Found Footage Horror: Podcast Coverage of the Ice Invasion

I actually have a long standing policy of never watching a presidential debate. I think going back to the year 2000 when I watched the debate between George W. Bush and Al Gore, and I was like, "I'm never doing that again." It's just. Why? It's like very anxiety provoking for me. Was that one really bad for some reason? Well, it was bad. And it's also like. I mean, I don't really watch sports, but I imagine people who watch sports and their team isn't doing well, it's like you want to reach into the TV screen and make them play better. And I felt that way watching those debates. And I was just like, "This is not helpful for me." Like, I can just get the take after the debate is over and find out what happened. Right, right, right. And so I didn't watch the presidential debate in the summer of 2024 between Trump and Biden. And I even stayed off of social media while it was happening and after it happened. And I was like, "I'll just get my take in the morning." You know? So I get up that morning and I open up my podcast app and there's a new episode from the daily. And the title of the episode is "A Brutal Debate for Biden." Because of course, this was the one where he struggled to like. Yeah. finished thoughts and things. Yeah. But what I remember doing that morning is I looked at that title and I just swept my finger across the screen and deleted that episode without listening to it. And then I swept my finger across and deleted the daily from my podcast player. And then I went through and deleted like half a dozen other podcasts that might have similar news. And I was like, "I'm just taking a break from the news. I can't deal with this right now." You know? So I tell that story because I feel like I was starting to do that this year as the Operation Metro Surge was happening in the Twin Cities. Like I was seeing stories about it again in my podcast feed, but I just wasn't listening. I would just delete those episodes and not listen to them because I found it too stressful. You and I recorded our last episode the day that Alex Prety was killed. And at that point, I was consuming like local news and I just didn't care about the national context. So then in the week after. I mean we recorded that episode, we made that episode and that was my focus that week. And so I again wasn't really paying attention to the national news at all. And then after we released that episode, which was the Thursday after Alex Prety was killed, I remember that weekend just feeling like hungover from working on that story. And by the news and just feeling like everybody was saying that maybe something was going to change because of the videos that had come out making it very clear that Alex Prety was not justified use of force. But I just remember this feeling of like. I don't even know how to put it into words. Like I don't think I've ever experienced a sense of outrage so much like in my body. And it wasn't external, it was like internal, I didn't know what to do with it and I just felt sort of paralyzed by it. And then I listened to the episode that this American life put out that following weekend, which is called What's Your Emergency? Back from federal immigration agents launched big operations in North Carolina. This is back in the middle of November. One of the things that local reporters did to get a sense of what ICE and Border Patrol were doing, the scope of it, the kinds of things they were up to was that they requested 911 calls. Where they decided to try to tell the story of ICE over the last year, almost entirely through 911 calls that they had gotten from various cities. And something about listening to that story, I was like, oh my god, I have to examine how this story has been covered over the past year by all of these outlets. And that if I can do that, then I can sort of get my arms around like what we've been going through. And I remember, I texted you and you were like, yeah, let's talk about it. And so we had a phone conversation and I was like, I'm going to listen to a few of these shows I'm going to try like the daily and see it like something there. Yeah. And I texted you from my walk, I think. Well, you said I started listening to recent ICE related episodes of Radio Atlantic and I instantly wanted to talk about it. Then I heard the most recent related episode of the daily, and it's so bad my head almost exploded. Yeah, I have just, yeah, I have strong feelings about the daily, but we'll get to that. Yeah, yeah. So this is phonograph. I'm Rob Gileemeyer's. And I'm Bry Degreen. And today we're going to talk about how a variety of different podcasts have been covering ICE since the election. And one of the reasons I wanted to do this is having gone back and listened to these episodes, it became clear to me that each one of these individual episodes covering a different aspect of ICE is like an individual episode of a TV show. But when you listen to them all together, it feels like binge watching like an entire series of a TV show or at least an entire season. Because I don't think this TV show has done yet. And even though I mentioned that episode of this American Life about 9-1-1 calls, we're going to come back to that later because the first episode of this American Life that touches on ICE is an episode that came out literally days after the election. They put out an episode called The Cake We Baked. It's American Life from our Glass. Today's program, this is The Cake We Baked. Today we have stories of people who have some special personal investment in the outcome of this week's election. And we look at what's coming for them. About what we should expect now that Donald Trump had been elected. And the reporter is Nadia Raymond. And for this story, she wanted to sort of talk about what might happen because Trump had been saying during the election that he was going to with it. One of his projects was the largest deportation in American history. Mass deportations are coming. Donald Trump promised it. People waived. Mass deportation signs at his rallies. It was the first item on the Republican Party's platform this year. And she says that she reached out to Tom Holman who we now are more familiar with. And he didn't want to talk. So then she talked to a former DHS official name Jason Howzer. He was the chief of staff for ICE under Biden for a couple of years. Has been working for DHS on and off since 9/11. And it was fascinating to me because I can't think of another example of a long-form interview that's just a prediction. And a lot of it is her asking him, could they really do this? This sounds implausible. And he's like, oh no, you could do that. One way to catch a lot of people quickly, especially the ones who snuck in and ICE has no info on is to bring back work site enforcement, aka large-scale raids. The Biden administration stopped doing those. Do you think there would be raids then in the first 100 days? I think there would be raids within the first three weeks. Really? Yeah. Those are not hard to turn on. Those are not operationalized. Those are not. I don't know if you had this experience, but he kind of has this Trumpi vibe himself. He served under Biden, but he served as chief of staff for ICE. And he's very concerned about the safety of the ICE officers. And he just comes off as sort of like a bro a little. And so it's disorienting because you're like, who's side of you on here? You go and you do the raid, you line all the workers up, and you start checking status of each and every one of them. Right? And then maybe you just arrest them all, bring them into detention, and then do the checks to see who is removable. There's nothing that could stop ICE at that point from just bringing people into custody, detaining them, and then figuring out who is removable at that time. The impression that I got is that he sounds like that partly because he's putting himself in the chair of someone who would make this happen. And he's trying to persuade her that it's definitely doable. Like if he's a Trump person, here's what he would do. Right. Because one of the things that really struck me about the second half of that interview is when he finally sort of reveals