This is a lightly edited transcript of the January 26 edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch the video here or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.
Perry Bacon: I’m Perry Bacon. I’m the host of The New Republic’s Right Now. I’m joined by Jessica Pishko. She’s the author of a book called The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy.
That came out a couple of years ago, and she’s written a lot about sort of law enforcement issues in the U.S., particularly how federal and local law enforcement work together.
So I wanted to bring her on to talk about kind of ICE and what we’re seeing in Minneapolis. There’s a lot of discussion about how ICE interacts with the National Guard, Customs and Border and there’s a lot of tension right now between the local police in Minneapolis and ICE based on the events of the last few weeks. I wanted to ask her about those kinds of things. Jessica, welcome.
Jessica Pishko: Hey, thanks for having me.
Bacon: Let me start with that. I think we’ve heard a lot about how ICE is not that new of an agency. I think it was created in 2002. Talk about the history of—we’ve had immigration reform, enforcement, in the country before. Talk about the idea of where, kind of, ICE came from, if you can.
Pishko: Yes, of course. As most people have pointed out, the Department of Homeland Security was formed in 2003, right in response to 9/11. Which is why it has “Homeland” and “Security” right in the name.
And what they did was…the prior system had Border Patrol. So Border Patrol was always Border Patrol. We had a division called INS, and INS basically was more of an administrative office. They basically handled people checking in, processing people’s claims because immigration. I think that one of the things that is maybe not obvious to people is that people think: Oh, immigration is you wait in line and then you get a piece of paper and then you’ve got a green card, and then you go and get citizenship, right?
But instead, immigration is actually a big patchwork, right? Because you have people who seek asylum, you have people with protected status, so you have a variety of people.
And so when they created ICE out of DHS, what they did was bring together two kind of different law enforcement agencies, right? So the two parts of ICE: one is called HSI—Homeland Security Investigations, which used to work under the Department of Justice. And they are like detectives, is what they would say.
So if you talk to an HSI agent, they would say they’re more like the FBI. And actually periodically through the years, they argue that they should be part of the FBI and not part of ICE because their mission is really about... they do quite a lot of work [in] trafficking: drug trafficking, human trafficking.
Also, actually one of the things they do that you might see if you live in a city like New York is counterfeit[s]. So if someone’s raiding like a store on Canal Street, that’s usually HSI; they’re raiding for, like, counterfeit handbags or whatever. And they consider themselves like trade agents, right? And that’s how they go about their business.
Now the other part of ICE is the ERO. The ERO is the division that basically removes people, right? Their job is essentially enforcement and Removal, which means their job is to go out and basically arrest people who are subject to removal, and that’s their whole job.
And so the two divisions are different in all law enforcement. They argue, right? I think one of the things that is [always] true about law enforcement, just like every other profession, is different groups argue amongst themselves about who’s the real cops and who’s this and who’s that, who should be doing this?
So there is, like, tension between the two sides. HSI does not always like working with ERO. And you know right now it’s all very confusing right now because the mandate is just: Arrest a lot of people, right? Everybody needs to be arrested. And so...
Bacon: Let me slow down and stop you. I want to come back to that. So talk about ICE from, let’s say, 2003 to 2016—when, I’m guessing, a lot of us did not think a lot about ICE. So what was ICE before Trump?
Pishko: Yes. So before Trump... so one of the ways ICE works is they have regional offices. Our example here [is] in North Carolina, right? We have a North Carolina regional office, and most ICE operations will happen out of that regional office, right? So the ERO operations are [handled] locally.
And the reason why they’re conducted locally is because the main job of ERO is really to pick up people who have been arrested or who are detained in prison or county jails. That’s always been their primary job. And if you look at prior administrations—even if... actually, if you look at Biden’s administration—this was primarily what ICE does.
They get calls from local law enforcement who have people that they’ve arrested who they believe are deportable. And then they’ll call ICE and say: Hey, we have these people. We think they’re deportable. Can you come pick them up? That’s just like the typical way it goes.
You will see people will be in prison. After they’re released from prison—and this is like in every state, California; it’s not like a red state/blue state thing, right?—they will call ICE and say: We have such-and-so [who] is being released from prison. We think they’re deportable. [Can you] come pick them up? And that’s the biggest thing they do.
