S6 Ep22: Put Excuses on ICE (with Adrian Carrasquillo)

I know that you want to listen to your podcast, so I'll keep it short. Because if you think it's important to make a duurzame keuze, can ASR maybe help? I think, how then? Well, for example, when you're doing something to do with the things you love to do with Schade. Will you know more about the instructions where a duurzaam schade-restal can be? Go to asr.nl slash duurzamekeuzes. This does ASR for you and a duurzame community. ASR does it. So, then you can now listen to your podcast. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, and this week we are covering yet another killing of an American citizen by our own government. We've heard a lot from Republicans calling for investigations, a lot of finger pointing inside the Trump administration. And today, you're going to hear from some of the real people driving Trump's declining poll numbers on immigration. The majority of the country now disapproves of how ICE is handling its job right now, according to a recent YouGov poll, including about one in five Republicans. Today, every voter you're going to hear from voted for Donald Trump in 2024, and a lot of them are not happy. I think this group is interesting because while you, dear listener, were probably extremely mad, as I know I was, about the killing of Alex Preddy this past weekend, many of the voters we talked to were more like sad and anxious and also confused. And we're going to try to make sense of all of it. My guest today is Adrian Carasquillo, the Bulwarks immigration correspondent and author of the excellent Huddled Masses newsletter. If you're not reading that, you got to be. It's so good. One of the best things we're producing here. Adrian, thanks for coming back, man. Sarah, it was great to be on with you. Yeah, I know. Thanks for coming back. You have to be here. I make you come. Yeah. But Adrian, you were in Minneapolis over the last few weeks because of the Renee Good killing. Well, just tell me about your time there. What were you reporting on? What'd you find out? What'd you see? I always think about these trips, like, what are the stories if I never run into an ICE agent? You know, if they're hitting people in the face with tear gas, we kind of know what the story is. And I just feel like we want to know what this has been from the beginning, which is if you're doing interior enforcement, what does that look like in communities? And how are you affecting businesses? And how are you affecting organizers? people I think in the last few years particularly I've heard the word activist and it's all of a sudden this big scary word these are people who are organizing their communities who are worried about their own parents or their own families and on top of that are getting just like this incredible crush of incoming so I did like a day with one of the top activists out there she runs a group called Copal which is a Latino group what I thought was really fascinating there is they have like a Midwest immigrant defense network of 106 groups in the Midwest. Clearly, like if those people are not existing to help people with rent assistance, with groceries, with utilities, no one's getting that help. People are locked in their homes right now, scared to come out. I was with her and she filled up someone with a gas tank because they were too scared to go to the gas station. You know what I mean? So this is the kind of stuff. And then I saw on top of that, just sort of how she was like depressed and the things she's good dealing with. So I talked to folks like that on the ground, business owners who've lost 90% of their business. And the way they say it is like only really the Americans are coming basically, like the Latinos are too scared to come and they have kids, so they have to keep working. So, you know- Can I ask Adrian, just to be clear, is it people who are undocumented who are scared or is it anybody who is worried that they're going to end up in a confrontation with ICE because they're brown? Yeah. There was a guy who's Ecuadorian, you know, I'm a half Ecuadorian. So I'm talking of this guy, he sells Ecuadorian food. He's been a U S citizen for 25 years. Like the Renee good shooting terrified him because now he's scared to leave work because if they're going to do that to a white woman, what are they going to do to him? You know? So, and I've seen this throughout our, our coverage. Like when Charlotte happened, there was a baker and he was like, he used to be in the Colombian armed forces. This guy's not like scared of stuff. And he was like, when agents come up to me, I'll just show them my documentation. And he saw a couple of blocks from his bakery, just some Latinos get just like thrown on the concrete before they could even show documentation. So he like ran to his bakery because he's like, that's what's going to happen to me. There's no time to be like, don't worry, guys, here's my documents. So it was really eye opening to see and the folks who prepared to be in negative 20 degree weather to protest and to do the general strike they did the other day. I mean, really remarkable folks, as we've seen. And it was really eye opening. It was really special. And I felt privileged to be able to do that and tell those stories. Unfortunately, so many of us are seeing the protests through the eyes of the shootings, right, and what's happening around there. And this was something that struck me about Renee Good was, like, she was just dropping her kids off, and she clearly, like, came upon a group of people who were protesting in some way, and she, like, got involved. And so is it just people kind of coming out of their houses saying, these guys are in our city, and we don't want them here? And they're not trying to, like, impede something specific, necessarily. They're trying to say, like, broadly, we don't want you here. Is that right? Broadly, we don't want you here. I think there was a viral tweet recently that was like the sort of ICE handbook stuff where they're like, people can curse at you. People can yell at you. You know, some of these folks that are observing are just like