← Runaway Country with Alex Wagner
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- [00:01]
Alex Wagner
Runaway country is brought to you by Mosh. The older I get, and it's pretty old, the more I find myself wanting to be more intentional about the way I live and eat and take care of my body. The old adage, you are what you eat rings quite true to all of us in the modern day. And I'm always looking for an on the go protein snack that satisfies me, but now I found one that helps me live intentionally as well. Mosh Bars Mosh, which you may have heard about on Oprah's Favorite Things, was founded by Maria Shriver and her son Patrick Schwarzenegger with a very simple mission to create a conversation about brain health through food, education and research. Maria's father suffered from Alzheimer's and since then she and Patrick have dedicated themselves to finding ways to help other families dealing with this debilitating disease. MASH joined forces with the world's top scientists and functional nutritionists to to go beyond your average protein bar. Each mosh bar is made with ingredients that support brain health like ashwagandha, lion's mane, collagen and omega 3s, plus a game changing brain boosting ingredient that you will not find in any other bar. I mean, but also, how many bars are you eating that have lion's mane in them? Right? I like them because you pop them in your bag, which is very easy when you're running around all the time and you get get your protein and also get some lion's mane for your brain. I know I keep saying lion's mane but like really, if someone gave me the opportunity to eat more lion's mane, I would put it in something. I'll take it. If you want to find ways to give back to others and fuel your body and your brain, Mosh bars are the perfect choice for you. Head to moshlife.com Alex to save 20% off plus free shipping on the best sellers trial pack or the new plant based trial pack. That's 20% off plus free shipping on either the best sellers trial pack or or the plant based trial pack at m o s h l-I f e.com Alex thank you Mosh for sponsoring this episode. We know that you're here because you care about democracy and that smart conversations are important to you. It is not enough to just be outraged. And that is why we wanna give you a heads up about a show from our friends over at the Bulwark that we think you'd appreciate. It is called the Next Level. I listen to this podcast all the time and I love it Every week, the Bulwarks Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller and Jonathan Vil AKA jvl. If you know, you know they come together for a smart and snarky conversation about what is going on in politics. This is a sharp group of people whose backgrounds and politics are different, but they do tend to agree on the big stuff. The joke might be it's like two gay former Republicans and a Catholic commie walk into a bar. Okay, JVL is not quite a commie, but like us here at Crooked, they believe this country deserves more candid political discussions. Tim, Sarah and JVL break down the biggest stories of the week. With a ton of experience, no bullshit and clear thinking, the Next Level comes out on Tuesdays. So you go follow it wherever you get your podcasts and it is also on YouTube at the Bulwark Channel. It is worth your time. Hi everyone. Welcome to another week of total mayhem. American streets are a place of fear and violence, but we are also making inconceivably bad moves even beyond our borders.
- [03:19]
Jacob Soboroff
How far are you willing to go to acquire Greenland?
- [03:22]
Donald Trump
You'll find out this week.
- [03:23]
Alex Wagner
President Trump's plan to get Greenland has ushered in the end of the transatlantic alliance, the end to a rules based international order, and the beginning of a European realignment towards China. The old rules are dead. Sovereign land grabs are now American foreign policy and a homegrown gestapo is our domestic policy.
- [03:45]
Mark Brulee
We as law enforcement community have been receiving endless complaints about civil rights violations in our streets from US citizens. What we're hearing is they're being stopped in traffic stops or on the street with no cause and being forced to demand paperwork to determine if they are here legally. As this went on over the past two weeks, we started hearing from our police officers the same complaints as they fell victim to this while off duty. Every one of these individuals is a person of color who has had this happen to them.
- [04:25]
Alex Wagner
That was the police chief of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. His name is Mark Brulee. Announcing publicly that his own police officers are being targeted by the ICE agents who have invaded that state. The rest of the country has seen people being dragged from their cars, protesters being punched on the street, toddlers being hit with tear gas, and the public officials speaking out against all of this. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry and Minnesota Governor Tim Walls. They are being targeted with subpoenas from the Trump Justice Department. But less seen in this terrifying new America, less known is is what happens after that. And it is no less dark. People are dying in ICE custody. They are being sent to countries where they have never lived where they don't speak the language and where their lives are very much at risk. Most people have no idea what it means to actually get deported in Trump's America. And Donald Trump very much wants it to stay that way. I'm Alex Wagner. And this week on Runaway Country. What happens after the phone cameras stop rolling? What goes on inside ICE detention once nobody's around to protest? And what can be done to resist a system that seems so fundamentally at odds with American values and the US Constitution? To sort through all of that, I will be joined by Ms. Now political and national reporter. My friend Jacob Soboroff, who covered family separation under the first Trump administration, who is on the streets of Minnesota this week and whose new book, Firestorm, about the devastating fires in Los Angeles last January, makes connections to immigration that you might never have actually expected. But first, what happens when someone gets arrested by ice? And can anyone stop this madness? I spoke with David Wilson, an immigration attorney based in Minneapolis. Here's our conversation. So, David, first of all, thank you for taking some time to chat. Give me a sense of how your law firm is managing the moment. I mean, what's the caseload been like since ICE came to town? And how many people is your firm representing who have been detained by ICE.
- [06:45]
David Wilson
Since the first of the year? We have already filed 100 habeas actions. Wow. Our call volume increased from maybe 80 to 40, 90 calls a day. On January 5th, it was 560. And it hasn't been less than that since then.
- [07:04]
Alex Wagner
Wow.
- [07:05]
David Wilson
So we're struggling to keep up. We're trying to help as many people as we can, but the number of people reaching out in pure panic is just overwhelming. And a lot of the people who are panicking are people who shouldn't. They're citizens, they're residents. There are people going to school. They're just, the presence of law enforcement in this scale is really just intimidating a lot of people. And they're making sure that what do I do if I interact with someone, how, if they don't believe I'm a citizen, for example? I get that call at least 10 times a day. Questions that I have been doing this for a long time, questions that I never thought I'd have to answer. I'm spending a lot of times answering and reaffirming for people. Look, you're, you're okay. And if you have any risks, there's someone who is going to help you. But it's, boy, it's, it's a lot. It's a Lot.
- [08:04]
Alex Wagner
Can I just ask, when you say you're getting 500 to 600 calls a day, like, what is that? How do you manage that? And what do you say to people? I mean, I'm assuming you don't have the manpower, woman power to manage all those cases. How do you. I mean, I guess how do you let people down and say, we can't handle your case?
- [08:22]
David Wilson
Well, we saw some of this coming. We could watch what was happening in other cities. And so we thought through some of our strategies for how to screen for who we can help, who we can't. Essentially, like a triage, like an emergency room. You had to prioritize who you can help, who you can't. And so we're pretty good at determining right away, all right, we can help this person. This person. We can't let them know and, you know, tell the family. So they don't spend money on someone, you know, recklessly. We can't. And we don't think they should. We're always very clear on that, whether they should spend money or not. But there is a limit. I mean, there. Yesterday we had 15 calls at 6 o' clock that we're still screening through. And so some of us were here until 9 o' clock at night. Getting back to people. I was calling someone at 10:30 last night to let them know that their family member's gonna get released in Oklahoma. Then I was dealing with the U.S. attorney's office at 11:15 who are writing me because they're still trying to keep up as well, trying to resolve a case. So it's been, it's. I mean, it's an important mission. We're not shying away from it, but, boy, is it exhausting.
- [09:35]
Alex Wagner
Yeah, and I would assume it's meant it's both mentally and emotionally exhausting to be dealing with all of this chaos.
