Liz Brace and Young Chomsky report from Minneapolis, where ICE agents—equipped with Clearview AI, Mobile Fortify, and BI2 eye-scanning tech—struggled to arrest Latinos amid activist resistance, despite most Somalis being legal citizens. A chaotic raid saw agents slip in snow, pepper-spraying non-aggressive protesters while failing to secure a single detainee. With $170M spent on warehouses for 3,000 daily arrests and deportations surging 4.6x despite low border activity, enforcement appears driven by political theater, not criminal necessity, targeting vocal opponents like activists and Democratic leaders. [Automatically generated summary]
That's the original Turn and Burn, the folks that helped make America.
But you know what?
I'm very proud of what you, the Mean Green Machine, are doing in Minneapolis right now, just like you've done it across the United States over these past tough nine months.
And I want you to know that you're the modern day equivalent.
Turn and burn.
Makes me very proud.
I also want you to know that I've got your back now and always.
I love you.
I support you.
And I salute you.
Welcome back, Braves.
Why, thank you, Liz.
And in fact, I'll take this opportunity to introduce myself once again to our audience.
My name is indeed Brace.
I'm Liz.
And I am producer Young Chomsky.
And this is Shroudon.
Hello.
It is not canonically, but it is a little bit of a special edition.
Yeah, you wanted, I realized actually, yeah, you were like, when we were talking about doing this episode, you're like, we're going to do a special report.
I don't know.
I just like the use of special report music.
But this is coming out at the regular time of an episode because they don't know we don't.
We didn't record an episode last Friday.
It doesn't matter.
We're doing a special report.
Cue the music.
Cue the music.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our special report, Cue the Music, once again, but just for a brief moment.
And we are doing that because I just got back from Minneapolis, just like from the dictator song.
And I am, I got to be honest, it sounds like I'm making one of those jokes.
Like, boy, are my arms tired.
I flew back, but I really am so sleepy.
And so it's going to be, it's going to be a rough episode.
No, it's not.
For the listeners, it's going to be amazing for us.
Yeah, but I spent, what, Wednesday to Saturday in Minneapolis.
And I want to tell you about it, Liz.
I would love for you to tell me about it.
Can I ask you a question?
Absolutely.
Really, just straight off the bat.
What?
Some listeners who are not visually impaired may have seen this, but you procured a like Jacobin press pass.
Okay.
Well, I want to.
I have a question.
Yeah.
First of all, I believe you, did you make that?
It doesn't matter who made it, right?
I mean, all that is it's made.
Why didn't you make it a Truanon one?
You literally already are.
You have a podcast.
You are a co-host of a podcast called Truanon.
Why do you have to fake being part of another publication when you're already part of one?
Interesting question.
And there's a lot of answers that I could give you.
And I'll give you the one that most closely resembles the truth.
For a number of years, numbers of years, but it's also numbers of years.
For numbers of years, I have been presenting myself with varying degrees of honesty, although never actually achieving the level of playing honesty as a member of certain press organizations when I believe that would benefit me, if that makes sense.
So, even prior to us starting this podcast, if I on occasion wanted to go to something that might be easier to go to, if perhaps I were a reporter for the Atlantic or The Nation.
Classic move.
Nothing weird there.
Because I was red-pilled on a fact a long time ago, which is that press passes are fake.
They're not real.
There are things like city press passes, which are kind of notarized.
They have like a thing.
They just make them now notarized.
Just as journalists have to go to a notary.
They are.
Yeah, I know.
Which, by the way, that is a side hustle I've been thinking of dabbling in for a long time.
But I'm trying to get away.
I decided to have something notarized and it's awesome.
Stamp.
So cool.
But press passes aren't real.
And so you can just make one.
It doesn't have to be.
I wouldn't suggest that you make one saying that you're a member of an already existing publication or something like that.
But I made a press pass that said, yes, I'm an editor-at-large at Jack.
Why didn't you just make a press pass that said you are a co-host of the podcast Truanon?
Because for a long time ago, we named this podcast Truinon.
And while I think that is an excellent name in many ways, in one way that I'm sure you know has bitten us in the ass over the years is that the name closely resembles the group QAnon.
Nobody cares about QAnon anymore.
I think you would be surprised.
And explaining that fact, I have found.
I'm just saying, I think you should have a little pride.
It's not pride.
I'm being duplicitous, Liz.
It's not pride.
And I'm not being duplicitous.
What is an editor-at-large?
Nobody knows.
I could be an editor-at-large at Jacobin, you know?
And I figure they're the least inclined to get mad at me about lying about that.
And I told them after the fact that I did do it.
And so that's a form of permission, right?
And so, yes, I made a press pass.
I'm not lying.
I just wish, you know, I think it would be nice for you to represent Truanon when you go.
Okay, I will do, I'll do it next time.
But what if I was going to do something naughty?
But anyways, it is, I didn't do anything naughty.
I was there purely as a member of the press.
And I decided to go as a member of the press because, you know, we've been reporting on it so much or talking about it so much, but it's one of those things I'm like, I got to go and see it for myself.
Waltz of Controversy00:15:51
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
And I'm physically banned from flying.
So you are?
Oh, because of the gun incident.
Yeah.
The one inside my belly.
Yeah.
And I love flying as longtime listeners will know.
It's one of my favorite things in the world to do and to pray loudly the entire flight and occasionally stand up and say 1776, which actually you'll find that in Biden's America, that was worse than saying a la akbar.
And now it's a little bit normal.
You can yell at the fly attendance the entire flight if you so wish.
So I went to Minneapolis.
Also, the reason, one of the reasons I decided to go is I have some friends in Minneapolis.
Some friends of mine were quite involved with some of the things that are happening there.
And so I kind of had an easy in to get a good picture of it quite quickly from arriving.
And plus, I had a free place to stay.
So I got in on Wednesday night.
And this is also, this is the night after Ilhan Omar got sprayed.
Yeah.
Can we talk?
Yes.
Hold on.
Sprayed by, was it apple cider vinegar?
I believe it turned out to be apple cider vinegar, which is which is wow.
First of all, how far we've come with the ubiquity of apple cider vinegar?
I will say that used to be quite novel.
I would say about 2015.
Yeah.
It was like, oh, apple cider vinegar.
You use that.
What?
You, you do that with dressings, but it's so tangy.
Now it's being sprayed at politicians.
It's so you just have it in your cabinet.
Yeah, it was really, I mean, I love apple cider vinegar because it gives me a delightful tang and a almost a sort of sensual shudder when I drink it.
It's zippy.
It's very zippy.
But it is a extraordinary choice for this seemingly perked out individual to spray on Ilhan Omer.
I mean, the guy, you saw the video, right?
Yeah, briefly.
It's like she's giving like a, you know, a little bit of a Zapruder.
And like, I mean, there's not much to Zapruder, you know?
But he's, he, like, she's giving like a speech to, I mean, it looks like a bunch of community members or something, like a kind of small venue.
And he is like a nervous looking guy sort of shifting around, quite unshaven, a bit maybe out of shape.
And at one point, right after she calls on Christian to resign, he stands up and says something.
I think, I think it's like, you're tearing us apart or something like that.
And he sprays her or he squirts her, I guess would be the correct nomenclature.
Wait, was it with, but was it with like a spray bottle or it was with like kind of a squirt gun?
It was like this sort of, it was like an oral syringe.
That's right.
It was an oral syringe.
Okay.
I forgot, but now I remember.
That's so fucking weird.
I just pause for a second.
This man was before he went to this community meeting preparing an oral syringe at his home where his two children live with apple cider vinegar and saying, I'm going to squirt this in this lady's face.
That's so weird.
It's, there's a series of really baffling choices, but I think that there's like, I think there's kind of a lot of people like this.
And I don't really even know what I mean by this, but just like sort of minorly violent psychotics across our country.
The guys.
I think they're not more violent.
I know.
I know.
I think that they sort of lack the physical fortitude in some ways, which is good.
Ilhan, though, for her part, sort of goes to punch him before he is kind of dragged away by security.
I just see it.
She was cool as a cucumber, too.
I know.
And it's really good.
Well, that gave rise to a immediate reaction on the right that it was staged.
I love that.
I know.
And it was, it was, I would say like a uniform reaction.
And, you know, do you think people really believed that?
Or they were just like, this is our best response.
I feel like I can't tell anymore.
I know.
Which we'll talk about also a little bit with more immigration stuff.
But like, I genuinely can't tell because it's such an absurd.
Look, I love a false flag.
I do.
Yeah.
Longtime listeners of this podcast understand my, you know, interest in that.
But this is not a good one.
No, it does seem like it was immediate.
And it was funny because the reaction was the sort of reasoning behind that reaction was that she had moved sort of too fluidly after he had sprayed her and that she didn't follow CDC protocols for poison control, which I think you tend not to maybe exactly follow in the heat of the moment.
Yeah, in the moment you're like, hold on, hold on the protocols.
But it's funny because, you know, it's, it's, there's a huge risk of, I mean, there's, I think on one hand, it is actually also insane because Elon Omar is one of the most hated politicians in America by a certain kind of person in America who is maybe apt to do this kind of stuff.
