Why ICE and Border Patrol are sparking backlash (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Welcome to the Global News Podcast on YouTube, where we go behind the headlines to focus on one story and why it matters. The Trump administration is facing more and more backlash over its immigration crackdown in Minneapolis after the killing of another US citizen. Let's go to Washington. Bernd De Voosman is there. Bernd, thank you for talking this through. Let's take a step back. What is it that these agents are doing on the streets of Minneapolis and other cities?

[00:00:27] Speaker 2: Well, according to the Trump administration, what Immigrations and Customs Enforcement or ICE is doing is enforcing existing immigration policy. Now, the arrest and removal of what the Trump administration has dubbed illegal criminal aliens was kind of a cornerstone of the Trump campaign. And it's something that his campaign has been very, very active in since he came back into office just over one year ago. In practice, what they are doing is kind of it's been much expanded from its previous mission. And now we're seeing ICE agents in cities where traditionally wouldn't have been particularly common to see them on the street and operate in ways in which they hadn't before. Now you're seeing kind of much more sweeping and widespread detention powers. And that's why people on the streets of Minneapolis and Los Angeles and other American cities in many cases are protesting. They see this as very much an overreach of what ICE was intended to do that they think has now had deadly consequences at least twice in Minneapolis.

[00:01:26] Speaker 1: Now, you use the term ICE agents, which we hear in the news all the time now. What actually does that mean? Who are ICE agents and where do border force agents fit into this?

[00:01:37] Speaker 2: Sure. Well, ICE is Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and they're essentially charged with enforcing US immigration law in the interior of the country. Now, traditionally, as I mentioned, that would have meant, for example, checking on workplaces that were found to have undocumented workers, for example, that are here in the United States illegally. Whereas Border Patrol, which is formerly known as Customs and Border Protection, they have a similar role, but exclusively along United States borders. So, for example, when one drives across from Mexico into the United States, your first point of contact with an American official of any kind would be with a Border Patrol officer. Close to the border, you'll see Border Patrol helicopters, Border Patrol vehicles, and in many cases, Border Patrol blimps that kind of hang over the border. They not only check people coming in and out of ports of entry, but also they're in charge of, for example, chasing smugglers that perhaps cross the Rio Grande or they're coming through the desert carrying drugs or guiding undocumented migrants into the United States. But there again, you're seeing kind of those roles be kind of expanded. Both of those agencies are under DHS, the Department of Homeland Security. And now you're seeing both Border Patrol and ICE agents deployed inside US cities, which is something that was never the case before this Trump administration. So, for example, many people will see Border Patrol agents that you can tell by the marking on the vests or on their uniforms, which tend to be green, inside American cities that are nowhere near the Mexican or Canadian borders, helping enforce those immigration policies. Essentially, what the Trump administration did was bring in every available agency it could to help find, detain, and deport undocumented migrants in the United States. And that's why you're seeing kind of them be in the public consciousness in a way that wasn't the case before. Very few people, unless you cross the border, would have had any sort of encounter with Border Patrol in the past.

[00:03:44] Speaker 1: So obviously, you need a lot of people to do this work.

[00:03:47] Speaker 2: Are they trained for the work that they're doing? Well, that's one of the main concerns at the moment, that there's been a massive recruitment drive and quite large bonuses given to people to join ICE. But there are a lot of concerns that because of the demands on that service, they're kind of rushing through training and that perhaps standards have dropped. These aren't necessarily people that go through the entire training process, which was quite long. That would have been the case in the past. And that could have pretty that could have grave consequences. I think that's one of the main reasons the protesters are there also. You're seeing a lot of backlash into the way ICE has been trained and rushed to do this mission from people in many of the cities where they're operating now.

[00:04:34] Speaker 1: And Bert, in those interactions that Asians are having with US citizens, what legal powers do they have?