kind of following ICE to see what they're up to. One guy who I wrote about, a drummer who was at the protest on Friday, he had ICE agents show up to his house calling his wife by name to scare them, to let them know we know who you are. So he did that the day before Renee Good's shooting. But these folks are still doing stuff after these shootings, as we saw with Alex Preddy. And that's been a really remarkable part of this, of just like everyday Americans, like everyday white folks in Minneapolis who are like, this is not cool what they're doing in my neighborhood to my neighbors. And I'm going to stand up and be vocal about it. Yeah, I mean, the thing that I want to really highlight as we go into the focus group sound is that when you listen to voters week in and week out, the way that I do, of all different types. But the thing that you really have to learn is, hey, man, a lot of these voters are not clocking what we are talking about in D.C. Like they are not in the minutia. They might know the government shut down. They don't really know why. They know prices are higher. So this is where sometimes people are like, well, voters don't care about policy. And I'm like, it's not that they don't care about policy. It's that they don't care about the minutia of a lot of it. They're not following the news super closely. But there are certain things that end up becoming flashpoints for them, things that break through. One is things that are personal consequences for them, like costs and prices. But this has just blown me away the extent to which everyone we talk to in the groups have seen these videos. They can frame by frame tell you what happened in these instances. And so as a matter of all the eyes of the country looking into something, all the eyes are on Minneapolis right now. The American people are following this. They see it. And they have feelings about it. Are people on the ground there aware that the nation's eyes are on them at the moment? I think they do. They are aware that the nation's eyes are on them. I think a lot of the folks I spoke to felt how I felt, which is that they hoped and they thought that the Renee Good shooting would be some watershed moment, and then it sort of wasn't enough. And I heard some of your focus group stuff on that. Folks, they were still kind of like accepting this authoritarian thing of like, don't do anything with law enforcement or they might kill you. And you're like, wait, what? Like, that's not what we signed up for here in America. But I think the Liam Ramos thing, which I'm writing about now, and I know we're going to talk about later, the little boy who was taken and then the shooting of Alex Freddie. I mean, it's like I've heard you talk about this before, the way that like social media affects us and the incoming that we have. And just like you're on Instagram to get away from like your responsibilities for two minutes and watch a fun video. And all of a sudden you're watching like executions by the state. And that stuff's really terrible. But yeah, just the way that it has been out there. Yeah. When I was there, I think I felt that people knew that it is national, but it's also smaller because it's personal to them. That's the people they love and that's the community. I mean, the drummer that I spoke to told me that a friend of his is moving back to Minneapolis because she's realizing how much she loves the community, how much she misses it. So yeah, there's something special there. And it felt really nice to see the way these people were coming together for each other. All right. I want to get into the immediate reaction to the shooting of Alex Preddy. We talked to a group of Biden to Trump voters the Monday after that shooting took place. So that's just this past Monday. And here's what they thought of the events and how the government responded to them. Let's listen. The way Homeland Security is running things, I'm all for the ICE. I'm all for get the criminals out. But the way they're approaching and separating families and the killings and getting a little kid from schools, I'm against that. So I feel like she has to get impeached for sure. We've seen law enforcement interactions. That on paper initial response, everyone freaks out and then you get a much longer view of it. I just don't know. It looks bad. It kind of looks like seven people had them and they were trying to wrestle them down. They seen a gun and then fired. It doesn't look justified, but I think it's so early to tell. Give me about a week or two, get more information out there, get any body cam from any of those people. If he had a weapon and he pointed it at them, then I can understand. Like they are federal agents. Come on, like that's what's going to happen. I mean, they're going to do that to you. But if it wasn't like all of that happened, like if it was just they saw a gun and they shot him, that's not right. A lot of people carry weapons. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to use it on them. I think the ICE maybe also are like on the edge because everybody hates them so much and they don't know what's going to happen. So I don't know what to think about it. I'll just give it time until the full investigation completes because right now we can't really judge about what's going on right now. So we don't have the full details. And I'm sure there's way more story to this. But the way they went about it, I didn't like how Christy Noam was like, oh, but he had a gun in his hand. He had a nine millimeter, but it was his phone. So I'm like, do you not see what we see? Like, it's like a little off, kind of. The day of the shooting, okay, Bandingo, whatever it is, I forgot his name right now. The head of ICE and her came out hours after the shooting saying it was justified shooting without an investigation so right away antenna goes up and be like oh i've seen the video this morning you see the ice officer remove the gun from the holster of he's a male nurse he's laying on the ground on his knees and they see the gun and they remove it when he takes the gun he that's the officer screams gun gun gun and he pulled it and then they