And it's, it's, you know, if this guy had had a gun instead of a syringe, it could have gone really differently.
You know, interestingly enough, I don't think the reaction from the right wing would be that much different, maybe a little happier.
But it was, I think, one of those instances that actually like this could have been something significantly worse, or even if there had been something sort of in the syringe or whatever that was worse, maybe poison or something.
But the immediate reaction was that it's a false flag.
And I think Trump even was like, I don't know about that.
Like, I don't give a shit or whatever.
Like, he answered some question by a reporter where he sort of dismissed the entire thing.
Now, back last year in July in Minnesota, you know, two state legislators got shot.
In fact, four people in total.
Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered.
And John Hoffman and his wife were severely fucked up, like injured, basically, by a guy who dressed as a police officer, went to both their houses and shot them.
But do you remember?
Everyone is, by the way, everyone has like completely forgotten this.
Yeah.
Oh, totally.
Totally.
Well, there was a big, the reaction on the right was twofold.
One, it was like that Tim Waltz ordered this hit.
So can I talk?
Can we talk about it again?
I'm sorry.
I got to pause.
Yeah.
This idea of Tim Waltz on the right as both a like communist mastermind.
Yes.
And also like a befuddled buffoon, similar to what we saw during the debate with JD Vance JD, is that's a difficult, like, you know, how do you square that circle there?
Because they seem to hold both at the same time.
He's like an incredible operator who is ordering assassin, false flag assassinations against his own, like members of his own party and also is so incompetent and inept that he like can't form a sentence, basically.
You know, it is, I've thought about this a little bit.
And I think that many of the people commenting on this understand that in some crucial ways they themselves resemble Tim Waltz, sort of ofish, buffoonish, in some ways quite cowardly, incapable of meeting whatever moment that arises.
You know, Waltz has sort of humiliated himself, humiliated himself on the national stage a couple of times and has withdrawn from the governor's race due to Nick Shirley's viral video, which is crazy.
So he immediately started out this new thing with a surrender.
But they themselves also might believe themselves capable of a Machiavellian kind of strategizing.
And so maybe they see Waltz as a kind of Democrat mirror of themselves.
But other than that, I don't know.
Also, sometimes right-wing people, actually, this happens to everybody, but I feel like right now, right-wing people just Waltz, Waltz is like their focus because of like both him being like, you know, Kamala's VP and he's, you know, he's the governor of Minnesota.
That they tend to create these very complex, oftentimes self-contradictory mythos around characters.
You know, I mean, Obama was, I mean, there's a, they really honed in on Obama.
Some of this, we're getting so off topic.
I promise I'll steer us back.
But just real quick, so much of this reminds me of the same kind of like rhetorical shit that people would pull, especially in the early years of the Biden regime on the left, where they would be like, actually, he's a total mastermind.
Actually, this is like the economic stuff is incredible, what we're doing, like all that kind of narrative build out or narrative scaffolding, I guess, that people would kind of like, you know, build up in order for them to defend whatever position they felt they needed to.
Anyway, it kind of reminds me of this a little bit.
Well, you also have to, I mean, Walls sort of is a his demeanor is sort of very like, I don't know, soft, I guess, in some ways.
Yeah, he's a good boy.
In order to build him up as this really villainous kind of guy, you have to imbue him with all of these, I guess, traits.
You've seen the ones that are like, he's a CCP plant.
I'm still lean with that one.
I love that one.
I love that.
I didn't even know if he was in China.
Walls is Chinese.
Waltz is Chinese.
Remember the Tiananmen Square thing?
Anyways, anyways.
So the reaction to that, I think, was really telling because it's a pretty big deal.
You know, like there's a pair of, well, one successful political assassination, another political wounding.
And the right immediately was like, it's, first of all, it's Tim Walz.
And you even had like, you know, national politicians saying this kind of stuff.
And then they seized on the fact that the guy had some kind of like no kings flyer that he had in his like back seat as he was a deranged no kings protester.
And he killed Melissa Hortman because she had said that illegal immigrants should not get free health care or something in Minnesota.
I can't remember what, but it was like they took her out because she was pro strong borders or something.
And but they immediately, they immediately sort of like added this element where he was a liberal that did it, even though all signs sort of point to him being a kind of mentally ill conservative guy.
Same kind of thing here.
It's like the same thing.
And also that one was sort of notable because Trump really like just downplayed it and kind of didn't mention it.
And, you know, these are, this is, this isn't unusual for Trump or anything.
And it's, I'm not going to pretend like I, you know, cry when my political enemies are hurt in some way.
But generally, a president would probably offer some words to try to calm down a situation or, you know, make some noises of sympathy for, you know, even though the other person is on the other side of the aisle.
It's not like they're on the other side of his aisle.
They're state legislators in Minnesota.
But no, he didn't.
He kind of like he sort of played into the conspiracy theory stuff there.
I think he like posted some videos that made it look like it was Wallace's fault or a false flag or something.
But it was a it was a pretty extraordinary reaction.
And so we see that kind of just happen with the Ilhan Omar stuff too.
I mean, he had a, he posted a video on True Social that was just like another guy talking about, did Tim Waltz really have Melissa Hortman assassinated?
And like, it's kind of, I mean, I don't know what to say.
I don't want to be like a pod sea of America guy about this, but it is kind of crazy that like the president is posted on his scam social media site that the governor of Minnesota had a member of his own party assassinated.
You don't need to apologize.
It's completely insane.
It's totally crazy.
It's just totally crazy.
No, the levels of Grift, graft, and just like what everyone likes to call slopulism now and the pandering to a sort of like really like eager to be fooled base.
Yes.
It's fucking pathetic.
I know.
It is.
It is.
And I just, I, I, I fucking hate crazy people.
I'm sorry.
You know, I hate, I hate nuts.
You know, I like nuts a little bit.
I like crazy people a little bit, but I hate crazy people.
And I'm just like, I'm so sick of, I guess, yeah, because populism for many people is actually just means, not that I like any other definitions of it either, but it like oftentimes just means like acting as schizophrenic as possible.
And that's just like, I'm just sick of that shit.
I'm so, I'm sick of every form of populism there is.
It just is.
This was so successful.
Yeah, it really has.
Maybe next time we'll try it.
It'll work better.
Anyway.
Anyways, I, so this was the night after she had been sprayed.
And I was like, is she going to come in here with like a gun out or anything?
But it was a very sort of low-key event.
It was like 50, 60.
I think it would have been insane if she came out with a gun.
What are you talking about?
That would be cool if she came there with a gun.
Oh my God.
She's still a politician.
They can have guns.
That's not my point.
I think that.
Don't act silly.
You know what I'm saying?
I'm not acting silly.
I'm saying.
I think you're acting a little silly.
I'm acting a little silly.
And there was some security there, although I think they were undercover.
But it would be a powerful message if the next time she did give a public speech in Minneapolis, she was pointing a gun over the heads of the crowd, but ready to sort of lower the barrel at anybody who got up or shifted too much of the seat.
I will say this.
She's a beautiful woman.
And I will agree with you 100% in the most respectful way possible.
I will say it so you don't have to.
Thank you.
Something real quick that I find interesting.
Obviously, Trump hates her for reasons that I think we all can identify.
Yeah.
But it was funny.
I was reading a, I was reading and some, the like New York Times interview with the mayor, Jacob Fry.
It's Fry, right?
Not Frey.
It's Fry.
Yeah.
I know.
But it's Frey.
It is Frey, but we'll call him Fry.
Whatever.
We'll probably respect Mr. Fry guy.
I don't like, I don't like the cut of your jib, but whatever.
Sister's Legal Observation00:15:33
Anyway, he was like talking about how he was got on a phone call with Trump.
You know, Trump called him.
They're trying to like manage this situation or whatever they're fucking doing.
And he said the first thing out of Trump's mouth was, saw you on TV.
You looked great.
Which is, of course, like 100% the thing that I imagine Trump saying.
But I'm shocked that Trump cannot see Ilhan's beauty through his own, what do I call it?
What do I say?
Racist impulses.
I'll say this.
And I, again, I try to be very respectful when I talk about women.
I think she's too natty for him.
You know what I'm saying?
I don't know.
Anyway, just something I'm thinking about.
I was thinking about it.
But she was in very good spirits.
And I ended up talking to her for a while and asking her about it.
And she's like, yeah, I wish I could have.
Well, it's, you know, I don't know.
Well, that absolutely is so zippy.
But I will say that she, you know, expressed great regret at not being able to have perhaps defended herself for just a few seconds more before the man was taken away by security.
But she's a very funny lady.
And I will say I humiliated myself.
And so we're glad I'm wearing the Jacobin press pass because this other lady comes up and she's like, oh, this is my sister.
And I was like, wow, you're so much taller than her.
I was like, you're her sister.
Where are you from?
You know, like, where are you?
She's just, that's my sister.
She just got into town.
And I was like, oh, where are you?
Where are you coming from?
She's like, Boston.
I'm like, Boston?
Why the hell are you in Boston coming here?
Which is colder.
And she's like, I don't know.
I like the cold's not that bad.
I'm like, you're out of your mind.
And then I was like, you don't have an accent.
I guess, well, maybe you were born here.
But I said something about the act.