what he thinks the consequences of this would be. And part of that is he talks about, you know, if you think about deporting a million or two million people, that's a big number by itself. But then if you think about how many people are connected to those one or two million people, how many families, how many children are in this country and are legal residents or citizens who are connected to the people who are deported and you think about the ripple effect of that action. How many people are have status here on our first generation migrants or like from migrant families? I mean, we're talking this would affect like 50 million to 100 million people, like these sort of actions. There are a few things too that which is where like remarkably prescient, I thought that he was saying it's interesting to listen back to it now. If I'm in this, the scenario where I'm the head of ICE for Trump, all the rules of engagement and policies are out the window. Why not load up a few plane loads of Cuban nationals and send them to the Bahamas and just send them to a third party. Why not just I could go find a country that says they'll accept three or four plane loads of Cuban nationals and I'll send them to a third party country. And remember like that happened, but he's projecting that that's going to happen. Yeah. And then that they were going to do these raids at hospitals and schools, places that people that the ICE hadn't previously gone into and that totally happened to. Yes. Yes. So then from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is reveal. I'm Alexan. One of the shows that I think has done the most comprehensive job of trying to cover this is reveal the documentary podcast with Alexan. There have been videos circulating lately that I just can't get out of my mind. If you have an idea and a whore app or a speaker, they've done a number of episodes. I think they did an episode related to ISEAN LA. They did an episode where they went to Chicago. They just recently I haven't listened to it yet, but I saw it come out. They have a new episode about Minneapolis. I just feel like they've done an amazing job of not only trying to cover this, but trying to cover it on the ground, like trying to talk to people who are there and experiencing this. When they return to the ICE office two days later and were called up to the counter, the officer asked if they knew they had a deportation order. I was like, yes, I know. He was like, okay, are you doing something about it? I was like, yeah, yeah, I have all my papers on my attorney gave me. It was like this big. One of the first episodes is called Taken by ICE. The first story on this episode is a story from Katie Mingle, who we've talked about before, an amazing producer. They focus on a pair of brothers. The family had been in the United States and had been seeking asylum. Their asylum petition had been denied. Technically, they had a deportation order. What a lot of people don't know is that if you get a deportation order, you can file a petition to remain in the country for other reasons and it's a legal process. And so you're waiting for that legal process to complete. In previous administrations, even in Trump's first term, it was generally the case that if you had a deportation order, but you could prove you were pursuing some kind of legal remedy, ICE wouldn't detain you. This was especially true if you didn't have a criminal record and Jose and Jose have never been in trouble with the law. And one of the things that you have to do when you're waiting for this legal process to run its course is you have to check in with ICE periodically, like maybe every six months or so. And they were doing that. They were following the rules. They were doing everything right. But none of this seemed to matter to the ICE officer who was looking at their paperwork. He only looked at the first page and they were like, there's not going to hope you do this is worth nothing basically and gave it back to me. And he was like, okay, give me a minute. I'm going to talk to my supervisor. The boys went to sit down. They were nervous. Eventually the officer came back and asked Jose and Hoseway to follow him to another area away from their mom and little brother who they'd come with. And then he told me, okay, you're being detained by ICE and you're going to be putting in the moving proceeding. If you have anything that you want to give your back to your mom, your phone, your wallet, give it to me right now so I can bring it to her. I look back and my brother was in handcuffs. When they put the handcuffs in me, it's really happening to us. We had never been putting handcuffs because we had no problem with the law. I couldn't express the feelings that I was feeling at that moment because I was I felt like a criminal. Even though it's like a much quieter story because nobody's being beaten, nobody's being shot. It feels like it's a great example of just how it feels in these more sort of bureaucratic situations to suddenly have the rules changed on you. You've been following the rules. You've been doing everything right and suddenly they're treating you like a criminal. Very few of these stories honestly talk to the people being affected by this directly. There is a story on NPR that I think about all the time that I don't know who produced it. NPR's Jasmine Garz brings us the story of one 12 year old girl who desperately needed to run one errand and how it turned into a complex underground operation. That was about a young girl in Minneapolis who she's sheltering at home, single, dad, he's at work. She's been told not to leave the house and she gets her period for the first time. Like many girls she freaks out a little. But unlike many girls, he had been hiding in her house for the last few weeks. She hadn't even been going to school. She thought about going to get menstrual pads. She called her dad at work. He's a single father. He told her no. Do not go out into the streets. He told her you have to stay inside. And like they document what it takes to get her pads basically and to talk to a nurse because she's like having cramps and is scared. And that's how several hours later. Five people in a city-wide network of volunteers got a 12 year old girl her first menstrual pad. And it's like this insane network of community volunteers and person to person to person. But that's another story that yeah, it's just sort of getting into the actual experience of what this is like for people. And those are the stories that I have noticed like really stick with me. Yeah. So then I'm Hannah Rosen. This is Radio Atlantic. And today border patrol. The new face of the Trump immigration crackdown. This came out on November 20th, which I think was around the time that Chicago was being occupied by ICE. And it takes sort of the long view of the situation. The White House and the Department of Homeland Security are using them kind of as like a you know shock troops or like a strike force that is going from city to city escalating the pressure and trying to make as many arrests as possible. And it's just a completely different way of operating than the way that ICE officers are trained to conduct themselves. I was a little surprised you wanted to talk about this one because like to me it was maybe just because like it's kind of just like a straight step back to a with a report expert reporter. Right. It just like listening to it now I almost was like okay I get it like enough. I don't know what to do with this. I know. Like what was striking to you about it? Well part of the reason that I wanted to talk about it is because I think it's interesting to look at these different styles of covering these things. And the interview with the expert reporter is such a common technique for covering the news because it's so easy you know you just grab Bob from down the hall and you know talk to him about what's happening you know. So many Bob's. But at the same time one of the things that they do is they introduce all of these elements and characters of the story that will recur. So this is the first episode where I hear a mention of Greg Bovino. Within the Border Patrol Bovino has been viewed as kind of an extreme figure you know an