Inside the ICE Detention Boom: Soaring Abuse Claims and Little Oversight

23:05And that is a feature of a rapid expansion. You've got to hire up these staff really quickly in order to actually get them online. But the Trump administration is not waiting. They were literally building Camp East Montana as it opened. In August, it was holding about 1 ,000. A month after that, 1 ,500. A month after that, 2 ,000, because they were building the tents next to the ones they'd already started holding people in. And they didn't have enough staff. And that led to serious issues. And in fact, Camp East Montana is the place where we have seen the homicide of a man in January who was reportedly killed by prison staff during an incident.

23:43Now, ICE says that's not true, that he committed suicide. People who witnessed the event actually were rapidly deported from the country, despite litigation holds from a judge saying, don't deport this person. He was a witness. One of them got deported anyway, and he reported back. He said, I saw what happened. The guards killed the guy, and it was nothing to do with, he was not suicide at all. And these are the situations that happen when you are rapidly hiring up. So I do think going back again to the administration not caring what happens and really just wanting to speed things up as quickly as they can.

24:18They have four years in office, and they want to use every minute of that to get their numbers up.

24:24Kara Swisher:Yeah, it recalls to mind putting Japanese Americans in horse facilities, if you remember, in San Francisco during World War II. So, Jimena, you've talked to some of these people who've been held in these detention facilities. Talk about what it's like there and what some of the stories that have stuck with you. Yeah, I mean, I've definitely spoken with folks in detention centers across the country. Many often call and talk about how they're kind of in this room the entire time. They maybe get an opportunity to call their wife or their husband, where they talk about daily lives almost as if it was the conversation that they would have before going to bed at night.

25:04Kara Swisher:But instead, they take that as a time to do it instead. A lot of conversations about what are their red lines, how long do they wait. I've spoken with people who are stocked up with lawyers. They have criminal lawyers. They have immigration lawyers. They have constitutional lawyers. They have, you know, teams of lawyers to try and fight their detentions through the various convoluted court systems, the immigration court systems, the district court systems. And then I've talked to people who don't have a lawyer and call me because someone else that was in detention called me at one point and they think that maybe like I can help tell their stories.

25:41Kara Swisher:And sometimes I can and sometimes I can't. You know, that's obviously a different side of it all. But, you know, ultimately, it's really variant. Some people are there very quickly. Others are removed very, very slowly. I spend a lot of time using the ice detainee locator as well to kind of track and see where people are getting moved to. And that, as we've seen over the last year, is not always the most accurate, up-to-date, speedy system. What is their state of mind in terms of the treatment and how they're feeling about what's happening there? Yeah, I mean, I think the people I talk to are obviously very self-selected.

26:17Kara Swisher:So it tends to be a very resilient group, you know, people who are actively fighting their cases or want to actively fight their case and see it all the way through, even if it means that they're in detention for a year. But obviously, that is not everybody in detention. And when you have these overcrowded conditions, you hear about, you know, people sleeping on floors, about, you know, the food not being very good, about like the bread being moldy, about there being questions about the drinking water. And, you know, a lot of this has been well reported by my colleagues at NPR and other outlets as well.

26:50Kara Swisher:It's just, you know, these challenges, not just in detention, but when you have an overpopulated and overcrowded space. So more than 40 people have died in ICE detention since Trump took office. In fact, last year was the deadliest on record in decades. 2026 is on track to be worse. Austin, you wrote that these deaths are becoming, quote, a predictable, normalized part of ICE operations while Congress and most of America and public appears unaware or indifferent or both. What's leading to so many of these deaths besides just chaos, it feels like, in some way, and not caring about it, obviously?

27:27Yeah, I think it goes back to the fundamentals that Aaron was touching on. These are not facilities that are prepared to handle this number of people. And in any population, not just immigrant population, if you suddenly start detaining 3 ,000 American citizens inside of a facility, some number would have a variety of mental and physical needs that would have to be met, right? So it's not unusual that this would happen. What's unusual is that they are intentionally avoiding, you know, staffing up and providing the services and the infrastructure that they need. I think the second order problem is, okay, if you're expanding a system this quickly, there's likely to be mistakes along the way.