all pull the guns out and they shoot him 10 times where's the justification I sorry there is none okay I do think communities of color are being targeted despite politics or you know their affiliations So regardless of that I do think communities of color are being targeted And I think that that alone is reason for Chrissy Noem to be removed from her position. You know, she's setting fear in a lot of communities. That's not what I voted for. That's not something that I strongly disagree with. You know, because even on my case, you can see my face, you can see my name. Even if I'm a citizen, I might get questioned. So I should note that we did in the screen over-index slightly on Hispanic voters. But I'm just telling you that sort of for awareness, they were not all Hispanic, but several of them were. And look, to a lot of people, the killing of Alex Preddy, I think this looks and feels different, actually, to the killing of Renee Good, where we did have, as you mentioned, right, we had done a similar group of Biden to Trump voters, and they were much more willing to give ICE the benefit of the doubt than this group was. Like, I will say, especially with swingier voters, you do tend to get a kind of let's wait and see, you know, let's see about the investigation. But I would say that the previous group after Renee Good was just a little more, you know, if they tell you to get out of your car, you got to get out of your car. And I think it's a difference in just like the nature of the actual killings, which I did not think there was much ambiguity on the Renee Good killing. But it got very quickly into, well, but did she turn her wheels and where was he and did he get knocked over? Whereas this one, everybody's like, I don't know, there were seven guys. They were on top of him. He was down on the ground. Like they know he's a nurse. That's a lot of information for average voters to have for a news event. It just is based on what I see. So you can tell that the White House feels differently about the reaction, too, to this because they went from smearing him immediately, which people also picked up on, to, you know, maybe looking for someone to blame. But I was surprised that a number of them were like, yeah, get rid of Kristi Noem. And so you wrote several weeks ago about how Kristi Noem could be on the chopping block. Do you think she's on thin ice, pun intended? And since so much of immigration policy is driven by Stephen Miller, how much does it matter even who's in charge at DHS? Yeah, well, remember, right? They put us on the naughty list for writing that Noam's job was in jeopardy and that it was driven by not just issues with her, but also Kour and Lewandowski and this idea that kind of the knives are out for both of them and maybe they'll both go. And then the Atlantic reports that besides Bovino being out, that the next two people that are up in line is Noam and Lewandowski. It's like even you can see now when people sort of take the counter approach to like, Bovino's taken off, but it's still Miller. And it's like, they're just looking for someone to blame. Well, these people have not covered themselves in glory in these moments with these big operations that are going on in Minneapolis, the way that they're invading this occupation of the city. And the big difference, I think, was the way that Republican senators and Republicans in general responded to Alex Bredi's killing, right? Like with good. And I remember hearing those focus groups that was more of like, well, the car could have been a weapon. But here, this is not fast and furious where one person can take on 10 people. As you see this man being beaten by all of these agents, you know that he's down. He's not going to do anything. And he just looked like an execution. It was like 10 shots. So I think that that's where we just see the voters immediately being like, this is different. I'm going to be curious to see. I'm starting to see some stuff pick up in Phoenix. And I wrote that Phoenix was going to be one of those cities in the new year that they were going to go to and see how the operations look different. because they quickly can escalate into this violence again. And when there's border patrol in cities, they're just ready to engage in violence so quickly. What you guys did just hear in Adrian's answer, if you didn't notice it, was him pointing out how his reporting was proven correct, despite the fact that the White House, you know, tried to act like it wasn't. We don't need the Atlantic to confirm it. You were the first on that, buddy. Way to go. This show is sponsored by Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. It's time to lower your spending and create wiggle room in your budget so you can afford your subscription to the bulwark, which is the most important subscription you'll need. A couple of guys in the office, they were just talking about Rocket Money and they find it super helpful that you can cancel subscriptions with just a few clicks and that is fewer clicks than usual. Rocket Money users have been known to save hundreds of dollars a year off their unwanted subscriptions and decluttering your credit card statements is one of the best feelings in the world. Trust me. This is exactly the thing I need because I have subscriptions I want to cancel and not a lot of patience or time. