Is the ICE Crackdown Finally Backfiring on Trump?

0:01This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.

0:19I'm Michelle Cottle. I cover national politics for New York Times Opinion. And this week, I am joined by the usual suspects, columnists Jamel Bowie and David French. Guys, good to see you. I trust you're staying warm in all of this. Well, Michelle, I am in New Hampshire, where, as we record, is a balmy six degrees. Oh, dear God. Which, believe it or not, is warmer than it was in parts of the time when I was in Nashville and warmer than it's been in parts of Chicago. So I'm enjoying the weather. Woo! Jamil, what about you? How's Virginia? It's like 20 degrees. It's a little warmer, but it's icy.

0:59Oh, you should be in short sleeves outside. I don't, you know, even in the summer, I don't wear short sleeves. I spent two hours yesterday with an ice pick trying to get the ice off of my driveway. So very exciting. Oh, well done. All right. But today we're going to look at the icy confrontation in Minnesota where, you know, we're looking at the wake of the shooting deaths of Alex Preddy and Renee Good. And we're going to talk about specifically how the Trump administration is scrambling to do some damage control. Now, of course, we were recording this on Thursday morning. Some things are almost certain to have changed, gone sideways, I don't know, flipped, inverted by the time you hear this.

1:44The last week has been especially fraught in the country, and folks are feeling like there's a tipping point coming for the Trump administration's maximalist immigration plans. So first, I want to know, what do you guys think? Is there actually change in the air? I think you got to look at this two ways. First, on the ground. On the ground, it's clear that the administration isn't really pulling back. Like there's been this talk of a new tone, of a new approach, but they're still snatching people off the street. They're still using intimidating tactics. Like they're still doing this stuff. They're still using ICE less as immigration enforcement and more as sort of a secret police harassing people.

2:28So that hasn't changed. But the other way, the other kind of perspective to look at is just a larger political perspective. and looking at things in Washington, I think it is quite clear that the administration is on the back foot that the response, especially to the killing of Alex Petty, but really both good and Petty and them happening so close together, I think really surprised the administration. I don't think they quite understood the level of discontent and anger there is in the public. And I think that we're witnessing an administration trying to recover its ground politically and it has lost real ground politically.

3:04You have a handful of Republican senators talking about how Christine Noem has to resign. I mean, there is a real push to get some accountability from the administration that I don't think they were anticipating and I think represents kind of a real political defeat and the failure of this operation in Minnesota, even if they're still kind of doing what they've been doing. David? You know, I'm going to take a little bit of a bleak and cynical approach to what we're witnessing. How unusual for you. Yeah, well, this isn't my first rodeo. I mean, we've been watching these guys for 10 years now. So when I think about what's happening, I think of the Trumpist authoritarianism as a big stream or current of water.

3:46And what happens is that water always finds a way. It always finds the weak point. But if you erect a dam or if you erect sort of a barrier, it will kind of back up in one area, but then it flows where it's weak. And so I think what you're seeing is that you have this big authoritarian river of Trumpism. And at different places and at different times, different people can sort of throw up a barrier. They throw up a dam. And I think the people of Minnesota have responded in a way that I think is heroically peaceful. And that when you do that, it does create a dynamic that puts the administration temporarily on a bit of a back foot.

4:26And so what you see, I think, in some ways is sort of a cosmetic tactical retreat. And why do I say cosmetic? Because as Jamel was saying, like on the ground, not a whole lot has changed. But sort of in the air, in the public, there's sort of the sense that he took a blow. You know, when Bovino, Gregory Bovino is reassigned or maybe about to retire, depending on the various kinds of reporting here, that's largely cosmetic. If Kristi Noem comes in for a two-hour scolding in the Oval Office, that's mainly cosmetic. But so long as Stephen Miller is the man behind the curtain, so to speak, and he and Trump are simpatico, you're going to be dealing with that authoritarian wave.

