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Front Burner Transcript for June 19, 2025

Host: Jayme Poisson

JAYME POISSON: Hi, I'm Jayme Poisson.

[Music: Theme]

JP: On Sunday night, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to call for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to expand their deportation operations in democratic cities. He said, quote, "ICE officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History." Trump specifically named America's largest cities -- Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. This comes after thousands of people flooded the streets in those cities and many others over the weekend to protest the president's military parade, increasingly authoritarian measures, and his immigration crackdown.

SOUNDCLIP

PROTESTERS: [clapping and chanting] No fascist USA! No ICE! No KKK, no fascist USA!

PROTESTERS: [drumming and chanting to the tune of the Ludacris’ song “Move B***h”] Move ICE! Get out the way, get out the way, get out the way!

JP: There have been scenes of ICE agents, often wearing masks, rounding up people across the country almost every day in recent weeks. Like this moment, where a group of them go after a man at an immigration courthouse in New York.

SOUNDCLIP

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: No, no, no, no! No, no, no!

ICE AGENT: Get up. Get up.

[Unidentified man yelling in non-English language]

JP: Or a separate incident at a New York immigration court, where the New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate, Brad Lander, a U.S. citizen, was arrested by ICE agents while trying to escort a defendant.

SOUNDCLIP

BRAD LANDER: I'm right here in the hallway. I asked to see the judicial warrant. By asking for a judicial warrant? You don't have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens asking for a judicial warrant.

JP: We've also seen raids of workplaces employing immigrants, like this farm in California where workers pick produce.

SOUNDCLIP

REPORTER: We don't know how many people were detained. One of the farm workers we talked to said ICE agents were chasing some of their co-workers around until they were detained.

JP: Earlier this month, on June 5th, ICE made the most arrests in a single day since its creation, detaining more than 2200 people. NBC reported that hundreds of them were part of an ICE program that had already flagged them as people who are not considered threats to public safety. However, as the pressure mounts from the Trump administration to rapidly increase deportations to a million a year, ICE's reach and tools continue to grow, along with reports of people being held without warrants or due process. So today we wanted to better understand what ICE is exactly, how the agency came to be, and how their work fits into over a century's worth of immigration enforcement and mass deportation campaigns in the U.S. Adam Goodman is an associate professor at the University of Illinois Chicago and the author of The Deportation Machine: America's Long History of Expelling Immigrants.

[Music: Theme]

JP: Adam, hey, thank you so much for coming onto Front Burner.

ADAM GOODMAN: Thank you, Jayme. I appreciate you having me.

JP: So we know that ICE, or the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, is the government agency responsible for finding, detaining, deporting people who have violated immigration law, but we've seen ICE also described as this kind of like rogue force, almost like secret police. So just to start, what makes ICE different from other law enforcement agencies in the United States?

ADAM GOODMAN: Well, in part, it's their reach and the fact that they're a federal agency, not tied to any particular locality, um, that exerts incredible autonomy and authority and discretionary power throughout the United States and especially anywhere near the borders, whether those are land borders or either the East or West Coast of the United States. But their power is largely unchecked, and they've been instilled with an incredible amount of authority historically. I think that's only increased in recent years as we've seen President Trump empower agents on the ground, um, who feel emboldened to carry out the mission to apprehend, detain and deport as many people as possible. And we've seen that with the increasing budget dedicated to enforcement efforts.

SOUNDCLIP

DONALD TRUMP: Vast numbers of those people were murderers, killers, people from gangs, people from jails. They emptied their jails out into the U.S. Most of those people are in the cities. All blue cities. All Democrat-run cities. And they think they're gonna use them to vote. It's not gonna happen.

NEWS PRESENTER: And he wrote in part, quote, "ICE officers are herewith ordered ... to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History."

JP: I'm curious like where they fit into the hierarchy. Like do they trump local law enforcement 100% of the time? Like is anybody above them?

