Adam Watson (00:00) Welcome back to “Simplifying the State,” the podcast where we break down politics so you don’t have to try to figure out why the mayor of New York City invited kids to hit him with snowballs. As always, I’m Adam Watson.
Nicholas (00:12) I’m Nicholas Perrin.
Adam Watson (00:14) All right, now before we start, if you would be so kind as to rate us and follow the podcast wherever you’re listening and share it with anyone you think would enjoy it, like the driver of the snowplow that just buried your car in 10 feet of snow. All right. So today’s topic is going to be fairly relevant. We’re going to be talking about ICE and sort of how the role of ICE has changed in the first year of the Trump administration. Nicholas, looking at the past in terms of ICE, would you say there’s been a major increase in its presence or has it just gotten more media coverage?
Nicholas (00:55) Well, I don’t know a whole lot about ICE before the Trump administration, but I can say for sure that it’s definitely been getting more media coverage. I think it has also definitely increased its presence in, you know, major cities and just in general because—when was that spending bill passed that gave like $10 billion to ICE? Yeah.
Adam Watson (01:26) You mean the most recent one? So that was passed—well, it passed the House. It hasn’t yet passed the Senate. So what he’s talking about is that there was an appropriations bill to give funding to various Homeland Security agencies, the Coast Guard, and TSA. Among them was ICE. That passed the House with the help of seven Democrats. It’s yet to pass the Senate. That was, I think, about four or five days ago, I’m going to say, give or take.
Nicholas (02:00) Well, yeah, I mean, the increased media coverage isn’t for nothing. That’s what I’ll say. I don’t think ICE has shot and killed American citizens very often within the past five years.
Adam Watson (02:21) Yeah. I mean, so they have had a major increase in their budget. Their numbers have swelled by 110%, and that’s from the administration. They’ve increased the total number of officers and officials from 10,000 to 22,000. But here’s the caveat to that: They’ve done that in the last year or so. There’s no way that all of them are well-trained because it takes several months to train an ICE agent effectively. Unless all 12,000 of them came in at the same period of time, there’s no way all of the ICE officers on the street right now who are new have been given adequate training. And I mean, this isn’t just some janitorial position. I mean, these are people with guns. These are people who are going out to arrest people who maybe don’t have any background in law enforcement, who have not been given adequate training, and we’re sort of seeing the consequences of that. As you talked about, I mean, two people have been killed by ICE. I mean, the second one is—I mean, both of them are insane, but the second one is like there is absolutely zero way you could excuse that. With the first one, you could maybe say, “She was trying to hit me,” or whatever. That doesn’t seem like that was the case. But in the second one, I mean, they literally just started beating the hell out of him, and then they shot him. And I mean, there’s no justification that anyone can create for that.
Nicholas (04:05) Like the only reason he got involved in the first place was that he was trying to help someone else who got thrown down to the ground by ICE. He was a nurse. He was just trying to do his job.
Adam Watson (04:20) He was a VA nurse, and they maced him, they beat him up, they pushed him to the ground, and they took his gun, which he didn’t have in his hands, by the way, it was like on his belt, behind him. They took it, and then they killed him. Like, that’s what these people are doing now. They’re not deporting the worst of the worst. They’re going into cities, they’re occupying them, and then they’re shooting people.
Nicholas (04:45) I’ve heard a lot of comparisons of situations like these to, well, fascist regimes and authoritarian regimes across history and even today. I don’t want to be the one to shout “fascist” at this administration, but I think that line of protection is getting thinner and thinner.