5:09And in Minnesota, they put up a little bit of a dam there, right? And it was able to sort of re-channel Trump. But what I'm concerned about is we keep looking at these things. What happened in Minnesota? What happened here? What happened here? and view them too discreetly on occasion when they're really all part of a larger whole. So I don't think I'm looking at them discreetly. I think I'm trying to take a larger sense. You mentioned a tactical retreat. I'm asking myself, what is the strategic goals for both the opposition to Trump and for the administration itself? For the administration itself, the strategic goal, I think, you know, the reason why they're doing these operations, the reason why they've taken such a draconian and harsh and violent line against opposition is that they want to establish, they want to get rid of dissent, right?

6:00They want to pacify the public. They want to sort of make sure that there's no meaningful opposition to their authoritarian designs. And then for the opposition, obviously, there's the, you know, for the people of Minnesota, it's quite narrow, the strategic goal, like get ICE and Customs and Border Protection out of Minnesota. But like broadly speaking for the opposition to Trump, it's to as much as possible neutralize Trump's ability to achieve his like authoritarian designs. If you look at this from a strategic perspective, I actually think this is a real defeat, right? Like authoritarian states are quite brittle, right?

6:33That's part of the consequence of them not having any kind of like pressure release for public discontent. And authoritarian regimes are actually quite reliant on maintaining its standing with the entire public and not just small segments of it. And so when you look at it from that larger picture, the result of the Alex Preddy killing has been broad public discontent with the administration, right? Like people who aren't ordinarily involved in politics via their platforms or whatever may give clear statements about what their political views of the administration are. And I think that the extent to which Freddie's killing in particular has basically both revealed for large portions of the public what the administration's designs are and hardened opposition to the administration, that even if they still have these authoritarian designs, even if they still want to, I think, create the perception of a wave, I think the fact of the matter is, is that they've, like, suffered a serious setback in terms of accomplishing their strategic goal.

7:33I agree. I do think that they have suffered a setback. I don't think there's much question, but I will tell you that I'm haunted by the fact that after January 6th, if you'd surveyed an awful lot of people, they would have said, look, right there in front of all of our eyes is the true nature of MAGA aggression revealed to the extent that they have invaded our Capitol to try to overturn an election. And they lost, many Republicans broke ranks on that day. and there was a sense and you know Mitch McConnell's fateful mistake is rooted in this that the work had been done that Trump itself had sort of shown his true colors and now the political sort of the the process of politics was going to run its course against him I think what we realize is that doesn't work with him and in hindsight if you're looking with that 30 ,000 foot view what so many people made a mistake about on January 7th and 8th and 9th and 10th was thinking he'd absorbed this really tremendous defeat.

8:31His true colors had been displayed to the whole world. And instead of pouring into the breach and MAGA lines, so to speak, and moving with extreme ferocity to exploit the weakness that was so obvious in the Trump administration at that point, a lot of times it was sort of like, aha, now politics is going to work. And I'm still upset that, for example, when the momentum was there, the impeachment drive still was not pushed with the speed and the necessary vigor, the slow, slow, slow criminal investigations. A lot of it was because people had thought, well, now we see, now we know. And I just don't want to get into that mindset in Minnesota where we think, now we see, now we know.

9:19It's much more like there's a weakness here. They have overreached, They have overstretched. And now is the time to redouble efforts. So let me just jump in and ask if there is a difference this time because of the political landscape right now. So post-January 6, Trump was out of office. The Republicans were feeling like, well, maybe we just humor him right now and then he goes away. Nobody thinks that anymore. And for the longest, Republicans have been operating on the assumption that their only risk politically to their fortunes is if they don't back Trump enough. In this case, they are seeing from this public reaction the potential downsides to having hitched their wagon to this authoritarian nightmare.

10:16And so you do see people in Congress pushing back. So I'm just wondering if because the kind of landscape is so different this time, people are kind of approaching it more cautiously, but with more seriousness. I think that is the question. I agree with David very much that there was this moment of opportunity after January 6th to put the stake in the heart of MAGA, to really knock out Trump as a viable political figure. But it required sort of a quick, aggressive action. Right. And they didn't do it for, I think, for exactly the reasons that David described. There was like this sense that, oh, well, this is so egregious that we know how American politics works and so egregious that like he'll just fade away.