ADAM GOODMAN: Well, when it comes to questions of immigration, they do operate kind of independently, and they do have, you know, the authority over local, state law enforcement agencies who may or may not help them. One of the big changes under the Trump administration -- which really started decades ago at this point, and both Democratic and Republican administrations have supported in the past -- are the collaborations between agencies. And I think, you know, rather than thinking of a hierarchy, I think one of the big changes we've seen under the current administration is that they're expanding the reach of who is enforcing immigration law. And they're partnering with local police and state police, they're partnering with other federal agencies. And in turn, they've been able to, you know, reach perhaps a much broader population of people than they otherwise would have.

JP: The plain clothes that we see a lot of these officers in, the masks that they wear that essentially cover their whole face, maybe worth noting one downstream consequence of this is that in a couple of cases recently, criminals were able to sort of pose as ICE agents and sexually assault or rob people. But why are they allowed to cover their faces and wear plain clothes?

ADAM GOODMAN: That's an excellent question. I don't have a good answer for you. I mean, in part because no one is checking their power to do so. And no one has said that they're not allowed to do so. This is a, kind of a novelty of sorts. In the past, agents have identified themselves, typically. They have perhaps been dressed as plain clothes, you know, agents on the street, but they've had badges, you know, name plates. And, you know, seeing now today masked individuals, in unmarked cars in some cases, just, you know, enforcing disappearances of citizens and permanent residents in some cases, along with undocumented immigrants, is incredibly disturbing and I think should be concerning to everyone in the United States.

JP: Is there anywhere where ICE can't operate?

ADAM GOODMAN: Well, historically, there have been some agreements that have limited the agency's ability to go into sensitive locations, such as schools, places of worship. All that has been discarded. So now, you know, people could find ICE agents in houses of worship, they could find them at schools. So I think now, no place is off limits. And that's been made clear explicitly by the agency's leaders. And it also speaks to an important point. That, you know, part of the administration's goal in executing mass deportation is also to, to scare people and to operationalize fear in ways that makes people feel unsecure and unwelcome, in hopes that they might actually pick up and leave without ever encountering an immigration agent, um, which the agency has, you know, made clear. And a self-deportation is a major part of its larger immigration enforcement efforts.

[music]

JP: You mentioned the role of funding. Since its creation, ICE's funding has tripled. And as of the last year, I think it was around $9.6 billion. Border Patrol receives more -- around $19.6 billion. Just what does that, I wonder if you could just lay out for me what that money goes to, specifically.

ADAM GOODMAN: Well, it could go to putting more agents on the streets. I mean, there's certain, um, bureaucratic and operational limitations when it comes to carrying out mass deportation campaigns. A lot of them have to do with how many agents they can have, you know, patrolling communities and carrying out immigration raids. You know, what is the budget for detaining people, which is incredibly expensive? What is the budget for holding hearings or actually carrying out deportations? And, you know, all that, I think, contributes to the possibilities of mass deportations in a large scale. But historically, they've been limited, and I think today we still see the limits. And we've seen the administration's frustration, the president's frustration with the lack of, um, the lack of action on behalf of the agency. I think that has a lot to do with these bureaucratic, logistical limitations related to the budget. But, you know, we also know that the administration is, and ICE, the agency, and border patrol, are requesting to increase their budget even more. So we don't know what that would mean in terms of the lived realities of people, but it certainly won't be, you know, it certainly won't be good for people that care about, you know, due process, immigrants' and citizens' basic legal rights, and not wanting families to be separated, when we know that all the policy the administrations have led to increase family separation and human suffering.

JP: Another thing I wanted to ask you about is how the agency is working with outside contractors. So we talked on the show about the work that they have been doing with Palantir, for example, the data analytics company. But I know they also work with logistics companies that help to build out their detention facilities. And just, can you tell me a little bit more about the scope of the work these companies are doing and maybe some of the concerns that people have raised about this kind of outsourcing?

