wartime sort of feel, at least a wartime look to their actions against immigrants. How did that fall apart in terms of their plans at Guantanamo?

[Julia Ainsley]

Well, there were two reasons they wanted to use military assets both at Guantanamo and to detain immigrants inside the United States. One is the fear factor that you mentioned is much scarier to deport someone to Guantanamo and on a military aircraft. The other is the vast amounts of money that they get through defense contracts. And I get into this much more broadly with a whole chapter in the book. But basically there wasn't enough money in ICE's coffers. But if they could tap in to DOD, they could get more money. And one of the ways this first came to fruition was with this idea that Trump wanted to put 30,000 immigrants at Guantanamo Bay. Well, there is a place at Guantanamo Bay that does hold migrants. It's usually people interdicted at sea if they're trying to flee Haiti, most typically, and they could hold about 200 people. And they were in bad need of repairs. So what they did instead was they tried to build tent Facilities outside the existing prisons for suspected terrorists. I've been to them. It's very hot there. They did not have access to running water, air conditioning in these tents, and they built them anyway. But I mentioned Caleb Vitello, and actually, I think had it not been for Caleb Vitello throwing sand in the gears, the Guantanamo plan may have gone, gotten off the ground. I don't think they could have gotten to 30,000, but I think it could have gone much further. What he did is he got a message from a person very close to Stephen Miller, his name is Tony Salisbury, who said, miller wants you to send a thousand people to Guantanamo to go ahead and get this started, make good on the President's plan. As you know, Trump likes to act very soon after he announces something. And Vitello thought, there is no way we can do this. He tried to reason with people from the Pentagon about why this wasn't safe, how they had the capacity to detain the immigrants they were arresting at that point within the United States. But he could not. They could not take no for an answer. So he started to send down basically small numbers of people, like 6, 7, I think he got to 10 of people who needed a lot of medication, who didn't speak Spanish or many other languages that would be easily spoken down there, and really tried to make it the hardest group of people they could possibly have down there. And it was this quiet way of not saying no, but to making sure was a policy that was not going to go forward. And then soon the complaints started to come back from the military personnel in Guantanamo that this was not going to work out. And this was one of the first strikes against Caleb Vitello that did eventually lose him the job of ICE director.

[Rachel Maddow]

Wow. Essentially forcing the proof that this policy was impractical, that it couldn't. That it couldn't work, and having the sort of. Sort of bureaucratic, administrative know how to be able to assemble that kind of a response. Response.

[Julia Ainsley]

That's right. I mean, the point that we make, that I make over and over again in this book, is sort of no matter how you feel about immigration, some people think that anyone who's here illegally should be deported. Some people think anyone who crosses the border should be able to have the right to stay here, no matter their asylum case, no matter what you think. This was very expensive. It cost 10 times the amount to fly people to Guantanamo on a military plane than it would to deport them on one of the charter planes back to their home country. And it was a vast expansion of Executive power through this, what Trump thought was an asset for him. So regardless of whether or not Trump personally felt that he wanted to deport 1 million in a year, he knew that with this issue because he had so much power behind it. And Miller thought the same thing, that they could do things like allow ICE officers to profile people in the street based on their characteristics, not based on crimes they had committed. They could do things like enter a home without a judge, judicial warrant, a violation of the Fourth Amendment. They could do things like go after foreign students and start looking at their social media and try to find an underlying crime after that so that they could revoke their student visas. So what I tell people is, no matter how you feel about immigration, if you're worried about an expansion of executive power, you should read this book to understand just how far this went and that these were the seeds that were sown for the flashbang that booms that we saw throughout the summer.

[Rachel Maddow]

Julia, how has the flip side of that manifested inside the administration? Because you're describing how they thought they could do all these things. They thought they could cross all these lines. They thought they could rush over the edge of the cliff in terms of what not just the Constitution allows, but what people commonly understand the Constitution to allow to do all sorts of things that engendered incredible or that catalyzed incredible pushback. I mean, how does the public blowback, the plummeting polling on this stuff register within the administration? I've always wondered, for example, if it could undermine or affect the position of Stephen Miller, who has been, as you document, the author of these radically unpopular policies that really have politically hurt the president, that have galvanized the opposition. How did they ingest the pushback and the resistance and how unpopular this stuff is?

