Title: The New ICE

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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian today. Coming up on today's show, some New Jersey PATH commuters have taken to calling this path "Summer from Hell" due to delays from fires, a derailment, and signal failures. We'll talk about what's needed to fix fix the beleaguered transit system and how to navigate this weekend's scheduled disruptions. Then, if you feel like people have become ruder these past few years, you're not alone. Vox correspondent Allie Volpe joins us to talk about her latest article that asks, Are we in a crisis of rudeness?

We'll end the show with your call in on your end of summer bucket list. What did you check off this summer? What are you squeezing in this Labor Day weekend? The unofficial last weekend of summer. I protest, I want summer to last all the way into September. We still want to know what you're doing, so get those calls ready. First, President Trump's mass deportation policy is moving into a new phase. A closeup on the agency charged with executing this policy, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, shows a distinct shift in its outward tone and posture.

Social media videos produced by the agency for publicity and recruitment purposes show images of tricked out SUVs emblazoned with the agency's new logo and Trump's name. My next guest says Trump appointees are trying to supersize ICE using a multi-billion dollar cash infusion and driven by an unwavering commitment to deliver on the president's political promises. These changes are raising concerns among career ICE veterans, conservative law enforcement officials, and Democrats alike. Nick Miroff is a staff writer at The Atlantic who covers immigration, the Department of homeland security, and US and Mexico border.

His latest article was headlined, Fast Times at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Nick, welcome to WNYC.

Nick Miroff: Thank you. It's great to be with you.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, we're going to be talking about the new, more public role ICE is playing, and you can help us report the story. Have you seen ICE agents in your community? Were they in unmarked cars or were they in some of these newly branded vehicles? What are you seeing or do you have a question for my guest, Nick Miroff, staff writer at The Atlantic? You can call us at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can call or text that number. Nick, to help us understand some of the most recent changes at ICE, I wonder if you could take a step back and talk for a moment about what veterans of the agency considered to be their role prior to the Trump's inauguration.

Nick Miroff: For the last few years and certainly during the Biden administration, the agency really emphasized that it was going after criminal aliens. There is broad consensus across party lines, that immigrants who commit violent or serious felonies should be deported from the United States. I think it's always been a fairly safe messaging for ICE to really emphasize that criminals are its priority. For years, they have leaned into that messaging.

They have published statistics, really kind of playing up the criminality of the people that they arrest. Even as a lot of times, critics pointed out that the criminal violations involved were immigration violations themselves or things like traffic infractions and that sort of thing, or using false identification and not the serious violent felonies that everyone abhors. What's different now is that they are increasingly out front about-- at least the agency is, and the political appointees running ICE, about arresting people who are just in the country illegally but haven't committed crimes.

As the agency really becomes more aggressive, becomes more visible, you're seeing some apprehension. I'm hearing, apprehension from ICE veterans who know that that type of aggressive enforcement comes often with a pushback and a backlash.

Brigid Bergin: Sure. There's also this shift that your piece notes in terms of the social media posts. This really kind of branding, sort of swashbuckling sensibility the agency seems to be putting out there. How much of a shift is that in terms of how the agency operates? Are they used to being so open and so public?

Nick Miroff: No, it's a flashy, brazen new approach being driven by political appointees. For career ICE veterans and officers, they're used to working in plain clothes, they try to keep a low profile. They know that their presence, especially in major US cities, is very controversial and that a lot of people despise the kind of work that they do. They have operated for years on the assumption that it's more effective when they maintain a low profile. They don't drive around with ICE emblazoned on their cars.

Even during the first few months of the President's mass deportation campaign, what have we seen? We've seen officers and agents on the street covering their faces with masks or really try to minimize the presence of their logos, that type of thing. This is a new, much more swaggering approach with the political appointees at ICE making these videos, putting wrappings, they call them, on cars to have marked vehicles that will go around proudly displaying the ICE logo.

We're in this new phase where they want everybody to know that ICE is here and isn't going to make apologies for it.

Brigid Bergin: In terms of some of those videos, we've seen them coming right out of New York City. We know that mass deportations are one of the president's top priorities. He's installed a very loyal supporter in former South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem is the Head of the Department of Homeland Security. She was here back in January at an ICE raid in the Bronx that, of course, then turned into a social media video just days after the President's inauguration. Why are those kinds of public displays part of this administration's strategy?