ADAM GOODMAN: This is an incredibly important point, and, you know, the federal immigration enforcement efforts have, have really always depended on public-private partnerships and on businesses that were seeking to make profits off of, you know, human misery essentially. And, you know, looking to minimize costs and maximize profits isn't a good combination when it comes to the well-being of people who happen to be caught up in the immigration enforcement system. So transportation companies also play a big part of this, in addition to the kind of technological firms that are now assisting the agency and surveilling immigrants. Transportation companies, private prison companies, you know, they're taking advantage of the policies and the fact that the number of deportable people in the United States has increased recently since the Trump administration has taken power. And, you know, they're, they're cashing in, as are their stockholders. And that's something that I think, um, you know, we know that this kind of toxic combination of profits and punishment have long fuelled immigration enforcement in the United States. And, you know, the fact that state policies create a market essentially in deportable people and turn deportation into a business, is I think something that historically has long been true, but doesn't need to be true. And different policies could point in a different direction.

[music]

JP: I want to get into a bit more of the history now. A lot of people might not actually realize that ICE has only been around since 2003. And it was created when almost two dozen different agencies were consolidated under the newly created Department of Homeland Security. This was under, of course, George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11, when he justified the massive government reorganization by saying:

SOUNDCLIP

GEORGE W. BUSH: I do not believe anyone could have prevented the horror of September the 11th. Yet we now know that thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us. And this terrible knowledge requires us to act differently.

JP: Before then, ICE was the Immigration and Naturalization Service. And what changed when ICE was created?

ADAM GOODMAN: Well, let's pause right there for a second, just to think about the rhetorical shift that you laid out. From the Immigration and Naturalization Service to the Department of Homeland Security. I think that in itself says a lot. The ways in which immigration had become-- or has become intertwined with questions of national security, um, when it comes to the agency's justification, its budget proposals. Um, that has everything to do with it. And as well as public support. And kind of the fearmongering that the Trump administration has used is usually related to immigrants as criminals or immigrants as potential, you know, threats to the country in different ways.

SOUNDCLIP

REP. NANCY MACE: One woman or one child violated by an illegal alien, is one too many.

WHITE HOUSE DEP. CHIEF OF STAFF STEPHEN MILLER: Biden flooded this country with millions and millions of illegal aliens, many of them rapists, murderers, gang members, terrorists, human smugglers, child traffickers, and every kind of criminal and thug that you can imagine on planet Earth.

DONALD TRUMP: And they were prisoners, and they were people that you don't want, in many cases, in our country, right?

ADAM GOODMAN: And we know in reality, most people who come to the United States, whether it's with or without authorization, you know, do so to work, to find a job, or to reunite with family because they're fleeing natural disaster or political violence. But kind of the singular nature that the agency itself and the current administration, you know, has viewed immigration as a question of national security, and as a question of, you know, limiting crime and criminals, I think has led us down this path during the last 20-plus years to the point now where we see record levels of funding for immigration enforcement, and we've seen a real shift from the service side of the immigration bureaucracy to the enforcement side of immigration bureaucracy. It's not to say that people weren't apprehended and deported before. You know, I should note that the United States has deported more than 60 million people during the last century and a half. Most of those deportations occurred prior to the creation of ICE, prior to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. So enforcement has always been a part of the United States' immigration history and immigration policy, but I think that we've seen it ramped up to previously unknown levels, largely because there seems to be an unlimited amount of funding put toward enforcement since 9/11 and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

JP: And just in that 20-year period, this has been a bipartisan priority, right? And I say that in part because deportations went up a lot during the Bush administration. They went up even more during Barack Obama, right? More people were deported from the U.S. during Obama's first term than Trump's first term.

SOUNDCLIP

BARACK OBAMA: Even as we are a nation of immigrants, we're also a nation of laws. Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws, and I believe that they must be held accountable -- especially those who may be dangerous. That's why, over the past six years, deportations of criminals are up 80%. And that's why we're going to keep focusing enforcement resources on actual threats to our security.