[00:04:41] Speaker 2: Essentially, they are in fact allowed to see, for example, if someone is a US citizen. But the concern is that the probable cause that would have been legally required in the past, that in many cases appears to be lowered. For example, now you're seeing many US citizens come forward and say that they were perhaps racially profiled by ICE or other federal law enforcement officers on American city streets, that they've been unfairly followed, that proper search and seizure laws, which are protected by the US Constitution, aren't being followed. And again, I think that's causing quite a lot of anger, too, because now also you're seeing these agents who are almost universally wearing face masks or balaclavas when they're operating and don't have body-worn cameras, as local law enforcement officers do. They're stopping people, US citizens and others. And those interactions are very tense. And there is a concern that there is very little recourse if something were to go wrong because there's no body-worn cameras, for example.

[00:05:46] Speaker 1: This is something I think is obvious to people watching us in the US, but much less so elsewhere. Who are these people answerable to? We get the idea they're answerable to President Trump and operating in Minnesota without any support of the people who run Minnesota.

[00:06:01] Speaker 2: In some ways, that's very much the case. So both ICE and Border Patrol answer to the Department of Homeland Security, which was established a few years after the September 11th attacks. But in this case, the direction really does seem to be coming from the White House through the director of DHS, Kristi Noem, to those agencies. And what we do know is that there's been very, very little cooperation in the case of Minneapolis between those federal law enforcement agencies and local police and local officials.

[00:06:34] Speaker 1: But in some parts of the US, this has support. So let's talk about the policy that these agents are enforcing. Am I right in thinking that these are immigration rules that have always been there but haven't always been enforced like this?

[00:06:47] Speaker 2: And I think it's very much fair to say that immigration enforcement and border security is perhaps not the main reason that Trump was elected president in the last election. But it's certainly one of the top reasons. It's something he promised to do throughout his presidential campaign and which he began doing on the first day of his administration in January of last year. And it's something that's broadly popular with his base. Now, I think we're starting to see polls suggest that while people are broadly in favor of the ultimate objective of this sort of immigration enforcement, there is growing unease with the way it's been carried out. People thought very much it would be much more focused on criminals who have committed violent crimes, for example, or crimes other than immigration violations. And now we're seeing more and more, for example, families or people that had been in communities for decades, they've also been caught up in this. And I think that's, polls suggest, causing a lot of discomfort with the way it's been handled.

[00:07:53] Speaker 1: And let's talk more about the criticisms beyond Minneapolis. We've got former presidents like President Obama, President Clinton, talking about hundreds of years of freedoms being at stake. And even Trump supporters like Joe Rogan on his podcast talking about, you know, this leading to military guys parade in the streets, asking US citizens to show their papers and being very against that.

[00:08:16] Speaker 2: Indeed. And I think for the White House, those voices such as Joe Rogan in particular, that'll very much be raising alarm bells because there's very influential podcasters within the broader magasphere, as they call it, that are kind of expressing that discomfort that I mentioned earlier in terms of how this has been done. I thought one of the most telling things, for example, about the shooting in Minneapolis that took place recently was that very influential figures within the pro-gun lobby that are broadly supportive of Republicans and broadly supportive of President Trump, they came and expressed grave concern about how this shooting took place and what exactly led to this man being shot, because they the way they saw it, he was being blamed for being a legal gun owner, which for them and for millions of Americans is an issue that they're very passionate about. You're also seeing other kind of people within that broad Trump base that are very influential. They all see this as kind of a distraction, perhaps from, for example, the economy. You know, the president is focused on riots in Minneapolis. He's not focused on bringing down prices or bringing down inflation. And I think that's something that the Trump administration is very much going to have to respond to in the short term. I think from their perspective, it's almost to be expected that Obama or Clinton would be critical of them, even if the language is very strong from the Obamas and from the Clintons. They're very much worried about how this is perceived within the segments of America that already support them, and I think seem quite shaky in some regards.

[00:10:03] Speaker 1: Well, thanks, Bernd. In Washington, you can get more of that interview and the other Global News of the day in the Global News Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts from. You can subscribe here on YouTube. And if there's a story you'd like us to cover, then do drop a comment below.