28:07So how do you respond when things go wrong? This administration has, you know, claimed that American citizens are terrorists after they've been killed by ICE. They've dismissed detained deaths as essentially being immigrants' own fault, not theirs. So I think the bigger problem isn't just that things have gone wrong. It's that when they've gone wrong, the administration has avoided any sense of accountability. And we're not seeing Congress changing that either.

28:32Kara Swisher:Right. And the American people aren't seeing it the way they did, say, in Minneapolis. So you said a lot of these deaths are also preventable. How so? So research on detained deaths shows that about 95 percent are preventable. When you do a deeper dive, you know, in cases, let's just take, for instance, there have been three, sadly, suicides in detention so far this year. Suicides are preventable deaths within detention centers. There are standards about how to monitor and make sure that people are not able, you know, to harm themselves in that way. If you don't have staff and oversight and a commitment to following through with those policies, things like this are inclined to happen.

29:11Kara Swisher:Yeah, inevitable. Aaron, that kind of leads us to the warehouses. The government has spent close to a billion dollars buying up close to a dozen around the country. The goal is to be able to hold 100 ,000 people at any given time. These warehouses are not built to hold people. They're built to store things, Amazon or whoever. Talk about what happens in that system, in a warehouse system. You've said they fundamentally reshape immigration detention. Just explain that. Yeah, so the American immigration detention system really slowly emerged over about 30, 40 years as Congress gradually expanded the system with a little bit more funding every year.

29:48And that means that the system we have today is, as Austin described, a patchwork of large facilities, medium-sized facilities, and small county jails where people are held everywhere from a few dozen people in some facilities to 500 in others to over 2 ,000 in a handful of facilities. So ICE is saying, we now have enough money,$45 billion, that we can redo the system from scratch. But actually thinking through how to build a modern, efficient prison system is what they want to build usually takes more than four years, but they only have four years to do it. And so they seized upon the cheapest, even though it's enormously expensive, method of doing that, which is buying these commercial warehouses and sites around the country.

30:32And they want to have 16 what they call regional processing centers where people are taken after they are arrested and held for a few days while ICE figures out what to do next. And then eight mega detention centers. These are going to be warehouses that hold anywhere from 7 ,500 to 10 ,000 people. And ICE clearly thinks that by concentrating these warehouses, a small number of them at key locations around the country, they can build what ICE acting director Todd Lyons called Amazon Prime, but with human beings. The problem is, of course, this is not something ICE has any experience in. The largest federal prison holds only 4 ,600 people.

31:12So we're talking about some facilities that could be double the size of the largest federal prison in an agency that only runs its own handful of detention centers, mostly which were built in the 1980s or 1990s.

31:25Kara Swisher:So this would exacerbate current problems. Exactly. These problems are already in existence in the private detention centers. And ICE is now saying we want to own these facilities larger than anything we've ever run before, larger than the largest federal prison, larger than the largest state prison in the country, and we want to build eight of them. And that is a disaster waiting to happen. So, Jimena, we're seeing opposition, obviously, these mass detention warehouses, even in Republican districts. It's sort of interesting to watch it play out. How does that complicate the push to open them quickly?

31:57Kara Swisher:I see them ending up empty at some point, presumably. So what are the main concerns and how does that complicate this issue? Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that could block some of these warehouses from opening or coming online, depending on where they are. And that's not counting other initiatives and kind of pop-ups that the administration might decide to open up. We have seen some successful Republican pushback, particularly in the South and in a few other states, where whether it's local leadership or senators saying we don't want this in our community. So there's definitely been a paper trail of this kind of resistance happening bipartisanly, locally and nationally.