I'm like, oh, you don't have an accent.
And then.
Any kind of accent, you know, she doesn't, you know, it's, it's, Ilan Omer has got like a Somali accent, you know, like, you don't, she doesn't have an accent.
I didn't mean anything by it.
And then the lady sort of stand there for a while.
I'm like, wait a minute.
I think I get that.
I had a feeling that I was humiliating myself.
And then I did realize she didn't mean it was her actual sister.
She sort of meant it, this is my sister.
And it was Congresswoman Ayanna Presley.
And I felt a little chagrined by that.
And they, it was a, it was a fine party.
But yeah, it was, it was, um, it was interesting because it was like a lot of people.
Also met Will Stancil.
And I got to say this.
And I, I don't want to, I, you know, I don't want to psychoanalyze large groups of people, but I think I'm going to.
I think a lot of people large groups of people are just the single person that you're no, no, I can't even, that's not my business.
What's going on?
What's going on there?
Okay.
I just want to analyze a social phenomenon real quick.
I think a lot of people on the internet sort of disliked Will Stancil, like left-wing people or whatever who kind of get into like Twitter quote tweet wars with people.
Dislike Will Stancil.
Then he became like an object of malign fascination for very active members of sort of online right-wing communities.
And then I think a lot of people who had previously been opponents of his felt some kind of guilt at, you know, seeing somebody get so much negative attention, perhaps obviously significantly more than they deserved because there's some fucking random guy in the Midwest.
And then him sort of being a, I guess, very vocal anti-ICE person on Blue Sky or whatever, never looked at the website, never will.
And like participating in some anti-ICE activism caused him to be like a figure of valor for many on the left.
And I'm just going to be like, guys, everyone just needs to chill out about everything.
You know what I mean?
It's just some guy.
You know?
But, and that was, it was just, he's just some guy.
And listen, everybody's just some guy.
But that was sort of interesting because it was, it was, it was the night after this sort of this incident with El Hana Omar.
And I feel like I got the impression that she was, I mean, I kept, I, you know, I asked her, I was like, what's it like to be really, I think, one of the most hated women in the country.
And, you know, I don't know, she had quite high, she had high spirits.
She was very good natured about it because I think on some level, it's, it's so ridiculous.
I mean, she's been the ire of so much or she's, she's had the frequent ire of so many people for so long.
And it seems like people, she's fairly popular in her constituency, still.
So I just, and you know, I, I think there was a, there's a, it was a question over whether Trump was going to try to denaturalize her at some point.
I don't think that's completely out of out of the question.
But again, she seemed in pretty good spirits.
Well, I think that women are uniquely strong in that respect.
So I'm just saying.
Yes, I can imagine.
The next morning, so I stayed at a friend's house in Whittier, which is like a neighborhood, I think, in the south or southwest of Minneapolis, quite close to where Alex Predty was shot.
Maybe like a five-minute walk, probably less than that, but it was so cold, Liz.
Liz, it was so cold there.
I mean, I spent Christmas in Lansing, East Lansing.
So believe me, I know.
Yeah, it was unbelievable.
But the next morning, I woke up at like seven in the morning and one of the people I was staying with, you know, text me.
He's like, actually, there's ice outside the house right now.
And I walk outside and there is indeed a white truck with two ice agents sitting in it, sort of just idling in the street.
And I think that somebody had just walked by and seen them and kind of reported it.
And within like, I want to say three minutes, there was maybe 15, 20 people on the street.
And again, this isn't seven in the morning.
So people kind of leaving their houses.
There's an apartment building nearby.
Several people sort of walk outside there.
And then a bunch of cars pull up.
And I think at that point, people are making noise.
There's some sort of whistles.
Not too loud.
I think it's maybe a little too early in the morning for that, but like there's people blowing whistles and doing some honking.
And he just takes off.
But it was really kind of a crazy introduction to two things.
One, which is how many ICE agents there actually are there, because this is just like a random side street.
Like this is just like a couple block long street of houses, like not a busy area by any means.
And it just sort of shows how many are out there by the fact that this guy was just sitting there.
And there's a question of whether maybe there's a lot of activists in this block and they were doing that thing where they've been sending people out to sort of sit outside of people's houses or they'll drive by people's houses and take pictures.
I don't know.
But it was a pretty good introduction.
But it was also a good introduction to how many people are sort of involved in the, I guess, activism against the ICE agents there.
Because I was very surprised at how many people left their houses and how many people drove up at that early in the morning.
Like, I mean, how many people was it?
I mean, like maybe 20, 25, 30 people at seven in the morning.
Later, I saw it, it was like some places it was like significantly more people.
And this like, and other incidents that were sort of similar to this, but later in the day and in different places, a lot of people at various times.
And we got started pretty soon after that.
I was doing basically write-alongs and there was a lot of kind of journalists doing this out there.
And so.
Yeah, I remember you saying there was a lot of press out there.
A lot of press out there.
I mean, I didn't really see that many of them, but I heard from people that there were.
So many editors at large.
So many.
Well, no, no, no, no.
That's a pretty high-ranking position, in fact.
But essentially, like from, so I'm not going to pretend like I have the full picture of how everything works there, but just from what I witnessed, there are, and this has sort of been reported on a lot.
And so I knew a little bit about this before I went out there, but it was kind of really good to see it firsthand.
There are various signal chats for different neighborhoods or different areas of the city.
And in those chats, people will say that there's suspected or confirmed ICE agents at such and such location and people will kind of respond to that.
And so there's some people who are essentially doing foot patrols.
And then there's other people who are doing what's called commuting, which is driving around and looking for ICE agents.
And then when you see them, you kind of chase after them.
That is what I did for the majority of the time I was out there.
I was tagging along with some commuters that I know.
And how would you identify them?
ICE agents?
Well, it's interesting because, you know, they've been using unmarked cars, right?
Like they don't ride around in like giant cars that say ICE.
And they don't even really drive around in cars that you could like that look like, you know, undercover federal cars.
Oh, they look like DoorDash guys, is my understanding.
In fact, not only do they look like DoorDash, sometimes they will be driving around with lift like stickers in the windows.
Yeah.
I saw a car of FBI agents.
It's like serving people or something.
You know what I mean?
It has that kind of rental cars as well.
Sure.
So they want to protect whatever.
Exactly.
And they're all getting sent to different places and stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
A lot of out-of-state plates that was pretty easy to identify them by.
But I actually saw a car with FBI agents in it, wearing FBI vests and everything going into the federal building that had a fuck ice bumper sticker on it.
And I heard from several people who saw other cops or excuse me, like other federal agents with like various fuck ice things in the cars.
But it's interesting because they, I mean, there was a lot of rumors that they were like dressing up as whatever other like postmen or local police or stuff like that.
I'm not going to say that's impossible for them to do.
I don't think it's legal for them to do.
And so I don't really, I don't really think that they were doing it.
But there was consequently, because they drove around in, you know, these unmarked cars and tried to keep a relatively low profile sometimes, there was a lot of paranoia.
And so there's like a lot of false sightings in these chats.
And that was, I sort of, I learned very quickly there was a sort of varying degrees of, I don't know what you would call it, but level-headedness among various activists.
And so some people would see two people just sitting in a car and in a sort of inverse of whatever neighborhood watch kind of, you know, reaction that, you know, some, you know, gated community person might have to a couple of people sitting in a car would report it and be like, you know, suspicious vehicle, two people sitting in it doing nothing and it's idling.
Well, every time, I'll say this, from my experience, every time that we checked out a sighting like that, it was just two guys sitting in a car every single time.
Every single time we went and actually to confirmed ICE sightings, it was all we were always wearing tactical gear, always wearing plates.
They were wearing civilian clothes for the most part, or, you know, set of tactical looking civilian clothes in some cases.
But they had the vests on.
And I don't think that these guys are going out with like plate carriers or anything.
I think they're very paranoid and pistols holstered and shit like that.
So the first morning we actually start cruising around and we get a call.
And so there's these, there's these, you know, there's these big chats where people can type into it, but there's also people who are sort of doing a dispatch thing.
And it kind of is just like how you'd imagine like police dispatch or something.
They would they would have people check in every once in a while, sort of say, say where you're patrolling.
And if there was a confirmed sighting of an ICE vehicle, they would send you there or you would kind of report on the movements of the vehicle.
So people would bait and people have there was there was some people who are really good at being like, you know, the car is going southwest on such and such boulevard or, you know, give actual directions like that.
And then there were some people who'd be like, the car turned left.
And of course, you know, you don't.
Yeah, no, you're other left.
Exactly, exactly.
Pretty quickly that first morning, we do come upon a vehicle with ICE agents in it.
And it's already being tailed by one car.
He takes us around this roundabout several times, which the people I was riding with told me was very normal for them to do.
Sometimes they would just drive around the roundabout for about 10 minutes, which annoy you.
I know.
To annoy you, but I'm like, also, you are annoyed too.
So I don't know if a cell phone.
Exactly.
But they sort of break checked the car in front of us and then get out.
And it's only one ICE agent, we realize.
It's a guy who's riding by himself, but he goes and he sort of yells at this woman and he takes his phone and takes a picture of her face.