Now, the two other things they do... is sometimes they will have people with warrants that are deportable. So ICE might have... supposedly, they’ll get a warrant and say: This particular person, we think, is deportable. We want you to go get them because we think that they have committed a serious crime. And so sometimes they’ll set… it’s called a targeted arrest.
Then this third thing they do on occasion is what they call “collateral arrests,” right? Collateral arrests are basically: you go to arrest an individual, and there’s like this person has two friends there, or two family members there, that they believe are subject to deportation. And so they will just arrest them at the same time.
And to say also. when ICE arrests you, they don’t make the decision about whether you’re deported. An individual still has rights even after ICE arrest you.
It’s not just—it’s similar to being arrested for—let’s say they think you committed a robbery and they arrest you. They say: We think you’re deportable. They will arrest you. They put you in detention. That’s the fourth thing ICE does, is detention, right? They buy and rent detention facilities for people.
But that person... you still have a right to see a judge. You have a right to ask for bail. You have a right to argue your case. So you could say: I’m not deportable for X, Y, Z reasons, right? And so they’re just basically like a catch-and-release agency. Like, they catch people, they put them in detention, and then judges decide okay this is what happens.
Bacon: Did ICE change much in Trump 1.0? I don’t recall. I don’t remember—there was the “abolish ICE” thing that started in Trump One, but I don’t remember them being deployed to cities like this. So what happened in Trump One involving ICE?
Pishko: So the biggest thing that Trump did in Trump One was change the priorities. So one of the things about ICE in all law enforcement is that the bulk of how they operate is not law, but it’s like... priorities; it’s policy.
And so what Trump did when he came into office was he changed the policy. The first policy he changed was the policy of collateral arrests. So under Obama, Obama tried to limit the collateral arrests of people who did not have criminal convictions. That was in the U.S.
I want to clarify, too, that like everyone that ICE decides may be arrestable, deportable... it’s what they did after they got here. So it is a weird system. Like you’re already here, and then you maybe are accused of a crime, and then they decide they might deport you. It’s a weird system.
So he got rid of all these priorities. They also had rules about: you weren’t supposed to be in courthouses. You’re not supposed to be at houses of worship. You’re not supposed to be at hospitals. Because under Obama, his kind of catchphrase was “felons, not families.” Which you can debate. I have a lot to say about that, but ultimately what his goal was not to arrest in essence, let’s say someone had a family, right?
You have an individual that’s arrested, they have a wife, [and] some kids. Maybe some of the kids are citizens. Maybe the wife is not. The Obama-era policy was not to arrest the wife and kids as, like, collateral arrest[s], but just to arrest the individual that they thought had committed a crime.
So that was like the biggest change under Trump I. And I’ll say Tom Homan was there under Trump I. Now he has like a really rigid idea about who should be deported. I will say Tom Homan never got confirmed as head of ICE. Like, they tried to make him head of ICE, but he was considered, like, too scandalous. And then one of the reasons he never became head of ICE [was] because they didn’t...
But his positions are really extreme because… we have exceptions for example, one exception is like someone receiving medical care in the U.S. So let’s say you have cancer and you or your child is receiving, like, cancer treatment. We, the U.S., has a policy of not deporting families who have, like, children getting medical treatment. But Tom Homan thought that, he [would] argue: No, we shouldn’t make that exception, right?
Now we see what we see, which is, like obviously they don’t make that exception anymore, but that has been, like, the traditional policies.
Bacon: And so Trump One was to change the enforcement policies basically.
Pishko: Yeah, but they still didn’t change that much about street arrests. Like, they still were mostly picking up people who were in jails. That was the bulk of their job. And to say also, the biggest complaint always from local law enforcement is that ICE doesn’t pick up all the people that they get called about.
Like it’s totally like let’s say you field calls. So let’s say in a day they get 20 calls and they’re like: Hey, here’s all these people you could pick up. ICE will decide: Hey. This person.
Now under Obama, they would prioritize people with what they would call, like, serious convictions. So basically if it’s a felony punishable by over a year, that was the basic gist.
Under Trump, they dropped that. So you could go get anyone. Like, practically speaking, they just can’t. They only have a number of vans and they can only drive so many miles.
And so they have never—and they still actually don’t. That’s one of the lies. They still are not picking up all the people they get called for. But okay. That’s been their typical job.