32:41Kara Swisher:What is the principal objections of people in local districts, including Republicans? Yeah, I think that's the tough part is it very much varies. Sometimes people just say we don't want this in our town for any reason, whether it's we don't want these people in our town. You know, that can easily be a reason. Other times, it's just an acknowledgement that the community cannot sustain this. You know, in some of these places, you know, even some of these smaller facilities would double the size of a town. And that is just not something that the city has infrastructure for. And so there is a reliance on like logistical challenges and where that could land.

33:22Kara Swisher:And so those are some of the more pragmatic arguments against these like larger facilities. Austin? I mean, there's two specific concerns that we've seen come up, especially here in Western Maryland, but also in Social Circle Georgia and elsewhere. The first thing is these facilities are not capable – sorry, the local municipalities are not capable of providing water, wastewater, drinking water to these facilities. It would absolutely overburden. They literally don't have the water to send to the facilities. And the second thing is that often gets overlooked is once the federal government buys up one of these properties, Cara, that property goes off the local tax rolls.

33:57So it's taking hundreds of thousands of dollars out of communities that means less money going to the school and to the infrastructure it so desperately needs.

34:04Kara Swisher:Right. And also, one of the things that's interesting about the administration likes to brag about how it effectively shut down the southern border and ended asylum, how quickly they're deporting people. It seems counterintuitive that DHS needs more space to hold more people. How are those related? Yeah, that's right. So I think there's two things here. One is there's an attitude within this administration within ICE that the only way to deport people is detain them until you can get them on a plane. There's no data to support that, but that's the belief. So the idea is that mass deportation requires mass detention to make it work.

34:37But I think more importantly and more underneath of all of that is they are deeply interested in making this process as punitive as possible. because the truth is there's lots of legal, lawful pathways that Congress created to ensure due process and make sure that humanitarian migrants have access to at least a review in front of a judge or an asylum officer. And the best way to make sure that this process goes faster instead of slower, the best way to make sure that people give up on their basic rights is to make it as painful and harmful as possible. And I can tell you talking to families, Cara, that there are, you know, USs and spouses of undocumented immigrants who are saying, I don't want my husband in one of these facilities.

35:19It's better that we leave the country so we can stay together because there's no way I'm going to let my husband go through this process or wife.

35:26Kara Swisher:I personally now know a half a dozen people who have done that. They're leaving. They're just leaving. Aaron, people have been comparing the Trump administration's attention process to concentration camps. It immediately obviously evokes the idea of Nazi Germany. There have been lots of concentration camps, but that's the top memory of people. It's an extreme example. Talk about the use of the term concentration camp. Is that fair? Is detention center? I mean, a lot does swing on words in many ways. For me, these are jails. They're prisons. The warehouses are a new thing. We haven't seen those before.

36:01But in many senses, these are quite literally jails. We see one of the largest new detention centers that's opened under the Trump administration last year is the California City Detention Center, which is a private prison that was previously used by the state of California as a long-term prison. When California moved away from using private prisons, the facility was shuttered for several years. And then when ICE came into the office, they just reopened it, slapped a new coat of paint on it, and started hiring it out to ICE. So I think that getting mixed up in the terminology here is not as helpful as looking at what is actually going on in these facilities.

36:39And one great example of how conditions have gotten worse, we featured, we recently published a big report on ICE detention in Trump's first year in office. And we highlighted the story of a woman who had spent a time in federal prison for illegal reentry, which is a federal crime. and she said her time in federal prison, she was treated better than when she was sent to an ICE detention center. And as much as, you know, you can say in some cases, is this deliberate? Is this deliberate indifference? Deliberate negligence? But that doesn't matter to some extent. For these people, that's what's happening to them.

37:17And they're having to make decisions about their cases.

37:19Kara Swisher:Right. And I think one key distinction when we talk about things like internment and others is that the goal of the U.S. government is deportation. As Austin said, the Trump administration believes deeply that in order to deport people, you must detain them. And I agree, the data does not support that. But in their view, it would be the easiest if people were in detention for 24 hours and then signed a paper saying that they could get out and leave and free up that bed for someone else to come in. People are held in these detention centers for long periods of time, but the government doesn't want that.