[Julia Ainsley]

Well, let me take you to June 6th of 2025, and I was interviewing Lee Galler, who I believe, you know, he's been on your show many times. He's represented immigrants back from family separation. And really through all of these lawsuits, the Alien Enemies act that took people to the seacot prison in El Salvador. And at that point, this is just the day ICE is going into LA and Border Patrol is going into la. At that point, these protests that you have that you're showing on your show, Rachel, they really hadn't materialized yet. And he just said, I can't get the American to care about this the way they cared about family separation. We don't have that resistance yet. And it was such incredible timing, because as we spoke, the first protests were beginning, and it was something that Stephen Miller and others at the White House really categorized as radical leftists. You can go back and look at exactly what they said, what Caroline Levitt said at the time, that they were radical leftists. But something happened as you move from Los Angeles to Chicago to Charlotte, New Orleans, and then of course, in Minneapolis with the fatal shootings of two American citizens, where inside the White House, there was a thought that maybe we've gone too far. And especially if the American people can't trust us at our word, when the statements that were coming out about those shootings didn't align with what the American public could see in the videos. And that was the major catalyst that changed it. But I will say this, Rachel. Yes, there was some internalization, there was some processing of those lessons. Stephen Miller still has his daily call with everybody at dhs, encouraging them to them to pick up the fight and go out and arrest people. But Mark Wayne Mullen, the new head of dhs, is saying he wants to take a much softer approach. He wants to talk about the criminals they're arresting, not the others. I just spoke to someone this week, an ICE official who said they're still arresting about 1600, 1700 people a day. That's incredibly high. They're using really high tech programs to target the immigrants they want to target. They're still holding people in detention without bond. And, and as this person told me that they think that if midterms go well for Republicans, this will surge back up again because they think that that will give them an endorsement of these policies.

[Rachel Maddow]

Julia, what do you think is going to happen with these warehouse prison prisons that they have tried to stand up? And it has been a remarkable thing to see in red states, blue states, rural areas, all sorts of places that you might expect to potentially be on board with this, at least in theory, as Trump supporting areas everywhere they've tried to put one of these Trump warehouse prison camps for immigrants, there's been pushback. And as you know, none of these new warehouse facilities has opened. What do you think is gonna happen with that over time? I was struck in reading your book that it seems like the warehouse project was part and parcel of something that you described as essentially being originating with Noem and Lewandowski, who are now gone, that everything should be government owned and operated, that there shouldn't be leased charter aircraft, for example, there should be government owned and operated ICE Air and they should buy all the planes, that there shouldn't be private prison corporations or anybody else contracting to stand up or operate these detention Centers that it should be all ICE owned, Homeland Security owned facilities. And that's part of what drove them purchasing these warehouse sites. That overall approach is sort of associated with Noam and Lewandowski. And now they've been forced out and Mullen wants to do something somewhat different. What do you see happening with those warehouse facilities?

[Julia Ainsley]

