Pod Insights Civics 101 What is ICE's job? About this episode We examine what the current presidential administration tells us about Immigration and Customs Enforcement and what the numbers, courts and history of the agency have to say.
For more information on the data referenced in this episode, you can check out this Politico fact check of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem's statements about ICE, this CATO Institute analysis, this CBS report, and this TRAC report and this Deportation Data Project release.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Hannah McCarthy? Nick, do you remember the last time we made an episode about ICE?
0:05 Nick Capodice? I do. I remember. It was the first interview you did by yourself here at Civics 101. And you were nervous. This was like eight years ago, right?
0:15 Hannah McCarthy? May 2018. And yeah, I was nervous. We had just become the hosts of the show. This was only the third episode. We had made as hosts of the show. And I was like, oh, man. How do you make a Civics 101 episode about this agency that is really unpopular right now?
0:36 Speaker 02 More protests are expected this morning after a 37-year-old Minneapolis man was shot and killed by a federal agent.
0:42 Speaker 03 Christian Benavides reports the incident happened on the hills of the shooting death of Renee Good and has led to escalating tensions between protesters and federal officers.
0:51 Speaker 04 Fast-moving developments in Minneapolis after a protester, Alex Preddy, was shot and killed by federal agents in broad daylight over the weekend.
0:59 Speaker 05 I mean, we've got a deadly shooting here. We have to have an investigation. And you've got protesters screaming on the ground in front of us, emotional, throwing trash cans, barricading.
1:14 Speaker 06 It's worth it, buddy. It's worth it. All right, we'll see. All right, we're in jail. Trump can protect you for long. If you're in jail.
1:26 Nick Capodice? So how do you make a second Civics 101 episode about ICE?
1:31 Hannah McCarthy? Well, you start all over again in 2026. That's how.
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3:04 Hannah McCarthy? This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.
3:06 Nick Capodice? I'm Nick Capodice.
3:07 Hannah McCarthy? And today, ICE. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And again, we do already have an episode about ICE. It explains a lot, but it doesn't really get to what is happening right now. So two things. I recommend you go back and listen to that episode if you want to know why ICE exists and what the deal was in the second year of Trump's first term as president. But for the purposes of this episode, Nick, I just want to get to something really basic. What is ICE's job?
3:40 Nick Capodice? Well, I guess we can start with the actual name of the organization, the enforcement of customs and immigration law.
3:47 Hannah McCarthy? Let's talk about that enforcement part. You've got Customs and Border Protection, CBP, historically at our ports of entry and patrolling the border. So they're usually at the edges of the country, the areas where people come into the country, and they are enforcing our laws there. The borders and ports of entry, those are not specifically ICE's job, for the most part, though they can and do work with CBP, especially lately.
4:16 Nick Capodice? All right, so ICE is on the inside.
4:18 Hannah McCarthy? Well, ICE is, for the most part, the agency tasked with interior enforcement. Though, you know, because a big part of their job is to arrest and detain people they suspect of being in the country without authorization, without documentation, that is something they can do at the border as well. I do just want to note here that people have noticed that Customs and Border Patrol employees have been participating in immigration operations far from US borders. And because of something called the 100-mile zone in the Immigration and Nationality Act, people are wondering why that's allowed, what they're doing so far from the border.
4:55 Nick Capodice? Hang on, the 100-mile zone?
4:58 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, there is a federal regulation that says that immigration enforcement, this is actually both ICE and CBP, have authority to board a train, a bus, within a, quote, "reasonable distance," unquote, which federal regulation says is 100 miles, from any external boundary of the US. Planes, by the way, are different here because they are part of the port of entry for international travelers. So if you have heard about the 100-mile zone and thought to yourself, "Okay, what is going on in terms of immigration enforcement happening so far from the borders?" Well, again, that 100-mile zone, it is really about boarding vessels, right? A bus or a train. And really, all of those agents and officers do have the legal authority to pull over
5:41 Hannah McCarthy? a car and interrogate and arrest someone they suspect of being undocumented. So that 100-mile zone thing, that is a restriction, but not as much of a restriction as it might seem. And while typically Border Patrol has done enforcement at the borders, and ICE has done it away from the borders, the distinction has blurred under the Trump administration.
6:01 Nick Capodice? All right, so that's why you're seeing CBP alongside ICE far from the border. And Hannah, real quick, can we touch on this "suspect" of being undocumented thing? What constitutes "suspect"?
6:15 Hannah McCarthy? So courts have said that immigration enforcement cannot stop, arrest, and detain people based on their perceived race, what language they speak, where they work, or where they physically are in any given moment.
6:27 Nick Capodice? AKA ICE and CBP.
6:31 Nick Capodice? Cannot racially or culturally profile people.
6:34 Hannah McCarthy? Well, in September 2025, the Supreme Court issued what's called a stay on a lower court's order that had barred racial profiling.