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at rocketmoney.com slash the focus group. That's rocketmoney.com slash the focus group. Rocketmoney.com slash the focus group. Now, everything you're about to hear came in the aftermath of the Renee Good shooting, but I still think it's pretty instructive about how people are thinking about ICE at the moment. We talked to another group of swingish voters about immigration enforcement recently, including some of the sort of abolish ICE discourse. and the people in this clip voted for Trump in 2024, but currently disapprove of his job performance. So sometimes we screen just to explain how we do it. We'll say, okay, we take a bunch of people who voted for Trump and then we'll ask them, do you think he's doing a very good job, a regular good job, neutral, somewhat bad, or a very bad job. And so we like to talk to these people who are on the sort of, no, I voted for him, but I really disapprove of how he's doing. And so that's who this group is. And just have that in your mind as you listen. Let's go. I don't like the way ICE is being run right now. I don't think they're doing a good job. I don't think they're training enough. Whatever policies they're telling their workers to do, I don't agree with. I don't think it's going very well. But the idea of completely removing it, I think is also not a good idea. I think it should be reshaped to be a lot less violent and not a deport at all costs type of mindset. But I think the idea of completely removing it is a bit too far because we still need an agency that carries out, you know, let's say a criminal or a sex offender that happens to be an illegal immigrant. I think that still needs to happen, just in a different manner. Well, I'm about to abolish ICE just because from a simple fact, I mean, obviously the way Trump's using it now, it kind of seems like his own little private police force. the fact that they don't have to show their faces can you imagine any other country if they would have shown us a video from name your country i don't care guatemala their police wear masks what are you talking about their police wear masks that makes no sense and then to have that be a part of what they do here in the united states of america yeah it just seems like he's using it as his own little police force to intimidate to scare the fact that you know you know moving forward obviously Trump's not going to be in office forever, thank God. But, you know, whatever you do comes back to you. So let's say the next president is a Democrat. Now they want to use ICE to, you know, to do it that way. So now we're just going back and forth. Everybody using ICE as their own little police force. And by the end of the day, it's just going to degrade into chaos. So yeah, I don't see the function of ICE. I think policing can be done by the FBI. I think policing can be done by the local police departments. I don't think a separate entity that it seems like only reports to the president is a good idea in the country. My mom's insurance agency, her employee, you know, is Hispanic and several of her like extended family members were picked up by ICE. And I mean, some of them even have like a green card and everything. Like, it's just a little crazy. Like they just pull, pulling people out of cars. I mean, the aggression and the violence part really needs to stop, you know, because, and a lot of times they're taking, you know, people that are citizens, but regardless of that, I don't think that, you know, people that have lived here their entire lives, right? Maybe they didn't, you know, get the official documents to be a citizen, but I feel like, like, that's kind of not fair. You know what I mean? Now, if this is like a wanted criminal, like, okay, that's a different story, right? But the violence regardless needs to stop. I mean, they have tasers they can use, you know, like it, I just think it should never, I don't know, just some of the things I've heard, I just, I can't even believe that we have an agency that operates in that way. I just think there should be some type of reform for ICE, like to remove it. There was ICE before Trump came into office. I just think that there needs to be better training with the officers that are participating in ICE more than anything. with the eyes it's like your face isn't shown so like there's like almost little to like no public like accountability like as far as personal accountability you know when you're doing things behind this mask and I also think that it gives a lot of these agents you know this like I don't care I can do whatever I want and like this like intimidation tactic and like this like I'm invincible, you know, like people are going to say and do things a lot differently, right? And do probably a lot more like bad things when their face is covered, rather than, you know, when it's shown. And at least when something bad happens with a local police department, right? You know, you kind of know and you can see like who that person is, you know, so if something does happen. They can go into people's houses without having a certain type of warrant and detain people. I do think that is very reminiscent of the Holocaust time, in my opinion, you know, searching and seizing people like without having the proper paperwork. I did read about the young child this morning as well, who was used as bait to capture his father and I think one other person in the household. I feel like that's a little excessive. When originally I had voted for, okay, we're going to get criminals, people associated with drug trafficking, et cetera, out of the country. And now, like I just saw on the news this morning that some five-year-old kid was taken from school and they used his dad to like lure him out. And I'm like, that's crazy. That is crazy. I cannot stress this enough. No matter how angry you get at the voters for voting for Trump, and then you say, what did you think was going to happen? Right? And we all have that impulse. You're like, Trump said he was going to deport, like, millions and millions of people. Like, did they think they were all criminals? It is clear to me that the voters in their minds said, no, he's going to deport dangerous criminals. Like, that is what they heard. We can all argue over, well, that's not what he said, guys. If you're listening to what he said, that's not it. But like, that is what they believe. I just hear them say it over and over again. Yes, I want dangerous criminals out of the country who are here illegally. But like, people who've lived here a long time, people who aren't breaking the law, using excessive force, like the masks come up all the time, the fact that they don't show their faces. And whether they told themselves that so they could vote for Trump because they thought he was going to bring them a better economy or, you know, whatever. It just clear to me that people have drawn this line for themselves