- [09:41]
David Wilson
It is so much. There's so much pressure to, you know, help people, you know, who are. Especially when, you know people. It's really hard to appreciate when someone just literally disappears. You can't reach them, you can't find them. You can maybe see for a little while where their phone is, reporting where they are, if they got phone tracking on, or find my phone operating. But once that goes away and you know that they're somewhere flying around the country and it may take three or four days for them to show up, the families go into sure, pure panic mode. And you feel for them because a lot of times it's fathers. A lot of fathers get detained and a lot of them are my age, several have medical issues. And so we're constantly asked, how can I get my dad's medication to someone so he doesn't have issues with his ongoing, I have one now, his ongoing prostate cancer treatment. We're trying to get meds because they don't want to go backwards. They were close to the end of a chem cycle. We've got diabetics, high cholesterol, heart medications, all kinds of medical issues that the family's just desperate. Like, they're not even worried about getting someone out. They're worried about just keeping them alive. And so there's a lot of pressure to resolve that too, while trying to lawyer the moment, not social work the moment, and move forward with litigating the release of someone.
- [11:09]
Alex Wagner
You're talking about this phenomenon that the administration is pursuing robustly, which is taking people from Minnesota out of state. Can you talk a little bit more about that practice and, you know, sort of what's happening here? I mean, you're, as a lawyer, I would assume you want to keep them in state where you know where they are, you can communicate with them. You know, you can work within the, you know, the judges that I'm sure you know, in Minnesota. I mean, talk to me a little bit about the implications legally of disappearing someone to another part of the country.
- [11:43]
David Wilson
Well, so I call it the witching hour now. It's the hour where we think the flight is going to take off to El Paso. And so if someone's detained in the morning, we try desperately to file something before 4 o' clock because we want to try to establish at least jurisdiction here over the case rather than having to chase the case around the country and end up with different judges that we aren't familiar with. Maybe the schedule changed three or four times in the meantime of the case. You know, sometimes someone will end up in El Paso. Two days later, they'll end up in New Mexico. We've had them bounced out Oklahoma. They're kind of spreading out. Once they get to one location, often it's temporary. And so for us, what we're trying to deal with is you have, you know, 3,000 plus agents here locally on a population that's pretty concentrated. The immigrant community in the Twin Cities is, you know, pretty easy to isolate locally. And they're just inundating them. You may even, during this recording, might hear whistles outside my window because I'm at a major intersection. You hear them sometimes.
- [12:54]
Alex Wagner
And the whistles for people who don't know, are frequently blown by citizens who are Trying to protect people from detention by signaling ICE is in town, using their whistle.
- [13:04]
David Wilson
Right. And we have three or four daycares on our street. So there are a lot of parents who are, you know, really upset that ICE is coming outside of their, you know, the schools and arresting their teachers in front of the kids and, you know, kind of terrorizing them. So the parents are volunteering. They do essentially the equivalent of ICE school guard. You just see some phenomenal response from the community in response to it. But what we, you know, so the challenge really is first and foremost, keeping up with someone before they move. If they go to the local ICE office at Fort Snelling, that building is not designed as an ICE detention facility. It's a multipurpose government military building. The VA is in there. There's other military offices in there. So ICE's capacity to detain is really just two really large rooms. So they're just filling it to capacity. So their people are spilling over all day long. It's gotten to the point now where they can't even process people here. They're detaining them. They're taking them out of state to process them and then sometimes bringing them back to possibly detain them here if they're going to bring them back, or they're going to leave them wherever they ended up being that day. So we had someone just, in the last 24 hours, go to Central California, get interviewed by an ICE officer. But he put in the system, was flown right back, and now sitting in jail here. Yeah, it's so inefficient. I mean, there's so many things wrong with this. From a taxpayer standpoint, people should be enraged at the waste.
- [14:39]
Alex Wagner
In many respects, that's insane.
- [14:42]
David Wilson
Yeah.
- [14:44]
Alex Wagner
I mean, I'm enraged when I read. I want to talk about detention because you mentioned medical concerns. I mean, on NBC on Monday, NBC reported that a third immigrant detainee, a third one, has died at Camp East Montana on Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. Right. You're talking about trying to prevent people from getting deported down to or transferred down to El Paso. That is the third death at that detention center in 44 days. I new to the statistics of people dying in detention, but that seems like very high. And we know that one of those deaths has been ruled a homicide. Can you talk to me about what you've heard about the conditions inside these detention centers?
- [15:21]
David Wilson
People? I mean, so. Yes, but the one in Montana, Camp Montana is special. It's a special. Awful. People, you know, are essentially in a tent city in the middle of winter, it may be Texas, but it's not that warm. And they're just so many people. And down there, a person may get a phone call with a loved one, but they're capped at two minutes, and it may take three or four days. In between calls, attorneys are just desperately trying to reach their clients and have meetings with them. You can't get any communication in and out of that facility. When we often have clients who are really ordered released by federal judges. I have several today. I'm tracking them down. We're four or five days from when the judge had said, release this person. And U.S. attorney's office here in Minneapolis can't get someone in the federal government down there to release them.
- [16:19]
Alex Wagner
What? Why? Because there's. There's no communication.
- [16:22]
David Wilson
Chaos. It's chaos. There's just. Because they're just. They're just putting so many people in one location so fast that they don't have time to process them. They don't even know half don't have case numbers yet, and they keep entering their information wrong. They often will miss. They'll get a spelling wrong in the name or they'll get the country of birth wrong. So it makes it very hard to find people. So the conditions there are terrible. The management of the facility seems to be just absent. There's just no rhyme or reason as to why the conditions are the way they are. And, you know, the cynic in me says, well, that's part of the game.
- [17:04]
Alex Wagner
It's done by design. Yeah. And so I feature not a bug.
- [17:08]
David Wilson
Yeah, it's. Well, it's. It's part of the. It's adding pressure in the crucible. And this, with this moment really is meant to be, is to squeeze people and to give them to surrender and, you know, do what the administration wants. And that's. They're hoping people will crack. And some people do. They. They work. They're desperate to get out of there. That's so awful. Jesus.
- [17:29]
Alex Wagner
What happens if you have a medical condition? You mentioned people who have diabetes or they're going through the last round of chemo for prostate cancer. What's their. I mean, if they don't know, if they're not recording where they're from and they're not getting their names right, and they can't even release them when they've been ordered by a judge to do so, I assume that means their medication gets lost in the mix as well.
- [17:47]
David Wilson
Oh, we're panicked about people with any serious medical issues because we have no way of knowing that there's adequate, even adequate screening. Most of these detention facilities have very limited medical staff. The ICE does have an obligation to provide medical care. They're the custodian of the person. Just like any state facility, they're obligated and if they don't, it could be medical malpractice by the physician who's ever taken care of the OR has the contract. But given the volume and the unfamiliarity that these doctors would have with someone who's just showing up and suddenly having to give medication for someone who's got 20 years worth of history, that's just, it's not happening. There's no way it's happening.
- [18:34]
Alex Wagner
So we're gonna see more deaths. I mean, it just seems like numerically if you have no system by which they can get life saving medication and you have an excess of people and a shortage of doctors and no information and a completely chaotic, dysfunctional system, that's a recipe for more people dying.
- [18:48]
David Wilson
I mean this situation is frankly ripe for a human tragedy over and over again.
- [18:55]
Alex Wagner
What recourse do people have if they've been mistreated in detention?
- [19:00]
David Wilson
I mean, I think the challenge is identifying who did the mistreatment. And then if they, if they get out, because that's part of the challenge, they have to be here to do something about it, then they could always pursue a claim of the Federal Torture Claim Act. But the ICE officers though do have a very high level of immunity. Not absolute immunity as necessarily as the government seems to suggest these days, but it's just accountability is always a challenge in detention facilities. And that's been the case for 30 years, is that, you know, you have an agency will say that, well, this person started the fight and they were just intervening or this, you know, there's always something that's put back on a third party, if not the person who's making the complaint. And the officers are just angels. That's how they portray them. And so they're there doing some kind of biblical intervention, but really what they're doing is putting people in chokeholds and shackles and not letting them move for hours on end and terrible food and food maybe not appropriate either culturally or medically for people either. And so accountability is going, is a big issue. And I don't know that there's an easy answer for that. I think at some point you'd hope Congress would start really supervising a little more. But if it feeds the narrative of the current administration, I don't know that accountability is going to come to the table anytime soon.