37:53They would prefer that people just give up and stop fighting.

37:57Kara Swisher:Right. How do you other two think of the word concentration camp? Jimena and then Austin. Yeah, I mean, I agree with Erin in terms of, you know, these are very much more like prison and jail kind of structures. I think when it gets into the question of prolonged detention and what is actually the point of immigration detention, you know, that's definitely worth exploring. again, as I mentioned earlier, acting ICE director Todd Lyons underscores that immigration detention is not supposed to be punitive. And I think that that's important to remember. Someone being put in immigration detention is not supposed to be a punishment.

38:34Kara Swisher:They're not necessarily there because, you know, it's logistical. It is a process. It is the stopping point before they're put on a plane or somewhere else. And so I think that's where we have to see, like, how is this administration using immigration detention? And is it moving from, you know, being not punitive to being punitive? Austin? Yeah, I have a slightly different perspective on this as a political geographer who's looked at the spatial practices of power and control from states across, you know, our modern history. And I think one of the things that happens when American citizens see, you know, fellow citizens shot in the street who are then called terrorists, when they see the language, the xenophobic rhetoric, the really brutality, the dehumanizing language coming out of the administration, as well as record numbers of deaths in detention, the fact that this is civil and not criminal, the fact that most people don't even have a criminal record.

39:28You know, it's normal for people to grasp at the nearest approximate analogy that comes to mind. And so it's understandable, I think, why people might go to particular points in history and in memory and say, hey, the closest I can think of to what I'm seeing right now is this other period in history. I think to your point, Cara, even when we think about concentration camps, it's better to actually step back and say, you know, across the world, right now and in the last hundred years, there's a lot of examples of the way that different governments have, typically authoritarian governments, by the way, have exploited this artificial distinction between civil and criminal, have used these kinds of mechanisms, whether it's warehouses or camps.

40:09It didn't start even in Germany. I mean, it happened in South Africa. It happened with indigenous people in this continent. It's happened in Australia with, you know, offshoring to islands, essentially, you know, warehouses on islands off the coast of Australia. So I completely agree that I do not think that empirically these are concentration camps in the way that we typically understand that term, as you said. But I understand why people might grasp at analogies.

40:35Kara Swisher:We'll be back in a minute.

40:45Hi, I'm Brene Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's going to be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree. And we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday. For the last 10 years, everything in American politics has basically revolved around one man. And as a political journalist who came of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat.

41:23I am officially running for president of the United States. It's going to be only America first. America first.

41:35Kara Swisher:Thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building. But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm going to ask in our new show from Vox. The idea of like a post-Trump or not exactly Trump-focused show can exist because he's not really driving any agenda items. It really does feel like so reactive. You know, I think this Iran thing is also going to cause a big split in the GOP. So far it doesn't among like people who say they're MAGA voters are still with Trump. But like for the first time, you see on a major issue, open opposition from the start of this war.

42:10I'm Estet Herndon and welcome to America Actually.

42:16Kara Swisher:While DHS expands its detention capability, it's getting harder to know what's going on inside of them. The Trump administration gutted some of the agencies that were supposed to provide oversight for these facilities like the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. We've also seen DHS try to block members of Congress from showing up unannounced at ICE detention centers. Other judges recently, DHS can't do that. Aaron, who's overseeing detention centers now and who's able to investigate complaints coming out of them? There's actually three independent bodies that are supposed to do this oversight.

42:48One of them is the Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman. This is a relatively new office created a few years ago, and the Trump admin fired 90 percent of its staff. The other is DHS's Office of Inspector General, who is run by someone who is widely perceived to be an ally of the Trump administration, who was appointed as the inspector general in Trump's first term. And the other is ICE itself. ICE has an Office of Detention Inspections that occurs inside of its Office of Professional Responsibilities, and that office has been accused of essentially rubber stamping inspections. They outsource it to a private company that effectively never finds any serious violations.