Does that sound right to you Yeah we on the same wavelength because the first thing I was going to tell you that even though we talked about this it just a reminder that interior enforcement looks different up close And people heard mass deportation but they really were like, the border's really porous under Biden and I want that fixed. And folks that are steeped in the immigration world were like, this means like kicking open a door in Queens, New York. Like this means going into your neighborhood, into your school's supposed sensitive areas like churches and schools and hospitals no longer off limits. When I was in Minneapolis, ahead of my pre-interviews, figuring out who to talk to, and the woman that I ended up profiling, she sort of dumped all the worst things she had heard. And one of them was someone in urgent care being scared to come out of the bathroom like it was a scene from the pit because ICE was outside waiting. And I'm with you. And I've heard it from plenty of people. And it's sometimes hard to be like, what did you expect was going to happen? And I think the knife's edge here a little bit is fairness, because on the one side, they were like, it's not fair that these people are coming in and it's not working for me and the economies. It's not fair. But now the fairness and accountability comes on. Like, why are these guys have masks on? Why this guy gets shot 10 times in the back? You know, and so they're like, if you just had the guy's face in a video, the Border Patrol guy who shot Alex Freddie was taken out. And Tim Wall said today to Tim Miller, we don't even know who he is. We don't know the names of these people. People are just like, what the hell? We should just pause on this. So, so Walsh did sit down with Tim. And so we're taping this on Tuesday. And it was incredible to me that the governor of the state has not been told who the guy is who shot Alex Preddy. Like, we don't know. And like, in an open society like ours, in a liberal democracy, that kind of accountability, like comes with the package. this covering their faces. I mean, I've always ran a whole campaign here in D.C. about taking off their masks when ICE was here. You'd see them around with their faces covered. It is insane. The guy who said it looks like a South American dictatorship through the police forces covering their faces. That is not what we do here. ¿Quieres mejor internet? Cox's internet de 300 megas tiene las velocidades rápidas y confiables que buscas. Perfecto para streaming y gaming y trabajar desde casa. Everything for just $45 a month when you add Cox Mobile. Include a Wi-Fi device and a price of 2 years in your plan. No wait! Change today to Cox. You need Cox Mobile Giga Unlimited. A price of price is not included. Prices and charges. The speed of mobile data is reduced after 20 gigas a month. I know you want to listen to your podcast, so I'll keep it short. Because if you think it's important to make a lot of choices, can Acer maybe help? Now I hear you think, how then? For example, when you're paying for the things you love to be a bad person. Want to know more about the insurance where a bad person can be? Go to asr.nl. This is for you and a bad person. Asr does it. So, now you can listen to your podcast. Don't say abolish ICE. And then there's other people, they would rather say, let's reform it, which I do think Americans love this. Americans want to believe that they are being reasonable and everyone thinks they're a moderate. I'm telling you, man, boy, everybody thinks they're the moderate center. And so everybody's like, yeah, reform. So what are the various schools of thought on how to handle ICE if Democrats are back in power in 2029? do you think Democrats are going to take the lesson from this and who knows where this ultimately lands, but that the American people are now with them. They want to protect immigrants. They want to abolish ICE because abolish ICE is now like a plurality of people in the bowling do say abolish ICE, which is wild. But Democrats, you know, you just you have certain Democrats who I feel like have internalized the lesson that that kind of talk, defund the police, abolish ICE, is a net negative for them in the long term. On the other hand, the American people are getting sort of fed up. How do you think that's pushing on Democrats right now in leadership? My two lines on this is like the abolish ICE discourse was very frustrating to me because I thought I just broke down among familiar fault lines and I wasn't sure like where Democrats were going. What I find interesting is like, no matter how much you hate the Trump-Miller, what they're doing on immigration, they are imaginative and creative in their cruelty. When they think about how they can make an immigrant's life difficult from using their tax forms to using all manner of ways of tracking them down, they are creative. And Democrats are not similarly creative in ways to figure out how you can sort of start trying to get some accountability here or how you can start pushing back. You know, I literally spoke to a Democrat after Renee Good, and then there was the second federal officer shooting. And we were just like, there's going to be a third shooting, a fifth shooting and a 10th shooting, unless Democrats start pushing back here in ways that like really resonate. And clearly there was a third shooting. I think the conversation that was not being had and I was losing my mind, but finally it started happening was why are there border patrol in American cities? Doug Stafford, Rand Paul's chief strategist had a tweet where he said, what border is in Minneapolis? And since when is it illegal to carry a gun? And then he deleted that tweet. And now we see Chris Murphy wants to do legislation around. I think you can say, look, ICE is going to keep its funding. I mean, they're going to have funding. This is the least amount of ICE agents we're going to have in like the next four or five years. There's going to be more ICE agents. But you can say, get Bovino out, get Border Patrol out of American cities. These guys that are used to being at the border and wrangling immigrants