- [20:34]
Alex Wagner
Feels like, we're going to really have to have a truth and reconciliation committee in like 10 years that get through all the foot phone footage and look at, get firsthand testimony, because Lord knows it doesn't feel like there's any accountability right now. Let me just ask you one kind of big picture question because, I mean, you're a lawyer, you went to law school, you've been this game for longer than the Trump administration has been engaged in a campaign of mass deportation. What does it feel like to be a lawyer and see the legal system so perverted or at least handicapped in this, you know, the, the, the firing of immigration judges. We talked to a newly fired immigration judge. The system, they are trying to inject chaos into the system, trying to make the lives of the most vulnerable harder and maybe deny them constitutional rights. There's just a brutality in this hour that feels pretty unique. I wonder how you look at all of it and how you sort of go about each day.
- [21:31]
David Wilson
I think there's, I kind of take two, take a deep breath usually. But I take into perspective that as much as the administration has tried rewriting the rules on a lot of things, you know, denying women who have been suffered horrific violence related to their gender, trying to wipe out all their asylum claims en masse by changing the standards randomly making detention much harder to get secured or released. Excuse me, for someone secure because they keep changing the bond rules, those things are incredibly frustrating. And it's completely, completely so obviously political. And so there are days when, I mean, my colleague and I were just talking about we need to make a scream room in our office so we could just let it out. But as a lawyer, there are moments though, too, I get reminded the honor of being a lawyer, and which is going into a federal court before a real judge who doesn't care about the politics, but does care about the law not being followed. And when you see the judges react to what they can see as completely ignoring the letter of the law and then having an administration daring to not follow their direction, and then the rebuke that comes out of that, that's when I realize that's why I enjoy being a lawyer, because there's accountability. If we can't get it from Congress, there are so many federal judges who are more than willing to help. It just takes a lot of energy to get something before them. And you have to get enough momentum and examples of the same thing before the judges start reacting. Minneapolis, having so many cases pending right now because of the number of arrests, when we had these initial bond Changes starting back in July. The judges were very deliberate and very thoughtful in their approach to the cases and wanted to make sure they made the right decision. Fast forward six months later. Now the judges are giving the government basically 48 hours to explain why they're doing what they're doing and then ordering them to fly someone back to be released here because they are so frustrated at what the government's doing and not acknowledging they've lost this issue in court. Just let it go. When 98% of the judiciary says the individual gets a bond hearing, maybe someone should take that to heart. But until there's the Supreme Court decision finally saying it or maybe a circuit court decision, the agency feels unrestrained. For every case that we resolve, there are 10 we don't. But the judges at least give us something to hold on to. Some faith that, look, our government system does work. Sometimes you just have to ask one side to work a lot harder than the others to make some, inject some accountability.
- [24:26]
Alex Wagner
Well, David, I know that there are countless people in Minnesota and beyond that are thankful that you're working extra hard and fielding phone calls until midnight. Thank you for taking time out of a busy day, doing much more valuable things for the citizens of Minnesota, for the people of Minnesota. Thanks for talking to me and helping us understand what happens once people are spirited away. Because I think the fight obviously doesn't end on the streets. It continues in courtrooms across the country. And it's great to get the perspective of a foot soldier that's involved in that fight. So thanks for your time.
- [25:02]
David Wilson
Thank you.
- [25:05]
Alex Wagner
When we come back, I will put all of this into context with Jacob Soboroff. Are you annoyed with misleading healthy meals? Are you tired of locking in for another New Year's trend? Well, Green Chef cuts through the noise as the trusted authority in clean eating, delivering only real farm sourced ingredients. Trust every bite. With over 40 clean, customizable weekly recipes designed to give you peace of mind, every Green Chef box delivers certified organic produce and responsibly sourced proteins and seafood. That means avoiding ultra processed fillers. Reach your wellness goals with options like Mediterranean, high protein, high fiber, plant based and more. All clinically proven to support healthier habits. Take control of your health without the stress. Let Green Chef do the research, meal planning and grocery shopping. Enjoy low prep, low mess meals for every lifestyle. I literally just got my first box of Green Chef and I cannot tell you how excited I am because I ate complete trash for lunch today. I think I like grabbed whatever was on the counter. And if you are telling me that I a responsibly sourced proteins and organic produce and easy to make meals on the go for busy podcasting lunatics like myself are available. I'm all in. I'm thrilled. I'm totally excited to crack open the box and I will be reporting back to you on all the delicious things inside it. Right now go to greenchef.com alexgraza and use code alexgraza to get started with 50% off Green Chef plus free Graza olive oil set in your second and third boxes. We love that olive oil. This 50% off offer is only available for a limited time, so do not wait. That's code alexgraza@greenchef.com AlexGraza Runaway country is brought to you by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. One of the quiet wonders, and there are a few One of the quiet wonders of American democracy is the government doesn't get to tell you what to believe. That principle, the separation of church and state, is not anti religion, it is pro freedom. But right now, that line is being deliberately blurred by politicians who think their beliefs should be everyone's law. The Freedom From Religion foundation exists to stop that. They defend the First Amendment so that public schools, courts and governments work for all of us. Believers, non believers, everyone. This is not about silencing faith. It's about stopping the government from picking favorites. If you care about democracy, pluralism, and the freedom to live your own life, join them and help protect a country that belongs to all of us. Visit FFRF us newyear or text my name a l e x to 511511 to learn more and join, go to FFRF us newyear or Text my name alex to 511511 and support the work of protecting our shared freedoms. Message and data rates may apply. Jacob Soboroff Every time. Which is to say, all the time I read about something relating to immigration, detention or the forceful removal of people from these United States. I think of you because you've done such excellent and essential reporting on this.
- [28:22]
Jacob Soboroff
Thank you.
- [28:23]
Alex Wagner
So it's great to have you on the program. In addition to the fact that you have written an amazing book that we're gonna get to momentarily. But let's just first start with where you are. You're in Minneapolis.
- [28:32]
Jacob Soboroff
I am, yeah, I am.
- [28:34]
Alex Wagner
And you know, every account that I've read, every tweet, every sort of social media missive that I've read from people on the ground say it's way worse than you can actually imagine. If not physically, in terms of safety, people are Just so psychologically burdened by what has happened to their city. Can you just give me a sense of what it's like there right now?
- [28:57]
Jacob Soboroff
It feels like a supersized version of what I saw and have seen in LA this summer. And then I saw in Chicago, and then I saw in the hall of 26 Federal Plaza in New York, and then I saw in Charlotte. I've been to all these places, and I've. My mom's from St. Louis Park, Minnesota. So I grew up coming to Minnesota in the summers, going to the state fair. I love it here. Man, I'm already getting emotional talking about this. It's. I've never seen the people here like this. It's very, very sad. In a way, it's very inspiring to see people out. Yesterday it was 8 degrees, and, you know, it's massive protest in the middle of Government Plaza in the middle of the day, in the middle of a work week. People are rightly. Outrage doesn't do it justice. They feel like their community is being ripped apart, mischaracterized, abused, and just like we've seen in all these other cities, people are being ripped off the street indiscriminately, where. In a place where there are more agents now than there have been in any of these other operations leading up until this point. And so it's. We're basically in the middle of an ongoing rolling collective trauma for the people of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and they're both reeling, but also fighting back in a really extraordinary way.