43:28So in many cases, they are either policing themselves or not really doing any kind of policing internally. And then, of course, externally, there are lawyers who go into these facilities. There are members of Congress who have been fighting hard in court just to go and exercise their right to do inspections. And so you do get some view. And the people themselves, as Ximena said at the start, you know, people are calling her. People are able to talk to reporters from the inside and say what happens. And we've even seen some videos smuggled out of a few ICE facilities showing terrible overcrowding.

44:01So it's not like there is no view.

44:04Kara Swisher:That happened in the first term of the Trump. Remember, the pictures were really quite problematic for the Trump administration. And crucially, those pictures were of border facilities, crowded people at the border. We actually sued over that during the Obama administration. Overcrowding in those border facilities got worse. And then inside ICE detention, we had never seen situations like that. And now we have. We have seen in ICE holding facilities in Baltimore, in Florida, in Los Angeles, in Chicago, in Minneapolis, people crowded into small holding cells. 30 people in a room with a maximum capacity of 10 people, not getting enough food, not getting enough water, and smuggling out cell phone videos saying these conditions are horrifying, people are going to die.

44:49And in fact, there have been some instances where people caught diseases in these crowded conditions and then were hospitalized afterwards just because it was so unsanitary. So we are seeing, from what we can see, the system has gotten worse. But what we know is that we don't have enough visibility in this system, and accountability has been disappearing on a daily basis.

45:11Kara Swisher:So, Jimena, you've written about how the Trump administration fired nearly 100 immigration judges last year and says it hopes to replace them with, quote, deportation judges. These hearings are one of the few opportunities for immigrants to have publicly plead their case and say what's happening. The immigration court effectively turns into a rubber stamp for removals. How would that cloud our understanding who's being, they're not getting due process, basically, correct? I mean, at a very minimum, it gives the perception that the judge is going to come into the case with already the sense of deport or not and with the pressure to deport.

45:45Kara Swisher:And, you know, I'm hearing that as these new judges are being onboarded, the training really leans into denying asylum protections and denying additional protections from being deported. Because, of course, asylum isn't the only way, only thing that you can argue in immigration court. But I think a lot of people don't realize that immigration courts, we call them courts, you know, for all intents and purposes they are, but they're administrative courts. They're under the Justice Department. The boss of all these judges is ultimately Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and then above her, the president.

46:19Kara Swisher:And so, you know, to what extent can there actually be an independent court system? You know, that's been up for debate for a very long time. But we're really seeing this administration utilize that to remove the people that it didn't want for whatever reason and then bring on a slate of candidates that at the very least has a very similar background. Many of them overwhelmingly worked for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And so we are seeing that sudden shift and change. And, you know, it might affect what those ultimate statistics look like. They're just to sign the papers, right, and to get them out.

46:57Kara Swisher:They're just sort of rubber stamping, as I know. And there's a lot of pressure on them. We've seen the Board of Immigration Appeals and other parts of the Justice Department issue memos saying that judges are not doing enough, that they're not moving fast enough. And so, you know, there's no judgment cast on someone that comes in from the agency to work as an immigration judge, but then they're faced with a pressure to move quickly, quickly, quickly. And that is going to lead to mistakes. And I think that's something I believe Austin said earlier, but when you're moving mass volume at mass speed in a system that's already prone to mistakes, those mistakes just seem more likely.

47:36Kara Swisher:Okay, Austin? Yeah, of course. Just want to say empirically what we've seen is that the monthly asylum denial rate has increased all the way up to well over 80, 85 percent. Normally, just for context, it's between 45 and 60 percent. We've never in the history of immigration courts seen asylum denial rates this high. And this is just those that actually make it to their hearing. It doesn't even include people who are prevented from ever filing asylum claim in the first place. So we're seeing it in the data. That's a huge jump. That's an enormous jump. Now, you recorded an AP story about how reliable vetted immigration data is becoming a lot harder to get in general.