Adam Watson (05:15) Yeah, right. I mean, yeah, I don’t want to be the one to call an administration of an opposing party fascist. Like, I feel like that word has been thrown around too much lately. But like, having a group of individuals who are going out into the street who are terrorizing people—I mean, that’s what’s happening in these cities. I mean, they have been questioning or detaining or arresting people who are either here legally or who are citizens, and then they’re causing so much chaos in the cities they’re doing it in. Usually, how a deportation operation is supposed to go is, you know, you’re supposed to do a lot of investigating into this person. You’re supposed to find out their status. You’re supposed to find out if they’re overstaying their visa, etc., etc. And then you send in a surgical team to arrest them and then deport them. You don’t send like 3,000 agents into a city and just start rounding people up to see if they’re illegal immigrants. That’s not how it is supposed to work at all. And that’s what they’re doing. But yeah, I mean, masked men killing people and causing chaos and fear—I mean, that is from the fascist playbook.
Nicholas (06:29) I think it would be good to point out why they would go through all this. Why would these trained government agents—although how well-trained is up for debate—why would they, in effect, execute a U.S. citizen? Like, what goes on in the training or like in their work environment to cause them to do something like that? How much pressure is being put on them?
Adam Watson (07:06) Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, that sort of goes back to the thing we were previously talking about. I mean, you’re putting people who are perhaps not well-trained, you’re putting them into a high-stakes situation—in a situation for which, even with previous training, this is not something that they were trained for at all. I mean, ICE, I don’t believe it is like riot or crowd control training. I don’t think they receive that because typically, this is not what they are supposed to be doing. This is not what their role is supposed to be. They’re not supposed to be, you know, constantly in a city patrolling, etc. They’re supposed to go in, find the specific person they’ve been tasked with deporting, and then that’s it. And I mean, we’re seeing the consequences of that.
Nicholas (07:57) I think this current administration and what they have tasked the ICE agents to do—like to go into “blue” cities and try to find whatever illegal immigrant they can and deport them—the quotas that were put out by the Trump administration, I think especially, are taking a toll, like, not only on, well, budgeting and the federal government, but like these people, you know? Their actions are not excusable, but there has to be a reason for why they did it.
Adam Watson (08:37) Definitely. It’s not all clouds and gray skies here. In terms of where the public stands on this, there has been widespread protesting about what ICE is doing. In terms of polling, 61% of people, according to a YouGov poll, believe ICE has gone too far in what they’ve been doing. And according to Time, around 19% of Republicans and 48% of Americans support abolishing ICE. That is up from about 9% of Republicans and 27% of Americans in June. But I think that this is going back to the fact that, look, I think people are concerned about illegal immigration. I think illegal immigrants do need to be deported. But the way they’re going about doing this is wrong, and they’re not even doing what they’re supposed to be doing. I mean, to sort of just give an example here, that case that we heard about with the 5-year-old and the father, who they sort of lured out with that child—they were here awaiting their asylum process. So they were doing what they were supposed to do. They weren’t hiding from ICE or anything like that. I mean, ICE still came in, they still deported them, or well, they sent them to Texas to a deportation facility, seemingly awaiting deportation. And I mean, they’re not even doing what they’re supposedly meant to be doing. But yeah, I—sorry, I was just going to ask you what you thought, you know, of ICE’s role in terms of just how it’s been handling the immigration deportation aspect.
Nicholas (10:08) I think… poorly. I’ll just put it like that. But I think all of the deporting things, like the solutions that we’ve been seeing to the illegal immigrant issue in the United States, don’t address the root issue of why undocumented people are coming into this country in the first place. I don’t know how to solve that issue. I mean, one thing we can do is make green cards easier to obtain, among other things. But I think until we address that issue, it’s just going to be this routine of ICE gets beefed up, you know, they kill some people and the public gets angry and then, you know, maybe it bulges them, but then we need a solution to undocumented immigrants, and then the cycle continues and everything gets worse. I’m not trying to be a “doomer,” but that’s just how I see it.
Adam Watson (11:14) Yeah. I mean, all of this really stems from a broken immigration system that is not set up to handle the number of people who want to come to this country. I mean, there are so many ways that you could make the system better and reform it—adding more immigration judges, making it easier for people to get appointments. That was the aim of an app that was introduced in 2021, you know, to get these immigration appointments, to speed up the process so that there are not so many illegal immigrants that you need to give ICE a budget of like $40 billion. And I mean, yeah, this whole thing just stems from this country’s poor immigration system, honestly. Like, how ICE has been treating the people in Minnesota—that is one issue, but it really stems from the broken system that we have, and it needs comprehensive reform.