- [30:18]
Alex Wagner
Yeah, I mean, I will say one of the things that always strikes me in this moment is it's a leaderless movement. It's a leaderless resistance right now. And it's such a testament to the tenacity of the American public that people are just out there because they feel personally driven to do something. You know, it's not like they are. There's obviously people who are organizing, and I don't mean to undermine the tenacity of those efforts, but there's not one person saying, this is what we have to do. This is the strategy nationally or even. This is. These are our options. It's just people who are so powerfully impacted emotionally or physically or financially, whatever it is, that they just gotta get into the street and stop this.
- [30:57]
Jacob Soboroff
The thing I went to yesterday in the middle of the day was organized by, I don't know, the group. I don't know who they are or what their beliefs are, but I think the group was called something Party Socialism and Liberation. But there were, like, Moms with little kids that showed up, that had nothing to do with it. People are just showing up anywhere they can, wherever they can. Where people are on the street finding an opportunity to push back. People are going to targets and buying salt that people normally pour on the street for ice and then standing back in line to return them to jam up Target to protest the fact that Target hasn't spoken out. The same thing that they've done at Home Depot is buying ice scrapers and then returning the ice scrapers and waiting in line. People right now as I'm talking to you, Alex, are chasing Greg Bevino through the streets in south Minneapolis because that's where enforcement is happening today. Any way people can find to get involved, they are. And by the way, it has worked in all these other cities. Greg Bovino left la, he left Chicago, he left Charlotte in the face of all his opposition. He left New Orleans after just a couple of days. I'm not saying that it doesn't leave long lasting damage, but I do think that they're afraid of the resistance. He said yesterday in this press conference that he hasn't seen an opposition as strong and well organized. I think he was trying to paint them as the radical left and agitators and antifa or whatever the bullshit is that he says. But I think that that means that it's working.
- [32:22]
Alex Wagner
Yeah, well, Bovino, just for people who don't know, is the head of U.S. customs and Border Patrol and is a villain who belongs in the pantheon of Trump villains and is a late arrival. I think, people, he's not as much of a household name but is absolutely one of the main adversaries here as we talk about the destruction of our democracy.
- [32:40]
Jacob Soboroff
He has become the avatar for this whole thing. And what's amazing about it is the perception is that he is the big head honcho of the whole thing. But his actual job, he's got some title called commander of the operation at large and he's going around to these cities. I think it's a made up title. He's not the Chief of the Border Patrol, actually. He's not the CBP commissioner, he's not the DHS secretary on the org chart. He's relatively low down. But they found this dude who would do their bidding and, and they have put him out there and made him the face of this whole operation in a way that is both like totally puzzling to me and so obvious that they just central casting pick this guy because Donald Trump loves how he looks, he loves his haircut, he loves his face. He loves the way that he talks.
- [33:27]
Alex Wagner
And he's willing to do it.
- [33:28]
Jacob Soboroff
He plays the part.
- [33:28]
David Wilson
Yeah.
- [33:29]
Jacob Soboroff
And he's willing to do it.
- [33:29]
Alex Wagner
And he's willing to do it. Right. I mean there is the. You talk about the trauma that's being inflicted upon the citizenry. It's like you read these accounts and the Washington Post did a really interesting kind of like 24 hours on the ground in Minnesota where at people who are both activists, they're victims of ICE detentions, they're just, it's a panoply of characters. But you know, there are people who have nothing to do with any of this. I mean we all have something to do with it since it's being inflicted upon our citizenry, but. Or our communities. But they're like 14 year old kids who are now going to high school and their classrooms are less populated, maybe even empty in some cases compared to what the attendance was last year because people are too scared to go to school. When you are a child and like you're going to school, but then you know that a sizable portion of your classmates are too scared to come, that's trauma that is visited upon you regardless of whether you are at risk of detention or not.
- [34:23]
Jacob Soboroff
That's what I'm saying. And that's what we experienced in la. It really is a collective trauma. And like this rolling, ongoing trauma that's being perpetrated in a way where like family separation, when I covered it in 2018, was stopped after 5,500 kids were deliberately tortured, in the words of Physicians for Human Rights, because of the outrage. And, and so that policy went from the, the early part of the Trump administration in 2017 to the Pilot program in El Paso in the summer of 2017, but was stopped in June of 2018 in the face of all this public opposition. It had like a finite beginning and end. Every One of those 5,500 kids will be traumatized for life. I'm not minimizing that. But this is like there's just no endpoint to this in sight. So it's this rolling thing where you're right. And I was in Columbia, Columbia Heights neighborhood yesterday where I met up sort of spontaneously because we had heard something was going on with these ICE observer watchers like Renee Goode was. And they said, you don't know how many schools are in this neighborhood and what it's doing to people here. Even though they just targeted that one house on the corner and took the father and the kid and the mother is left behind, I think was the story that they told me, think about all the collateral damage all around this neighborhood right now for people that many haven't seen or only heard the whistles blowing and not knowing what it meant or who was being taken from the neighborhood, that's playing out every day here.
- [35:42]
Alex Wagner
It is like a new world Gestapo. I will, I just, I mean, and I will say there are children across the country who hear stories about this and worry about it unfolding in their own neighborhood. And my kids, I try and shield them from too much of the news because it's all so terrifying. But they know that there are ICE raids happening in our neighborhood and in our community. And they're like, well, what if they get us? You know, because American citizens are absolutely swept up in all of this. And even if they don't get them, what if they get their friends? You know, I mean, this is just. Let's talk big picture for a little bit because you have been covering this for so long. I mean, you were one of the first reporters to get access to one of those family separation detention centers. And I, we now, you know, we just spoke with David Wilson, who's a lawyer who is representing a lot of the clients who are in these detention centers. And the reports from inside there are gruesome. People are dying in unprecedented numbers. And I wonder when you hear about what's happening in terms of deaths in ICE custody and just the brutality and force with which people are being apprehended and sent to places that were never their home or just ferreted away in the middle of the night without their families or their lawyers knowing where they've gone. How does that square with what you saw in Trump Won? And does it feel to you or does it appear to you to be more vicious? Or, I mean, I guess just compare and contrast the two, if you could.
- [37:05]
Jacob Soboroff
It's far more indiscriminate, but only because Stephen Miller was stopped by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people in the street all around the world in the summer of 2018. He would have separated 25,000 kids if he could, using a process known as administrative separation. They believed in that policy. But Trump, remember when Ginger Thompson's audio from ProPublica leaked and you heard the kids crying and the Border Patrol agents on the inside saying, oh, we have an orchestra here. Trump didn't say, my God, I'm so morally opposed to what I didn't realize was going on. He said, I didn't like the sight and the feeling of the families being separated. He didn't like what was happening on television, what he was hearing in terms of that audio. So this is what they drew up in the first term and it's what Tom Homan told me was going to happen. He said to me on the second day of the raids in la, when I met up with him in a parking garage in Long Beach, California, that he believed people were going to die as a result of the operations that were happening on the streets. The tone and tenor, the level of opposition, the tactics that were being used by his very own agents. He saw these clashes being inevitable. And not only, by the way, is this policy based on a 1954 policy that deported a million Mexicans and some Americans. It's now killing immigrants and American citizens. Almost an echo of that 1954 program.
- [38:35]
Alex Wagner
So under Eisenhower operation we will not even say its name, but it begins.
- [38:40]
Jacob Soboroff
With the W. That's exactly right. And that's what they wanted to do all along. It's what they promised they were going to do. As you and I both were on the floor of the Republican Convention seeing signs that said mass deportation. Now this was what they drew up and now they're executing it. And as far as what's going on inside the facilities, I've seen that too. I went in the Adelanto ICE Detention center in the high desert outside of LA during the separation policy and I saw people curled up in the fetal position. I wrote about it and separated, locked up in isolation. Inspectors general reports talk about people trying to hang themselves in these facilities. These are private immigration prisons, largely, mostly all around the country. That network is vastly expanding. There are more people in immigration detention now, I believe, than any other time in American history. And it's, I hate to say it, but I'm not surprised one bit that this is what's happening on the inside.
