--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is a Sunday story from Up First, where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: President Trump campaigned on a promise of mass deportations, and since he took office in January, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE, have been increasing detentions to try to meet that goal.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: In July, Congress approved $170 billion for immigration and border enforcement. $75 billion of which will go directly to ICE. It's the most money the U.S. government has ever invested in detention and deportation, and it makes ICE the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: All this prompted our friends over at NPR's ThruLine podcast to take a look back at the history of ICE, from the original intent of the agency to its evolution as a law enforcement powerhouse.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The episode features two people who've spent decades working on opposite sides of the immigration system.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: You know, I think there's a, to keep the system fair, it has to be well regulated.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Roger Werner is currently employed by the Department of Homeland Security. He's worked there since the department was created in 2003, and he was a founding member of ICE.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: He's also the co-author of the book, The History and Evolution of Homeland Security in the United States.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The views he expresses are his own. He's not speaking as a representative of the government.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: They also talked to Peter Markowitz. I'm a professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York City.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Markowitz founded the Catherine O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic, where he defends immigrants facing deportation and works on policy.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: In the Throughline episode, Werner and Markowitz take listeners through the fascinating history of ICE. starting from its origins as the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or the INS, stretching back into the 20th century.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And they also explore the question of what's changed in 2025 since the Trump administration took office.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: We're going to play that final part of the episode about what's changed over the past year.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: But I strongly recommend that you check out the full episode on the ThruLine podcast because it offers critical historical context for the moment we're now in.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: We'll be back with Throughline host Rund Abdel Fattah, who will pick up the story at the beginning of 2025.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This message comes from Netflix.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The critically acclaimed series The Diplomat returns for its third season, starring Keri Russell as Kate Weiler.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Now the president is dead. Kate's husband Hal may have inadvertently killed him, and Grace Penn is leader of the free world.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: None of this slows Hal's campaign to land Kate the vice presidency.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Allison Janney and Rufus Sewell return, and Bradley Whitford joins the cast of the Emmy-nominated drama.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Watch The Diplomat, now playing only on Netflix.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This message comes from Dell Technologies.
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--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I got three words for him. Jack and O.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: You're going to see us take this country back.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Shock and awe.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: That is how Tom Homan kicked off the Trump administration's second-term approach to deportations.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: President Trump is pushing through a mass deportation campaign.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Immigration rates are up all across the country.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines have been called to Los Angeles by President Trump.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Agents, often armed, wearing plain clothes and masks, are showing up at places where Latino workers are known to gather.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Hardware store parking lots, car washes, street vendor corners, and rounding them up.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: They've grabbed people at bus stops or dragged them out of their cars.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: For the past few months, it's felt like Americans are seeing ice everywhere.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: It's been hard to scroll Instagram or TikTok without hitting a video. of workers and hairnets at a meatpacking plant being herded into a break room by ICE agents.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: A woman crying as she's put into a white truck.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: A black ICE van accelerating as a group of protesters pushes against its hood
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Some of the videos are posted by ICE itself The ICE agents faces are blurred The people they detaining are not
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Immigration attorney and law professor Peter Markowitz says this moment what he's seen unfolding online and in his own work, is unlike anything he's experienced in ICE's history.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The examples I might point to are like the deployment of non-immigration agents, National Guard, other military and law enforcement agencies in a kind of sweeping, heavy-handed, very visible manner.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: That is something that is unfamiliar to me in what I have seen in immigration enforcement in the time that I've been doing this work and really in any time in my lifetime.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Since the start of President Trump's second term, ICE is averaging more than 600 immigration arrests every day.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: In some states, that's more than double the usual amount.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Though government attorneys say there's no quota, Trump's deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, has set a goal of 3,000 detentions per day.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: That would mean a total of more than 1 million arrests every year.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The repercussions are rippling out globally.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: In March, the Trump administration sent hundreds of immigrants to a notorious facility in El Salvador.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And in July, it deported eight immigrants who'd been convicted of crimes in the U.S. to South Sudan.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Only one of them was from there.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Peter Markowitz says that as far back as its creation, some of ICE's work has always been about optics.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And this is where historian and DHS employee Roger Werner agrees.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Speaking as a researcher and private citizen, he argues that detaining immigrants at such high rates and even deporting them to countries they have no attachment to could be a powerful deterrent.
--:-- Roger Werner: I recommend you all go to the southwest border sometime.
--:-- Roger Werner: Imagine walking 50 miles. Like an old lady or a kid, 50 miles. Wow.
--:-- Roger Werner: But that, I mean, but that, doesn't that transmit a level of like desperation on their part to do that?