11:10And there was a real lack of understanding. I think that that's actually not how American politics works. It's not how it's ever worked. And if you want to defeat someone, you actually have to defeat them in a proactive way. And the question I think for this moment is whether or not Trump's opponents and especially Trump's opponents in the Democratic Party understand this. And I think that there are prominent and important voices in the Democratic Party, especially in Congress, who are still wedded to this very this old model of what they think American politics is, where something terrible happens and everyone agrees that the other side is bad or is in the wrong.

11:47And that's just not the case. And so that's like the big question of the political moment. Like, do people actually understand what David is describing in terms of what needs to be done? All right. So let's talk about the Democrats' reaction in Congress, which is where they have a little bit of leverage right now. The immediate plan seems to be to block DHS funding, if necessary, even forcing a partial shutdown unless and until some guardrails are put on ice. I mean, do you guys think this is practical, sensible, ridiculous? What? I mean, I think if the Democrats don't take strong action, it's a big problem for them.

12:30Look, and it needs to be strong, but it also needs to be something that can really reach and persuade sort of the normie voters who are tuning in right now and not liking what they're seeing. And so I think a very direct, no masks, no immunities, no home invasions. In other words, like if you're looking at all of these things that are the real hallmarks of, you know, what are the things that are tyrannizing our communities and just saying no to each one of these things in a way and make the Republican Party come out there and defend masked police. Make the Republican Party go out there and defend administrative warrants that are not shooting somebody because they show up in a protest with a gun.

13:14Come on. Right. Right. It's going to defend. They might say, oh, well, I don't defend that shooting, but I want ICE to have full freedom. No, no. Make them defend all of these things that are grossly unconstitutional. Make them defend, for example, shackling and detaining lawful refugees who have done nothing wrong at all and sending them down for detention in Texas for a reexamination of their case. So I think it's you, you have your list of the most reasonable demands, which in any constitutional republic should be completely acceptable and then make the Republicans defend the indefensible. I agree completely.

14:01I think the political task is, yeah, to make Republicans defend mass agents, mass paramilitaries, really, and the use of administrative foreign interests. I think I'm glad to point that out, David. That is forcing ICE or CBB to get actual judicial warrants to conduct arrests may seem minor, but first of all, it puts a real limit on what they can do because that takes time. And second of all, it helps ordinary Americans defend their rights. On the left, there is real ridicule for the idea that you should impose any new training requirements. But I think you can actually use training requirements to, again, reduce the speed at which ICE can operate.

14:45If you require them to double the length of training, make it like 180 days, right? You need half a year to get properly trained to do this work. Then you can just reduce their manpower and reduce the rate at which they can deploy new people. I think those things are popular. And they would serve to at least, like, again, reduce the amount of harm being done. not from my perspective, from my politics, not a solution to, I think, the basic problem of having this kind of agency. I don't think this kind of agency should exist. But given the political situation, these are achievable things you can do that can weaken the agency until it can be dealt with in a more appropriate manner.

15:27So let me jump in here and say, you know, like in the interest of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, I do think that the training should not be poo-pooed because if you watch these things, these ICE agents look like they've been sent out in the field with this, like they've been jacked up to believe they're going into some incredibly dangerous war zone. They look like they're on a hair trigger, you know. They would do well to spend more time, and you'd have to, of course, make sure the training was, you know, appropriate. But I think that part of the problem is these guys are just not equipped for this.

16:05Oh, I'm just so with you on this training point. And the other thing I want to say, just for those listeners who might be saying, oh, these three New York Times elitists sitting in their comfy chairs, opining about street tactics. Guys, I've been in far more dangerous situations when I was in Iraq than have happened on the streets of Minneapolis. I know what it's like when young, very disciplined Americans are exposed to extreme violence. And we didn't act like that. So, you know, this sort of idea that ICE has no choice but to be so aggressive when all of these people are blowing whistles and blocking them in the road.

16:49And spare me, spare me. I mean, I have seen younger Americans in far more dangerous situations. infinitely more dangerous situations, exercise far more restraint and compassion and discipline than we're seeing. So this is not just, oh, pundits, divorced from reality. No, no, no, no. I want everyone to realize you can deal with far more dangerous situations with far less force than we're seeing. I know this. I've seen this with my own eyes. And so, yeah, it's just when you see these videos and you have experience dealing with more dangerous situations, trust me, it's more shocking. I want to say one more thing about the training thing, just to, I think, clarify my position here, which is that I actually do not think it is possible to do any kind of training that will change the character of this agency.