- [39:36]
Alex Wagner
More of my conversation with Jacob right after this break. Runaway country is brought to you by Miracle Made. Do you ever wake up sweaty, freezing or just plain uncomfortable? The temperature in your bedroom can make or break your sleep. That is why I switched to Miracle Made Sheets. They are inspired by NASA technology and they use silver infused temperature regulating fabric to help you sleep perfectly all night long. Thanks to their antibacterial silver technology, Miracle Made sheets stay cleaner and fresher up to three times longer than regular sheets. That means fewer odors, fewer wash cycles and way less laundry. Bonus, all that hidden bacteria and regular sheets, it can clog your pores. We don't want that and cause breakouts. We definitely don't want that. Miracle Maid's antibacterial design helps you sleep cleaner and clearer night after night. Plus they just feel good if not better than the sheets you'd find at a five star hotel, but without the steep price tag. Smooth, breathable and ridiculously comfortable. Upgrade your sleep or give the gift of better rest. And what a gift that is. Go to trymiracle.com Alex to try Miracle Made Sheets. Today you'll save over 40% and when you use the promo code Alex you'll get an extra 20% off plus a free three piece towel set. What they make an amazing gift and with a 30 day money back guarantee there is no risk. That's trymiracle.com Alex Code Alex@ checkout thank you to Miracle Made for sponsoring this episode. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You know the new year doesn't require you to reinvent yourself. Maybe just like takes a load off your back, right? Just be less burdened as you go forward in this year. I know that's like a strange thing for me to say after the podcast we just listened to, but it's true. And the reality is that therapy can help more easily identify what holds you down and weighs you and makes your heart heavy by offering unbiased perspective, open ears to better understand your relationships and your motivations and your emotions. I know that therapy has helped me through my many, many years of it. I would not have gotten through being a person in the media or the Trump administration without some real help on the sidelines. It is excellent support. I recommend everybody do it. There's just never a bad time to start. Quality therapists are available. BetterHelp therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and they are fully licensed in the US. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences and their 12 plus years of experience and industry leading Match fulfillment rate means they typically get it right the first time, which is a big deal. If you aren't happy with your match, you can switch to a different therapist at any time or from their tailored recommendations. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is one of the world's largest online therapy platforms, Having served over 5 million people globally and it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com runawaycountry. That's betterhelp.com runawaycountry. You mentioned Stephen Miller, the architect of our national despair, who is running roughshod over, I don't know, the Constitution and anything else that stands in his way. But it's also the difference between Kristin Nielsen, the former DHS secretary under Trump, 1, and Kristi Noem, the. What is she being called? The Ice Barbie. Can you compare? Like, there is a zeal for. There is. And I wanna play the president. Yesterday, in a meandering sundowner of a press conference, in the words of my friends at the Bulwark, exhibited some version of, I guess I'm not gonna say contrition, but, like, he is aware of the fact that people are not okay with brown people being terrorized in. In this country. And he is also someone somewhere must have shown him some polling numbers around in the Latino community because he knows he has some work to do. And let's play Trump's comments about Hispanic. Singular. Singular. Can we play that sound?
- [44:03]
Donald Trump
Border Patrol is incredible, too. I mean, Paul Perez and that group is incredible. Mostly Hispanic, by the way. They're like 60% Hispanic. You know, they talk about Hispanic. They're mostly Hispanic. Right. And they're unbelievable people. And then they say, oh, we discriminate against. I love Hispanic. They are unbelievable entrepreneurial. They have everything. I did great. I did the highest. Nobody ever got numbers like I got from the standpoint of being a Republican.
- [44:35]
Alex Wagner
Okay. Just.
- [44:36]
Jacob Soboroff
I mean, oh, boy.
- [44:38]
Alex Wagner
Singular Hispanic. That'll win him over. That'll win him back. Just calling them Hispanic. I love Hispanic.
- [44:43]
Jacob Soboroff
You know, he also. He expressed, you could say, contrition about the killing of. Of Renee Good.
- [44:52]
Alex Wagner
Renee Good.
- [44:53]
Jacob Soboroff
But really what he seemed to focus on most is that he was under the impression, and might be true that her father was a Trump supporter.
- [45:01]
Alex Wagner
Yes, Right. Which is a problem, right? Like, it's not a problem for him. It is Kamala Harris. But for him, if you voted for Don, we actually have that sound. Let's play this is Trump offering, I don't know, words of caution. What does this even qualify against? Ice's brutal tactics. And also expressing support for Renee Goode's father, who voted for him in 2024, apparently.
- [45:24]
Donald Trump
And, you know, they're gonna make mistakes sometimes. ICE is gonna be too rough with somebody or, you know, they're dealing with rough people, they're gonna make a mistake. Sometimes it can happen. We feel terribly. I felt horribly when I was told that the young woman who was had the tragedy. It's a tragedy. It's a horrible thing. Everybody would say ICE would say the same thing. But when I learned her parents, and her father in particular is like, I hope he still is, but I don't know. Was a tremendous Trump fan.
- [46:00]
David Wilson
He was.
- [46:00]
Donald Trump
It was all for Trump. Love Trump.
- [46:03]
Alex Wagner
Oh, man.
- [46:03]
Jacob Soboroff
Oh boy.
- [46:04]
Alex Wagner
Where do we begin with this? The first is like he begins to say, ICE can sometimes be too rough, but these are rough people. I mean, there might be some rough people, but the majority of the people I've seen are fathers, brothers, mothers, sisters, grandmothers, in some cases high school students. Not rough people who are being thrown to the ground. Some of them are American citizens that are being put in banned chokeholds. And he reserves most of his words of regret or contrition for the fact that a Trump supporter might have had to deal with the loss of his daughter. Not the actual daughter or her widow who's being investigated by the feds at Trump's direction.
- [46:44]
Jacob Soboroff
Correct.
- [46:45]
Alex Wagner
But the. But the father of the daughter who voted for Trump. That's where Trump's sympathies lie.
- [46:50]
Jacob Soboroff
I didn't hear him say anything when masked armed federal agents beat the crap out of Narciso Barranco, the landscaper in Santa Ana with three sons in the Marine Corps, US Citizens when he was cutting bushes outside of an ihop. I didn't hear him express any contrition when Annie Lucia Lopez Belloza, 19 years old, was coming home from Babson College to go visit her mom and dad in San Antonio and was deported to Honduras by federal agents waiting at the airport. I didn't hear him express any contrition about the US Citizen who was ripped in his underwear from Minneapolis from his house and put into a vehicle and interrogated for an hour until he was returned to his home without. I don't even know if he got an apology. And the list goes on and on. How many stories of this type of injustice have we continued to hear over and over? If you really are out there and you think that they are going after the so called worst of the worst, I got a bridge to sell you. As they say, it is absurd and outrageous that they still use the language criminal, illegal alien to talk about the people that they are taking off the streets. Movino gave a press conference here yesterday and said they have taken 3,000 people since the start of this Operation Metro Surge or whatever it is that they're calling it, and 10,000 people in the Minneapolis St. Paul area since the beginning of the year. You really think that those are violent criminals because they use the word illegal, criminal, alien, they're people who are undocumented who come here, who are just, as you said, are neighbors and colleagues and friends and fellow parishioners and classmates. Same thing we've seen everywhere in la. We'll talk about the fires. The people they're picking off the streets in Los Angeles are largely people who are standing in Home Depot parking lots looking to engage in the rebuilding effort of the largest, most costly wildfire event in American history. That's who he's going after. Meanwhile, he's saying about the fires that it was a mystical tap that wasn't turned on and that's the reason that LA burned and that's the reason that L A is not recovering. Because Donald Trump's idea of how to fix that was not the solution. Actually, it's his own immigration policies that are ripping people off the street who all they want to do is show up on a construction site and help.