Bacon: Did Biden change what the Trump administration did in the first term in any real way?
Pishko: He got rid of some of the collateral arrests. I would say that was the bulk of it. He returned to the Obama-era method.
Now I do want to say, like, even under this regular regime... like there’s this idea that there’s all these people who committed serious crimes and they’re all, like, wandering around, right? Like hanging out. This is not true. It just has never been true and it’s not true.
In the first instance, if you look at who ERO arrests [and] puts into deportation... the bulk of them are frequently basically serial drivers under the influence. They’re people with multiple DUIs.
Now, again, not saying like a DUI is good. It’s not right. I’m not saying a person with multiple DUIs is not [a] terrible murderer. So it’s like this has always been the kind of people who have committed very serious crimes, right? Like serious assaults or sexual assaults or homicides. They’re arrested and go to prison.
So everybody knows where [they] are, ‘cause they usually will have a trial. They’ll go to prison. Usually prosecutors want that trial. Now they’re not required—they were never required—to do it. So for example, you didn’t have... if let’s say someone was accused of a serious assault, you could deport them before the criminal trial.
But it happened less. It happened. But I would say now it’s obviously regular practice: they just obviously [are] going after anyone who may have been arrested for many different things.
Bacon: So talk about ICE as of January 20. What has changed? Because to me, the biggest changes are these 3,000-a-day quotas and the deployments to cities.
But maybe that’s only part of it. So talk about what ICE has done distinctly over this last year and change.
Pishko: In reality, like a lot of the ERO stuff—like the typical... I always call [it] the driving in vans and picking up people. That’s actually the same. They are still doing that on a regular basis.
And it’s a little bit funny ‘cause there’s some states—like Florida was upset because Florida, as many people are aware, has been arresting a lot of immigrants. They have a lot of local law enforcement cooperation with ICE.
And Florida was frustrated because Florida law enforcement was like: We’re calling ICE to come get these people. And they’re, like, not picking up. We have so many and they’re not picking them all up. What are we going to do?
And that was how they opened that Everglades prison. They were annoyed that ICE was... because if ICE doesn’t pick someone up, you have to release them. You can’t just hold people for no reason. So some of [ICE] is doing the same.
The biggest change that really Trump did this time was first move everyone who was doing anything else over to just arresting people who might be deportable, right? Like they moved all those HSI people who, like I said... and they do trafficking, they [do], like, serious investigations, right? CSAM... so like child pornography kind of stuff.
So they moved everyone and they also pulled a lot of people from federal agencies, like the Bureau of Prisons and like the post office and all these federal agencies. They’re like: We need all these guys in the street. And they flooded them on the street, right?
The second difference was instead of targeted arrests like they’re supposed to have, they would have, like, a dossier: Here’s the person, here’s his picture, here’s where he works or where he lives.
Instead of doing these targeted dossier arrests, they just started, like, driving around and you could see what’s happening. Like they’re driving around picking up people, or they’re knocking on a door where they heard Tren de Aragua is, and then just arresting everyone.
And so sometimes they are using warrants. Some of them are old. Like one of the things it seems like they’re doing is regurgitating old warrants. Like they’ll be like: Huh, here’s five people we never got or whatever.
So they’re pulling some of that, but then they’re also, like, arresting tons of collaterals. And that I think is the biggest thing we see is just that mass, like, arrest of people you would not... which is where you get, like, kids and grandmas and moms, like the kind of people that normally they would not arrest and put into detention.
Bacon: Now, I perceive Chicago and Minneapolis as having more agents on the ground. Is that correct as well?
Pishko: Yeah. Normally ICE ERO does not just walk around doing policing like they are normally... like I said, their typical job is at a van. The van will come and pick people up, or they might have a targeted operation to arrest someone.
Usually what they would typically [used] to do is arrest them when they left the house for work. Okay. That was a typical practice. So again, it’s like a van. It’s like guys in a van, surveillance and arresting people. So no, they’re not normally, like street patrol, traffic patrol.
The other thing about ICE is they’re not really supposed to be doing traffic stops. They’re not supposed to be doing policing. Yes. [They’re] supposed [to be] doing policing right now.
There’s long been an issue about how [ICE]... like when it comes to collateral arrest with other things... I think there’s a lot of that [guidance] about: Is it racial profiling? Is it not racial profiling?