JP: What changed about how ICE operated under Obama? And do you see any big differences between then and now?

ADAM GOODMAN: Well, 100% the history of deportation from the United States is bipartisan. It's one in which Democratic and Republican administrations have, you know, pushed enforcement-first policies and doubled down on them time and again. You know, some of the harshest immigration policies that have led to the most repressive laws and draconian outcomes have been signed by, you know, Bill Clinton, or, you know, implemented and carried out by Barack Obama. And that said, I think there are important differences. You know, one of the things about the Obama administration is that they did carry out mass levels of apprehensions and deportations, but they also responded to political pressure, and organizing, you know, and activists who made clear that they're on the wrong track. And so we see over the course of the Obama administration that actually deportations decreased. There seemed to be kind of a before and after. It's not to kind of excuse, you know, the agent-- or the administration's enforcement policies and, you know, the many families that were separated as a result of them, but I do think that we see kind of a distinct difference in terms of who was targeted. As well as, you know, the spin that was put on immigration during the Obama years. So we see Trump using immigration as the number one policy issue that he is using for his own political gain. Um, to gain power and now to maintain power. And if things aren't going well in other policy realms, you know, they're going to come back to immigration time and again because they know that, you know, that's been successful for them. So, you know, I think that... I don't, I don't want to leave people with the idea that, you know, everyone has always been kind of the same on this issue, regardless of the administration, but we do know that historically, Democrats and Republicans have supported enforcement-first policies. And I think we even saw that in this past election with Kamala Harris's immigration platform, you know, resembling I think something you'd describe as more restrictive than George W. Bush's immigration policy a couple decades earlier.

SOUNDCLIP

KAMALA HARRIS: Those who cross our borders unlawfully will be apprehended and removed and barred from re-entering for five years. We will pursue more severe criminal charges against repeat violators.

[music]

JP: I want to dig into history a little bit more with you. Um, two examples in particular. In 1954, President Eisenhower carried out Operation Wetback, which some describe as the largest mass deportation in American history. What happened then, and what are some of the parallels that you see today?

ADAM GOODMAN: It's true that in 1954, the Eisenhower administration, you know, launched a mass roundup. Um, an expulsion campaign of Mexicans in the country, oftentimes regardless of whether they had authorization or not. And that led to hundreds of thousands of deportations. But it also, I think, you know, in effect was a PR campaign for the immigration enforcement agency, um, in celebrating their so-called accomplishments and power in hopes of getting, you know, more congressional appropriations. And it became a campaign that was based on fear. It was a campaign that was largely, um, you know, made strategic use of the media to propagate fear and self-deportation efforts across the nation. And, you know, it was, it was in the one hand, I guess, a precursor of what was to come later. And the Trump administration made explicitly clear that that's, you know, what they're comparing themselves to. And also a crucial difference is that deportation today means something different than it did in the middle of the 20th century. The consequences of being deported are harsher and more punitive than they ever have been. You know, it's more difficult to re-enter the United States today without authorization. In the middle of the 20 century, that was something that people could do for the most part. Today, that's not necessarily the case.

JP: The other one I wanted to ask you about was the Palmer Raids in 1919, orchestrated in part by J. Edgar Hoover, who would go on to form the FBI. Because that was a case of mass arrest and detention of immigrants on Ellis Island; people of Asiatic races, as they described them then. But it also went after political radicals, right. Particularly communists. And how does that example maybe illustrate the way immigration enforcement is used to go after not only undocumented immigrants, but also those who do have documentation or even citizens participating in political dissent?