Well, for now, Mullen has put a hold on new purchasing or new construction. In other words, that they've already purchased them to outfit them to hold immigrants for immigration detention. That doesn't mean they won't revisit it. There's a big question about what do you do now that the government has spent all of this money? I've been to that facility in Williamsport, Maryland. I spoke to some of the protesters. That shot right there is actually very hard to get because our drone couldn't get high enough to get that entire building in there. That is how massive it is. I'm very impressed with those with those shots there. But you can also see windows at the top. There's no space for outdoor recreation. These are things that brick and mortar detention contractors who operate the detention space know that they have to provide in order to be compliant with long standing federal court settlements about how you treat immigrants in detention because it is not supposed to be punitive. And in fact ICE still has that on their website. But yes, this idea came about. I was actually the first to report on the idea of the warehouses last fall. I was speaking to someone and they were just going through the list of everything they were trying and they said something about buying up giant warehouses. And I thought, come again? And now this is the policy that actually went forward. But what this really came from was a desire by Lewandowski, by Noam, again to bring everything in house and to do some really unorthodox approaches to detention. It's the same thinking behind Guantanamo Bay. It's the same thinking between Guantanamo Plan B, which is to build this massive tent facility in Fort Bliss, Texas outside of El Paso, which has also been the host of a whole slew of problems, including several deaths. It's the same reason why we have state run facilities that are being reimbursed by fema, starting with Alligator Alcatraz. These warehouses were the latest iteration of that. And contractors who have this space said that they had 10,000 beds that they could turn on in a second if they got the money from DHS to hold immigrants in places that have typically housed immigrants. But Noam Lewandowski wanted time and time again to go a different route, to come up with their own ideas and in some cases come up with things that would be seen as the most punitive as possible, which is, of course, why you would be looking at a warehouse like that and talking about a place like Alligator Alcatraz.

[Rachel Maddow]

I'm going to ask you a question that is not a question I would typically ask because I tend to try to stay out of the mean girls internal fights among administration people. Just like I'm allergic to that stuff. It's not my thing. I realize there's like, there's a lot of drama to mine among the personal relationships between these people. But because of what you just described and because of the detailed reporting on how personal, personal, some of these worst, to my mind, worst policy decisions were and how much Noam and Lewandowski, like you, can, you can really trace a lot of the most deliberately outrageous decisions specifically to those types of preferences that you just described from them as people. I have to ask mean girls question, how did Corey Lewandowski last that long? It seems like he does not have a friend in the world, not at Homeland Security, certainly not at the important Homeland Security contractors who are narcing them out essentially for demanding kickbacks and payments to go with their contracts, as you reported, and certainly not at the White House where, as you report, Stephen Miller himself said, no, no, no, Corey Lewandowski, you cannot be the chief of staff of the Homeland Security Department. And you were, you write about sort of getting consistent reporting over time about how much the White House wanted him out. I mean, how do you, how did he stay that long? I mean, I realize he's out now, but it does seem crazy.

[Julia Ainsley]

Well, I guess I have to differentiate between the White House and the man in charge. And for a long time, Corey Levandowski showed loyalty to President Trump. He was his campaign manager. In 2016. He was able to come back with a new life as a second life in politics after he attached himself to then Governor Kristi Noem in South Dakota and when she was nominated to, to come back and run dhs, it was well known he was at Mar a Lago during those transition conversations. It was well known he was going to be running it with her. But it really did raise concerns among people at dhs, political and career people who had spent their careers at DHS and weren't tied to any political party as well as those who were very loyal to Trump. They were worried about his influence there. And in fact, we get into this in the book very early on, right after Corey Lewandowski came in as this special government employee and started sitting in meetings and these big decisions without actually being in a Senate confirmed position or on the payroll. There were people who got together at a private home in Washington to talk about their concerns, what they could do, to speak out if they had problems with him and with their relationship. And the meeting lasted six hours. And at the end, these people walk out of this home basically with their heads down. And they kept them there for the rest of the year because they realized that, rumor or not, the idea, the perception that they were in a relationship was enough to really have real policy implications. And that people felt that they couldn't speak out against Corey Lewandowski if there was even an inkling that he was in a relationship with the boss.

[Rachel Maddow]

And so they then decided not to. I mean, it's just, it is a. I mean, you have, you have some portraits of heroism in this book, Julia, but some also just absolutely craven portraits of what I would describe as cowardice. I have one last thing that I want to ask you about, which is you mentioned on the military contracting, the efforts by private companies, private individuals to try to tap a sort of motherload of funding for this stuff. And we have seen your book sort of ends with the one big beautiful bill and the tens of billions of dollars massively upscaling the size of, of these troubled and dysfunctional and scandalous agencies, and with all the implications for what that means for the rest of Trump's term. But you have a very disturbing chapter early in the book about a company or a proposed company, a special purpose vehicle called 2 USV. This is Erik Prince of Blackwater fame, a program that he proposes to the White House, wherein he would essentially stand up a private paramilitary force of 10,000, basically mostly untrained deputies, civilian deputies, and 2,000 lawyers and paralegals to, to, to arrest and deport 6 million people a year. This is a, this is a science fiction, dystopian, science fiction sort of proposal. What do you know about what, what can you explain to our audience about that proposal, about why Erik Prince had the confidence that this was the right time and the right place to pitch that sort of thing, and whether that proposal is, in fact, dead?