Because there were rules that said: Oh, you can’t just drive up to a house and arrest everyone who looks Latino or who speaks Spanish or something like that.
It seemed like there was some... because if you asked, they would say: Oh, it’s like multifactor. But the factors were, like, language. I mean, they were always like: What language [do] people speak? What [do] they look like? [What is] their job? Okay. So I was always... I don’t know... it sounds like racial profiling to me.
But nevertheless, they were not supposed to be driving around and pulling over people [they] see in their car.
Bacon: Okay, so this has changed a lot. Let me try to clarify this. It appears the shooting on Saturday was carried out by someone in Border Patrol, technically, right?
That seems unusual, because my understanding was that ICE handles immigration enforcement inside the country, while Border Patrol operates at the border. Minnesota is technically a border state, I guess, but they were also in Chicago, which is definitely not at the border. So how do we end up with Border Patrol in Minnesota—and in Chicago?
Why is Border Patrol taking on this role? Is that something new as well, or is this not entirely new?
Pishko: Yes, that’s right. But the intent was to be... ICE was like policing the bad guys on the inside. And again, you could see the relationship to 9/11 because the complaint people had about 9/11 was that some of the people involved [had] come legally. That they were legally here.
And so ICE was formed in part because they were like: Uh-oh. Like: We let these people, like, come legally and now they’re... in our community legally. So that was always what ICE was.
Now, Border Patrol was supposed to be, as you rightly point out, like at the border—both the U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada border. Honestly, they’re more like a roving militia, and that’s their style.
If you talk to people who have seen Border Patrol, I have not seen them on the U.S.-Canada border, but I’ve seen them on the U.S.-Mexico border, and it’s a desert.
They have been sued many times for aggressive policing. It was a huge lawsuit because some Border Patrol agents shot a teenager on the Mexico side, like through the fence, because he was throwing rocks at them. So their job is like a roving militia.
There are other people who do the kind of paperwork. If you drive home from Mexico and you go through a little checkpoint, sometimes there’s some Border Patrol, especially if they think you’re in trouble. But most of the time the people doing, like, checking your passport... sometimes they’re just private security that are hired, and sometimes they’re just, like, administrative agents.
So Border Patrol is really more the police. Now, Border Patrol is not supposed to be, as you point out, used in the interior. On the flip it’s a little confusing because the zone has confused people.
So the issue with the zone is that Border Patrol can do more and everyone—like citizens and not citizens—have basically fewer rights in the border zone.
When Border Patrol is concerned... that is to say, Border Patrol can pull you over if they think you are, in essence, like, harboring someone in your car.
So this has actually happened to me. Like I was driving and they pulled me over because they thought that I was, like, picking up... because people will walk and then a car will come and pick them up. So they thought: Oh, you have... you picked up migrants.
Bacon: What state were you in at the time?
Pishko: I was in Arizona.
Bacon: Okay. You were in a state that was on the border.
Pishko: Yes. And I was lost and I was driving suspiciously, so they pulled me over to look to see if I had basically migrants in my car. Okay. And they can do that, right? That’s... you have like slightly less rights.
And if you are a non-citizen, like Border Patrol could pretty much just take you into custody if they think you’re a migrant who, like, walked across the border or whatever.
And then the second thing they do is they, yeah, they focus on “got-aways,” as they call them—like people who run and stuff like that. So you have, like, different rights at the border now.
Border Patrol, as a result, is not used to working in the interior where people—citizens and non-citizens—have more rights. You can’t, in theory, stop a car just to check out who’s in the car... [or] who’s in your car today. You can’t just stop a car.
You’re not supposed to, like, racially profile drivers. You’re not supposed to stop people on the street for no reason. We know that from police. You can’t just stop anyone on the street and say: Who are you and what are you doing here?
You have to have some sort of, like, suspicion that they’re doing something or other, right? If anyone remembers New York stop-and-frisk policies, right? That was the kind of stuff that’s not supposed to happen.
Bacon: Was Border Patrol in Minneapolis ostensibly because that’s close to Canada? Why are they in Minneapolis, and then why are they in Chicago?
Pishko: Honestly, [it] has nothing to do with the border. Basically what they seem to have done is they made Greg Bovino... he [has] a new job that’s like commander of Ops. And so what I think they did is created this like... now they haven’t been, like, totally transparent. So that’s why people are confused.