--:-- Roger Werner: Yes, but it also is the amount of risk you would take.
--:-- Roger Werner: You put your kid through that.
--:-- Roger Werner: It's one thing an adult male going across and say, hey, listen, I'll send you money.
--:-- Roger Werner: We'll figure out how to get here. I can totally understand that.
--:-- Roger Werner: But, you know, and putting a four-year-old child maybe in the hands of a smuggling organization, a cartel based.
--:-- Roger Werner: These people are absolutely brutal.
--:-- Roger Werner: No, I hear you.
--:-- Roger Werner: I guess, I guess in my mind then I'm like, I have a two-year-old.
--:-- Roger Werner: But I think about it. I'm like, what would compel me to ever put him in that situation?
--:-- Roger Werner: It would be things have gotten so bad in my present circumstances would be like, that's just how in my brain, that's how it works.
--:-- Roger Werner: I totally understand it.
--:-- Roger Werner: But you also have to say, is the risk worth the reward?
--:-- Roger Werner: Meaning, are you likely to remain in the United States?
--:-- Roger Werner: That's the real driver.
--:-- Roger Werner: The driver isn't that, you know, where you're going to risk your children.
--:-- Roger Werner: It's are you going to. Right.
--:-- Roger Werner: If there isn't something worth it on the other side.
--:-- Roger Werner: Yeah.
--:-- Roger Werner: If you show and say, and we're talking theoretically here, I was not involved in these operations.
--:-- Roger Werner: If you show and say that, hey, you're not going to be allowed in no matter what you do.
--:-- Roger Werner: Would you sell everything and try?
--:-- Roger Werner: No, you would look for another alternative.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: We asked ICE about this.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: A statement from ICE in response to our questions read in part, quote, It's baffling that anyone would even question a nation's decision to enforce laws enacted by Congress to deter crime. End quote.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: Optics aside, I've noticed two other major changes in ICE's operations.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: The first has to do with the judicial process, when cases go to court.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: You know, if you go to the immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, where I often represent clients, what is happening there is different than what I have ever seen before.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: The agency is moving to terminate cases, which normally if you're representing an immigrant, the termination of a case is a victory.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: But the plan here is to bypass the immigration courts and to use extrajudicial mechanisms to deport people.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: So they can use a mechanism called expedited removal.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: And it's a mechanism where ICE gets to act as the judge, jury and executioner.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: They don't need any immigration judge, and there is very little federal court review available, and, you know, an agent kind of determines on their own that this person is going to be deported with almost no due process.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: And so they move to terminate these cases for the purpose of using that alternative mechanism, notwithstanding the fact that an immigration judge has kind of, you know, has a process underway and the person is fully compliant with that process.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: This is happening around the country
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: A statement from ICE in response to our questions read in part quote ICE is now following the law and placing these illegal aliens in expedited removal as they always should have been
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: If they have a valid credible fear claim, they will continue in immigration proceedings.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: But if no valid claim is found, aliens will be subject to a swift deportation, end quote.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: Since ICE's detention numbers began to rapidly increase.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: There have been reports of overcrowding, poor sanitation, and lack of food at ICE detention centers.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: Peter says all of this is happening at places where conditions were poor to begin with.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: Have you ever been to one of those facilities?
--:-- Peter Markowitz: Many times.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: What is it like, you know, inside one of those facilities?
--:-- Peter Markowitz: It is indistinguishable from the jails and prisons that I've also routinely visited.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: In fact, Sometimes they're exactly the same facilities.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: You know, there are medical care of the poorest quality.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: People routinely die in immigration detention because of inadequate medical care.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: There's a couple of big private prison companies that manage the majority of these.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: And through a profit motive, sometimes you have to pay for things like soap or pay for things like toothpaste.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: And so it is really kind of the most minimal provisions that are provided to folks.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: We'll be right back with more of ThruLine's conversation about the history and evolution of ICE with Rund Abdel Fattah.
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--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The second major change Peter has seen since the beginning of President Trump's second term is money.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The one big beautiful bill is directing more than $175 billion to immigration enforcement.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: If you leave out the U.S. and China, that's more than any country in the world spends on its military in a year.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: ICE alone is set to get $75 billion of that money.