Nick Miroff: Because the politics and the messaging are really paramount for this administration. I was there in New York City when Noem arrived, and as many listeners may remember, she was tweeting about the raids before 7:00 AM as they were going on, and the ICE officers who were on the ground were appalled. Everyone knows that for reasons of operational security, you don't announce that you're conducting law enforcement operations in a given area. It compromises officer safety.

For this administration, it's the optics, it's the politics. They want, really, to use immigration and immigration enforcement as a political instrument. This is what the president campaigned on. This is what Trump has promised supporters. They're thrilled by this type of activity and this approach. That's why you see this kind of bold messaging and everything from these rap videos, to recruitment posters with Uncle Sam, that type of stuff. If it angers liberals and riles up their opponents, all the better. What they're really going for is trying to please the president and deliver on the political promises that he's made.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, if you're just joining us, this is The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian today. My guest is Nick Miroff. He's a staff writer at The Atlantic who covers immigration, the Department of Homeland Security. We're talking about the evolution of ICE and its public image and what that means for the work that they're doing. I want to bring in some of our listeners. Let's go to Philippe in Harlem.

Philippe: Hi, Nick. Great fan, big reader a long time. I'm also an immigration reporter, and one question that I had was that, for a long time it's really been border patrol that had this culture of like the swashbuckling paramilitary. They often had a tendency to push the envelope until they got their way. I think most famously giving themselves, via regulation, the 100-mile zone power. I'm curious if you think that ICE, despite some internal pushback, is going to develop its own internal culture, especially with this sort of big recruitment push that is sort of more mirrors the border patrol ethos of a long time or its own thing or how you see that playing out, if the cultures will merge or your view on that.

Nick Miroff: I do think that that is already occurring. The ICE officers who are retiring, a lot of them have been more accustomed to this sort of low profile approach, trying to avoid provoking controversy or a backlash, particularly in major U S cities where ICE wants to do most of its work. They are used to being more politically sensitive to whatever the shifting winds are on the ground. Now I think we're seeing this much more kind of "in your face" unapologetic approach that, as you say, is more akin to the way that the border patrol has operated and the border patrol's own kind of insular culture. I was just this week at a recruiting expo for ICE in Texas. One thing that really struck me was that across the board, a lot of the new applicants, they really are coming, they've bought into the administration's messaging about the nature of the job and about how they can really save the country and protect the country. It was less of a what I would call a professional law enforcement crowd. There was a lot of people who are really responding to what the administration has been saying about the mass deportation campaign and the president's objectives.

Brigid Bergin: Philippe, thanks so much for that question. Let's go to Mark in Nyack, who I think has another question about some of that recruitment. Mark, you're on WNYC.

Mark: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I've seen both in the so-called left wing media as well as social media platforms like Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, chatter about whether in the vacuum created by the disinclination of legitimate law enforcement to work for ICE, ICE is either explicitly or subtly recruiting far-right extremists. I'm thinking of the Proud Boys whom Trump told to stand back and stand by, Patriot Front, and some of the other groups represented on January 6th. I wonder if the guest has any information on that question.

Nick Miroff: It's a great question. In our recent piece in The Atlantic, we really get into some of the recruitment posters that ICE has been publishing on social media, including the one that generated really the most controversy, and that was an image that was taken from a real 1930s New Deal poster created by the US government during the Franklin Roosevelt administration that was to promote the New Deal. The ICE recruitment campaign had changed the messaging and the words on the poster, and posted it with the phrase, "Which way American man?"

That was an explicit reference to a white nationalist text from 1978, Which Way Western Man? that was all about about how Blacks and Jews and immigrants were threatening to ruin the country. What we've seen is that as the messaging has grown, I think, more brazen and sought to make more of an ideological appeal, that they are openingly inviting people who have white nationalist ideas or who have racist views to be part of this effort. Now, whether they end up bringing those people in or trying to screen them out out of caution, I think is yet to be seen. The messaging is certainly going in that direction over the past couple of weeks.

Brigid Bergin: Nick, in your piece, you look at some of the people who are behind these new pushes, whether it's in terms of recruitment strategy, changing standards. Since we're talking about some of this messaging and some of the recruitment marketing, you talk about a 26-year-old graphic designer who seems to be leading some of the charge there. Who is that and what are some of the other issues you're seeing coming up in that work?