17:43ICE has always had this kind of reputation for brutality. ICE has always been the subject of real criticism about its operations. I think that when you look at what Miller and Trump want out of the agency, even with new training requirements, they're still going to be looking for basically goonist men to participate in this processes. So for me, I think the goal here, the end point looking five years down the road is that ICE doesn't exist anymore, that we find some other way to do immigration enforcement that does not rely on paramilitaries, that does not rely on these like staged raids, that does not rely on this construct of undocumented immigrants are a existential threat to the United States.

18:29And so any force we use to get rid of them is acceptable. No, none of that. And so for me, all of this stuff is really kind of like, it's like a holding maneuver while you try to get the political power necessary to, again, do something fundamental about this agency, fundamental about the Department of Homeland Security, fundamental about Customs and Border Protection. Okay, but I think we're all in agreement we're not going to come out in support of the whole abolish ICE as a mantra. That just seems like it's a disaster politically because it lacks the nuance. Are we all in agreement? You think that's great?

19:04I mean— I don't love that. I don't want to abolish that. Even if you want to remake the agency, the idea of that being anything other than catnip for the right, who is then going to pitch it as, well, they don't want any kind of enforcement. No borders. No borders. No nothing. So two things. First is that I'm not a political strategist. I don't have a sense of how effective a slogan abolishizes. If a Democrat says they don't want to say it, whatever, they don't want to say it. But I think that if you are following public sentiment, if you are looking at where the public is, and if the public, if like ordinary people are embracing this slogan as something to represent their feelings about the agency, then that's something to take very seriously.

19:52This is something to take extremely seriously. And if Republicans want to say, oh, look, they want to get rid of border security. Look, I think you can I reject this idea that Republicans are like the prime movers of American politics and that like, you know, they. Well, Democrats certainly haven't moved American politics in the last few elections. I reject this idea that Republicans are sort of the prime movers of American politics, that their rhetorical strategies are the ones everyone needs to respond to. And I think part of the problem, honestly, is that Democrats take a prone position that Republicans say, oh, they want to get rid of border security.

20:33And the response is, oh, no, no, no, please. We don't want to do that. I mean, the response ought to be you want to defend an agency that's killed two people? You go ahead and do that. Right. You defend this behavior. We're listening to people who want to see some fundamental changes. You defend the secret police. Right. I think that's the response to that. No, no. I mean, I totally get the whole, let's overhaul the agency, rename the agency, what do you do? But I'm just saying there's not – when you've found a slogan like decriminalize border crossings or abolish ICE or defund the police that has a backlash, a political backlash in the country like what we've seen, then maybe you rethink the slogan.

21:15Not the idea, but like, why go trolling for trouble like that? I mean, I'm not, I don't think the, I don't think, I don't want to like bog us down in this. I'll say that the one time defund the police was present in American politics in any kind of significant way, which is like the summer of 2020. Like Democrats didn't lose that election. No, but when it was tried, never mind, we're not going to get into the details of like how it failed in Minnesota when they tried to defund the police. But, I mean, I'm just saying as a mantra, abolish ICE has not been fantastic and could just be tweaked. That's all I'm saying, tweak the mantra.

21:57Okay, we're going to get, step back from the administration and look at the larger kind of Republican conservative response to this. When you're looking around, David, in your right-wing corners and from the administration's outside allies, what are you seeing? You know, this is one of those areas where you really got to draw a distinction between MAGA and what you might call sort of more normie conservatives. And what I'm seeing right now, and I wrote about this, was MAGA, all of this is just radicalizing MAGA more. They don't believe the polls. They don't care about the polls. And what they're looking for and they're spoiling for is this opportunity to impose further control.

22:43And so the core folks are further radicalized by this. And then they use that ferocity to try to keep everybody else in line. And this is the old playbook. It's the exact same playbook I have seen for 10 years, which is Trump's administration does something horrific that gives decent people an off-ramp where you can say, look, I voted for him, but this is too much. And this happens just with regularity. And then the instant somebody puts on their blinker, you know, they're a quarter mile from the exit and they throw on that right turn blinker to exit. It is like they just get swarmed, just swarmed in real time.