attention seeker. He is the only Border Patrol chief who in his social media profile photo was you know carrying a weapon right. He's holding a big military grade rifle. And they also it's the first episode where they reference these propaganda videos that ice was making under his direction. Increasingly you know as he travels around the country with his own film crew they're making videos that are almost akin to kind of you know trolling operation where they're they're using you know certain songs like you know they would take like a Kendrick Lamar song and you know and use it in Los Angeles as they were rolling through the streets. You know making themselves out to be like action figures. And then the last thing that they mentioned that recurs throughout multiple episodes is the Supreme Court ruling that seemingly gave license to do these sorts of things. There was a recent Supreme Court opinion that opened up new options for Border Patrol. Can you explain what it is and how it works. Some people sued in Los Angeles because they said that they were being detained based solely on the fact that they looked Hispanic and that that was clearly unconstitutional. And a federal judge agreed with them and put a restraining order on ice for doing that. By the time it made it to the shadowdocket of the Supreme Court it came back with a ruling in favor of the administration and an opinion from Justice Brett Kavanaugh that agents could continue to use racial and ethnic appearance as a factor in determining the reason that you know a reasonable suspicion to stop and question someone. And it couldn't be the you know the only factor but that they could continue to use that as a factor. It's fascinating to hear them talk about all those things in this sort of like calm journalistic tone. Like we know this is important that we're just setting the stage for a future. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I believe it is your civic duty to watch the videos that show an ice agent killing a Minnesota woman yesterday. One of the first episodes that came out after Renee Good was killed was an episode from Slates podcast What Next. It's like their daily news podcast. And the title of the episode was Everyone Saw Ice Kill Renee Good. And it came out on January 8th, 2026 the day after. She starts by essentially telling you the listener. I'm imploring you to watch the video of this killing. I know it's a hard ask but I'm asking anyway. It's like the opposite of a trigger warning. Yeah. Yeah. Or I don't know if that's fair but yeah. Yeah. The video I think is the clearest was published by the Minnesota reformer, a nonprofit newsroom. It's 4.5 minutes long. It shows all kinds of context. When it begins you see a maroon Honda in the middle of a street perpendicular to the sidewalk. It's not really clear why the vehicle is on an angle like this but the driver waves a car past her. She seems to motion at a silver truck too but agents in tactical gear hop out. One goes straight for the Honda's door handle. That's when the driver tries to peel away and observers really start yelling. It's also when the driver gets shot. No! The part of this video that I find the most heartbreaking is the sound of the people reacting to what just happened. As opposed to what happened, you know. Dude, you shot her. It shows a brief glimpse of the Honda's door hanging open and someone who's draped themselves over the dying driver. It's a wrenchingly human image. The camera person backs away. Hearing sort of the anguish in people's voices in the moments afterward and their shock and horror at what this person just did. Whistles are blowing. Sirens are wailing. Eventually the entire block seems to erupt in this gutter-all rage. As I watched all this, all I could think about was how much Minneapolis has been through over the last few years. There have been a number of high profile police killings. The George Floyd murder, of course, now these fraud allegations and a deployment of federal agents and this. But I knew who to call. John Collins. He's a senior reporter at MPR, the local public radio station. It's interesting to hear the difference between national reporters like that Radio Atlantic reporter, immigration reporter talking about this and local reporters because the local reporters, you can hear in their voice the sort of immediacy of it. Yes, exactly. And I do think you hear that in this piece. When I first got there, the body had been taken away and there were police lines that were going up. Minneapolis police were showing up to try to secure the scene they said. And there was tape. And behind the tape dozens and dozens of federal officers including Greg Bovino, the head of Customs and Border Patrol. Yeah, there's just a quality to his voice where it's like you can sense that he's seen these things like he's been on these scenes, you know, that's different from a guy in a room at the Atlantic monthly, you know, totally not that the Atlantic monthly isn't knowledgeable, but he doesn't have the same like it's not a visceral part of his reality. Right. Exactly. And the other interesting thing about this episode is that it's the first episode that I listened to that makes reference to all of these things that we now are familiar with with the Minneapolis scene, which is things like the signal chats. John's been keeping his eye on signal chats that have cropped up locally. That's where people share information about where they're seeing federal agents or who's getting taken away. The whistles come up. If ice is there, they will stick around with ice, they'll blow their whistles, they'll honk their horns, and then if ice takes off, the observers try to follow them. And he also talks about the fact that these observers are starting to be harassed by ice. In some cases, ice has used their license plates to look up personal information. So you have an observer who they're keeping their distance, not breaking federal laws or not impeding law enforcement. And they're following this ice caravan and the ice caravan will lead them directly to their own house. And they get out of the car and they take pictures in front of the house, they take pictures of the house, they take pictures of the people. One woman I spoke to just yesterday, actually, for a different story I'm working on told me an ice officer walked up to her before this exact thing happened. And he said, hey Judith. So he knew who she was and he wanted her to know he knew. And you've heard of that happening not just to observers, but reporters, right? Yeah, I heard through the grapevine that like ice agents were just sort of sitting outside of reporters houses, reporters of color in a threatening way. Yeah. And not doing anything, but just sort of being there. Yeah. So multiple episodes did cover Renee Good being killed. But the New York Times podcast, the daily did not they did not come out with an episode here we go the week. And she was killed. And I just want to say, like I cover that week. What's that? What did they cover that week? The first episode they put out about what's happening in Minnesota was five days after the shooting. And the title of the episode is a breaking point. The Minneapolis police chief on ice. So it's just an interview with the Minneapolis police chief. And it's a good interview. I think he says interesting things like I I felt like it was worth listening to. But it felt like a very weird first salvo person to turn to. Right. But I guess it's like they're probably trying to find an angle that hasn't been over because I get that point. All the other like the main angles had been covered a lot. Well, that that was the impression that I got I was like, I bet that they were trying to talk to people on the ground. I bet they were trying to talk to people who were on the scene when Renee Good was killed, like people who witnessed that, people who filmed that. And I bet none of those people wanted to talk to them. And partly that might be that they don't like the New York Times. But I bet it's even more likely that they are afraid for their safety, right? And being put in a national spotlight at this moment is pretty dangerous. That's an interesting assumption. I don't know if they I mean, I