And I mean, we talked about this in the last episode, but this is part of the effort that they're doing to essentially build databases full of activists.
Yeah, maybe we can pause here for a second because that's actually exactly like a new sworn declaration that was filed by Nicole Clayland, who's a 56-year-old Target corporate employee.
I can't remember where she worked.
I think it's Target.
No, if it's like product department or something.
I don't know.
Anyway, but she's like in corporate.
And she lives in suburban Minneapolis.
Anyway, she said that she was participating in legal observation within a volunteer group, similar to what you're describing, and was following a vehicle, which after a while stopped and just like was like fully blocking her path.
So she couldn't like proceed anywhere.
So an agent gets out of the car, addresses her by her name, and then says, We've got facial recognition and my body cam is recording.
Okay.
So they said they were like, you're impeding all of our work.
I'm going to give you a warning.
If you continue to do so, we're going to arrest you.
But it was just like a warning or whatever.
Now she says three days after that incident, she gets an email that her global entry/slash TSA pre-check was revoked.
Side note, there's been all these anecdotes about this happening on various forums, especially the like global entry Reddit forum.
Really?
Yeah.
Clearview AI Controversy00:04:44
And that like people have kind of noticed this happening for participating in these protests.
She says that she's been a member since 2014.
She's never been detained or arrested ever.
Because it is, I will say this about global entry that, of course, is under the purview of DHS.
And you can get knocked off of that for like minor arrests because it's all for like ease, depending on not just not talking about TSA precheck, but for like global, global entry status.
Yeah.
Anyway, she, you know, in her sworn statement, she's like, I've never been detained.
I've never been arrested.
There's no reason.
I've been a member since 2014.
And she claims it was from this incident with DHS and that they're like directly, I think she called it intimidation and retaliation.
And I think that absolutely could be true, where they're like, actually, we've now flagged this woman and we're going to like remove her entry.
My question is if it's like specific to the person or if now within their database, these all of these activists that they're taking photos of, they're flagging internally, which is automatically knocking them off of, you know, these other sort of privileges that they may have within a like DHS database.
There's that Ken Klippenstein article that just came out.
Sorry, trouble saying the name and I'm sorry about that.
Okay.
God apologize.
And they mentioned that there's this sort of like new subcategory of aggressive activists, I think it's called.
And I wouldn't be surprised if that's how they are flagging most people that they're putting in this because it's not like this woman was arrested.
In fact, I think the majority of these activists are not arrested.
But they are sort of on these lists now.
And they were, the guy was not subtle about it.
I mean, the way that he photographed her, the woman in the car in front of us, he was very clearly doing as a way to also show the gathering crowds around there that he was doing that.
And I think he snapped a couple other photos of it.
Performance as much as it's.
You know, DHS has declined to kind of detail exactly which tech it's using in Minneapolis specifically, but the New York Times was reporting on at least two of them that we know, Clearview AI, which I think everyone knows Clearview just by reputation.
There were a ton of exposés, various degrees that started coming out about Clearview.
I feel like from COVID, honestly.
I mean, that was involvement.
Yeah.
I know that's a whole nother thing.
But I mean, I just, you know, I think that that name has a lot of associations, spooky associations already.
Rightfully so.
In January, DHS said that they were limiting Clearview to just child sex abuse cases, funny enough.
But they just signed a new like $3.25 million contract with them in September of last year.
And they said that it would be used to investigate, this is their quote, assaults against law enforcement officers.
Clearview itself is like pretty controversial.
It uses facial recognition software to match within very not Clearview databases and where all of that data is being collated from and who's, yeah, there's so much there that it would be like a whole nother episode, I think.
I mean, we should do one.
But they're also using this tech called Mobile Fortify, which I think maybe other people have heard about.
And we talked about that the last episode.
Yeah.
Along with those kind of plugging into then the real-time database that they're using, which is built by Palantir, that is combining kind of every single piece of digital footprint, meaning from like credit reports, Facebook, Instagram, anything that you have logged into, anything ever, email, like just your entire digital footprint along with government data.
And it seems like they're also using, I don't know if they're using this in Minneapolis, but they recently bought up an app called BI2.
I think it's BI2 and not B12.
But BI2, which basically can get an ID on a person.
They're just like reading one, an eye within seconds up to 15 inches.
Oh, wow.
Fence Between Faces00:15:40
They can be pretty far away.
I mean, you know, relatively.
I would say.
Yeah, but like, you know, that's clearly like, you know, coming up to someone driving a car.
Yeah.
They don't have to get right in your face to kind of pull up an ID.
Yeah.
The guy did lean like very close to, I think the woman kept the windows closed, but he did lean quite close and take the picture.
He, the officer, he was like maybe six foot tall, white guy, was very jittery.
I will say this.
He seemed noticeably jittery.
Drugs or nerves?
Nerves.
I mean, I could tell I've seen people with this kind of nervousness before.
And, you know, frankly, in his defense, I'm not going to say defense, but, you know, in his, you know, to play devil's advocate for a second, if I was standing on a freezing cold street of Minneapolis next to a roundabout at eight in the morning with like 25 people yelling, kill yourself at me and blowing into whistles and honking horns, I would also be quite nervous.
He gets back in the truck.
It's part of the reason they keep shooting fucking people.
Well, so this is, this is, I kind of, I had a bad feeling about this guy, which would to be, I'm not trying to be dramatic here.
He did not shoot anybody, but I can sort of, I get a glimpse of a little bit of the mindset of some of these guys from this guy.
So he gets back in his car.
The woman he takes a picture of, she's like, I'm going to hang back for a sec, just, you know, so he doesn't try it again.
And so we started following him.
And here's an interesting, we were, we were sort of the lead car behind him.
And there was, I think, a couple others at this point too.
Here's sort of the interesting thing about this whole dynamic between ICE and the commuters there is that for the most part, a lot of the local PD were kind of not around and had taken a sort of, I'm not going to say neutral position because they have, you know, especially at the hotel, I guess by the time this comes out last week, you know, during some of the noise demonstrations, they're not like an actual neutral force in this,
but they definitely are hanging back in a way that I found very noticeable.
And so we were actually just driving like maniacs around, like speeding very quickly down the streets.
The cops or excuse me, the ICE agents were doing the same thing.
So we're essentially engaged in like a high-speed pursuit down fairly quiet suburban, well, not suburban, but you know, it's Minneapolis, down fairly quiet kind of neighborhood streets following this guy.
And he's trying to lose us.
And so he's like turning really quickly.
He's speeding up.
We're speeding through red lights behind him.
He's speeding through red lights.
We're going right behind him.
It is, it is, there's a lot of adrenaline pumping.
And we chase this guy for about 20 minutes, 25 minutes, because he had suddenly sped up after taking this woman's picture as if he was going somewhere.
He eventually loses us, but one of the people who I was in the car with had been doing this so often that he actually figured out where we could cut the guy off the only direction he could be going.
And so we did take that route.
And we see, we turn onto this one street and we actually see his vehicle there with the doors open and another vehicle with some flashing lights on, but it's an unmarked vehicle, but both police lights on with all the doors open.
We don't see him.
We don't see anybody.
And there's no like activists or anything around.
So we get out of the vehicle and I hear some yelling and there's a sort of like apartment complex with a playground behind it.
And I see a pair of ICE agents really struggling to arrest somebody.
And, you know, I get closer and accompanied by a friend of mine and they seem to be arresting an immigrant, somebody that they had.
I don't know what had precipitated the arrest, if this is somebody they were targeting or what, but the guy that we had been following appeared to have arrived as backup for agents making an arrest.
What I witnessed in the next 15, 20 minutes was some of the most bumbling, incompetent, at times very pathetic displays of police work from any uniformed officer I've ever seen anywhere in the world.
I have been arrested numerous times throughout my life.
And I'll be honest, I was guilty every time.
But I, you know, I have been the recipient of relatively professional police work in the grand scheme of things.
And I've been on the receiving end of very aggressive and let's say less than professional police work.
This was unlike any of that.
I mean, this was like a totally, this was like if you and your dumbest friends drank a bottle of Hornitos and then tried to wrestle a Mexican.
I mean, it was like, I've never seen it like this.
They are slipping and sliding all over the place.
Because of the ice?
Ice on ice?
No, they're on snow.
They are not on ice.
But because of the equilibrium, or not the equilibrium, because the weight of the vests that they have is so heavy that they're actually kind of unable to move effectively.
The guy they're trying to and failing to arrest a maybe guy's like five foot three.
And they kind of end up just like at one point.
I have video of this, which maybe I'll post.
I did post some of it on my personal Instagram, but I'll post some in an addendum to this episode or something.
At one point, after they handcuffed the guy, or maybe they're trying to handcuff the guy, like one agent is holding him and the other agent just pushes him like to fuck with him.
But by pushing the prisoner, it knocks the other agent off balance and they just all fall into the snow.
At this point.
There's no problem with being like so geared up.
Yes.
And just also they're like, you can tell that they're really hyped up and like they don't know what they're doing.
They don't know what they're doing.
Yeah.
At this point, other people are starting to arrive.
They're back up.
They don't have backup.
It's just these three guys of these three ice agents.
But other activists are starting to arrive until there's a crowd of maybe 15 there.