48:13Kara Swisher:Talk about that because that's critical. We don't know what we don't know. We don't know, right? That's the whole point. That's right. I think the most significant example I can point to is the fact that, you know, on day one, the Trump administration stopped publishing monthly enforcement data that came out of what was called the Office of Homeland Security Statistics, a really incredible agency, very innovative, that published data for everyone. I mean, it's not a political story or a partisan story. It's, look, here's the data for what's going on with immigration enforcement. They stopped releasing that data, and what they started doing is bundling, you know, data talking points into a bunch of rhetoric that is either unverifiable or verifiably inaccurate, such as claiming that everyone they're going after and arresting and detaining are people with criminal records, which is just demonstrably untrue.

48:59Kara Swisher:And when you think about what they're doing, one of the things that's interesting in the speed of what they're doing is you're starting to see sort of corruption questions happening. And obviously today NBC reported that Corey Mundowski, one of the private prison people, are complaining about shakedowns, which is, I mean, if these guys are complaining, you know something's afoot, essentially. Anybody have a comment on that? What is the sort of implications of the gnome residency in this job, very performative, obviously corrupt, versus now? What do they have to change? Because that is, I'm hearing from a lot of Republicans, the wasted money, the corruption, the self-dealing, and obviously someone's got it out for Corey Leimdowski, and deservedly so.

49:47Kara Swisher:Anybody talk about this? Yeah, one thing that we've seen the administration use is single-source contracts. And the single-source contracting has allowed them to essentially pick and choose who gets these contracts. This is sped up with the warehouses. They actually did an incredibly unusual process to integrate DHS's detention needs into a Navy procurement system, which lets them bypass normal federal contracting rules requiring competitive bidding. As a result, they have been spending this money more quickly than ever with less transparency. And who is getting these contracts? In many cases, it's politically connected providers, some of whom have no experience in the field whatsoever.

50:29Even at times above the big private prison giants. Yeah, and we're seeing that with how much they're spending on the warehouses, Cara. I mean, a lot of these warehouses were finding that the most recent evaluation is a fractional number of what the government has actually paid for it.

50:45Kara Swisher:Meaning they're overpaying. They're overpaying. They're dramatically overpaying. Yeah, the Republicans are even complaining about it. So what happens if they don't open Ximena? They just sit there? What occurs? I guess so. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it sort of depends on what the contracts outlay. There might be, depending on how they're written, they might revert back. I honestly haven't parsed through the various contracts. But yeah, I mean, for the most part, they're probably in government contract until they're either used or they're not. I don't know if Aaron or Austin has insight into specific facilities.

51:18Kara Swisher:Will corruption be a big problem here than stopping it? Because certainly this reporting suddenly is gaining some steam. And I assume it's a way to kick them on their way out or set them up for prosecution later. But does that have a big impact? Because you're seeing a number of these stories come out now rather significantly. Yeah, I mean, I think the contracting at DHS writ large just across components, like not just immigration, but also FEMA, the planes, the Coast Guard. Like there's just so many different components of DHS where contracting has come into question. And, you know, Senator Mullen was asked about that during his confirmation hearing, and he seemed open to actually rolling back the internal policy that the secretary has to sign everything above a certain amount, which was not only putting a lot on Noem's discretion, but also backlogging a lot of approvals or denials that could have come out of the agency.

52:15Kara Swisher:And so I think contracting kind of the individual, like who signs it, who approves it, that definitely seems to be a bit in flux at the department. Yeah, it really is. When the prison guys are complaining, you know there's a real problem because they're so corrupt. Last question. DHS is racing, speaking of money, to spend$200 billion it got from Congress. This number is staggering. In the one big, beautiful bill act ahead of the midterms, the expectations that Democrats will try to claw back some of that money if they win back the House or put more limits on it. for sure. The detention system is already stretched, but expanding will be key to meeting Trump's goal to deport a million people a year.