They created basically, like, a roving Border Patrol unit that they are sending to different places. Some people might remember a raid in Kern County, California, before Trump took office. There was a huge raid of farm workers in Kern County at the end of 2024. They went in and arrested dozens of people, dozens of farm workers, and it was very unusual.
It was like a highly unusual thing for people to do. It was in the Central Valley. There was, like, no good reason to do it. That was Greg Bovino, and it was kind of Greg Bovino testing out, like, what he was going to do in Chicago and Minneapolis: just driving in, arresting a bunch of people, like sweeping them away and then driving out.
And that is what his mission seems to be in Minneapolis. Like they drive in, they sweep up all the people, and they, like... the other thing about Border Patrol is they have a lot of equipment. So they do: they dress like [the] military. They dress in desert fatigues. They have the helmet with the camera. They have the, like, gear and the vest and they wear that outfit.
Bacon: So what’s happening is they are doing these sweeps, and then in Minneapolis people are protesting essentially, and that’s creating these [incidents], and that creates Saturday, right? It’s like what we’re seeing is they’re over-policing. There’s protests of the policing, and then [there are] these clashes... is that what’s going on?
Pishko: Yes. And then that’s where people are pointing out things like, for example, Border Patrol should not be, like, policing a protest. And you’ll see right now... like I see the administration today has been like... you could tell the noise they’re making is like: ICE is different from Border Patrol.
Yes. Someone said Border Patrol was like it... a [Times] story was like “a gorilla.” They’re not trained to handle protests. They’re not supposed to be in a city. In theory, they don’t know all the legal rights. Like, they’re not trained to do that kind of work.
And so that’s why, like, the local police said people are really aggravated. [You] see? Plus they’re, like, really aggressive. Their demeanor’s super aggressive. They seem to be doing [the] sweeping.
Bacon: [The distinction] I’m drawing between the Border Patrol and ICE is something the Trump administration is drawing [too]. I’m not thrilled to hear that, but that it does feel like the Border Patrol person killing someone does seem slightly legally distinct. Or operationally distinct.
Pishko: That’s what that I think they’re trying. They’re going to start to argue that, like, it’s like operationally distinct: Like, that was Border Patrol. ‘Cause Border Patrol does bad policing.
It’s true. They’re like rough. They’re not used to, like, this kind of [thing]. And protests... like everyone knows if you’ve been in protests, like, police don’t like protests. Policing a protest... [it] can be very overly aggressive like these... This is a known issue, policing a protest.
And now, after 2020, a lot of agencies [tried] to train on, like, how to police protest[s]. Again, I’ll [add], not necessarily that I agree with how they trained to do it, but like, they did train people to do it. CBP is not trained to do that stuff, so that’s just not what they do.
Bacon: I didn’t read all your writing about local police, but let’s assume what they say about the situation. You and I are skeptical of local police, skeptical of sheriff’s departments. But I think it’s worth putting that aside for a second and talking about ICE specifically as an agency and what it does.
When we talk about abolishing ICE, what does that entail, in theory?
Pishko: So I think that one of the things I do think people are doing—and I don’t really think it’s, like, bad—is like they’re putting all, like, immigration police under ICE. So they’re including like ICE and any federal agents doing immigration policing and Border Patrol.
Like, I do think when people say “get ICE out,” they mean all the immigration police. People have pointed out that would in theory not be that difficult because they made it, and so they can unmake it. And I’ve heard, like, some people talk about going back to the INS system.
Now, I want to say, it is not as if, like, they do not... it’s the same people. So it’s not as if they didn’t do basically the same thing. Like it’s the same people doing the same thing. So I think that what... I can’t speak to what people mean.
I think the thing people should think is, like, dissolved and reformed, like we did with DHS. DHS was, like, resolved... they dissolved INS and they reformed it. Now, even when they reform it, like the truth of the matter is most of those same people are going to work there. It is just, like, a fact. Like a lot of the people are still going to work there.
They’re going to have the same manual. They might, like, edit the pay... like [they’ll] edit the heading to say, like, something else. Maybe they’ll do some change-up [in] hierarchy or whatever, but, like, it’s going to be the same people doing pretty much, like, the same stuff because I would say the bigger problem is the way that this country has brought together, like, policing... so like the criminal system and the immigration system.