They're behind this fence and there's two of the ice agents and the prisoner behind the fence and then one sort of patrolling in front of it.
And it's a fence that's maybe like three feet high.
It's like a little fence that probably, you know, it's usually a salon behind it.
And they can't figure out how to get out of the fence and they are panicking.
The fence very clearly has a gate slightly further down.
I don't know if it needs a resident to open it, but it is, again, this is a three foot tall thing.
Pretty sure you can just open it from the inside.
One of the residents closest to them for the apartment building is yelling at them and whistling.
And they're being yelled at from now behind and people on the street.
And the officer that we had been chasing earlier starts panicking.
And I found it pathetic, actually.
I mean, I don't know how there's another way to put it.
And I'm actually shocked that he would allow himself this display of emotion in front of this large crowd, but he starts picking up his phone.
He calls someone on his phone, presumably other officers, and starts like in a really panicked voice.
Like, where are you guys?
Like, he does this several times.
I think I got on video twice.
In fact, we should play a portion of that right now.
So he does that multiple times, and he grows increasingly panicked.
And his actually, his partner is the guy that's like now trying to like handcuff the guy that they got.
And he's just pacing back and forth and shaking.
Not only is he shaking, but the guy that's sort of protecting them on the outside is also really tense and just pacing back and forth.
And he takes out a giant can of pepper spray or mace and starts shaking it.
At this point, a woman that is friends with the people I'm with comes up and she's asking the guy being arrested what his name is, because oftentimes people will just be snatched and their families or friends.
Nobody will know what happens to them.
And so you're supposed to try to get their names.
When she goes up to do that, and she's not being aggressive, she's not raising her voice or anything.
She's not certainly not making aggressive movements, trying to get over the fence.
When she goes to do that, the guy that's sort of on patrol outside the fence goes up to her and points the mace can directly in her face and sprays her.
And Ketz kind of gets it all over me.
I mean, not over me, excuse me, gets it all over her, but like it goes on like other people as well.
I get a little bit of my mouth and a friend sort of takes her back into the car.
It turns out her dad's there and is really gets really pissed off.
And at this point, backup arrives.
The ICE agents still can't figure out how to get the prisoner over the, around the fence.
They can't figure out the gate.
And so they end up just having a bunch of them climb over the fence and lift the guy over and put him on the outside.
And then the problem is, is now the prisoner and like one or two ICE agents is on outside of the fence, but all the cops have so are so tired and out of shape that they're unable to get back over the fence because they keep falling.
And they're not falling on ice.
They are falling because they are physically unable to scale a three-foot fence.
This seems too comical.
I counted eight falls.
I feel like there's too many jokes about being fenced in.
It was, yeah, I mean, build a wall.
Yeah, it's, it was, yeah.
I don't even want to say it.
But I mean, I know that like the kind of keystone cop of it all has been remarked upon by various reporters.
But I think it's, you know, they really downplay it, obviously, because these guys have, you know, they all think that they're like, they all have like main character video game syndrome or whatever, where they all literally are like narrating it as if it's like a fucking like, you know, I don't know, action game or whatever that they're,
they're the guy in.
It's almost like too obviously pathetic or something.
Well, it was, which almost makes me uncomfortable.
I know it was.
It was.
And in fact, that's when I was like, oh shit, is this because the particularly nervous agent who was still very visibly like shaking and unable to scale this fence, I was like, is he going to take the gun out?
Because I could see that he was like, he was clearly in his head, the situation had gotten out of control.
Right.
And to be clear, like, there were activists around there, but there wasn't like a riot or, you know, like no one was throwing shit at them.
They were like in their faces.
But not even these guys' faces.
Like, no, the other guys in the perimeter.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Yes.
Yeah.
They weren't in their faces.
I mean, they were a little bit, but it wasn't, it didn't seem like it was like about to pop off or anything like that in like a violent way.
But this guy was like, you know, hands sort of reaching like you could tell that he was kind of like going towards his gun.
But I'm pretty sure, I mean, it's been reported that they had an order, like, don't take out your guns.
Like, don't, you know, they, they were supposed to kind of like not calm tensions, but they didn't want a repeat of the previous two, the, the good and pretty shootings, uh, especially so close to each other, because I think that they realized that would be quite bad for DHS.
Um, and so this guy kind of like could, he didn't really know what to do.
At that point, a activist sort of falls or kind of like tries to put herself on the body of the guys being arrested.
I'll say this: I thought it was a really bad idea that everyone kind of was very confused by this because all that ended up happening was she was just immediately they took down her glasses and mask, pepper sprayed her in the face, and then handcuffed her and put her in her car.
I'm like, that would, I mean, that seemed like pretty obvious that that was going to happen to me.
Or to me, that seemed fairly obvious that that was going to happen.
But I think it speaks to a certain dynamic there that struck me as quite common throughout a lot of these incidents that there's a lot of adrenaline that goes through your body when you're like chasing these guys, right?
Like the ICE officers.
And then you catch them.
And then there is a this sort of like standoff, and there's this sort of tense situation.
And at this point, when we got there, we sort of had them on the defensive a little bit.
I mean, not in like a way where if they particularly should have felt threatened or anything.
And just speaking objectively, it was not a very threatening offense.
And I was, I mean, I was there as a journalist.
I was just, you know, taking videos.
But you're kind of unable to kind of consummate this, I guess, if that makes sense.
Like the closest thing that I could, I could compare it to was like going to battle because our war.
Because most of the time in war, you're sort of driving around or you're stationary, but you're like looking for an enemy or you're like kind of like on edge, like in anticipation of it.
And then that culminates or doesn't, but can culminate in some sort of like exchange of fire or whatever, but in some kind of battle.
Whereas this is actually not that.
This is, you have this sort of like tense standoff, and then, and it feels and you almost like, and there's a sort of like heroic feeling to it, but then it ends in like an kind of, it's, and I don't say this in a, I think I just am sort of speaking of it.
There's nowhere for it to go.
There's nowhere for it to go.
There's an impotence at the end of this, right?
That I definitely think that sort of everyone felt.
So you have these like moments of like, you know, spiking adrenaline of this, of this excitement, of this rush.
And then there's no, yeah, there's no like consummation.
There's no release.
There's no release.
And like sometimes, you know, the prisoners have gotten away.
I don't know if that's because of activists.
I haven't seen that happen.
I've seen videos of that happening in general.
But beyond that, there's no like, there's no, it's a defensive sort of action.
It's a defensive action.
It's more of a delaying action because in this instance, they still got the guy.
And not only did they get the guy, they got some random lady too.
And all we did was just sort of make it worse for them.
And there is a certain I'm not going to say we, because, you know, again, just neutral party here.
But, but there is, you know, there is something to be said for that for like delaying them or making it more difficult or damaging morale.
Defensive Arrests Delaying Action00:02:39
But it is, it is certainly like it's, it's very unequal as to what you can do, you know?
And so I don't know.
There was a, there's, I mean, that's that's true, I guess, of a lot of various kinds of activism.
But in this case, it was so like, you know, you have these two groups opposing each other and sort of standing off, but you can't like fight.
And, you know, I, you know, I know there was a that video of Alex Predi that came out, right?
Like a week before he got shot, kicking the tailgate off of an ICE car.
You remember that?
Well, yeah.
The one that everyone was like, that's AI.
Yeah, which that was really depressing to see how many people immediately assumed that was AI.
And then, even after it was clear, I mean, it was always clear, but after it became even more clear it wasn't AI, stuck to that story because I think that's a bad road to go down to.
But people were sort of like, I think a little defensive about it, but I completely understood exactly why he did that.
Because you have this frustration, right?
Of like you're unable to stop this thing in a real, real way.
And you have this kind of like energy flowing through your body and mind your mind and this frustration at this impotence.
And yes, I'm like, I completely, it seems very understandable that he would, he would kind of kick something.
Yeah, I don't know.
It is a, it's a, it's a very, it's a dynamic that I've experienced in other ways before, but never this acutely.
Like, you know, this isn't too dissimilar than like sort of facing off with the cops at a protest or something like that.
Although actually it is a little dissimilar because like there's off you can sort of, you know, there's scuffles with them or whatever, even though they oftentimes are almost always greatly outmatched protesters.
But in this, like we far outnumbered them, or the people that I was, you know, these activists far outnumbered them.
But they still, despite that, were unable to actually prevent them from doing this.
I want to talk a little bit about the arrests that they're doing, because I think that some of what's going on is explained by some of the contradictions within the administration and their own stated goals
Arrests and Contradictions00:15:03
and their political goals.
But while you were in Minneapolis, while you were in Minneapolis, there's a big story that came out in Washington Post about DHS buying up this like huge network of large industrial warehouses all across the country to turn them into new detention sites.
Kind of very frightening piece.
Something about like close to 170 million in warehouse and property buys that they're reporting.
Though I don't think that, I mean, they kind of make it clear in the reporting.
They're like, I don't think that's all that's being bought up.
Yeah.
It's just what has been identified so far.
Some of these warehouses are like enough to house close to like 10,000 people.
So they're huge.
They have operational targets, allegedly.
Again, they don't come out and say this stuff, but their operational targets are hitting 3,000 immigration arrests a day, which is a lot.