52:52Kara Swisher:What will that mean for migrants who bear the brunt of that pressure campaign to expand quickly, especially if they're stopped in this case? What happens next? Because it looks like it's going to be a big old stop sign. Jimena, then Austin, then Erin, please finish up. Where do you imagine this going, going forward? Yeah, I mean, I think the expansion is in full swing, and we'll have to see how this new leadership prioritizes, whether it's prioritizing rapid removals versus detentions versus arrests. Those are all also completely different parts of that system. But in terms of, you know, people who might get caught in the crosshairs, you know, we really have seen this Trump administration not just limit illegal migration, but also legal migration into the United States.

53:37Kara Swisher:And I think that's kind of the continued focus on next phase. Again, we're We're seeing more people in immigration detention that might normally not be there, not just because of the mandatory detention policy, but also because they are moving forward on different people with different visas, visa overstays. Delegalizing people. Delegalizing individuals. We're seeing the pullback of TPS, which makes, you know, many thousands of more people more vulnerable to arrest and detention. We're seeing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals get caught up in this as well. And so, you know, I think that really expands the scope of who is going to be impacted.

54:17Kara Swisher:If they're allowed to do that. Austin? Yeah, so my biggest concern about what's coming next is we're at a moment where enough Americans are paying attention to the immigration system and there is now bipartisan frustration with how things are going. I would like to hope that that could push us towards actually making some much-needed systemic changes to what our legal system looks like, to what the institutions look like who are enforcing the law. But my big concern is that some of these – the worst parts, the worst excesses of this system might get clawed back, let's say 5 or 10 percent. And then everything sort of falls out of visibility.

54:53and all of the parts that have been broken for decades under Republicans and Democrats is going to keep functioning still at a punitive and dangerous level, but it won't get the attention that it really needs to implement real changes. So my hope—

55:07Kara Swisher:Because the money is there. If the money is there. And so I just really want to see more people, more Americans, not just pay attention, but actually say, look, we really need Republicans and Democrats to come together and decide on some ways to fix this, at least fix parts of it. probably unlikely in the next three years. It's very challenging, yeah. Finish up, Aaron? Yeah, I just want to say amen to what Austin just said. The last time we made any major changes to our legal immigration system was 35 years ago. The last time we made any changes to the immigration enforcement system was 30 years ago.

55:40So we are operating in a 20th century system in a 21st century world, and the cracks have been showing for many years. And everything the Trump administration done has just made that worse. So the admin has three and a half years now, a little bit more than three years, in order to finish their mass deportation campaign. They won't be able to. They're not going to deport everybody. But it's very clear that Stephen Miller is still in charge and wants to push for the highest numbers they possibly can.

56:07Kara Swisher:Yes, we haven't mentioned him. Yeah. We haven't mentioned Voldemort yet, but go ahead. Go right ahead. And his goal is a million deportations a year. I don't think they're going to hit it, but they're going to try to spend every penny of that funding that they can in order to reach that goal. And that means more people caught up in this rapid system, more people held in detention, more people subject to awful conditions, and more people who see what's happening and say, I can't take it anymore. I just want to give up, even if I could have a chance to stay in this country because I don't want to spend another day in this hellhole.

56:37Kara Swisher:Right. So how close do you think he will get to that, hitting that number? I don't think he'll get there. Yeah. Right now, he's at about 400 ,000 to 500 ,000 people. We think they've been probably deported since he took office. Of those, some were migrants who had crossed the border before he even entered. You know, that's not even half of what they want to get for their million a year. By the time he leaves office, there will still be millions and millions of undocumented immigrants here. And that's why Congress really has to step in and do something. Something about this. I actually have one last question.