don't know that I would assume that they I guess my guess. I guess what was going on in the red editorial meetings is that they were like, we really should be covering Minneapolis. We couldn't get to it until now. So what could we do now that would be different than what other people are doing? Yeah. But again, it's like of all the people who are being affected at this moment by this government action. We're going to talk to the person in charge of the police. I don't know. And then the episode they put out after Alex Freddie was killed is just journalist talking to journalists. Like I think they do have one guy who's like from Minneapolis, but he's not reporting from Minneapolis. He's not on the ground in Minneapolis. He's just like knows how to speak him in his own. Yeah. Okay. And then they have an episode. So that was January 26th. And then January 28th, they have an episode called Trump changes course in Minneapolis, which is all about how this is affecting Trump. Like it's all the political ramifications, which again is interesting. But it feels weird. Like so we we've gone to the police chief. We've gone to journalists. Now we've gone to Trump. And then they have an episode on February 2nd called can Trump force blue cities to cooperate with ICE? And maybe I'm like I should probably listen to this episode again, but this is the one that made my head explode. Because the very strong underlying implication of this episode is that sanctuary cities are to blame for this immigration crackdown. And if the sanctuary cities had just cooperated with ICE from the beginning, none of this would be happening. Wow. So of course that drove me insane. And then they finally decide recently to reach out to ordinary people. And what they think about this. And guess which group of ordinary people they reach out to? Conservatives. Republicans. Trump voters. They're like, oh, how do Trump voters feel about this? Yeah. So anyway, that like that just doesn't feel balanced at all. No, no. Yeah. And so the episode that we listened to for this is the one episode that they put out where they went to Minneapolis. The only episode they put out where they went to Minneapolis. And even that episode rose me the wrong way. I have to say like the first time I listened to it, I was like, this sounds like the daily. Like I don't like I was sort of like, I wonder why Rob was flagging this. But then I was thinking, what when it sinks in, I was like, yeah, this of all things to do for this, like basically this story, this is a weird way to cover it. Like I'm annoyed at like every single second of this episode. And so the way that it starts is with this like stock protest chance. From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams. And this is the daily. Sounds like it could be from the Simpsons. Like it's the most stereotypical version of a crowd chanting at a protest. Yeah. And there's something about the theme music playing over that. It just drives me crazy. Yeah. And then the host for that episode says, you know, there's this widespread outrage in Minneapolis right now. Blah, blah, blah. Protests around Minneapolis have caught nationwide attention. As the city shows open defiance to a federal immigration crackdown. But we're going to focus on the quieter behind the scenes protests taking place. But behind the scenes, a quieter organized resistance has taken shape. And the rest of the episode is like, reportage on people doing things like mutual aid and observation sort of behind the scenes. And it is a surprisingly quiet episode about this moment where people are outraged, right? Mm-hmm. I could imagine them doing a part one that's about like the front line of this outrage, the front line of this protest. But because they're only doing the quieter part, it feels completely bizarre to me. It's kind of the place where sort of the recent waves of immigrants and settled refugees and the Minneapolis of the kind of white liberal urban culture intersect. And those groups have been kind of have been brought together in an interesting way by this ice crackdown in the city. Yeah. You know what it feels like is like you go out to do a story and you don't get the tape you're hoping for. But you have a deadline. And so you have to just produce this story anyway. And so you just produce this story with the mediocre tape, but it kind of missed the story. Yeah. For that reason. Yeah. Like that's what it felt like. It just, I wasn't a great representation of what's going on here. Well, in the fact that like they're like, okay, we're finally going to go to Minneapolis with actual reporters on the ground. Mm-hmm. Who are we going to talk to? Who are we going to focus on in this moment where people are being detained and attacked? So we're about to go to one of these places tell me about what this place is and then what its role is in this kind of network that you're talking about. Sure. So we're going to go to smitten kitten, which is a sex shop on a lendale here. And it's been playing a very interesting role kind of what's been happening here lately. Okay. Well, let's go inside. They could have picked any number of places that are doing, I mean, there's a million places doing mutual aid, you know? Yeah. And it's almost like kitschy the way they're like, oh, we're at the sex shop and you have to walk past the dildos to get to the toilet paper. Yes. Yes. I'm now walking past the sci-fi fantasy dildo section. I do want to say like the person they interview at the smitten kitten, which is the sex shop that's doing mutual aid, is amazing. Like the tape they get from her is amazing. I think that happened in 2020 was the first time I realized like my neighbor's house is on fire and the fire department is not coming. So you better find a garden hose. Like why am I and layman at the smitten kitten doing more than Jacob Frye? But the tone of the whole episode feels anthropological. Like it's like they're look at how interesting this situation is instead of caring about what's going on. Mitch drove. Patty was in the front me and back. Patty had brought along a small notebook. And before we left they stopped to make sure they both had everything. Especially their whistles. I have an extra whistle. Oh my gosh. Thank you. Yeah. How often do you guys use your whistles? Um every time we see ice and you just you once you see it is that's when you start blowing. Yeah pretty much. It's such a dramatic difference between another piece that you suggested listening to which is the panic world ice invasion of Minneapolis which I think we'll talk about next. Yes. Which is just like listening to those back-to-back. It's like My name is Ron and Broderick. I host the panic world podcast and I write the garbage and newsletter and I'm here in Minneapolis, Minnesota for career news. We're in front of the federal building where ice officers just deployed chemical weapons smelled like tear gas to me. I need to hear you just confirmed that you are going to fight for freedom. You're going to fight for justice. We're going to get justice for the government. It's like I was like a lulled into complacency. Right. And then you hear the next one and you're like oh right this is what's this is what's actually happening. Yeah. We go. Yeah. Yeah absolutely. It's funny. When I sent you this episode I didn't even realize that it's also a YouTube video that you can watch it as well as listen to it. I only listened to it. But the thing that's immediately apparent is just how much more visceral the experience of protests that he captured is compared to what the daily captured. There are a lot more proactive in attacking people than any police force I've ever seen. It's not the first time I've been shot with chemical weapons. It's not the first time I'm a tear guest. But I mean I don't think these guys have any real training. I think they're just like thugs that are given a gun and being like all right let loose boys and they act like it's a video game. I mean this motherfucker came up to me and shot me right at point blank range completely unprovoked. I was standing in a snow bank on the sidewalk like I was not even taking the street. Like I think back to that the way that episode of the daily began with