- [49:09]
Alex Wagner
Out literally to rebuild the country.
- [49:12]
Jacob Soboroff
Yep.
- [49:14]
Alex Wagner
So when we talk about the way in which this is all unfolding, the man at the top is certainly more addled and more, I would say, unhinged than he was in Trump 1. He is surrounded by or in his first administration. Miller is still there. But to go back to the other stooges who make all this possible, there are people like Bovino. But I mean, I do think the fact the difference maker here, and maybe you can talk a little bit more about this, is Kristen Nielsen was not drinking as perhaps thirstily from the same fountain of hate, that which isn't to excuse her behavior in family separations at all. But she is a different character and of a different, slightly different stripe than Kristi Noem. Is that accurate? Is that fair to say?
- [49:54]
Jacob Soboroff
I do think it's fair to say. I too don't believe, you know, I'm not gonna absolve her at all. And in fact, she, you know, she's the one that signed option three in the decision memo that basically effectuated the family separation policy back in the spring of 2018. And she is solely responsible and responsible alone for being the S1, the Secretary of Homeland Security at the time. But when it was stopped and he tried to restart it on I wrote about this and separated on a on Marine One with Melania flying there to go survey some natural disaster, you know, devastation. You know, he brought it up and she did push back about whether or not to reimplement the policy. I give her no credit. She hasn't get any flowers for me. But what they implemented during Trump won, they just didn't get there. What they wanted to do and they're now doing it in Trump too. Would Nielsen take the job today? I don't know. You'd have to ask her. But I can tell you what he does is he finds people who he can twist and turn. She insists that she didn't want family separation to happen. She was pushing back all along. Ultimately it happened. They find their ways to make happen what they want to happen. And they've got in Kristi Noem, someone will go stand in front of people at this El Salvador prison as if it's a green screen backdrop in a Hollywood movie while they are incarcerated there, many of them sent there illegally, as we now know. Obviously.
- [51:16]
Alex Wagner
You talk about this operation and how it's different from operations of Trump administration's past. There's also Minnesota stands apart in being more of a sort of dragnet than than we've seen in any other state. Right. Like there, there are things that are happening that are going down exclusively in Minnesota that were not going down in other states. Right. Like Operation Metro Surge. These are all the dumbest fucking names ever. But anyway, Operation Metro Surge is similar to what happened in cities like LA and Chicago. Right. But then there's another component that's being executed in Minnesota that's different, which is Operation Paris. And I'll let you, I feel like you have more intel on this than I do, but that's the Paris is P A R R I S Post admission refugee reverification and integrity strengthening. Sounds very Orwellian. Jacob. What the fuck is that?
- [52:10]
Jacob Soboroff
Their dream for a long time has been to dismantle the refugee resettlement system, which is a number that has always been designated by the President. And it's a number that fluctuates. It goes up and down at the discretion of the executive branch. And these are people that have been lawfully admitted to the country. And what they want to do is go back and look at the refugees, wherever they come from and I guess ostensibly re vet them to figure out if somebody slipped through the cracks or whatever. But I would bet, I'll bet you nickel, I'm not sure for sure, but I bet you that some of the people that they're re vetting now came in during the first Trump administration. I talked to a guy, actually an Ethiopian guy, who said to me he was an Uber driver that took me from the airport and I was asking him about what was going on and he was saying, yeah, man, I came here and became a citizen during the first Trump administration in 2017 and thank God I didn't get here any later because look what would have happened to me. Now, those are the types of people that they're going back and looking after and trying to kick out of the country. Now they're talking about kicking US Citizens out of the country. That's the kind of stuff that they're talking about now.
- [53:14]
Alex Wagner
Denaturalization.
- [53:16]
David Wilson
Yes. Yes.
- [53:18]
Jacob Soboroff
Where does it stop? Where does it stop? I think where it stops is people showing up in the streets and doing to Greg Bevino in Minneapolis what they did to him in LA and Chicago and Charlotte and New Orleans. And eventually he'll leave here. Yeah, eventually he will leave here. And eventually the 2026 midterm elections will happen and Donald Trump is going to face the consequences of this. This is unbelievably unpopular. Everywhere I have been, as I've been talking about this book, as I've been going around the country, people want to talk about the raids and people want to talk about ice, and people want to talk about what it means to have federal troops. Immigration. The conversation around immigration is no longer about immigration. It's about our freedoms. It's about our freedoms being taken away. It is about armed, masked federal agents showing up without identifying themselves on the streets of cities across the country, in red states and in blue states, terrorizing communities. And that is the intent. It's been the stated deterrence, punitive, criminalizing policy, immigration policy of the United States, for decades under Democrats and Republicans. And Trump believed by supersizing it that he would, I guess, make his base happy. I don't know what he believes. I don't wanna be the person that goes inside Donald Trump's head to figure out what he actually believes. But we know what he's doing. We know what the facts on the ground are, and they are taking this to a level that we have never, ever seen before.
- [54:43]
Alex Wagner
Yeah, I mean, I don't actually think he's thinking about politics in all of this. I think occasionally it kind of like comes across his radar, as when he says in a press conference, I love Hispanic.
- [54:52]
Jacob Soboroff
Hispanic.
- [54:52]
Alex Wagner
I mean, he obviously, like, again, I think someone was just like, this is. Somehow he's realized that the American public is rejecting the Gestapo ification of our immigration system.
- [55:04]
David Wilson
Yes.
- [55:04]
Alex Wagner
But as far as this being in any way politically convenient for him or his party, I don't think it is. I do think it's just, I wanna get the brown people out. I like cruelty directed at people who are weaker than me or as seen as are weaker or more vulnerable than me. And this is a Great way of executing on my sadistic impulses. We'll leave the psychology to the psychologists and the people who actually get to pee out the dark chasm. But you mentioned the after effects of all of this, and I wanna talk about LA and the ways in which we don't even think that these immigration raids happening all over the country have a chilling effect, even if people aren't directly impacted. And Los Angeles has a lot of rebuilding to do, which is something you explore in your new New York Times bestselling book, Firestorm. Let's talk a little bit about how you've seen. I mean, you started to touch on this, but the people who are charged or volunteer to rebuild a city like Los Angeles are largely brown and black people, immigrants in many cases, or targets of these raids or terrorized by these raids. How have you seen those two issues dovetail in your hometown?
- [56:14]
Jacob Soboroff
Oh, I think that they're inseparable, actually. And I think that, you know, often when. So just to back up, I watched my childhood neighborhood, Jan. 7, 2025, incinerate in front of my own eyes. I appeared with you on your broadcast. We talked about this live as it was happening. It became the costliest wildfire event in American history. 16,000 structures were destroyed. 31 people died, 400 people. If you look at the excess mortality numbers in terms of people who shouldn't have died around that time, three times the size of Manhattan burned in the most populous county in America. Two distinct neighborhoods dozens of miles apart were virtually erased, literally wiped off the map. And I did not have any mental capacity to process in real time like what I was experiencing. I could tell you, hey, I'm from this neighborhood. It's a beautiful neighborhood. I know what's over that ridge. But then when I rolled up on my childhood home, which I hadn't lived in in 35 years, but had burned to the ground every sort of hallmark of my youth. And Altadeen, on the other side of town, where my son had his ninth birthday and we live closer to today, gone. I knew I had to understand what this was and what the ramifications were. So, you know, I set off on this thing to figure out, how did it happen, why did it happen, who's to blame, will it happen again? And what are the consequences? One of the most profound consequences when these things happen is you can see the fissures underneath society in these mass casualty events. And inequality is one people are having a hard time building back because it's so expensive. In LA, 40% of the houses that are being sold, are being sold to corporations, not to Californians, because people can't afford to come back. But the other, the other huge, massive one, probably the biggest one for me is, is the impact on the undocumented community in Los Angeles. 40% of the construction industry in California, I think Gavin Newsom told me, is undocumented. And they are the primary targets of the mass deportation effort of the Trump administration because they're low hanging fruit. They hang in Home Depot parking lots around the corner from my house, all over L. A looking, they're out there.