there are now treating U.S. citizens like they're criminals. The Democrats need to truly understand this entire space and how much billions of dollars is going in and ways that you can try to start reining in the Trump administration. Yeah, that's a good point. The discourse is also often maddening in how reductive It can be that there's like the sides are abolish ICE or have them running rampant in cities and like murdering people. Like there are policy places in the middle that could get us to a much better place to talk about. They don't fit on a bumper sticker maybe quite as well. All right, let's keep going on the clips. For these next couple of clips, we're going to play people who are not swing voters. So the last two groups were all Trump voters, but they're swingy. They're people who did Biden in 20, Trump in 24. Or these are much more like Trump's base, I guess. And we're not getting from them kind of the widespread criticism of ICE, but there's still kind of enough of it in there for it to be notable. We heard about a harrowing encounter with ICE from a woman in a recent group who voted for Trump all three times. Let's listen. I was actually detained myself with my three daughters with guns pointed in our faces. I'm about to get emotional just thinking about it. And we are U.S. citizen born citizen. We are Puerto Rican. I look more Caucasian because of my red hair and freckles. But my daughters, they have the more Hispanic look with the dark eyes and the dark hair. And they did. They detained my children, which was absolutely terrifying. I guess the community has come together when they see ice. They'll post it on the Channel View, like watch, I guess you can say. hey heads up don't go over here ice is over here because in here in channel view is 99 percent hispanic community so it's a lot it's scary um and i've noticed that even my daughter said that they have come into the school trying to lure out parents trying you know oh we have your child you're gonna have to come and get them and a lot of the children's parents are immigrants and so it's either they leave their children detained or they risk the chance of being deported unless they have somebody that they trust to come pick up the kids. So I have volunteered myself for families that if they feel as if they're too scared to go pick up their children from school, I'll go pick them up myself and drop them off at their homes. So that way they're not scared to go pick up their children in fear of being detained. So Adrian, you wrote about Liam Ramos, a five-year-old boy who was detained by ICE, which some people called bait for ICE to find his father. Tell us about what happened there. You just wrote a newsletter about it and what you think the long-term consequences of stories like that are. Because I got to tell you, I was almost surprised about how much that has come up in groups. Like that story also people know about it. Yeah. What I wrote is Liam Ramos should bring the Trump administration to its knees because we saw in the first term when children are involved, people are like, what the hell's going on? And we've already gone through it. Renee Good, terrible what happened or Alex Freddie. There are people who are like, these were adults who made decisions and then something horrible happened to them that's not right. But this little boy is, it's just like, there's so many parts of it from the hat, right? I talked to Rob Menendez, the congressman, and he basically was like on the verge of tears on the floor, castigating Republicans for the face of the deportation regime, not being violent criminals, but being this like little five-year-old boy. And then when I talked to him, he just had like the emotion in his voice. And people see their own kids. People see their classmates of their children. And the reason that I think this is a big deal is because Liam Ramos has sent 1,200 miles away to Texas to the Dilley Detention Center, where a third of the detainees are kids. And where Eric Lee, which is a lawyer, he's had some viral tweets. He's been on MS now. This guy is like really, really angry because he has so many clients. So he has like a family of clients, and two of them are five years old. And they celebrated their fifth birthday in detention. There's a Florida settlement that says you're only allowed to be in detention as a kid 20 days. They've been in there eight months. Honestly, it's horrible. The stuff that he talks about with the food and the water bugs in the food, just like disgusting, horrible conditions. So there's children in there. They did a protest the other day, like a hundred people. And they were basically screaming, like, let the kids out. So this is the kind of stuff. And you know, there's this great Washington post article, a column, and I suggest people check it out. And it's like the art and architecture critic for the Washington post. And he writes about the power of photos and the way that we're reminded that someone is an innocent child because they have a little hat on or they have a toy or they have a little pet with them. And so it's just like, does the moral thing still happen in this country? Do we still see things and say, that's not correct and that's not what I voted for? And I think this is a big one. I've really seen so many mothers and parents just sharing that photo. Yeah. And people were sympathetic to this woman in the group, you know, what she'd gone through. And I just, I think at some point we're going to need to hear more people like her who voted for Trump, who sort of speak out, right? She's trying to do her bit now, right? She's saying, well, I'm going to go show up and try to help people out. This is why I sort of can't help but defend the voters because when I listen to them, it's just so clear they didn't think this was going to happen. And, You know, one of the things that kind of haunts me about Renee Good and watching her face in the moment before she shot. And then even Alex Preddy, as he kind of puts his hands up and he's standing between the woman, he's getting pepper sprayed in the face. They don't think they're going to get killed. You