That would push like detention capacity towards 100,000, which is, you know, I think it should be obvious.
But if it's not, there are not that many immigrants with criminal records in this country with violent offenses, right?
Which is one of the reasons why they are expanding their scope to meet these quotas.
And some of that is directly coming from Stephen Miller, like the demand for these quotas and stuff.
But so this is just some like sheer numbers from the last year.
This is from the Deportation Data Project, which, you know, there's all these watch watchdog, I guess you could call it groups that are trying to parse Deportation, immigration data, which is very complicated because the numbers that are coming out of the White House are so fucked up and fake.
Yes.
On like every, you know, whether it is about this or about employment or whatever, it's just a kind of a disaster in terms of reporting.
And it's not just that they're juiced.
It's like you're, it's really, it's really unclear exactly like how they're how they're juicing.
So you can't even like dejuice them, if that makes sense.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like it's not, it's not exactly clear where the numbers are even coming from.
Right.
So this one I think is affiliated with UC Berkeley.
One of the things that I think is important to kind of just, you know, to pull back, this makes sense also from what we talked about in the last episode we did on this, but interior deportations have exploded while basically nothing is really going on at the border.
Yeah.
Yeah.
As far as I understand that to be the case.
Yeah.
So, you know, deportations following ICE arrests inside the U.S. are up 4.6 times in the first nine months of Trump 2.
Arrests have quadrupled overall, but the composition of those arrests has completely changed.
So now street arrests are up 11 times from what they were previous.
And the kind of like transfers from jails and prisons has only like doubled.
So we've never seen like street arrests at this scale.
This is all historically new.
I think anyone with eyeballs can say, can say that.
But I think it's good to also be backed up by the numbers here.
There has been a whole shift away from criminal priority targeting, which again, I don't think that our listeners would be surprised about any of that.
But there are people who either because of whatever news world, whatever they live in, do not understand this and still believe this shit about the, you know,
rape gangs or whatever and going after these like violent criminals or the what we talked about it on the last episode, that fucking horrifying DHS website, worst of the worst, where they're trying to put forth that they're going after, you know, they're eating the cats or eating the dogs or whatever.
That website, by the way, is very interesting because, you know, some of the offenses that you see in that, I mean, some of them are like weed and shit like that.
But some are like murder.
And you're like, well, this guy's out?
Like, how did that happen?
But it turns out they're actually just taking them in some cases after they've getting, like while they're being released from prison.
Right.
Like, and that actually accounts for a huge number here.
But it's, it's, it is, um, they, they're juicing not just even the numbers, but they're juicing the framing of it as well.
Totally.
Um, arrests of people with no criminal convictions has increased seven times.
So arrests of people with nonviolent convictions, that could be anything from like a DUI to what, you know, there, I mean, there's so many that you see that are just anyway, nonviolent convictions doubled, while arrests of people with violent convictions is only up just shy of 30%.
So the entire like the growth of everyone who's being arrested is overwhelmingly non-criminal, particularly with street arrests.
Now, the street enforcement that we're seeing is central because of all of the quota demands, right?
And this is like really important because, and this is something that I know we've said on the show before.
I know that we've written about on our newsletter before, but like hitting mass deportation targets is mathematically impossible if ICE only focuses on people with serious criminal convictions full stop.
Yes.
So they will not be able to hit the, you know, these targets that are coming out of the White House unless they expand.
And this is where detention comes in.
And this is where, just to go back to the Washington Post story, like deportations are rising not because the cases that they're that are like put forth in these courts are weaker.
In fact, it's like the, it's the opposite.
Detention capacity has tripled.
And like they, through like administrative and legal wins, they've basically made release kind of essentially impossible.
And so it's forcing faster and faster removals, along with people just basically once they're in these fucking centers are like, I'm getting, I will leave.
Yeah.
Because they don't want to fucking be there.
So it's not because suddenly there's all of these criminals where they're like, oh, we can just deport them so fast.
It's literally because, you know, everything is the system's so overwhelmed that they're just like pushing them out, pushing them out, pushing them out.
And at the same time, by the way, legal labor inflows are continuing apace, if not increasing.
So we've already expanded the work visa pathways to keep up with the labor demands because all of the corporations are terrified of the shortages that they're facing because of all of these arrests.
Again, that's why they're moving into street arrests, you know, and out and away from kind of targeting these like major, I would say major culprits of like hiring illegal labor or whatever in the country.
I mean, and Trump is, Trump has signaled that.
I mean, the signals or the statements from the administration have been wildly contradictory at times.
There has been, you know, they've said, oh, we're just going after these guys with like, you know, these are criminals, these are hardened criminals.
And then on the other hand, someone will say like Stephen Miller, for example, well, everybody who crossed the border illegally is definitially a criminal.
So they're all criminals.
So actually everybody were deported, 100% of who we're deporting are criminals.
At the same time, Trump has said, frequently, he says frequently rather, I shouldn't say has said, because he actually just, I mean, he said it from the, from the beginning, as repeated, as I think as recently as like last week or a week before, that certain industries, they should be left alone.
I think hotels, he had mentioned it a couple of times, because clearly he has some probably friends who own hotels and are like, listen, we're paying these guys like $3 an hour.
We can't have you, you know, deporting them.
We're going to have a labor shortage or, you know, our bottom line is going to be fucked with.
And that's not going to be good for the economy.
And so it is, but, but then they have these very performative statements and then gestures.
I mean, they have real ones as well, but then performative ones at the same time where they do these like, you know, high profile sting up or not sting operations rather, but like operations, like the Chicago bullshit, like descending on that fucking building in Chicago, which is so crazy.
And obviously, like a lot of reportings come out about that specific raid.
I don't think they got like two people or something.
You know, it's like they're expending massive amounts of resources for essentially like hype videos.
No, and that's like, that's kind of the huge contradiction at the heart of all of this, which is like the state is maximizing removals for political signaling to the base that it needs to to show like, hey, we're doing our big tough muscle moves and we're also beating up left-wing activists and we're also capturing all the brown people and we're also, you know, whatever, whatever.
But in these sort of like, you know, huge theatrical content pieces like you're talking about, while at the same time having to maximize legal admissions for economic stability that all of the interior enforcement now threatens.
Yeah.
And so the only way to kind of reconcile or try to kind of reconcile those two things is through more expansion of these kind of like thuggish street arrests that are, that are pretty like unlimited in scope because there's if you do that, then you're not threatening anything and you're giving meat to your base.
You know what I'm saying?
Absolutely.
I do.
I mean, it's, it's, the, the entire thing, we talked about this a little bit last episode we did on this, but like, I mean, think of even the entire reason that they're going after Minneapolis in the first place.
You know, Minneapolis isn't like a nation-renowned hotspot for, you know, undocumented labor or anything.
You know, it came because of a Nick Shirley viral video on Twitter.
And that, that was about the Somali population there.
Can I just say, I think Shirley is a tough last name.
Surely you can't be serious.
It's a tough one.
It's a, it's a, it's an effeminate last name, let's be honest.
And not that there's anything wrong with that.
There's little that's right with it.
Let's say that.
But he, it's interesting because obviously that targeted the Somali population.
Vast, vast, vast majority of the Somali population are legal citizens.
Huge numbers of them have been born here, second generation.
And, you know, the actual arrests that are happening in Minneapolis, all of the people that I talked to, and I talked to a lot of people, everyone's like, yeah, every single person we've actually seen them go after has been like Latino.
That's been essentially it.
Like they're not, they're just like, they're just here to kind of make a scene because of a viral video.
Like they've been said here.
And so like that is, I mean, that's not like, there's not like a partisan spin on that.
That just is the fact.
Like that is, that was the cause of, well, no, I mean, that the attention is because of Operation Metro Surge.
The cause of it, I guess the cause of Metro surge, because the viral video came a little later was because of, I guess, the virality of the Somali fraud story, you know, the big fraud case there, that like the attention that that was getting on Twitter, which caused the Nick Shirley viral video, but it also caused Operation Metro Surge.
I kept thinking like it's okay.
I can't extrapolate too much because obviously different neighborhoods have different populations of immigrants, different, you know, they're doing different, they're maybe focusing in different places each day.
But what I was there, and I, you know, I was there for, you know, three full days, and I saw ICE agents a lot, a lot.
I saw a lot of ICE agents.
I saw exactly one bust, and I think there was exactly one bust that anyone caught in this entire quite large zone that I was sort of riding along on these patrols in.
There was a lot of ICE agents, a single bust.
And it seemed like what they were mostly engaged in were these sort of cat and mouse games with activists.
And everybody, I think, has kind of come to the conclusion that like, you know, this is about immigration in one sense, but like really, for a large part, it's also just about this sort of public war on activist types and like, you know, the Democratic mayors and governors of these places and these sort of enemy cities that they've identified.
But if I was somebody whose main thing was busting illegal immigration, actually, if my main thing was that, I would probably be content with this because it seems like a lot of the people that whose main thing that is are very stupid and publicly very excited just by these viral videos or whatever.
But it's very obvious, objectively, like if you're trying to get as many undocumented immigrants out of the country as possible or catch as many as possible, these sort of like random street busts are probably not the way to go about it.