Nick Miroff: Yes. These are political appointees that Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, has brought in. Specifically the graphic designer, you mentioned is a young man named Chad Kubis who attended Liberty University and was hired by Noem to work in public affairs and do graphic design. I think he's representative of a new group of political aides that Noem is trying to bring in. They're very young. She has installed a former aide named Madison Sheahan as the number two official at ICE. Sheahan is only 28 years old. She had been running the Louisiana Department of Fish and Wildlife prior to Noem installing her.

She is running ICE on a day-to-day basis right now and has certainly rubbed some of the veteran officials the wrong way with her aggressive approach, and particularly the way that she wants to conduct politics with the law enforcement mission of ICE.

Brigid Bergin: Another individual that you mentioned who's been installed in the orbit of ICE's leadership is Corey Lewandowski, a name that's probably familiar to those following Trump's orbit. What role is he playing? How has he raised concerns among some Republicans and Democrats alike?

Nick Miroff: Well, Lewandowski, who's a a long time figure in the Trump orbit, doesn't have an official role at the Department of Homeland Security. He is a special advisor to Secretary Noem, and yet his omnipresence at DHS is so great that staff refer to him as her chief of staff, even though that's not his real title. Lewandowski and Noem have been rumored to be in a romantic affair for a long time, even though the Department and both of them have denied that. Those types of rumors have dogged them, and the focus in recent weeks has really shifted to his role as a gatekeeper for DHS contracts.

Since June, Noem has had a policy in place that she wants to personally review and sign off on any contract larger than $100,000. Contractors in recent weeks have been complaining about long delays or missed payments. Some of the blame has shifted to Lewandowski, who, according to the most recent reporting, is working as a gatekeeper for a lot of these contracts. Of course, because he's not an actual DHS employee, has not had to disclose his financial interests and in potential entanglements publicly. I think we're seeing more and more concern within the administration about the role that he's playing and the influence that he has over the Department, where a lot of employees are fearful that if they cross him, that they will be fired.

Brigid Bergin: This becomes all that more important, given the context of what we said in the beginning, that this is an agency that's seen this tremendous infusion of cash, $75 billion. As you describe some of these new appointees, to me, it feels very reminiscent of what had been reported about some of the people who were installed at the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and yet ICE seems to be under the exact opposite kind of pressure. Instead of trying to cut, they're under this tremendous pressure to just spend. Is that right?

Nick Miroff: That's right. The president's Big Beautiful Bill included about $75 billion for ICE to spend over the next couple of years. About $45 billion of that is to expand the agency's network of detention centers across the United States and really to more than double its capacity to detain people as the agency tries to deport them. Then another major chunk of that, about $30 billion, is for ICE operations and for this massive hiring spree. Now, it's important to keep in mind this is $75 billion for an agency with an annual budget of around $8 billion. It's nearly 10 times ICE's annual budget is the pile of cash that they got through the Big Beautiful Bill.

What the agency has turned its focus to in recent weeks is this mass hiring push. There are about 5,700 deportation officers working for ICE nationwide. One of the reasons that the administration has missed the president's very ambitious deportation goals of a million people a year. One of the reasons is that they simply don't have the personnel to carry out to meet those kinds of numbers. They want to take that 5,700 deportation officers and add 10,000 more by the beginning of next year. They have launched this very aggressive recruitment effort across the country with messaging on social media, and all over really. They're trying to race people, fast track people through the ICE training academy by shortening the amount of time that there will be in the classroom in order to get them on the streets faster.

Brigid Bergin: Nick, I want to share some of the text messages that we're getting in from listeners seeing some of this in their communities. One listener writes, "ICE has been all over the Hudson Valley in huge numbers. Ossining, in Peekskill in northern Westchester, Spring Valley in Rockland County, Middletown, Poughkeepsie, Monroe in Orange County. Always unmarked cars. They take anyone they can. It's been awful." Another listener from New Jersey. Let me see if I can find that text message. There we go. "In my neighborhood in Fairview, New Jersey, I witnessed ICE taking a neighbor. They were parked on the street in unmarked vehicles.

When my neighbor came out to move his car for street sweeping, they jumped out and grabbed him. Some faces covered, refused to identify themselves, took him before his wife could come out of the house and see what was happening. Personally, I would prefer that ICE used marked or loudly branded vehicles and uniforms. It would prevent this kind of sneak attack and facilitate community warning systems." Nick, I'm curious, in your reporting, these types of incidents that I just described seem to be more like what was happening, the previous version of ICE where they were trying to operate in communities without drawing as much attention to themselves.