people chanting ice out now and it sounds so stereotypical. And then in this episode they have people yelling at ice but they're yelling very specific things. You come to places you don't belong where the people do not want you here. You are trainers to the Constitution. You are trainers to America. Yeah and there's something about the way that they produce it where stuff is just sort of like slammed together and it's sound like it's almost like disorienting the way that it's cut together. Right and I also I think they they think hard about where to cut these like pieces of tape. There's a part where they're interviewing a woman who's basically saying that this is the second protest she's ever gone to and that she used to consider herself sort of a Republican and that she's kind of been radicalized by this. This is your second protest ever? Yes. Yeah I went to the No Kings protest. This is kind of my first protest where I'm yelling at. But they don't they don't end that clip with her talking they end the clip with people need food they need water especially you know with a tear gas and now look at this bull's-ing. Yeah I know it's just perfect. Yeah totally. But then one of the most important parts of that episode I think is when they see a right-wing influencer. I was able to grab footage of it one point you know they're pushing us as Grant said back behind the yellow line dividing the street. A pro-Trump content creators there who clearly is working with ice like either doing a ride along with ice or you know just sort of like filming with ice. He then fist bumps the ice agent and they let him sort of do whatever he wants. Someone is shouting at this person coming through asking him who are you? Who is he with? Who is he with you? Who is he with you? Why is it in uniform? Who is he? Why are you turned around? And maybe it's because I'm listening to it and not watching it. But his silence the silence of that person the fact that you never hear him give an answer is almost the answer itself. Who are you with? Who are you in uniform? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you with? What are you shooting this for? Where's that content going? Which also gets at the point that they make repeatedly which is their sense that like in previous protests they've been to the people protesting have a target for their protests and that it's usually the the local police and that there are local officials who are sort of the enemy that they are shouting at and protesting but that in this case because it's federal agents and also masked federal agents that there's this sense that their anger has nowhere really to go. There was nowhere to put that anger and and this has been an an existential problem. Ice is here in the federal building where they're driving around in unmarked cars scooping people up and they don't really care how mad people are. They don't give a shit. It is really hard not to overstate this like it is a machine that doesn't care. Yeah and I think that feeling of like just like emptiness or like that anger or like anarchy basically is a feeling on the ground that a lot of people didn't capture. Yeah. Yeah. So then Minneapolis police received the report of a shooting involving federal law enforcement in the area of East 26th Street and Nicolay Avenue. We get to an episode of Radio Atlantic, another episode of Radio Atlantic called another death in Minneapolis which came out on January 25th, 2026. This is Minneapolis police chief Brian O'Hara yesterday. This is a 37 year old white male who is a Minneapolis resident and we believe he is an American citizen. And this one starts with a warning before we start a warning. In this episode you'll hear audio of a shooting and you can hear the shots clearly. That they are going to play the sound of Alex Prattie being murdered, which I'm not going to play the gunshots. But I was thinking again with this one how the sound of it is so much more powerful to me than watching it. And then I was thinking about what my experience of watching the Alex Prattie video was. And I realized that I don't think I ever watched a single one of the videos that came out in its entirety. Like I watched them all the way that you would like walk over hot rocks or something. Like I wanted to know what had happened but it was hard to look at, you know. And then I realized that I actually turned off the sound when I watched those videos. I never listened to any of those videos. Interesting. Because I felt like that would be too much. Yeah. And again it's the reaction. It's not the gunshots. It's the person screaming afterwards. One of the things about these videos is that the person capturing the video is usually screaming. And so there's like the sound but then there's this like much closer sound of like it's like a first person reaction, you know. It's not even just the reaction of the crowd. It's like the reaction of the person holding the phone. It's like if the director of a film was like screaming during the horror movie. Atlantic producer Jocelyn Frank went out to the scene of the shooting in the hours after. I looked at that there's gas, canisters going both directions forward and backwards at the crowd. Hey, can we get a better? We need a better. Yeah, well it was interesting because this is the same show that we were talking about earlier when they first covered this that it was like sort of the step back two way that I said like I wasn't sure why it was so interesting to you. And this this episode sounds so much more like urgent because the reporter I think is here, right? Is it Minneapolis? I think he was here, yeah. I was immediately getting different videos from my contacts in Minnesota who were like I was shocked to see what was happening. This is staff writer Adam Surwer who was in Minnesota on the day of the shooting. And you can just hear in his voice how he was moved by that and then also sort of yeah, rattled and moved by how what he says is brave these observers are. Yeah. And I'm sure like I just I'm sure that you cannot be a journalist in this situation and not be thinking like am I going to get killed? Right. You know, and I just think you start to hear that in people's voices and that's what you're hearing here. And it's just another example of like why it's so different to be on the ground. And I think it also accentuates the importance, the risk and you know the real selflessness that is involved in being an observer because the only reason we know that this happened the way that it happened was because so many people in that neighborhood were also prepared to witness if something terrible happened and it did and now we have many videos of it that contradict the direct statements of the federal government about the circumstances of this killing. Without those videos, we wouldn't have the kind of evidence that we have that the government is lying. You know, everybody can see what happened in those videos and it doesn't match what the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security are saying, what the president is saying, what the president's advisors are saying, this was not a man who was being aggressive towards federal agents. He was filming them. And now we know how important it was that he was doing that, but also how dangerous it is and how brave the people who do that are. And so then we get to the episode I talked about at the beginning of this, what's your emergency from this American life? When the city releases these two reporters, they altered the voices a little to protect people's identities. And specifically the first story in that episode, which came out on January 30th, 2026. There's women saying that all morning, these black vans have been showing up at a building, pretending to be exterminators so the people will open their doors. And she thinks the rise and everybody's scared. There have been reports from around the country of immigration agents pretending to be contractors or utility workers or police to trick people and then mad them. By choosing to tell the story through 911 calls, where people are calling 911 because of something that ICE is doing in their city, what that allows them to do is tell the story about how this is creeping into