--:-- Roger Werner: American voters are the ones who decided what our immigration enforcement system looks like when they cast their votes for president.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: I think it is really difficult, even for me, and I spend all day long thinking about this stuff, to wrap my head around and what that's going to look like on American streets.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: And to be clear, the $75 billion can be spent over several years.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: We know they're going to build a ton of immigration detention.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: The scale of detention is going to be astronomical.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: They are going to have massive physical presence of militarized agents on the streets.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: I anticipate that that's going to become a norm.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: I anticipate that we're going to be seeing checkpoints, you know, and so I fear that level of funding is so out of scale with what has come before, that we are at real risk of kind of becoming a police state.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: And we've already seen that ICE, you know, doesn't hesitate to move against citizens when it perceives the need to do so.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: So I think increasingly people are going to feel that in a very, very kind of visceral way.
--:-- Roger Werner: What does that mean for the agency to have that kind of influx of funding?
--:-- Roger Werner: A lot of responsibility, I would say, from a historical perspective.
--:-- Roger Werner: Is spend the American taxpayers' money wisely.
--:-- Roger Werner: Make sure that they're getting the best use of their money and it's not wasted.
--:-- Roger Werner: It's a big responsibility with that amount of money coming into an agency quickly that, you know, I hope historically the right thing is done with it.
--:-- Roger Werner: You know, that serves both the American people, the interests of the United States, and the people that are taken into custody.
--:-- Roger Werner: You know, they deserve the rights that are available to them under the laws that Congress has passed.
--:-- Roger Werner: But in spite of all the money heading ICE way and the responsibility that comes with it Roger Werner thinks this moment is fundamentally different from the rest of ICE's history or for that matter INS
--:-- Roger Werner: This is nothing out of the ordinary.
--:-- Roger Werner: None of this has been out of the ordinary over the years as it's been a result of funding and congressional and executive and political support and largely driven by the American people.
--:-- Roger Werner: This comes in waves of about every 30 years.
--:-- Roger Werner: With our immigration policy, we become too generous and people feel that we're being taken advantage of.
--:-- Roger Werner: So then they want a more firm hand or, you know, more thorough examination of things.
--:-- Roger Werner: There's always a pendulum swing.
--:-- Roger Werner: But there is, you do have to have a deterrent because we can absorb everybody inside the United States.
--:-- Roger Werner: So it depends on where you sit on the issue is how you're going to judge that, I guess.
--:-- Roger Werner: You know, if you think we should let in everybody, then, you know, but that's not what the majority of the American public believe in.
--:-- Roger Werner: So that's not where the polls are.
--:-- Roger Werner: They want some degree of immigration enforcement.
--:-- Roger Werner: What that looks like, that's always a, you know, that's that pendulum swinging back and forth.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: If you look at current polls, you'll see that most Americans actually oppose the kind of immigration enforcement that's being carried out by ICE today.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: And he worries that we've entered an era where ICE is amassing more and more power.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: And he feels like the checks on that power are disappearing.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: In the first Trump administration, you know, there were, you know, institutional players in the White House and DOJ and DHS, you know, said, wait, wait, wait, we have to follow the law.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: Those people are all gone.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: Like, there are no internal checks going on anymore.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: Beyond that, what are the other checks?
--:-- Peter Markowitz: The immigration courts are being purged, right?
--:-- Peter Markowitz: Anybody who is not kind of aligned is being pushed out.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: What I had hoped was that the Supreme Court may actually provide some kind of check against the most extreme examples.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: examples.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: And with one or two notable exceptions, that has really not been the case, right?
--:-- Peter Markowitz: Over and over again, they're letting them remove people to countries they have never come from or had any connection to.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: They're allowing the revocation of hundreds of thousands of TPS holders, status Venezuelans.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: They're stripping hundreds of thousands of people of humanitarian protections.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: And so the Supreme Court is no backstop either.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: And so no internal backstop, no immigration court backstop, no Supreme Court backstop.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: We are in a really, really, really precarious place as a country.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: I would impart to the listeners that you really have to understand that the men and women who work for these agencies, especially Immigration Customs Enforcement, have dedicated their life to public service.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: Tom Homan keeps saying, just wait, just wait.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: We're just getting started.
--:-- Peter Markowitz: And I believe him.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: To hear the full episode, you can find ThruLine wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: There you can also check out the rest of ThruLine's recent immigration series.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This episode was produced by Runda Abdel-Fattah and Sarah Wyman.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: with help from the rest of the ThruLine team.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: It was edited by Casey Miner.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Andrew Mambo produced this episode of The Sunday Story.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The rest of The Sunday Story team includes Jenny Schmidt, Justine Yan, Thomas Coltrane, and Liana Semstrom.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I'm Aisha Roscoe, and Up First will be back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This message comes from NPR sponsor, 1Password.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Secure access to your online world, from emails to banking, so you can protect what matters most with 1Password.
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