It also, in this case, sounds like potentially not necessarily going after the hardened criminals or potentially just the immigration violators, though we don't know that much about these specific incidents. Just any reaction to how those types of examples are things that you're hearing about in your own reporting?

Nick Miroff: Yes. I think anybody who's been following this on social media has seen these videos. This is something that is occurring in many parts of the United States right now, but especially in the Democratic run cities where the administration officials have said will be a priority for their enforcement efforts. Los Angeles was obviously a big one. Now here in Washington, DC, ICE, along with other federal law enforcement agencies and the National Guard, is operating much more openly on the streets.

Getting back to the marked cars, my understanding from conversations with ICE officials is that they plan to use them in coordination with the unmarked vehicles. If they have to do surveillance or if they have to keep a low profile, they will continue to use those unmarked vehicles, but then they will use the marked vehicles with the ICE logo at other opportunities. What they call worksite enforcement, when they do a raid on an employer, and they will pull up-- maybe first they will bring in the undercover operation and then have marked cars to follow. When people are taken away, that they would ride in a marked car so people would know that they're not necessarily being being kidnapped, as some of critics have described it in recent months.

Brigid Bergin: Nick, a listener asked, I think, an important question in terms of what kind of oversight Congress has over how these funds that have been allocated to DHS, and specifically, are being spent. Is there efforts in place to make sure that, as you mentioned, some of these contracts are not going to contractors that are favorable to specific individuals, that this money is being spent responsibly?

Nick Miroff: We haven't seen that type of oversight role yet. Certainly, it exists in theory. Some Democrats, including California Representative Robert Garcia, he's the ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee, he sent a letter to Secretary Noem last week raising concerns about Corey Lewandowski's role at DHS and asking for records and a history of his participation in contracting decisions and that type of thing. With Republicans in control of the key committees in the House and Senate, it's unlikely that we are going to see anyone really probing what is going on at the agency and how the money is spent. That would obviously change significantly if there's a change after the midterms and Democrats were to win the majority again.

Brigid Bergin: We need to take a short break. We're going to have much more with my guest, Nick Miroff, a staff writer at The Atlantic who covers immigration, the Department of Homeland Security, and more, and your calls in just a minute. Stick around.

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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, filling in for Brian today. My guest is Nick Miroff, a staff writer at The Atlantic who covers immigration, the Department of Homeland Security, and the US-Mexico border. We're talking about his latest article headlined, Fast Times at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Nick, we've been talking about the pressure on ICE to recruit more enforcement agents. In addition to the marketing side, it seems like there have been changes to the standards in terms of the types of people that they would hire into these roles.

Can you talk a little bit bit about how those standards have changed and what kind of law enforcement legal training are these new agents expected to have or to get?

Nick Miroff: Yes, sure. Again, they're trying to hire 10,000 new deportation officers by the beginning of Next year. The 10,000 break down basically into 3 groups. The first will be recent retirees who have already worked for ICE but hit the hit retirement age, and they will allow them to come back and continue to receive their retirement benefits while working for ICE and earning a salary. Then the second group that they're targeting are people who are already working in law enforcement. They have some law enforcement experience, they're police officers with state and local agencies, that type of thing.

They think that they can fast track their ICE training because they can skip some of the tactical and firearms training, that type of thing, and get them onto the street quicker. Then the third group would be people who have no experience at all. New hires. They want individuals with military experience in particular. They've waived the age restrictions for the job. Someone as young as 18 can apply. There are also people who are well beyond typical recruitment age for police officer positions. All of this is further incentivized with a $50,000 signing bonus that ICE is offering if you make a five-year commitment.

New hires will get $10,000 a year as a bonus over the next five years if they sign on. I was at the job expo this week in Texas and really saw people of all ages and ethnic backgrounds. They were mostly men, but certainly, a lot of people with military service backgrounds who had maybe fought in Iraq or Afghanistan and had taken on some kind of civilian job in the years since then, but said that they were really missing a sense of camaraderie and the feeling that they were part of serving a larger purpose. I think ICE really wants to try to get people like that into its ranks as quickly as possible.

Brigid Bergin: It's so striking to hear you say-- I know it's in the piece, but as young as 18, that speaks to a very minimal standard in terms of education requirements. Most likely those are not people who have college degrees. What is the minimum standard for education and training for some of these new recruits?