these various cities like step by step. And it feels almost like, like there's a genre of horror movie called the Found Footage Horror movie. Yeah, totally. There's a call from an emergency room where the person says, "Bring the ER." What's going on out there? Yeah, we have a bunch of self-explanatory ICE agents here who are interfering with patient care, we need them removed. How many would you say are there? The six? Okay. Are they in the ER right now? Yeah, the woman in the room would be. Right, it's so crazy because then the 911 numbers are they armed and he's like, yes. And do they have any weapons that you can see? Yep, you guys just come to the ER, we can show you who they are. And then they get worse. I need you guys to come here right now. I'm great. Great and killed there. There's US Border Patrol and there's four bombs and the fucking hitting US citizens. They just knocked out a young lady with a bike. What the fuck is going on? They have to pay a million dollars. They should be pay a million dollars. So at first it's like these people are harassing us. These people are invading us. Like they should be told to leave. And then it's like this person hit my car and now they pointed a gun at me. Yeah, that's just violating my own system right. See him, my car and now they were pointing guns at me. Yeah, and they just hit my car. So I understand that. You know, what am I supposed to do? And um, and then you hear like acts of violence. You hear people's windows being smashed while they're on the phone with 911. Right. And it's very what's so crazy is like it unfolds while they're on the phone. The dispatch you're asking for a cross street. The guy doesn't know the cross street. You're pounding on his windows. Do you hear an earthquake in street where you are? Yes, sir? We're on rain. It's just so like it's like nauseating how scary it is. Totally, yeah. I have this right here. We're intersection. Good night, University City. And also the fact that like this isn't an observer documenting what ICE is doing, this is someone asking for help. And the fact that they're essentially not getting help. Yeah. Like a lot of these operators don't know what to do. Totally. And I think that's one of the things that hit me so hard when I listen to this episode that maybe want to talk more about all of these episodes. Is that sensation of what it's like when your own government is doing something that is clearly wrong and no one else within that government is willing to say that it's wrong or do anything about it because they too are either complicit or powerless. Yeah. It just it like gives you that sensation in your stomach like it like the floor is dropping out from underneath you. Like we were saying like there's these different ways to get out this story and it's it's so like we've been saying like it's been really I think part of the reason we don't hear more stories from immigrants facing this is because people are obviously afraid to speak out and it's hard to get those stories. And this is a way to get like the real person perspective without having to find people to interview. Right. Exactly. Yeah. One of the calls that broke my heart the most was there's a woman who calls and says that ICE is just tear gas the whole street. She's got worship over nine one one. I just tear gas the whole street by Rico Fresh on Armageddon and Drake and I was just I'm a US citizen and I was just going to grocery store and they started tear gas in the whole street. It's ridiculous. Like are we no freaking war? This is from Chicago from when I was flooded with federal agents during operation midway blitz. And she says I'm an American citizen but they just like and she's trying to explain what just happened and she says something like what gives them the right to do this. It's by Rico Fresh on Armageddon Drake. Armageddon Drake. How did they do it? Who gives it as a right to do that? All right. Anybody got an analyst where? No. No one needs to ambulance but you need to be aware of the thing but you can't just do that. When I was walking to the grocery store and they tear gas in everyone. And she sounds like outraged. Like how could this be happening? Like this doesn't make any sense. And then I say that you said yes because I say in an unmarked course why do you uniform unmarked covering their faces? You hear her tone changes and she like becomes resigned to it over the course of the call. Like she's outraged and then she realizes that nothing can be done and so she's just kind of like is dejected by the end of the call and it's just I just want you to be around the fuck that I know you can arrest anyone. All right. You know the right is an analyst right now, right? No. I'm fine. And I have a little problem. Oh my god. It just yeah it just rips my heart out. Totally. Yeah. And then Ira Glass mentions the Supreme Court case that we mentioned earlier. In the first operation in Los Angeles last summer, immigration agents began widespread racial profiling, stopping anybody speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent. And then in September, the Supreme Court said they would allow that for now. So now they can stop anybody who looks or sounds far into them. Which I just sort of step out of this chronological order of the episodes that we've been talking about. I thought it would be interesting to go back and listen to an episode of the five to four podcasts that covered this Supreme Court shadowdocket ruling. On this episode of five to four, Peter, Riannan and Michael are talking about known Vivazquez Pardomo or recent case about federal immigration officers use of race to detain people suspected of being undocumented. And so this podcast is like a Supreme Court commentary podcast. That I've listened to for a long time, but I increasingly find myself doing the thing that I talked about at the beginning of this episode of not listening to episodes because I think they're going to be too upsetting, you know? Even though part of the goal of this podcast is they want to be open about the fact that the Supreme Court is not this hallowed sacred institution that dispenses wisdom from on high and show that it's just a political animal like every other aspect of government. And a huge part of the show is they're humor. They make a lot of jokes about the Supreme Court. But they also really care about justice. Right. And one of the things that I found kind of bracing about this episode is every other time I heard a reference to that Supreme Court case, it was always like, well, this is what the Supreme Court ruled. Like, and sort of maybe a little skepticism about whether that was the right ruling, but, oh well, you know, that's what Supreme Court said. And to hear these three people who know about the law and know about the history of the Supreme Court, to kind of like voice how insane it is. The federal troops appeared to be detaining people based entirely on their ethnicity and factors like whether they were near a home depot in a parent violation of various constitutional rights. So some folks sued and a federal court and joined the federal government from detaining people for discriminatory or arbitrary reasons. But the Supreme Court, in a move that we've now seen many times intervened to lift that order, allowing the administration to continue discriminating in immigration raids. The way the Supreme Court typically works is that somebody writes a majority opinion and several other, you know, justices join that opinion. And then if someone wants to say, I agree with the majority opinion, but I have a slightly different take, then they write a concurrence. That's the point of a concurrence. And in this case, no one wrote a majority opinion because it was on the shadowdocket, which is like an emergency, like when the Supreme Court feels like they have to make an emergency decision. They just say, this is our emergency decision, but they don't have to write an opinion. And for some reason Brett Kavanaugh was like, I want to explain what I agree with this opinion. And no one else joined his concurrence, which essentially means that no one thought he did a good job explaining even the other justices on the right. Exactly. That means that he wrote