can tell that they don't think they're going to get shot. That they are used to living in a country where what they doing is a protected right and people don get shot for it It like their faith in the essential rule of law even if people understand that law enforcement isn always professional they have a higher level of just trust and faith that this is not how this stuff is going to go down. So I feel like the shock in part is just that loss of, and this is sort of unrecoverable for us as a country, is that loss of faith that we live in I know you want to listen to your podcast, so I'll keep it short. Because if you think it's important to make a lot of choices, can ASR maybe help? Now I hear you think, how then? Well, for example, when you want to pay attention to the things you love, by Schade. Will you know more about the insurance where expensive Schade-Herstell is possible? Go to asr.nl slash duurzamekeuzes. This does ASR for you and a sustainable society. ASR does it. So, we can now listen to your podcast. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles. Designer, marketer, logistics manager. All while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. I want to play one more clip from someone in this group. This guy is a Gen Z Trump voter from Minneapolis who seemed to be something of an immigration hawk himself. Like he was pretty hawkish, but he still had his own criticisms of vice. Let's listen. My values on immigration are, it is a federal crime. Like these are people I know, people I've worked for years, and yet it's a federal crime to come to the country. The reality is if you're a legal immigrant, I think you should get deported. Part of immigration, I think we should absolutely a strong border, have strong security, and deport illegal immigrants. Part of the problem is I don't think that's what Trump's doing. I think this ICE nonsense is a big show. If they wanted to actually get rid of illegal immigrants. All they could simply say is it's illegal to employ illegal immigrants entirely in this country. And we're going to prosecute any business owner that gets caught doing that. They deported two people from my restaurant. Who are they not going after? The guy that owns it. Who are they not going after? The people who hired them knowing they were illegal immigrants, right? There are two and a half million illegal immigrants in this country. There's no shot they can deport all of them. But by doing the show on the news where you see ISIS going hard, raiding these places, they're going to deport what? A few thousand people, tens of thousands, they're not going to get two and a half million people. I wish Trump would actually go hard at the root cause of this illegal immigration. I think these ice raids are really just ripping our country apart because people stand on either side of things and it kind of destroys cities. Like, oh my gosh, I've had to leave work a ton earlier the past week because of protests. It's really hard to get around. Like, it's just, I don't know, that might be controversial, so, but that's where I stand on it. So what's the attitude inside the administration on how to handle this kind of ICE presence going forward? There was a Democratic research person who hit me up the other day and was like, I think Stephen Miller is just screwing them for the midterms. And they're like, they want to amplify that. And then other folks are like, should we amplify that? Like maybe they're in such bad shape, like heading into the midterms because of, as we know, the economy is a big issue, the major issue, but the way that immigration is the second tough issue. Even when we were talking about earlier, how you can limit some of the craziness here, if you even took away masks, which is not going to happen anytime soon, but if you got Border Patrol out and ICE was still doing their thing, a lot of people would say, okay, well, at least they toned it down a little bit. A source close to DHS that I talked to often was telling me that the whole Bovino thing was this Bovino Roadshow. This was this gnome and Lewandowski, thing and they enjoyed the political theater of it. And we saw him doing that with this like little Nazi cop playing and all this weird stuff. And so now they've been confronted with actually what real people, how people respond when they see these horrible things. And they just cannot limit the fact that there's going to be videos of encounters and these cities are standing up and these are just regular people fighting back. So I wonder if they'll take a break and if maybe the next city won't have the same, but already today I saw that there was, um, this week I saw that there was a shooting in Phoenix. So you just have to feel that with all these big weapons and these guys that are like testosterone crazed, sort of like waiting for a confrontation, that there's still going to be problems as they go forward. What was the shooting? What was the shooting you're talking about? There was a shooting in Phoenix. And I think it's still, there's still some of the details are coming out, but it seemed like it was a border patrol person in Phoenix. And I know that this week there were also some people who were protesting in Arizona. And as the agents drove by, They mace the people. So it's like, what is this behavior? What is this? This is insane. There's been plenty of times. It also happened in Chicago when I was there. Where they just sort of like shoot, you know, tear gas at somebody. And then they just walk away. It's just crazy. Ik snap dat je je podcast wil luisteren. Dus ik zal het kort houden. Want als jij het belangrijk vindt om duurzamere keuzes te maken. Kan ASR misschien helpen? Nou hoor ik je denken. Hoe dan? Nou, bijvoorbeeld. by the cost of the products you love are, by harm. Want to know more about the insurance where cost of harm is possible? Go to asr.nl slash duurzamekeuzes. This is ASR for you and a cost of life. ASR does it. So, we can now listen to your podcast. Fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. You know, before we go, there's one thought that's been kind of on a loop in my head that maybe