- [58:16]
Alex Wagner
They're so vulnerable for an honest day's work.
- [58:19]
Jacob Soboroff
They want to come before the fires, do a handyman job at your house. Anything you could possibly want. Today, it's literally rebuilding in a city, by the way, in a county where I think of the 16,000 structures, 10 or 12 have been rebuilt. Want to show up and be active on these construction projects. And instead there's one example of one of them literally running for their lives, getting hit by a car on the 210 freeway from a Home Depot parking lot because they were being chased by Greg Bovino's agents on the streets of la. And so you can't quantify it, but there are studies. UCLA has been talking about this. There is no doubt the pace of the recovery has been stymied by these immigration enforcement policies. And it's why the book, it might read like a sci fi thriller or some dystopian future, but it's like the lived reality that we are all experiencing right now.
- [59:10]
Alex Wagner
This is now. This is this shit that's all burning, both figuratively and literally. This is our country now. More from Jacob in just a minute. But first, Crooked Media's newest book, Hated by All the Right, Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind, is getting released next week on January 27. It is written by one of our favorite political journalists, New York Times Magazine writer Jason Zengerly. Why a book about Tucker Carlson and why now? Well, because the key to understanding our current political moment is the value increase of moral outrage over truth. And no one has done more to accelerate that cultural shift than Tucker Carlson. And Hated by all the Right People. Jason Zengerly gives a fascinating and informative look at Tucker's political evolution and how his rise traces the rise of the MAGA movement. Tommy just interviewed Jason on Tuesday's Pod Save America and it is a great episode so make sure to check that out. You can pre order Jason's book at a discount right now and see his book tour dates@crooked.com books. This is the last week to take advantage of the discount. So take advantage of it. Runaway country is brought to you by Helix. Have you ever gone to a mattress store? You know, you think you're innocently gonna just jump on a couple beds and figure out the one you like and then all of a sudden someone's trying to upsell you on the latest in supine technology. No. Yes, you have. Come on. Well, fortunately with Helix Mattresses you can leave all those salespeople behind. Except for me. I'm still here. The Helix Sleep Quiz matches you with the perfect mattress based on your personal preferences and sleep needs. It makes buying a mattress easy and stress free and actually takes into account what you are looking for and how much you want to spend. Helix is the most awarded mattress brand. It has been tested and reviewed by experts at Forbes and Wired. It has free shipping and seamless delivery. Helix delivers your mattress right to your door with free shipping in the US and the Happy with Helix guarantee ensures seamless returns and exchanges. The Happy with Helix guarantee offers a risk free customer first experience designed to ensure you're completely satisfied with your new mattress. There's even a 120 night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty. I got my mattress right after the holidays. Merry late Christmas to me and it was a seamless drop off experience. Unwrapping it and watching that mattress expand is like the greatest party trick in the world. I wish I could just keep ordering them to to do that. Figuratively and literally. It was so awesome. Some of the reasons independent of the mattress expanding that I was excited. A Helix helps you sleep better. A study they ran found that 82% of those involved saw an increase in their deep sleep cycle while sleeping on a Helix mattress. And that's really what you want. And B I spend all day covering Trump's antics. I guess with Helix I sized up my mattress so at night I can writhe in fury and frustration more comfortably. Those sleepless nights feel a lot more restful. If you are ruminating for hours about the machinations of a, I don't know, a power hungry dictator, then trust me, you wanna be doing that on a Helix mattress. It's about what you can control guys. So don't let a bad mattress add to your stress. Go to helixsleep.com Alex for 20% off site wide. That's helixsleep.com Alex for twenty percent off site wide make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you.
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- [63:20]
Alex Wagner
You, you, you kind of touched on this for a second, but you, I was still hosting the 9pm hour of Ms. Now at that point and you came on and Katie Tur, who you grow up with, also came on a couple times. And I remember thinking, how the hell is he able to report this without crying?
- [63:39]
Jacob Soboroff
Like I didn't have as many gray hairs as I do now. Oh, please, if you're watching us on video, whatever, as I did after a couple. It was a crazy, just like a.
- [63:46]
Alex Wagner
42 year old to say that or how old.
- [63:49]
Jacob Soboroff
42. You got it.
- [63:50]
Alex Wagner
But just like talk to me about having the collision of the personal, like a personal history collide with a national news story and what that was like. I had never experienced anything balance it or did you put one in a box?
- [64:06]
Jacob Soboroff
You can't, you can't. And that's why it was so overwhelming and why I knew I wanted to write this book. I think it's the most important assignment I've ever had because it is such a mix of the personal and the professional. I was definitely grieving, you know, in real time as I was reporting in a way that I felt vulnerable during family separation because like you have little kids and I was in there and I'm seeing these children and I was honest about how it felt. But they weren't my own children. This was my hometown. I was there four days earlier or something with my little sister Hannah and her brand new baby boy and sitting in the park chilling that burned down days later. Not only that, covering fires was the last thing that I wanted to do. I literally said to our mutual friend Sam Falls, sitting around a fire campfire on New Year's Eve, 2024 into 2025. The last thing I want to do is put on that stupid yellow jacket and go cover a wildfire in California. But I have a feeling that I have to do it this year.
- [65:16]
Alex Wagner
Yeah, baby, you sure did.
- [65:18]
Jacob Soboroff
And 10 days later, there I was. And so it was so many things colliding. I sat at my desk on that morning after walking out the house, and my son said, dad, look how windy it is. And I was like, okay. I got to my desk. I saw my. Saw a text from my brother who still lives in the Palisade, saying, big Palisades fire. We have to evacuate. I got up and I walked in the bureau chief's office, and I said, I have to go. And then for two weeks, I just covered this thing straight without any real capacity. The thing that was most nuts about it is, normally we in these places, you and I, interview other people, but nobody was there. Everybody had gone. My friends were gone. My neighbors were gone. The people I grew up around were not there. It was firefighters and reporters.
- [65:59]
Alex Wagner
And so, yeah, you were narrating it for us.
- [66:02]
Jacob Soboroff
I became the resident, the Palisades resident, even though I hadn't lived there since I was 18 years old. And it was. I thought it was a time machine into my past in a way, like fire is a remark I write. Fire is a remarkable time machine. It's like a curious form of teleportation into your past and future all at once. I didn't know then that that was true then. I thought it was just my past burning up. Now I know in talking to experts that this was the fire of the future. And there were so many things that I witnessed that I didn't fully get. Our infrastructure falling apart. The reservoir was empty in the Palisades. The steel towers that electrified Naltadena were dormant and shouldn't have been in there. Possibly changes in the way we live. Electric car batteries exploding all around us, potentially giving firefighters cancer. They say to me, you read in the book. They were worried about that. Misinformation and disinformation. Massive, massive, massive. One Trump. In that same press conference yesterday, Trump is talking again about the conspiracy theories about the water flowing down from the Pacific Northwest. They were pouring figurative fuel on the literal flames of the fire in real time. And all this stuff is happening as. I'm just trying to process that. My favorite restaurant is gone. My pediatrician's office is on fire. The two supermarkets in town are gone. And so that's what this project was. It was a real excavation of myself and of other people, which, as you know, is why I think I have the best job in the world. I get to spend time with people in their lives like you. Yes, Obviously, we don't do this enough.