it presumably thinking someone's going to join this and this will be the majority opinion perhaps, right? And all of the conservatives were like, no, Brett. It's so bad too. It's embarrassing. So even though the other justices on the right clearly agreed with the ruling because otherwise it wouldn't have gone through, they didn't agree with it enough to back Kavanaugh. Right. Exactly. And if anything, the way that the five to four hosts, the way they characterize it is that the other right-wing Supreme Court justices were probably embarrassed by the fact that Brett Kavanaugh revealed just how racist their thinking actually is. Kavanaugh says, quote, many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English. Therefore race and language can be a relevant factor. He says this is quote, common sense. Of course. He claims that because illegal immigrants in Los Angeles are likely to be Hispanic, it is therefore justified to detain people who look Hispanic. The point of discrimination law is that that does not matter. No. Yes. The law protects your individual right to be treated fairly, not to be discriminated against. You don't sacrifice your liberty because people of your demographic group are committing crimes, even if that's true. That's what the individual in individual liberty means. It means that it hears to you as an individual, regardless of your demographics. But the other really important point to me and that like hearing it spoken aloud, I was like, thank God someone. Even though I, in the past, I have avoided listening to episodes like this because I worry they're going to be upsetting to me. Hearing someone be upset on my behalf is actually cathartic. It's different than just hearing it as a straight news delivery. Yes. Yes. The next portion, Kavanaugh is weighing the burden imposed on people who are detained and interrogated by federal agents, right? This is wild. This is wild. It's fucking angry. This whole opinion made me angry, but this is still what? This is an aspect of podcasting that I think is really interesting. It's like what mode of language are people using on these various podcasts? You listen to, listen to Radio Atlantic and it's a very sort of journalistic, formal kind of speaking. If they ever use like a four letter word, it's notable, right? Whereas on 5 to 4, they talk like they're your smartest legal friends sitting at a bar, ranting about the Supreme Court. There's something about that that's like, I need to hear that side of thinking about this. What Kavanaugh says is, quote, the interests of individuals who are here illegally in the country and avoiding being stopped by law enforcement for questioning is ultimately an interest in evading the law. Oh my god. That is not an especially weighty legal interest. This is wrong, you guys. Everything about this is wrong. If you were a law student listening, this makes no sense. If being suspected of violating the law, forfeits your fourth amendment rights, then there are no fourth amendment rights. Right. Constitutional rights apply whether or not you violated the law. That is a huge part of the point. It's like a really big part of the point. It's not like if they're a criminal, then they don't have any interest in like the fourth amendment. No, it protects everybody. There's no carve out for looking for people who commit crimes. It doesn't matter if you're a murderer. You still have fourth amendment rights. You don't get to be like, well, the police didn't need a warrant because this guy was covering up a murder. You don't get to say that. That's not how a fucking works. And so there's this part where they talk about the fact that in his concurrence, Brett Kavanaugh says that even if some legal residents and citizens are swept up in these stops and questioning, their experience will be brief. The questioning in those circumstances is typically brief and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are US citizens or otherwise legally in the United States. And they're like the people who sued, which is the reason we have this case at all, were citizens. They were US citizens suing because they were treated horribly. Now, let me regale you with the story. Yes. Yes. From this actual case. Yes. Yes. One of the plaintiffs in this case is a US citizen born in LA. Ice shows up at his workplace, asks if he's a citizen. He says, yes, multiple times. They asked what hospital he was born in. Yeah. And when he could not recall, they racked a rifle, slammed him against a fence and twisted his arm behind his back. They finally get his ID at which point they let him go, but they confiscate the ID. Right. He took his ID and never gave it back. Another citizen in this lawsuit who runs a car wash showed Ice agents his ID. They still arrested him and brought him to a warehouse for questioning. These are examples from the case. Yeah. And so like, the implication of Brett Kavanaugh's ruling is, well, if you look like people who we think might be committing crimes, you just have to deal with this. You just have to, you know, be treated this way. And then I think back to all the stories from all these episodes. I mean, you're a citizen and I was just going to grocery store and they start to get in the whole street. All those people calling in to 911 on this American life episode. They might have been like, "I'm a American citizen, but this is the fact that you hear my car and he's on it all right." Virtually every single one of those people was a citizen or a legal resident. Totally, totally, totally. Yeah. And the fucking hitting US citizens, they just knocked out a young lady with a bike. And so those, the sound of a guy being ripped from his car, having his windows smashed and being ripped from his car, that's the sound of a US citizen being treated the way that Brett Kavanaugh thinks that's just fine to treat people. There's no harm. Make any fucking sense. It's incoherent. It's antithetical to the entire concept of rights. One thing I'm taking away from this conversation is like you are seeking the media that you're consuming about this to reflect your personal outrage or what seems like a warranted level of outrage about what's going on. Yeah. I mean, I think it gets at the question of whether journalism is accurate if it doesn't include emotion, particularly the emotion of the journalist. If a journalist is looking at a situation and they're feeling emotions and they don't include those emotions in their reporting, are they accurately reporting? And I think this is particularly evident in podcasts and audio because you can hear more emotion in audio than you can see emotion in print. Like I read this opinion yesterday and was furious, like pacing around my house angrily for like an hour and was like I need to do something to fucking calm down. I'm like losing my shit. So then pretty close to us starting to work on this, an episode came out from the podcast Heavyweight Jonathan Goldstein's show. Hello. Hi. My wife. Hi. My husband. How are you? I'm getting through. Yeah. So you wanted to talk? I did. I feel like we haven't had much of a chance to connect over the last couple weeks because there's been a lot going on here. Here is Minneapolis. So I actually want to talk about this in reverse order because the second part of this episode is this story where he interviews the family of the third person who was shot by ice in Minneapolis. The man's name was Julio Cesar Sosa Siles. He was Venezuelan and he had no criminal record. There are different accounts of what happened that night. Been in a nutshell, the federal government claims Julio had been targeted for arrest that he fled during a car chase and that when he was caught, he was shot by an ice agent in self-defense. The FBI says otherwise. Their investigation determined that ice wasn't looking for Julio at all and that he was not a part of any chase. Julio's roommate was mistaken for someone else while driving and he got into a car chase with ice. The roommate led the agents back to the house he and Julio shared with their partners and their babies. Eyewitnesses say the shooting wasn't self-defense that the men were fleeing into the house when shots were fired. At the end of the night, Julio and his