Such that started happening in, like, the nineties, right? This is like a drug war the way this country decides who ought to be deported, as I said, is your conduct upon arrival in the U.S., right?
You could see a world where you look at an individual before and you say: Oh, okay, what were you doing before? And et cetera, et cetera. Which we do that [with], like, asylum seekers and such, especially from overseas... they vet that.
But when people come and are, like, rendered deportable because they maybe committed a crime in the U.S., that sort of becomes, I think, where we see this union, and this is where, like, the racial profiling is hard to root out, right? Because you’re more likely to be profiled and arrested for crimes, then you’re more likely to be, like, charged with crimes and then deported. So it is like this system, like all the way down, where we, like the country, decided to put those two things together.
Bacon: So you’re saying that getting rid of one agency called ICE and putting those people into different agencies, without a thing they go to work at called ICE, is not a solution, because they’re going to be doing the same things under a different name.
Yes. So is there a legal change? What would that be? If we want to see fewer people detained in ways we don’t accept, and fewer people killed for protesting, what would that kind of change look like?
Pishko: It’s difficult for me to answer because my overall answer is going to be a lot more, like, systemic.
Bacon: So give the systemic answer. That’s what I’m asking for.
Pishko: So my genuine answer is, like, we need to move away from looking at policing as a solution to solve problems. So the first thing right away is—quite frankly—it’s a defund strategy. It’s fewer police. We should have fewer—immigration detention, quite frankly, just shouldn’t be a thing. We don’t need to detain people because we think they may be deportable. That’s, like, perfectly ridiculous.
They shouldn’t be allowed to buy these GEO Group facilities and house people—and they’re terrible. They’re terrible facilities, and that’s how people, like, give up and just end up going back. They’ll go to another country, because it’s like—they don’t like being in jail, for obvious reasons.
So I think we need to de-police—but, in particular, for immigration’s sake—to detach this criminal framing, like the idea that people who are immigrants are basically criminals until proven otherwise.
Border Patrol—I see some politicians saying, “Oh, put Border Patrol back on the border.” But what we see is what they do on the border. The way they act is like every single person walking across the border is a bad guy—an enemy—whether they’re a woman, a kid, or a family, right? They’re bad guys.
And so we act like every single person who is here is coming here as these bad people, and we don’t want them here. And I do think it raises the question: What are we policing the border from? If we’re so aggressively policing the U.S.–Mexico border, what is the thing—what is the thing that we think—
Bacon: I might agree with an open border. Let’s come back a little—that’s where we’re headed—but let’s assume we have a policy that says we want to restrict people at the border, but once people are already in the country, we’re not trying to punish them with this special agency.
That would seem to me—you could have—is it logically coherent to have border control, Border Patrol, that keeps people from coming in, but doesn’t really focus on people already in the country, which is what ICE does? Is it logical to have Border Patrol but not ICE, in a certain sense, or not? Or is that something you wouldn’t necessarily want to endorse?
Pishko: It is. I feel like people are—have different opinions on this. Yeah. I want to clarify. In my opinion, no. Okay. Because all we’re doing is criminalizing immigrants either way, and so we’re not—like, the system just serves to, like, make people’s lives miserable enough that they decide not to come, or they go away. Or they go into hiding, or they’re deported.
And then the other way the system works, quite frankly, is just—it’s really brutal for people who have experienced, like, the immigration system. The other thing is the immigration system is—it’s wildly—trying to think what the right word is—it’s wildly unorganized and just really hard to understand.
Like, if you have worked with people—like I used to do work, like, helping—we don’t have it, I don’t know what they’re doing with that now, but it used to be like, if you were an abused spouse, you could apply for a special kind of asylum. So you could prove that you were being abused and that you needed legal residency. Because of that—this is if you’re a victim of a crime, right—you could apply for legal residency. It’s really hard to do that. Like, it is not easy.
The time for waiting—one of the things they could do is just, honestly, have more judges, because the timeline to wait for people to go before a judge and argue their case is so long—ten years. It’s crazy. So you’re waiting in limbo. That’s why you have people waiting in limbo for a decade.