23:22And all of a sudden you're faced with the loss of your community. You're faced with the loss of your friends. You're faced with the kinds of attacks you've never experienced in your life because you're just a normal American who's not involved in politics all the time. And you do the Homer Simpson GIF thing where you walk slowly back into the bushes. And so my question, the issue, the question that I have for my friends, my more normal Republican friends who often express alarm at things that happen in the administration, is when are you going to stop having the wide eyes in response to the MAGA backlash and stop backing into the bushes?

23:59That's the moment when I believe that the fever will break, when you see the more normie Republicans standing up against this in a way that's not one senator here or one member of Congress there or one pundit over in the corner, but it's more unified and it's more persistent. Jamel, now you've written that there is no antidote for the Kool-Aid drinkers, right? But you said that you've seen some signs of infighting, finger pointing. We've seen some fractures in Congress. Where do you think this is going? I think where this goes, I think this is a place that where this goes kind of depends on the level of political pressure that's being sustained in the administration.

24:38If there's like a serious effort, right, like a real serious effort to remove Noam, whether that's an impeachment effort in the House, whether that's continuing pressure, I think you'll see, continue to see kind of the beginning, more finger pointing like you've seen in the last couple of days. It's Noam reportedly told Axios that she was just working on the command of Stephen Miller, right? Like, which to me is sort of a sign that's like, you want to go after that guy, not me. Stephen Miller has been like, oh, well, I don't think they were following protocol. And that's him pointing fingers at leaders over.

25:08Yeah, classlessly blaming the frontliners for this horrible development that he's responsible for. They all recognize that this is something very serious for their political position. And I think that as long as there is increased pressure, that is going to put them in a quarter. And honestly, I mean, the extent to which they are continuing to just operate the same on the ground, that's going to continue putting pressure. And if Democrats in Congress in particular can see and utilize this energy and, like, follow where this energy is going and put more pressure on the administration, I expect to see basically more attempts to scramble and get ahead of it.

25:48Now, I do think it's worth pointing out, we have seen some concrete moves by the administration. For instance, they're short-circuiting the anti-immigration operation in Maine, right? Yeah. They've said they're going to pull out of Maine, which I didn't understand that at all. That's a Susan Collins thing, right? She is running for re-election. She's potentially vulnerable, and they don't want to give— But why is he attacking? No, but I'm saying, why is he sending them in there? I mean, even if he's ticked off at Susan Collins, he's always grumbling about that. They can't risk Maine. Like he can attack Bill Cassidy in Louisiana because a Republican is going to win.

26:23You take down Susan Collins in Maine, he's one step closer to a Democratic majority in the Senate. Well, this – I mean, this is the tension between the politics and the ideological and policy desire. So Maine, right, does have a substantial – not like huge, but like a meaningfully large Somali-American population. If you go to Portland, Maine, there's Somali-American neighborhoods. You'll see Somali-Americans. Like there was a home for refugees, much in the same way as Minnesota was. And so I think the thing that they want to do is – I'm going to use another inflammatory term, but I think it fits.

27:02Oh, please do. Please do. They want to ethically cleanse the country of Somali-Americans. Oh, you've got to go there? And yes, I mean, listen, they are sending ICE agents to Springfield, Ohio to round up Haitians, Haitians who are legal, legal immigrants. They remove their temporary protected status and they're sending ICE agents to round them up. That is ethnic cleansing. That's all that is. I mean, it is notable that it's not undocumented so much as specific populations. Right. It's specific populations of non-white immigrants, right? There are plenty of like illegal Polish Americans, illegal Polish immigrants, right?

27:39Like in New York and Boston, right? No one cares about them. This is targeted, non-white, Latino or African people. They're sending militarized paramilitaries after them in specific places to remove them from the country. Even if they're legal, they revoke the status. and then they send people out there to detain them in these horrible conditions before they try to remove them from the country. That's the ideological goal. That's what they're trying to do. Look, this is an administration that in many ways is run by Twitter influencers. And so you can watch this. I'm going to let you continue, but I just want to adjust that and say Twitter Nazis.