partner Indirelli were arrested. And like the first story from reveal that we talked about, it's one of the very few stories that focuses on the experience of migrants and legal residents and other people who are being affected by ice because ice is targeting them in particular. Emilie has been in the US since 2023. With the shooting, she fears that she and her family have become targets, even more so targets, of ice. So she doesn't leave the house, not to grocery shop, not to go to work. She keeps the blinds drawn, the lights outside, off. She says she prays that God will just make her house invisible. I'm with my interpreter, Eric, who's not really an interpreter, but my former office mate, who works as an immigration lawyer. The house is full of life. Four kids of her own, ages nine through 14, and her three-year-old grandson, Julio and Indirelli-san. Once inside, one of the kids locks the door behind us. And there's this heartbreaking moment where she has footage of a video call right before the shooting happened, where multiple people were in this apartment and ice were banging on the door. Tear gas had been thrown through the window, and so Emilie's daughter and grandson got on the ground. They were phoning from under the bed. I can show you the video. You can hear everything. Emilie pulls out her phone. She had recorded the call, and she shows me the video. They're going to kill us, Maddie. I'm hearing shots. I asked where Julio and his roommate were while she was on the phone with her daughter. Turns out, they were also on the phone. They were there, and they were talking to their mothers. Because in that moment, they thought that they were going to kill them. And they wanted to say goodbye to each of their mothers. So that story is incredible. But he starts the episode with an interview with his wife. On Wednesday, January 7, I had dropped Aggie Effet School, and I was driving down 36, which is a one-way. There were, I don't know if it was six or eight vehicles coming directly toward me, going the wrong way down a one-way at full speed. And I really thought I was going to have ahead on collision. She just found herself in the middle of an accident, not intentionally, which I think is a big part of what happened here is there's people that you might think of as your traditional activist, people who go out to protest, people who are super engaged in the news. And then there's people just trying to live their lives. And what happened here is that a lot of people just trying to live their lives got caught up in what was going on. And this, I think, is a story about that. Yeah, there's the. Basically, focus is on two different incidents where it's almost as though her reaction to what's happening carries her out of her car against her will. Like, she's not choosing to do it. She has to do it. My brain just wasn't connecting. What was happening, and then I saw two women running toward this scene with whistles. And then somewhere in my head it clicked. Like, oh, this is an ice raid. I didn't even know exactly what that meant, but I just felt so clearly like something wrong is happening. And so I parked and I jumped out. And then there's a point. I think it's in the second incident where she's with a crowd of people and they see that the people they're bringing out of an apartment building are like teenagers essentially. One of them is wearing a t-shirt in shorts, even though it's, you know, very cold outside. I mean, it's so cold, it's the kind of cold that, you know, you take your gloves off for a few seconds and your fingers just really hurt. Like, it is hard to be outside in this weather. Yeah. And when we see the kids, we just start screaming, "Shame on you!" "Shame on you." I'm a mom. You know, like, "Shame on you." It's the words that come to mind. And we're yawning, you know, their kids. And. "Shame on you!" Sorry, this is going to be the hardest part for me. And I feel like something that gets lost in a lot of the coverage of this is, like, the cruelty isn't necessary. It's not just unjust. You hear stories about the way people are being treated after they're detained, like the living conditions they're put in, the food that has like bugs in it, you know, all these things. And it's like, they're treating them with this cruelty. And that when you see that cruelty happening on your street, it's as though the way she describes it, it feels almost like an allergic reaction. Like, your body of its own volition has to shout the word "shame" at what you're seeing. I can't even describe the feeling where, like, literally three feet from me, I see a man, like, just a Minneapolis guy on the ground, and an agent just pepper-spring him straight in the face from three inches away. And I mean, every part of you just wants to run and just like, tackle that guy, but you know you can't. And so you just yell. One of the things that I often notice in audio stories is when they leave in moments of, you know, like a person losing track of what they're talking about or kind of stumbling around. Like, the sort of easily-editable moments of a conversation. And there's a moment in the story. And then they've just got her by all fours. And start carrying her away. And then I see that they have a white-haired man that they are carrying by all fours. And they open the back door of a black SUV and literally like stuff him in. That's the only language I know how to use. She stops and just takes this really deep breath. And it's like, she's not taking a breath because she has to stop. She's taking a breath because she needs to keep talking. Sorry. So they stuff him into the vehicle and then. All right, there's flash-pops all over the place. And then the first. I just hear a bunch of like, "Papa, papa, papa, papa." And I figure out that these are, guess, water flash bangs. And then smoke just starts to pour out. And then it hits. Hearing that deep breath, like something about that, I was like, that's. Like, I feel like I'm in that deep breath. You know, we've been told that there's a drawdown on ice in the Twin Cities. But I don't know that I. Like, my wife and I were both like, "Oh, believe it when we see it, you know?" Yeah. I feel like we're all in this moment of like. You know? And now we have to keep talking about what happened. "Phonograph" is a production of me and Breed-A-Green. Special thanks this week to all the shows that made these stories. Reveal, Radio Atlantic, Whatnext, This American Life, Five to Four, Heavyweight, and even the Daily. There are links in the show notes to every individual episode that Breeda and I discussed. I'm also including a link for you to donate to organizations helping people affected by ice in Minnesota. If you like what we're doing with the show, you can review us on Apple podcasts or support us on Patreon or just send us an email to [email protected]. I think we're going to take a few extra weeks off to recover from these crazy times, but we'll be back with a new episode in a little bit. Until then, thanks for listening. I'll probably cut those out, but it was interesting to go for a few weeks. Like, I don't. I think I didn't start really listening to the news again until Kamala was back in the race or was in the race. Yeah. And those few weeks without the news was fascinating because the only way that I was getting news was inadvertently. I'd be listening to a podcast that wasn't a news podcast, but they would reference the news. So you weren't listening to the radio or like. No, I wasn't reading anything. I was just like taking a break. And I remember I would get news like the way you would probably get news like a hundred or two hundred years ago where you just somebody in the village square would be like, "Did you hear that this happened?" And then you'd pretend that you knew what they were talking about. I'd go on walks with my wife and she would tell me things that she felt like I needed to know. So anyway, I eventually did find my way back to the news, but and I was very aware when I was doing it, how privileged a position it is to do that, to take a break. Because most people are living in the news. The news isn't like a content stream they can just sort of dip their toes in. It's happening to them.