But what are they supposed to do? They go to work. They raise kids. They’re told that you’re going to live your life. So you have lots of people who live their lives in limbo because it takes so long, and because we don’t have enough—like, quite frankly, enough judges to, like, process things and move them along.
Bacon: So let me ask the question. I guess I’ve been building to it for half an hour, but I’ll ask it now. So you’re not a politician, you’re not a pollster, you’re not a strategist. I get all that. So Congressman X, probably a Democrat, comes up to you and says: If I say “abolish,” that sounds radical. I can’t say that. But I don’t like what I’m seeing in Minneapolis, or what else is happening in Chicago.
And this person says: I’ve done the reading, I’ve watched, I’ve done more training and body cameras and all the— and I’ve done enough to know that the reforms on policing we’ve called for were pointless and stupid and haven’t really done anything.
Is there an agenda of ICE reforms, or changes to ICE, that actually would reduce the number of incidents like what’s happened in Minneapolis and Chicago—something we can do that is short of ‘abolish’ but is actually not counterproductive and/or totally useless?
Pishko: Yeah. I think actually the thing that I think wouldn’t be obvious to people, honestly, is to get rid of detention—to get rid of immigration detention. So a lot of the reason why ICE and CBP feel motivated to go and arrest all these people is partially... one, I would say roll back the Laken Riley Act. Congress earlier this year passed the Laken Riley Act. Yes.
Which expands the number of people subject to mandatory detention. And that’s a... so one of the reasons why they feel like they could just arrest all these people is because a lot of these people are now subject to mandatory detention.
Bacon: Yes. I see.
Pishko: So we should not have mandatory detention. I don’t think we should be detaining any of these people at all.
One of the things that is happening is that when these people are seeing a judge, a lot of judges are granting them bond. Like, they’re telling them: Okay, go home and come back, and we’ll— they’re just like: you don’t need to be in jail.
And then people are in jail, like across the like it’s some jail in Texas, right? You don’t have your stuff, you don’t have your phone, you don’t have a ride to the airport. So like all these nonprofits are helping people, like, get plane tickets and whatnot. I just think if you got rid of detention, that would get rid of the incentives. And then I think honestly, the other thing is...
Bacon: But if you’re not detaining them, you’re not... okay. You’re not detained. You can still have the rest of the policy that is not the detained part. Because the detained part creates all the violence. Is that what you’re getting at?
Pishko: It would immediately disincentivize so many arrests.
Bacon: Oh, I see.
Pishko: You can’t detain them. So they would be like: Why are you... like, why... what’s the point of arresting those people? The other thing quite frankly is you just have to cut back staff. Like the thing... no one... the thing that no one ever wants to hear is, like, the real way to reduce presence is you just have to have fewer people.
Bacon: This is fun. This is the whole thing we’ve been talking about. In some ways, the policing conversation and the immigration conversation are related in your mind. The same conversation, probably.
Pishko: I would say they’re very much the same conversation. Like, honestly, you just have to fire people. We didn’t get into it, but we could talk about, like, local collaboration, which is its own problem.
But I would say also because what we see in Florida, which is a lot of local collaboration... when we just see, like, massive numbers of people getting... like between mandatory detention, local collaboration, and basically being as harsh as possible... we see lots and lots of people getting detained. We don’t even know where they are. Like, we don’t even know who’s in these places. We don’t know where people are going. So to me... that to me is... [plain]... like, ridiculous. Someone ends up on a plane to SeaTac because why?
Bacon: What the... this is, like, [a] crazy-making idea. There’s a lot of stuff out there: training and body cameras. Are those actively bad or just not helpful?
Pishko: I don’t think they’re helpful. The thing about training is, like, two things. One is... okay, the real practical point about training is, like, everybody has training. Like you probably had training when you started at The New Republic, right? You have, like, sexual harassment training, you have, like, DEI... everyone has training.
But when you do the training and then go work, does anybody, like, follow that training they got? No. So when people are trained—one, there’s a question about the quality of the training—but two, like, when those guys go out in the field... you were going to do... like I... let’s say I’m Border Patrol. I’m going to do what gets me advanced. I’m going to do what he... yeah. I’m going to do what’s gonna make me a better [Border] Patrol [agent] and I want to rise in my career, right? I want to go up and be, like, a lieutenant.