Nicholas (12:13) I don’t think I could have put it any better way.
Adam Watson (12:15) You were mentioning something earlier that might be interesting to talk about. You mentioned the whole ICE not needing warrants signed by judges. You want to talk a little bit about that?
Nicholas (12:25) So yeah, ICE does not need warrants signed by a judge to make an arrest and, you know, assign them to deportation. And because of that, well, things like—people like Abrego Garcia, for example, were able to get deported, and there was nothing, you know, anyone could do about it at the time, because a judge did not sign that arrest warrant. And, you know, if ICE needed an arrest warrant signed by a judge, that would have never happened. Abrego Garcia would never have been sent to El Salvador; he would have just continued living his life. But instead, he became a national news story, and a tragic one at that. And I think the whole reason that they don’t go for warrants that need to be signed by a judge is that it takes too long. And with the quota set out by the Trump administration, that’s just unacceptable. So this is what they have to do.
Adam Watson (13:36) Yeah, just to sort of give a brief explanation of what he’s talking about: Basically, ICE does not need a warrant signed by a judge to arrest somebody. They can use something called Form I-200, which is signed by an ICE supervisor. Basically, they can use that to arrest people suspected of violating immigration law. It’s kind of broad.
Adam Watson (14:00) I feel like this goes back to the statement of not wanting to call everything fascist, but this is dangerously close to it. This is just another aspect of ICE that is getting dangerously close to authoritarianism. And, you know, it’s not what ICE is supposed to be doing. They are supposed to be a surgical tool for deportations. They’re not supposed to be a blunt instrument like they are being used now.
Nicholas (14:28) I think until anything changes—like the quotas or the warrants that need to be signed by a judge and better training—until any of those things change, I don’t think—I think we’ll see the same thing in the news again and again.
Adam Watson (14:51) Yeah. All right. Do you have anything else to add? Sorry.
Nicholas (14:53) So I think this is a good time to say everyone needs to participate in politics. It’s very important, especially right now. So if you’re old enough to vote, or even if you’re not, make sure to write to your local legislator and tell them how you feel. Tell them what you think needs to be done.
Adam Watson (15:02) Yeah.
Nicholas (15:16) They can’t represent you if they don’t know what to represent.
Adam Watson (15:19) Yeah. And I mean, the whole point of why we started this was because we wanted to be able to share what was going on and what we thought mattered to young people. But I mean, all we can do is tell you what’s going on, right? It’s up to you to then use that information to go out and participate in our civics and participate in our politics. Because I mean, I get that it’s exhausting and I get that it seems tiring and it seems hopeless, and it seems like all of those things, but the only way to change it is to participate. The only way to change it is to protest or to vote or to write to your congressman or your local assemblyman or your mayor, or even the president. It doesn’t matter. It’s just that you may not care about politics, but politics cares about you. And everyone needs to participate. Even a little bit.
Nicholas (16:14) Hopefully a lot of it, if you can.
Adam Watson (16:15) Yeah, hopefully a lot of it—that’s what we’d love to see. Even just voting—that seems like that’s the bare minimum to have a society where everyone can be represented. And I think that’s probably a good place to end this one. What do you think? Yeah, all right. So, you know, remember to follow the podcast wherever you’re listening. Make sure to follow us on Instagram. Make sure to subscribe to us on YouTube. Make sure to do all those things.
Nicholas (16:33) I think so too.
Adam Watson (16:44) Make sure to tell your friends to go out and vote, or to register to vote, or to protest, or anything like that. And we’ll see you guys next time.
Music Attribution: “The World Is Ours” by Zane Little, used with permission, courtesy of freemusicarchive.org.