57:09Kara Swisher:We haven't mentioned Stephen Miller, who's at the center of all this. It's easy to focus on Chrissy Noem because she's such a performative clown and Corey Lewandowski, who's clearly corrupt to the core. I'd love each of you to finish up by reflecting on Stephen Miller, because I think a lot of the focus obviously is on Trump. Why don't you start, Aaron, and then Austin, and then Jimena? Stephen Miller's impact can be felt the biggest by Los Angeles, the raids, Gregory Vino. And we know this because in late May, Stephen Miller called together the heads of every 25 ice field offices to a meeting in Washington, D.C.

57:44and berated them and said, stop focusing on public safety threats or slower, more targeted enforcement. I want you out there at Home Depot at 7-Eleven. Just, in his words, quote, just go out there and get the illegal aliens. So that is the indiscriminate nature of the Miller enforcement. It doesn't matter who we target. It doesn't matter how long they've been in the country. It doesn't matter. They have family here. They have jobs. They've never committed a crime. In his view, if they're undocumented, round them up, throw them in detention, get them out of the country. Who cares? And that is the legacy of this administration because he has been the one in control of immigration policy from day one.

58:24Go ahead, Austin. Yeah, I mean, Stephen Miller is what happens when you give a monomaniacal narcissist access to a car with no brakes on it, and you fill the car with gas and let them drive. This was a system that was broken when the Trump administration came in, before Stephen Miller stepped into the institutions that he now runs. But his understanding of the institutions, his relentless pursuit of deporting every adult and child and pregnant woman and disabled person in the country without any remorse or without any pause to either the law or the reactions from the American public is a big part of what's driving this.

59:03And ironically, it's potentially so damaging to the Trump administration and the Republican Party itself that it has the potential to simply backfire entirely because we're seeing so many people, including Republicans, push back on this just over-the-top rhetoric and over -the-top enforcement. So he absolutely has been, you know, at the wheel. But we just we have to remember that, you know, this is what happens when Congress builds a broken car and hands it off to people in the White House.

59:31Kara Swisher:Mm-hmm. Ultimately. Jimenez? Yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty clear that Stephen Miller is the one that's driving the ship on a lot of these fronts, right? Everything from the reduction in the federal workforce that resulted in the depleting of staff in these civil rights offices and these oversight offices at DHS. You know, some of his broader thinking on why a mass deportation plan needs to happen to begin with. And so we don't see that, again, kind of thinking about moving forward, we don't really see that changing. He continues to have a very clear pulse and influence on the staffing, on the direction of the policy.

1:00:09Kara Swisher:And, you know, these were questions that senators were asking Kristi Noem when she was first being confirmed as, you know, who is actually going to be setting the priorities, the rules, the regulations, and moving the pieces. And so we'll have to see, you know, what that dynamic looks like with Mullen. But it will likely be fairly in line with the administration and their goals. Is his influence waning, do you think, at some point, if they lose in the midterm? You know, for now, I don't really see that necessarily happening. I think it depends on how this upcoming few months go for them. This was a really rough start to the year for DHS.

1:00:48Kara Swisher:You know, one thing I do often point out is that, you know, we do talk a lot about Kristi Noem, but Stephen Miller also called Alex Preddy a domestic terrorist as well. And other members of the Trump administration did. And the heat really came on Noam. And even though she acted the way that she had been, didn't really change her behavior, the administration saw that as the opportunity to make a swap, at least in that component. And so I think that's indicative that, you know, there aren't necessarily major changes or reworks happening in other places of the administration. And as long as the more, you know, I don't want to say consumer-facing, but voter-facing side of the communication is more on lock and more controlled, I think that that has more to do with it than, you know, who's in the Oval Office having these conversations.

1:01:41Kara Swisher:Yeah, it's still Stephen Miller. He will go down in history, I think, in a way that is not what he thinks it's going to be. Anyway, I really appreciate it, Ximena, Austin and Aaron. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thanks, Kira.

1:02:00Kara Swisher:Today's show was produced by Christian Castro-Russell, Michelle Eloy, Catherine Millsop, Megan Burney, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Bradley Sylvester. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more. Polish Thank you.