So I’m going to do what my boss says to do, and I’m going to act like my boss acts because that’s how I’m going to get promoted. So this is true with all police. Like you could tell them, like: No, you’re not supposed to do this. But if your boss is like: This is what we do...
You’ll see in the... movie [or] TV show where they’re like: This isn’t... this isn’t, like, what they tell you in training. This is the real world, right? They do... This isn’t like that. This is the real world. This is the real world, okay?
And that’s how they do. So I’m like: training, it’s fine, but that doesn’t change how they act. I do think one thing you could just do is fire... quite frankly, you could just fire people who are either committing crimes or who shoot people or who are... like, if you have someone that you knew... know... committed a crime. They should just get fired. I don’t know why.
Bacon: So you should definitely make sure... these are... these... the shootings we’ve seen are investigated and most people are off... are out of ICE. The people who’ve done the shooting should certainly be not walking around every day without any kind of prosecution. Obviously that would be... yeah, I...
Pishko: You should fire them. If you know someone... like some of these people with known... like we know, for example, that they’re harassing women detained... like just why are they, like... fire them. Why are they okay?
If you were at your job and you were known for doing bad stuff, they would fire you. If they were like: Oh man, [we] told them not to do it, but he’s doing it again. Yes. Like, you wouldn’t have your job. That’s how normal people... that’s how normal people jobs work. Like you can[’t] mess up and keep your job.
Bacon: All right, so let’s stop there. Any closing thoughts about... because I know you... you’ve written about sheriffs and I didn’t get into that as much, but I think this... we were in a sort of a law enforcement crisis and I feel... or, yeah, and that’s why I wanted to talk to you about this. Any sort of final thoughts?
Pishko: I do think that one of the things... that the goal here seems to be to create, like, a national police, which is not really something like we have had in this country. Like, we don’t have a national police, but that... one of the goals appears to be to ensure that, like, every state and local agency complies with federal rules, right? So they want everyone to do what the federal agencies are doing.
Bacon: They have a national police, and then the local police act as agents of the national police.
Pishko: But that’s what I think that... that’s what I think Stephen Miller envisions in his head...
Bacon: Yes.
Pishko: It is like a giant police for everyone. And that for a long time we’ve let police... honestly, we’ve let police do whatever they want. Like they get to do what they want, they get the money they want. And that... we see we don’t want to be ruled by police.
People should not be afraid to go outside. They shouldn’t be afraid to participate in a protest. Like, people shouldn’t be beaten up. We all agree [on] that. We shouldn’t have that, and we shouldn’t have like a policing system where they think that’s okay. Like it’s not okay.
Law enforcement isn’t better than the other. They’re not better than other people. They have to do what... they should be obliged to have [rules]... similar rules and consequences as everybody else and every other job.
Bacon: So in some ways that’s interesting you said it that way. ‘Cause I... we want to oppose, I think... people can oppose a national police force. [The] trick is... the things that they’re doing... a lot of times their local police does.
Pishko: Yes.
Bacon: So I guess it is bad that we don’t want to have a national police, ideologically people [oppose] this version of it. But it does get this contradiction about it. The national police is just doing [an] extreme version of what the local police does.
It’s hard for a lot... like I saw senators say something like: We want to, like, divert funds from ICE to local police. And I have trouble getting on board with that.
Pishko: Again, we don’t want police to be like a super class. Like they... they’re not like the boss of everybody. Police aren’t supposed to rule us all. And that I think is, like, the world that, like... I mean, I think it’s mostly Stephen Miller, but I think that’s the world that, like, some of these people are envisioning.
But also a lot of the Fraternal Order of Police and these groups that have supported Trump, like that is what he promised them. And that is a thing that I don’t think people want. I don’t think people want a police state. People don’t want that.
They want to be safe. They want to feel like they could go outside and their kids can play outside and their kids can walk to school and you can drive to work. People want to feel safe in their neighborhood, but they don’t want a police state. That’s not a thing that people like, right?
They don’t want... you can’t get pulled [out of] your car and then, like, your kid is left in the car for whatever, waiting for you to come back. I don’t think that’s what people want. So I think it’s a good opportunity for everybody to rethink the community’s relationship to police, and that’s not what we want. We don’t want to be ruled by fear of the police.
Bacon: It’s a great place to end on, Jessica. Thanks for your time. I appreciate it.
Pishko: Yeah, thank you. Bye.