[Julia Ainsley]

Well, when I reached out to Erik Prince and to the White House, neither of them commented about this reporting. But I held the document in my hand and I felt that it was important to include in the book because it shows how people were clamoring for these contracts at this time, and it shows what people thought they needed to include to get a head turned, to get Some attention from this White House. He spends a lot of the proposal talking about how immigrants are a drain on the social safety net, how they're more likely to bring diseases, a lot of things that some people could define as racist toward the people who are coming over the border. And I scratched my head when I saw it because I thought, Erik Prince of Blackwater, what do defense contractors want to do with ICE? At that point, the budget was just $9 billion a year. It has since grown to $75 billion a year. They are the richest federal law enforcement agency. But I called a source of mine who spent time both in ICE and in the military, and he said, I know exactly why Erik Prince and people he works with would want in on this. And that's because of something called wexmax and logcap. And those sound very boring government acronyms. But they. These government contracts through the Defense Department that are ongoing, they're just billions of dollars that are sitting out there with contractors already tied to them, so that if the United States needs to defend itself in a pinch, these contractors are already given the green light. They're vetted. They know what they're going to do, and that happens. That's why that exists for dod. And so if you pull that kind of money and that kind of guarantee into a DHS policy, you open the floodgates to an enormous amount of money. And that's why people like Erik Prince were wanting to get in on this piece of it. And I think what we later saw become of that, and it didn't go to Erik Prince, but it later became what is still a sprawling tent city in El Paso, Texas, just outside of El Paso and Fort Bliss. And Todd Lyons, the outgoing ICE director, said that they are now referring to the FBI, a case that was previously ruled as su suicide there by an immigrant, which is now being looked into as possible homicide. And there was even a death during the construction of the place. The contracts went out and got pulled back two or three times. It really became an incredibly messy business to try to mix the military and dhs.

[Rachel Maddow]

Yeah. And that. And there was so many red flags as soon as we found out they were doing that, that there was this contractor getting a billion dollar contract or whatever it was to set up that tent city. A contractor that had never done anything like contractor based in a home in suburban Virginia, didn't even have any sort of.

[Julia Ainsley]

They did toilets for Bonnaroo. Yeah.

[Rachel Maddow]

Yes, exactly. Exactly. And then instantly they start having infectious disease outbreaks and deaths. And as you say, what's now being referred to as a murder. And I will just augment what you just said about the weirdness of that Erik Prince proposal to what you just described. I'm just quoting to you from your own Book, page 60. It suggested that the proposal for doing this suggested Biden's goal to collapse the welfare state under the burden of immigration so that the country would have to move toward communism because, quote, if the financial strain forces a significant curtailment of public services, it could coalesce a voting bloc which favors socialism or communism. So the way that you got this sort of radical proposal to turn heads, as you say in the Trump administration, was to say that it was part of Joe Biden's secret commune plot to turn America into a totalitarian communist state and otherwise, you know, I mean, who, who could take issue with that? Julia Ainslie, this is a remarkable book. As you said, this is a, it is a short book. It is a very fast read and it is absolutely crammed with hardcore hard news reporting about stuff that is very present and very right now. Congratulations on this. You're going to win a bunch of awards for this, Julia, and I hope it sells a, a gazillion copies.

[Julia Ainsley]

Thank you so much, Rachel. It's great to be on with you.

[Rachel Maddow]

Really appreciate it. Undue process the inside story of Trump's mass deportation program.

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