Like driving down the street and questioning every Somali that you see or every Latino that you see, which they can do with these sort of newly legalized Kavanaugh stops and this new sort of warrantless shit that they're doing.
It's not actually an effective way to get immigrants out.
And again, I don't think that it comes as a surprise to anybody that's listening to this, but it is sort of shocking to actually see it in person.
The rest of that day, we spent, we followed one agent and then basically drove him back to the federal building and then ended up in a Target parking lot because they often stage at Target and just sort of staked that out for a while, didn't see any, and then went and found another agent or another pair of agents or was directed towards it.
Mobilization On A Neighborhood Level00:06:02
And they also just sat in their car for a while until we called it off.
And then the next night, and then I sort of kept on the horn for the rest of the day and it didn't seem like there was anything else that happened.
The next day, there was that big march.
And so I went down to the federal building to Whittier, which they're operating out of.
And I watched like, yeah, all these DE agents, all these FBI agents sort of parading in and out.
And they've put up these barriers so that people can't get into the street anymore.
It was interesting to see.
It was bitterly cold.
I stayed there for, I don't know, maybe 40 minutes and watched it.
And then we just went back on, I guess, kind of patrol.
And this is less about the actual ICE agents.
It's sort of more about the dynamics of the protests.
So, again, there's been a lot of reporting, a lot of like mainstream reporters sort of riding along with these people.
And so I'm not trying to really recount.
And I mean, you can like read whatever, like the New York Times or whatever.
I'm sure they sent people out and did it.
I kind of want to comment more on that, the dynamics of decentralized, the sort of decentralized activism versus maybe a form of centralization and like what the pluses and minuses are of each.
And so, you know, there's these signal chats that are sort of loosely run.
And I'm not going to pretend I have actually also, by the way, the full picture here because I wasn't engaged on any level but the level that I was engaged on, which was basically at the street level of people riding around.
But I talked to a lot of people who were who operated at various levels of this.
And the picture I got was there was these sort of signal chats that weren't really run by any particular organization, despite Kash Patel saying on the Benny Johnson podcast that they were investigating these signal chats for ties to activist groups.
And I think on one hand, you know, there was a sort of mass engagement with this stuff on a level that I haven't really seen outside of a few specific things.
I mean, there was a lot of, I guess you could say normie libs that were pretty heavily involved in this.
You know, you drive down the street and there would be like a few kind of just like random middle class people sitting in an intersection with like not a barricade, but they would sort of put some stuff in the street so you'd have to weave around it to slow down ICE vehicles that were sort of patrolling through their neighborhoods.
There was, you know, I can't, I have no idea what the numbers are, but there's a lot of people.
It was mobilization on a neighborhood level that I have not seen before.
I mean, that was just, it was really, it was extraordinary to see it in many ways.
But there's some real limitations in the structure that I don't know if people even want to overcome.
I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to say that.
I'm sure some people do.
I'm sure some people don't.
But there is no guiding, as far as I could tell, and I asked people about this, there's no like guiding organization behind this.
Like there's no central committee that has a solid political line or whatever, or like some, there's no like sponsorship by this or that party or organization over the whole thing.
It's sort of something that sort of developed like it has in other cities somewhat organically or mostly organically.
And then it's been adopted by various organizations that have dispatched people or whatever, but there isn't like a real cohesive coordination.
And so the way it works is like there's various chats in different neighborhoods or different sectors of the city and they are siloed off from one another, which I think is a good idea.
And there are specific people that work as like relays between them.
And then again, like a dispatcher.
The problems that you run into is that there's no like centralized training or anything like that.
There are trainings that happen, but like there's no central body that like standardizes a training.
And so you'll have people, and you don't need to go to any in the first place.
You can just like get invited to one of these chats and start doing it.
And so you have people who, again, like don't know how to call it directions or who will say inflammatory or like even conversational things over this like line that's supposed to be kept clear, except for like, you know, dispatching.
And then you have people reporting rumors, which was actually a huge thing that I discovered is that like a lot of people, there was a lot of misinformation.
Not even on purpose.
I mean, not saying on purpose, just like.
I think it's possible some of it was, but the stuff that I encountered, yeah.
That goes back to the adrenaline thing that you mentioned, which is that when you're kind of in that moment and in that state, you get excited to share and be a part of it.
And maybe it is working against some better impulses, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's, that's, that's what it felt like.
And like, you know, it's, it's, I'm not knocking anybody here.
I mean, it's, it's a fairly natural phenomenon that occurs.
For sure.
For sure.
But yeah, you'd have people sort of like, you know, saying, you know, there's these two guys sitting in a truck.
And it's like, well, okay, well, why don't you just walk up to them and see what they're wearing, you know?
And so I'm sure that there's probably a lot of people who are just being followed around, probably don't even notice it by like a car because they look like they might be an ICE agent, which was funny.
I mean, we ended up doing that at one point.
We followed these people on the behest of somebody else.
And all of us are kind of like, I don't think this is an ICE car.
And then they were finally just like fuck it, like pull up beside them.
When we pull up beside them, it's just like three guys going to work.
And we're like, this is, come on.
But, you know, I think that when a lot of like big events happen, and I'm talking anything from like a war to, you know, a conflict in a neighborhood, people might sometimes take like the maximalist position that like everything crazy is always happening.
And so you believe everything that you hear.
But there's a certain amount of discernment that I think, and this is maybe just advice to our listeners and general advice in your life.
Hard Limits on Opsec00:06:04
There's a certain amount of discernment where you have to like, at first, you know, when you encounter information, you say, okay, well, does this track with what I know to have happened in the past?
Or does this track with what I know to be within the realm of possibility?
Or does this track with what I know to be physically possible in some cases?
And if it passes those tests, then investigate further.
But it's always really important to take a, you know, to take a deep breath and not believe everything you hear, but also just not repeat everything that you hear without verifying it or having it verified.
Which, by the way, social media is training us not to do.
I know.
It is so opposite of like many of the instincts that you sort of get from using a lot of social social media.
I didn't notice actually.
I don't know why I said that, but I talked to many people who noticed that there was significantly less sort of adventurism than there had been during 2020.
People sort of, you know, striking out on their own and doing maybe some spectacular stuff that had little political value.
It is, you know, it's an interesting thing.
Like I was saying earlier, there's a certain level that you can go to, and then you kind of can't go further than that.
And I think that, and you can't go further than that because A, that's just like not the conditions that the U.S. are in.
But B, I think logistically and organizationally, it sort of doesn't allow for that.
I mean, these are, this is sort of a mass thing.
Like this is, it's a weird, it's like very intense activism, but it's done on a more mass basis than I've seen before.
And because of that, that means the general political development of the people that are in it is rather low.
And because of that, you can get people who either really tend towards quite a conservative approach to things or actually a quite adventurous approach to things.
Both are both are sort of symptoms of this.
And I'm not really sure what the solution to that is.
I'm not sure that there is necessarily should be a solution because one might kind of, you know, things actually, as far as things are going, they seem to be going decently well.
And I talked to people who there who are who are fairly centralization minded and they had some positive things to say about the decentralized aspect of it while acknowledging and talking about the drawbacks to it.
I think though, if things do reach another level in terms of, you know, internal conflict in the U.S., a degree of centralization would be necessary, but it was also unclear that like if that was even possible, because it doesn't seem, and this is true nationwide, there is no group that is able to have that either charismatic authority or logistical organizational authority.
And that was something I sort of noticed there as well.
That even if a group wanted to sort of be the one that directed all the efforts, it didn't really seem, and like the various groups like were involved.
Like I think PSL had quite a large presence there in terms of like the marches and stuff like that.
But in terms of the actual That like street level activism of like the driving around and the patrols, there wasn't like a central coordinating body, and that's maybe you know, it's it's also on the level of like infiltration of which, like, you know, there's HSI agents out there, it's like, and there's also right-wing people who are really sort of dedicated to countering this stuff, but often mostly from out of town, um, like they're having to do on the internet.
Uh, you know, it's it's okay, you can infiltrate this chat, but everyone's using most people are using like code names, um, or like nicknames or whatever, and there's only so much you can do.
Like, yeah, ICE knows where you are, but like the whole point is that you're supposed to be going to where ICE is, so they'll know where you are, anyways, you know, and you're not like broadcasting your exact location at all times.
And so, I will say, like, as in terms of like balancing out that, there are people, I was, I talked about some people, there is a certain kind of person really fetishizes a uh uh opsec, I guess you could say.
Um, and I think out of an unnecessary degree, yes, and like it is necessary, but then sometimes people to make a fetish out of it and to like to uh, I think it sometimes comes from a certain political frustration that you like can't it replaces politics for some people, yeah.
There's also just like there is a hard limit on what is possible in terms of that when you're doing stuff online or digitally, yeah, like there's a hard limit that you reconcile with then what you're doing politically rather than try to go further into like opsec that isn't actually going to do anything, and then that becomes that fetish, you know what I'm saying?
I do exactly.
I mean, like, if you're like, and this is, I'm, I'm using like a really hyperbolic example here, I just want to let people know that, but like if you're playing in some like violent action or whatever, and you're like doing that on your phone, well, it's like you're already like, no matter OPSEC that you do, you're already kind of fucked or whatever, yeah, you know what I mean, or like maybe you're not fucked, but like you're taking a huge risk there.