ADAM GOODMAN: You know, this is another branch, I guess, of the enforcement efforts both then and now. In part, you know, in the 19-teens, 1920s. And this was a time of mass immigration from southern and eastern Europe. And, you know, many of the people who may have arrived, you know, espoused different political views -- socialists, communists, etc. And United States officials -- you know, J. Edgar Hoover, Mitchell Palmer and others -- targeted them as real national security threats. Which, you know, we've seen kind of invoked in recent days as well by Secretary Rubio, as well as President Trump, in their efforts to target people who espouse political views they disagree with or find distasteful. People like Mahmoud Khalil and others who have advocated on behalf of Palestinians and Palestinian rights, and I think, you know, under broad protection of the first amendment have done so lawfully without, you know, without any problem, or should have been without any problem. But, you know, this political targeting I think is as useful to think of-- it's not, not just the mass roundups that the current administration is carrying out, but it's also kind of one-off examples, or relatively few examples of people targeted for their political beliefs that they can then use and publicize strategically to really scare other people into, you know, backing down or into not acting out, um, and essentially achieve more than they would have been able to otherwise. So it fits into a pattern both historically and also in the contemporary moment, um, that speaks to the scope of their immigration enforcement efforts, and the fact that it's affecting many people, primarily working class folks, especially Mexicans and Latinos in many places, but also others who you wouldn't think necessarily were targets of ICE and Customs Border Patrol.

JP: And just speaking of those working-class folks, the New York Times reported that an internal memo was sent by an ICE official to local homeland security departments to halt raids on workplaces specifically connected to the agriculture industry, restaurants, and operating hotels, unless they're connected to criminal investigations. Trump posted on Truth Social that, quote, "Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with these jobs being almost impossible to replace. We must protect our Farmers, but get the Criminals out of the USA. Changes are coming," exclamation mark. And just, what do you make of that reversal? What does that tell you?

ADAM GOODMAN: Well, I think this is a very interesting and important moment. It's perhaps a tipping point of sorts. You know, we don't know what's going to happen moving forward, but I think many people wondered, you know, at what point would the administration change course. Because there's a tension between wanting to deport any and every person in the country without authorization, um, and also recognizing that that might not be politically feasible, as we've seen, you know, millions of people take to the streets in the United States. Um, and whether that has any effect. Or, you know, it might not be feasible because some strong supporters of Trump -- who are themselves affected by these changes in agriculture and hospitality -- you know, tell him that they in fact need their workforce, um, that has long been essential to their industry's success. I think it's, you know, perhaps as many as one out of every two agricultural labourers in the United States is undocumented.

[music]

JP: That Truth Social post that I mentioned in the intro of the episode, where Trump called for ICE to expand operations in cities with essentially Democratic leadership, I just want to read you something that Gavin Newsom, governor of California, said in response to that. This is someone who has a famously adversarial relationship with the president, but here's what he has to say: "His plan is clear: Incite violence and chaos in blue states, have an excuse to militarize our cities, demonize his opponents, keep breaking the law and consolidate power. It's illegal and we will not let it stand." Is this what you think is happening here?

ADAM GOODMAN: I do think Trump is largely targeting anyone he sees as a so-called enemy. You know, and for him that might mean undocumented immigrants who are affecting the nation economically in his view. Um, but it also might mean anyone who's acting in solidarity or considering acting in solidarity with immigrants. So the attacks on immigrant communities through mass immigration raids is part of what he's up to, but also the decision to send in the National Guard and the Marines, you know, that seems to pretty clearly be targeting citizens, protesters, and others. And, you know, the legality I think has been questioned, and in fact, in some cases, shown to be illegal on some of the actions they've taken. But I do think that the message is clear, and that for Trump, immigration is an issue that he has used for his own political gain. Um, and as much as it can remain in the headlines and in the news, that has been beneficial to him. Whether or not that continues to be the case, we'll see. But we know that it's a lot easier for him to scapegoat immigrants for some of the real problems that people in the United States are facing, than to actually address those problems. So I don't anticipate him, you know, doing anything different in the months and years ahead.

JP: Adam, this was great. Thank you so much.

ADAM GOODMAN: Thanks for the conversation and for the thoughtful questions.

[Music: Theme]

JP: All right, that is all for today. I'm Jayme Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.

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What exactly is ICE? - Transcript

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