Nick Miroff: You don't have to have a college degree. If you have some sort of military or law enforcement experience, that will certainly count more than anything. I didn't see people who were as young as 18 at the job expo I attended, but there were definitely people who appear to be20, 21, 22, that type of thing. The types of jobs that would be available then would be the most entry level for ICE, and that would be working as detention officers and ICE detention centers, correctional officers.

ICE says that they will not be-- they're shortening their typical training course. For someone who's a new hire at ICE usually spends about 18 to 20 weeks in academies and in classrooms getting trained. They are reducing that to 47 days, a number that has been picked, I was told by several sources, because Trump is the 47th president. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security say that it's going to be an eight-week training course with classes six days a week. That's 48 days. This is less than half the amount of time that someone who's a new ICE hire would typically spend being trained.

They want to get as many people through that process and onto the street as quickly as possible. They say that they won't cut corners, that they will assign new hires to partner with experienced ICE officers and agents in order to continue their training on the job. It's more of an internship model than an academy one.

Brigid Bergin: Very interesting. I want to go to one of our listeners. Let's try Terry in Union, New Jersey. Terry, you're on WNYC.

Terry: Yes, hello. Thank you for taking my call and thank you for this information about ICE, because clearly what's happening is there's an emerging national police which is a tool of dictators. We've never allowed this in America before. People in New Jersey have formed Eyes on ICE, which is a vigilant group that goes to the largest detention center on the East Coast, Delaney Hall, in Newark, New Jersey, that has a capacity of 1,100 people and it's being fed by secret ICE arrest and it's operating in total secrecy.

Basically, we've had people at the facility on a daily basis since April 29th, and the conditions are horrific for people. What we're finding out is four-fifths of the people inside have been taken from following their legitimate court appointments. ICE surrounds them, takes them. While they are following through with their immigration process, many of them are spouses, American husbands and American wives, and they are following through to become American citizens. They are sitting in that detention center. I would urge anyone to come down, take a look at that detention center, and visit, meet these visitors and talk to them. Their stories are just heart-rending. That's what's happening with the people who are signing on the ICE agents. I would encourage anyone not to participate in this formation of a national police state.

Brigid Bergin: Terry, thank you.

Terry: Thank you.

Brigid Bergin: I appreciate your call, Terry. Nick, I'm wondering, Terry raises a lot of issues there in terms of how some people are responding to this kind of news. She also talked about Delaney Hall specifically, a facility in New Jersey, that is among the types of sites that presumably this $75 billion is going to build more of. What do you know about that facility? Is that sort of a harbinger of what we are going to be seeing pop up around the rest of the country?

Nick Miroff: Yes. No, it's a great question. ICE has about 60,000 people in custody right now in its detention centers. That's the highest level it's ever had. With the Big Beautiful Bill funding, there's $45 billion more to increase that capacity beyond 100,000 beds. One of ICE's problems, particularly in recent years, is that it doesn't have a lot of detention capacity in Blue states, in and around big cities like New York where there are the largest immigrant populations and where many of the people that the agency wants to arrest are located. This is one of the reasons why you hear about ICE detention centers in Louisiana, and Texas, and Southern states where the agency has a much bigger detention network.

They reopened Delaney Hall this year as part of this attempt to get more beds closer to New York City. I think what we can expect over the coming months as they build out this infrastructure is that they will try to set up places closer to northern cities where they want to make more arrests. I think that state and local opposition has made it very difficult for them and will continue to make it extremely difficult for them to get the permission that they need to operate outside, other than like federal property.

I think we'll see a mix of new places opening in some northern states, but mostly, ICE will continue to rely on its network, particularly in the Southern states where it's easier and cheaper to build and where communities want ICE to operate detention centers.

Brigid Bergin: Nick, just last month, Secretary Noem and border czar Tom Homan were here in the city again after an off-duty border patrol agent was shot. Here's a little bit of what Homan said at a press conference after that shooting.

Tom Homan: I'm going to work very hard with Secretary Noem to keep President Trump's promise and his commitment several weeks ago that sanctuary cities are now our priority. We're going to flood the zone. You don't want to let us into jail to arrest a bad guy in the safety and security of a jail. You want to release him into the street. What we're going to do, we're going to have more agents in New York City to look for that bad guy.