- [67:39]
Alex Wagner
You do a great job at your dream job. You do your. You do a great job I will also just say, as a colleague and as a fellow, I don't want to like a field reporter. As someone who believes so strongly in the utility of having someone or lots of people, ideally out in the field, you do such a great job, and it's likewise ditto. I mean, I'm not out like you are, but I really am so admiring of your work, and you do so such an excellent job of contextualizing it in the most human terms. Thank you. I gotta ask you, when you just touched on that topic of disinformation, and that's kind of how I wanna end this, because it's just. That's the work of journalism, right? I mean, it's just is to tell the truth. And yet we live in a moment when everything is up for grabs and we have someone sitting at the top of our political power structure who is a liar and who is very interested in creating alternative narratives and spreading only facts that are useful to him. Or maybe not even facts. I was just gonna say it's just alternative facts. We really should have listened when Kellyanne Conway, like, floated that concept in whatever year it was. But, you know, you had to tell the story, for example, of. I mean, on all these things, you often find yourself telling the hard truths about how did the fires start? Like, what were the fires really? Or even what's happening behind the 404 walls of this detention center, where you're gonna have to believe that what I'm telling you is the truth. You're gonna have to believe that the people I'm talking to are not paid actors. Again, since Trump is doubling down on the notion that these are somehow paid agitators in Minnesota and elsewhere, or standing outside of ICE raids and trying to protect fellow citizens. How has that work of trying to tell the truth, of trying to establish the real narrative of what has unfolded behind the scenes? Like, how is that job more complicated and sort of in reporting out the book, how was that challenging? I guess you're living in the among the consequences of this disinformation age. So what's that like?
- [69:51]
Jacob Soboroff
I think that my guiding philosophy is always. It's like military and diplomacy. They use this phrase facts on the ground. It's like, I always just try to present the facts on the ground as I see them, which is why I've always wanted to go out and experiencing things for myself. I'm not a subject matter. I mean, I've covered immigration for a long time or whatever, but I wouldn't consider myself a subject matter expert on anything I'm a guy who likes to go out and learn and let people learn along with me. And I've never actually said or been a big believer in like I'm some model of objectivity or neutrality. On the contrary, I'm going to tell you how I feel, actually, and tell you what I see, but I'm going to be honest about what I see and I'm going to be fair to the people that I talk to and I'm gonna let. And I'm gonna tell you the truth and you can make up your own mind as to whether or not you believe me. I can't convince you one way or another. And so in the fires, that's what I did too. It's why I told the story of Gavin Newsom watching in his operations center in la, Elon Musk basically prodding the local firefighters about the water pressure with conspiracy theories. And Newsom using that moment as his like, light bulb going off, saying, I'm gonna start pushing back against this guy and these guys in this way. And that's like the origin story of his current social media Persona.
- [71:09]
Alex Wagner
Newsom.
- [71:11]
Jacob Soboroff
Newsom. Yeah. No, Newsom's. Exactly. Newsom realized in that moment, if I don't serve up the version of the truth that I know, what am I doing? You're gonna let these people run all over you. And in the case of the fires, Trump's saying there's a mystical tap. Elon Musk is saying that the water, sorry, that the water pressure is due to incompetence or whoever the hell knows, we were flowing more water than you ever possibly could use. Civil engineers will tell you that there's no way that the hydrants would stay pressurized. And they did in Altadena, just, just like they didn't do in the palest aids. And there wasn't an empty reservoir in Altadena. It's why I included the story of Katie Miller calling me in the middle of the fires and asked me to go to Stephen Miller's parents house. And I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. And I felt bad because their house did burn down and I did go check on it and I did say.
- [72:01]
Alex Wagner
I'm sorry, I feel bad for Stephen Miller's parents, even if their house had survived, because they have to be Stephen Miller's parents.
- [72:08]
Jacob Soboroff
But anyway, I said the reason I included this story is that they too were victims of the misinformation and disinformation from her own son and daughter in law's boss. This is the Reality of the new age of disaster that we live in, where information is being weaponized even during natural disasters, which is why I don't think I did the best job of it. The people that did the best job of it during the fires were the local news, like Channel 4 in LA, definitionally a public service. This is what's happening on this street. This is what's happening around the corner. Here's what's. House burned down at a time when federal politicians were given bullshit, when local leaders were having a hard time getting out accurate information, when emergency alert systems were not actually working properly and resulted allegedly in deaths of a lot of people, including in West Altadena. It was the facts on the ground that were being presented by local reporters more than anything that I think was the most sort of heroic. Other than the first responders effort during. During the fires. That's all we can do. And that's all I can do is show up. So that's why I'm in Minnesota. That's why I've been to all these places. That's why I decided to go out to the Palisades, why I decided to write the book.
- [73:21]
Alex Wagner
Boom. I mean, I love that you're making all the right decisions each and every time, my friend.
- [73:25]
Jacob Soboroff
Oh, you don't know how many wrong.
- [73:26]
Alex Wagner
Decisions in my life you didn't want. You told Sam Falls, I don't want to be out there in the yellow jacket following the fire. And you sure did. And we would not honestly have understood the emotional weight in the same way had you guys not been there. And it was such a service in the same way that you guys at the. You at the detention center, you being tenacious and curious and inquisitive and trustworthy and all those things makes these stories live and resonant in a way that they wouldn't otherwise be. So we owe you a debt of gratitude, my friend.
- [73:55]
Jacob Soboroff
I'm actually a huge asshole in real life, just so you know.
- [73:57]
Alex Wagner
Well, that is true. But you know, we're going to judge you by your work, not your. Not your personality.
- [74:02]
Jacob Soboroff
Thank you. Okay, fine.
- [74:03]
Alex Wagner
Anybody knows you knows Jacob Soborough is a colossal dick. Just kidding. He's not.
- [74:09]
Hidden Brain Podcast Host
No.
- [74:10]
Jacob Soboroff
You never know. You never know.
- [74:12]
Alex Wagner
Anyway, I really mean it. I really have seen so much admiration for you. I think it's really, totally unsurprising that you wrote another New York Times bestseller. And I think it's fucking really important that you're in Minneapolis. And I can't wait to watch more of your reporting on Ms. Now. And I hope you will come back to this podcast and give us some more truth serum. I really appreciate you man.
- [74:33]
Jacob Soboroff
It's an honor to be here. You're the best. And now I'm gonna go chase Greg Bevino on very snowy streets.
- [74:40]
Alex Wagner
Go get him bro.
- [74:42]
Jacob Soboroff
See you later.
- [74:42]
Alex Wagner
Thanks Jacob. That is our show for this week and as always, if you have been impacted directly by the Trump administration or its policies, please do send us an email or a one minute voice note@runawaycountryokked.com and we may be in touch to feature your story. A huge thank you to everyone who has written in already. We read these things, we listen to them, we appreciate you. Last but not least, do not forget to check out the show and our awesome rapid response videos on our YouTube channel, Runaway country with Alex Wagner. Runaway country is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Ilona Minkovski. Our producer is Emma Illich Frank. Production support from Megan Larson and Lacey Roberts. The show is mixed and edited by Charlotte Landis. Ben Hethcote is our video producer and Matt De Groat is our head of production. Audio support comes from Kyle Seglin. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Adrienne Hill is our head of news and politics. Katie Long is our executive producer of development. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America EAS.
- [76:15]
Hidden Brain Podcast Host
The start of a new year is a natural moment to set new goals and shake up old habits. But doing so can also feel a little daunting. If you've ever reach the end of January feeling a bit cynical or discouraged about the hopes and resolutions that had seemed achievable just a few weeks earlier, the Hidden Brain podcast is here to help.
- [76:38]
David Wilson
All.
- [76:39]
Hidden Brain Podcast Host
This month we'll bring you the latest installment of Our popular your 2.0 series. The focus will be on the self doubt and anxiety that many of us grapple with when charting a new path. Whether you're struggling with self criticism, a lack of patience, or finding the courage to make a big change, we've got your back. That's U 2.0 from Hidden Brain all through the month of January. Join Us.
- [77:13]
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