you could shed some light on, which is I've seen other people make this point too. It's incredible what they do when they know the cameras are on them, right? Like the reason that Alex Preddy, like some people are like, well, they thought he had a gun. I'm like, no, they all have their cell phones out. Everybody's got their cell phone out. Everybody knows that's what's happening, right? There's a million cameras. What are they doing when the cameras aren't on them? Like they behave that way when they know people are filming them and it's going to hit the internet. When they're behind closed doors and they've got people in detention, like what does it say about how we're treating them there. Do you know how they're being treated? I tweeted that exact same thing the other day and there was a Cuban man, I believe he was in Texas and the medical examiner ruled it a homicide because he was choked to death because he was basically saying like, I'm not going in there without my medication. And they just like killed this person. I mean, look, I don't think any of us really think about it that deeply in a general sense, Americans, about what detention is. It's not good times. And that's a lot of denying medical care and saying, take a Tylenol and come back three days later. And then people are like, you know, getting really sick in their cells and stuff. But I think that this is an eyeopening part of it. I don't know if people are drawing that distinction from the things they're seeing in the street to what does that mean is happening in detention. But to me, that's like, again, underscores the power of what they did to Liam Ramos, the fact that he's now in a place where, because we've all seen him, we've all seen his like little face and it's like Spider-Man book bag. So now he's in there with his dad and there's other people and they protested and people think there's going to be retribution for them. One woman gave her full name to the Associated Press and they ran her quote where she's like, we just want dignity and we just want you to follow the law. We're like people with children. We're not criminals. So are these people going to now face retribution? And that is the second part of this, which is once we see what's happening in our streets, where are they taking these people? Right. And if somebody is taken from your neighborhood and they're sent 1200 miles away to Texas Democrats, that's what they did this week. They went to the Dilley Detention Center, where Joaquin Castro and some of the state representatives and some of the local groups, a procession from a church went to Dili. So it is, I think, creating reverberations to bring attention to these issues. Are Democrats starting to lean in on this? For a while, this was a, because immigration was such a strong issue for Trump, and this is another piece of discourse that's kind of been out there, is like, well, like with Abrega Garcia, there was a lot of like, you know, we don't want to make this a big issue. Americans, they want to secure a border. They do want illegal immigrants to be sent back to their home countries. And so they're like, so, you know, making the Seacott thing a big deal, don't do it. But now, doesn't it feel like maybe you could see Democrats, like more of them going to Minneapolis, more of them starting to say, actually, we are going to lean into the excesses of this, not just because the political winds have changed, but also because it's genuinely horrifying to watch? Or are they still kind of scared on this issue? What are you hearing? I think they're starting to stand up more. And I just remember last February when he had just won, he was like at the top of his power. And like Democrats were just like cowed from November. And they were like, eh, voters aren't really buying what we're selling. And, you know, people who voted for Trump weren't changing on him yet. But we wrote about it recently and Renee Good was one of those first big shots. But like you said, Abreu Garcia and Andre, the Venezuelans and El Salvador and tear gas in Los Angeles and then Chicago and Charlotte and New Orleans, so many different places. Now you just feel that sense that it's going deeper and that, yeah, I think Democrats feel emboldened. And it's not purely political. There's been people who told me like, we're limited in what we can do as they're trying to do certain things. But yeah, you would always hear like healthcare is a bigger issue or we can't do this now or now's the right moment. And I think most of us can agree that immigration is just going to be one of the central issues in November. So I do feel like they're stepping up and trying to figure out ways to fight back and do those pressure points going to Minnesota. I've also heard them say like a bunch of us going to Minneapolis also causes security things and, you know, just trying to figure out the right way to do things, but going to detention centers and elevating individual stories. I mean, that's how we do our coverage, right? Like if I tell you 250,000 deportations and I tell you a million deportations, those numbers are meaningless. Our mind can't figure that out. But if I zoom in and I tell you the story of this little boy, and how he represents all these other little kids there. Now we're starting to understand because these issues are heavy and people are busy and they have double shifts and stuff. They're not thinking about this all the time, but then certain things break through. And I think the horrible things that we saw in Minneapolis have definitely broken through. Yeah. Adrienne Karasquio, thank you so much for joining us. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the Focus Group podcast. Remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, subscribe to The Bulwark on YouTube and become a Bulwark Plus member at thebulwark.com where you guys can get more great reporting from Adrian. We'll see you guys next week. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping Sign up for your 1 euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl That's shopify.nl It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side