Brigid Bergin: Nick, so much of your piece is about-- as this agency is beefing up, it's also shifting its focus to places that are sanctuary cities like New York City. How do you expect to start to see that showing up on the streets?

Nick Miroff: I think it's worth taking a minute just to try to explain a little bit how ICE operates. In a place where ICE has the full cooperation of state and local authority, say, in a Red Southern state, in Texas, for example, what ICE officers can do is go to a jail and take into custody any immigrant who has accused of a crime or is completed a prison sentence. The jail authorities in that location will cooperate with them and they can get significant numbers of potential deportees that way. You can have a team of officers go with a van or even a bus and get get the large numbers of potential deportees that the White House right now is seeking.

In a place that's a sanctuary jurisdiction, pretty much every major US city that has adopted some form of law limiting cooperation between local police and authorities with ICE, ICE does not have that ability. They have to look for people on the street on their own. They can't really rely on the police departments to help them. It's much, much, much more resource intensive. Because the agency has lacked the personnel to go and carry this out in big cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles on a sustained large-scale basis, that is one of the reasons why they're not getting the numbers that Stephen Miller and other officials in the White House are after.

This new ICE workforce that they're trying to more than double the size of the deportation officers that they have, that workforce is going to allow them to go into these cities with more people, with more resources, and do much more aggressive enforcement work. That is really their goal over the next six months, is to get that in place and is to do what Homan is talking about in that clip, and that is to target those cities and to be able to operate in the way that they want. As we're seeing here in Washington, DC, in some cases, they will try to get some kind of National Guard role to support it.

Brigid Bergin: I want to sneak in one more caller, Sariah in Brooklyn, who has seen some of this recruitment activity online. Sariah, you're on WNYC.

Sariah: Hi, thanks for taking the phone call. Yes, in the past two or three weeks, you've been seeing on LinkedIn coming up in everyone's algorithm because I go through the comments, they're advertising using the old Uncle Sam, "I want you from the military back in the day." They're saying, "Come join ICE. You'll get a signing bonus, $50,000 starting salary, healthcare benefits, all different types of opportunities, and signup events as well." I just wanted to make that comment, that they're all over trying to recruit. That's all. Thanks for taking the call,

Brigid Bergin: Sariah, thanks for calling. Nick, you didn't mention those posters that were designed and have been used in various social media. I feel like LinkedIn almost is a different space for some of that because that is such a place where professionals are looking for jobs. Where else are people seeing this kind of information?

Nick Miroff: The recruitment pitch is all over YouTube, it's all over Instagram, X, formerly Twitter, those type of social media sites, the Department of Homeland Security, and ICE's spending pretty extravagantly on this recruitment pitch, and it's working for them. DHS just told me yesterday that they've got 130,000 applications already for these 10,000 jobs. I was at this job expo in Texas this week. There will be a story in The Atlantic coming out hopefully today about what I saw and who I met there.

They're not having trouble getting responses, getting applicants. By offering this type of bonus, by advertising so widely, they're definitely getting the kinds of numbers that they were looking for.

Brigid Bergin: Nick, before we let you go, I want to acknowledge we've had a lot of texts from listeners with grave concerns. One example, a listener wrote, "ICE raids are similar to sending the National Guard to 'clean up the streets.' Both are fear campaigns, but neither is the solution for immigration procedures." That is a mild version of some of the very extreme concerns that many of our listeners are sharing. I'm wondering, as we move post-Labor Day, out of the summer months into that pickup of the fall, what is on your radar? What are you going to be watching? What are you most concerned about?

Nick Miroff: I'm watching this rapidly developing expansion effort. The growth of these detention centers, their location, opposition to those detention centers, this hiring binge that ICE is on and how quickly people are deployed. Then, of course, what the White House's next moves are in terms of targeting cities with National Guard troop deployments and surging federal officers. Is the Trump administration going next to Chicago? Can they actually sustain these types of operations in a way that moves beyond just political theater? Do they really stay? Are they able to keep National Guard troops deployed for any length of time in a meaningful way?

How do these communities respond to that? What recourse do they have? I think these are things that everybody is going to be watching over the coming months and into next year.

Brigid Bergin: Nick Miroff is a staff writer at The Atlantic who covers immigration, the Department of Homeland Security, and the US-Mexico border. His latest article is headlined, Fast Times at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Nick, thanks so much for coming on.

Nick Miroff: My pleasure. Anytime.

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