And sometimes, I don't know, yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
Like, there are limitations to the use of phone and to use of like these like communication devices in the first place and like these giant signal chats and all this stuff that you have to accept those limitations and work around those limitations rather than pretend that those that you can obviate or alleviate those limitations.
Um, you know, it's it's the thing is, though, like, I don't really know what more people can do, and there's always sort of online interlocutors who urge other people to do something that they themselves are not doing.
Adjusting Tactics In Vegas00:04:42
Like, you know, like, how come you're not shooting an ICE agent when they're arresting somebody or something like that?
It just, yeah, I think it is quite a bad idea.
Um, or like John recommends against that, yeah.
I would, I would say, I would say we're definitely not encouraging it.
Um, and I think that's, I think it is, I think it will, will probably backfire in many ways on you, but uh, but you know, there, there are people who like who view mass action, every mass action, whether it's a spontaneous one or whether it's one that's organized as an immediate prelude to some sort of revolutionary moment, right?
And that just isn't history doesn't, I mean, like that history doesn't bear that out, but also like resistance to something does not equal a revolution against that thing.
So, there are probably quite a lot of people who are engaged in this sort of activism who do not wish.
In fact, I would say the vast majority of people do not wish for like a revolutionary overthrow of the United States.
And wishing that that were true doesn't make it true.
And so it's like people who might wish that were so, you actually have to engage with those people and attempt to persuade them to your political ideas rather than hoping that the actions that they take will lead to a somehow innate understanding of your arcane political ideology.
And that's, I don't know, it is, it is, um, it's interesting to see.
Uh, but I think that what the really the main lesson that I saw there was besides just being able to witness just how out of control these ICE agents are.
And it was frankly quite exhilarating that we, you know, kind of went on high-speed chases throughout the city, like, you know, every, once every couple hours.
The other lesson is just that, like, I don't think that this is sustainable for them, that what they can do, like, they're going to have to draw down at some point.
You know, I don't want to, again, I don't want to extrapolate just from the neighborhood or the area numbers that we were in for deportations, but like, if that is at all similar to what they were doing elsewhere in the city, I mean, what they got three guys that day, you know, it like it, and they're spending like 10, like $16, $15, you know, $20 million a day on having these agents there.
I don't know if they're adjusting their tactics after sending Bovino home.
Well, they sent him to Vegas, I guess, where he's taking a little break in Vegas right now.
But it seems like as activists adjust their tactics, the DHS or the federal government is adjusting theirs because it's not just DHS.
I think it's like half of the DEA is out there too, or like is engaged in deportation stuff.
A huge number of FBI agents are.
I mean, it's a whole lot of people.
They've also opened up USPS also involved.
Like they've tapped into like almost every agency that you could think of.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It is, it, yeah, it is a whole of government approach.
And I don't know.
I wonder how they'll approach this on the next city.
I mean, there are, they have, they're deploying people to other cities, but the next like real big surge that they do in the same targeted way.
I mean, I left with the impression that this was, whether it was intended to, I think it was, it has certainly become a war on from the federal government against maybe their most vocal or active opponents, which would be the people who would be willing to engage in this kind of activism.
And the immigration stuff was still very important to the government, but that seemed like a, it's secondary.
Whether it's before, I might have, I might have flipped those a little bit.
That seemed absolutely, I mean, there was certain, there were agents that we followed whose job seemed to just be to fuck with activists.
And like, you know, there's only so much they can do as well.
Like there's a certain level of like that they can't just like, I mean, they could, you know, they drew their guns on that lady the other day, but like they can't, there's a certain limit to what they can do.
And I think that they're testing those limits now and cohering maybe a strategy for future cities in Minneapolis.
Well, I'll say this.
Gold vs Bitcoin00:03:51
It was nice to be back in Minneapolis and not have pneumonia.
I'm just glad you didn't get it again.
I know.
Wasn't it freezing the last time we were there?
I think it was.
Yes, but not like this.
This has been a historic cold.
Yeah.
All throughout the United States and more's coming.
Get ready.
I know.
That's according to all the natural gas traders I follow.
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
Those are the guys that know when the weather's changing.
No, that's the heating oil traders.
No, the natty gas guys are gonna call it that from now on.
Natty gas.
Um they're the best because they're like all up in these like polar flows and shit.
And I'm like, oh man, they're on this.
And they were right.
I mean, you can look at natural gas prices on the side if you want to like start trading that.
Yeah, I know.
I got some barrels in the office.
Since you've been home, you do physical.
Liz, you don't understand.
Since you've been home, our studio is, I would say, floor to ceiling oil and gas.
Sure.
Physical.
It is just barrel after, yeah, physical.
Well, I'm sorry.
I'm buying fantasy oil.
No, you're trading paper.
No, I'm not trading paper, honey.
I'm trade.
Well, I'm trading paper for oil and then the oil later for more paper, but occasionally ducats and gold and things of that and silver.
No, no, you got out at silver, right?
I got out.
I know, I don't get out.
I don't get out.
I hold because it's real.
I can't just get out.
It's in physical silver.
And, you know, they don't take that at the store, but they will.
But I have a lot of medals as well.
I have spent a significant portion of your income on metals in the past month.
I will tell you this.
I'm fine with that.
Have you seen how medals have been doing?
If we've been getting, if yeah, if like, listen, Eric Adams, if you've been getting paid in gold when you were the mayor, you would be better off than if you'd get have you seen all those guys that are like, look at the gold chart versus Bitcoin.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They tried to put gold on the internet, but it turns out that gold is the best thing about gold is it's real.
That's so true.
Um, I do want to thank first of all, but actually, before we end and for actually really before I forget, I want to thank everybody who talked to me and showed me around Minneapolis.
I'm not going to name any of you or even give any identifying characteristics of you, uh, but I very much enjoyed my spending my time with everybody out there.
Uh, and I had great hosts.
And uh, you know, they have a thing called a meat raffle out there, Liz, a meat raffle, yeah.
The Midwest is something else.
What is it?
What it is exactly what it sounds like.
It doesn't sound like anything to they raffle meat, yeah, but yeah.
So, you know, how like people in like is it like a whole cow situation?
I it's unclear.
I'm not even sure if they even know anymore.
I think it's just they're so been so doing it for so long that it's just I don't know, but yeah, they'll take some people, some person people will bring meat to the to the to the elks lodge or whatever, and uh and they will they will raffle that shit.
It didn't the way it was explained to me, it was a little unclear on how actually even money was made because I think sometimes people buy meat and then raffle the meat, but maybe people are buying so many meat raffle tickets that actually you do make money off of it.
It's really it's weird.
I don't, maybe they take the meat, um, and yeah, I put they also have a form of gambling at bars out there that I really liked called poll tabs.
Okay, well, yeah, Cambod's awesome.
Organize the Jumbled Files00:03:01
I'm it's really bad.
Well, here's some more Trudon special reports.
Can you play the music?
And we should say, since I'm sure people are mad we didn't say it at the beginning of this episode, yes, we know there's been more Epstein.
Oh!
Oh my gosh, no, no, yes, we do are.
We don't know.
We don't know.
In fact, you have to tell us.
Oh my god, I'd love it if you told us.
Listen, we've been making our making our way all down into this, making our way through these files.
There's so many.
There's 3 million.
And I'm sorry.
What do you expect me to read all 3 million in one day?
I think they do.
I was reading this shit in the car when we were like chasing people.
I was, I was, uh, um, and when we were idling, I was just looking at the musk.
I fucking hate the federal government because the way they rolled this shit out.
It is so annoying.
I know.
Well, dude, I, I, you guys, I get, I hate transparency.
Well, and you know what?
Can you just like collate this somehow, make it make sense somehow?
Just organize it in some way or the fucking shit that they do.
We'll complain about when we actually do this.
But the thing that pisses me off, you don't need to make a separate PDF for one email and then another PDF for the reply to that email.
Oh, it's I'm going to tell you this.
The amount.
No, how about this?
Why don't you just be so incompetent that you give us the unredacted emails and then in the same tranche, copies of them redacted?
Yes.
So you confuse them.
How about this?
You know, why don't you, not knowing what any of the things are because they're just named 01, 02, 03, 04, and you're trying to be good and do your job well.
So you're going through all the files.
Your ass is fucking stuck for four hours looking at scans of the fucking race car driver's checkbook.
Well, you did.
When you told me that you've been looking at that for three hours, I was like, at a certain point, Liz, you got to know when to.
But you don't know what else is in there.
You don't know what else is there.
There was so much stuff about Southern Trust.
There's so much, but it's all, it's all jumbled.
It's all jumbled.
And I'm.
It's all jumbled.
Sick of it.
It's enough files.
I did search a certain bad word and found some crazy Peggy Siegel emails.
So, but I'll send this to you.
She's wild.
Wow.
What an emailer, though.
What an emailer.
Yeah.
But yeah, we'll talk about that next episode.
We got a couple episodes coming on about that.
Yeah.
Until then, I'm Liz.
My name is Brace.
We are joined, of course, by producer Young Chomsky.