6:44 Nick Capodice? Oh, so the Supreme Court said that ICE and CBP can target people for their looks and behavior.
6:51 Hannah McCarthy? Essentially, yes. For now, at least, they have paused the lower court's order.
6:56 Nick Capodice? What about 14th Amendment equal protection and Fourth Amendment unreasonable search and seizure protection? How did SCOTUS explain that one?
7:04 Hannah McCarthy? Well, they didn't explain much. There is no opinion in this instance. I can tell you that Justice Brett Kavanaugh did write what is called a concurrence, where he suggests that, you know, if you are a documented immigrant or a citizen who is stopped and questioned, you should just be able to show your ID and common sense says you would then be permitted to go. But many people have not had that experience.
7:32 Nick Capodice? Oh, a concurrence, but no opinion. This was a shadow docket thing, right?
7:38 Hannah McCarthy? Yes, or as the Supreme Court prefers to put it, the emergency docket or the nonmerits/motions docket. But listen to our episode on the shadow docket to learn more. Okay, so back to your question. What does suspect mean? Well, it can mean, right now, according to the Supreme Court, that you look sound or are in some way acting like an undocumented immigrant in the eyes of immigration enforcement. Okay, moving on.
8:10 Hannah McCarthy? Because I want to talk about the differences within ICE itself. We keep hearing about ICE agents. And there are ICE agents. But in terms of the way that they were originally established, agents and officers perform different roles. ICE agents are supposed to do the investigating. They are stationed across the country and across the world. They fall under the label HSI, Homeland Security Investigations.
8:41 Nick Capodice? Investigating what exactly?
8:43 Hannah McCarthy? Well, crimes. There are more than 400 US laws pertaining to national security. HSI investigates violations of those laws. So think smuggling of various kinds, trafficking of various kinds, financial crimes, fraud. HSI agents are also tasked with breaking up terrorist groups and transnational criminal organizations. And these agents are working in offices, like I said, across the country and across the world. They are everywhere.
9:07 Nick Capodice? But to be clear, an ICE agent is not the same thing as an ICE enforcement officer?
9:13 Hannah McCarthy? Right. An officer falls under the ERO label, enforcement and removal operations. And actually, in the past, during the first Trump administration, some HSI agents requested to please be removed from the agency because they were getting confused with ERO officers.
9:30 Nick Capodice? So they're under the same umbrella, but these agents were like, we do not do the same thing.
9:35 Hannah McCarthy? Right. And before I read you a bit of this letter, I do just need to say that an executive order that Trump signed at the beginning of his second term does appear to change the nature of HSI's main mission. But in 2019, a number of agents, reports say as many as 19, were requesting some kind of independence, some kind of distinction from this other part of ICE. In a letter they wrote to the Department of Homeland Security, DHS Secretary at the time, Kristin M. Nielsen, an agent said, quote, "The perception of HSI's investigative independence
10:13 Hannah McCarthy? is unnecessarily impacted by the political nature of ERO's civil immigration enforcement. Many jurisdictions continue to refuse to work with HSI because of a perceived linkage to the politics of civil immigration," unquote.
10:32 Nick Capodice? In other words, the people who investigate crimes were upset that they were being confused with the people who were taking undocumented immigrants into custody.
10:40 Hannah McCarthy? Right. And I am not sure how HSI agents feel right now. But later on, I am going to talk a little bit about how their mission may have changed under the Trump administration.
10:52 Nick Capodice? And what exactly are the ICE officers, as opposed to the agents, supposed to be doing?
11:02 Hannah McCarthy? Well, according to the ICE website, the ERO, or enforcement officers, quote, "target public safety threats, such as convicted criminal undocumented aliens and gang members, as well as individuals who have otherwise violated our nation's immigration laws, including those who legally re-entered the country after being removed, and immigration fugitives ordered removed by federal immigration judges." Unquote.
11:31 Nick Capodice? All right, here's where I'm getting caught up a little, Hannah. Are ICE officers supposed to be targeting just anybody who violated immigration law? Or are they supposed to be going after safety threats? Criminal undocumented aliens, as they put it?
11:47 Hannah McCarthy? This is a good question. So as I was making this episode, the Trump administration circulated a draft memo that, you know, if official, would direct ICE to avoid engaging with agitators. Now, agitators, that is the term that Trump and his administration has used to describe people protesting ICE.
12:06 Speaker 06 The people that are causing the problem are professional agitators, they're insurrectionists. They're bad people. They should be in jail. Thank you.
12:15 Hannah McCarthy? And before I read this quote from this memo, I do just want to state that we are fully aware of the problematic nature of the word "aliens" instead of using the term undocumented immigrants or unauthorized immigrants. But you are going to hear that term in this episode because it is in a lot of the language that is used by the Trump administration. It has been used by administrations in the past. Okay, so, you know, avoid engaging with, quote unquote, "agitators." And this memo also says, quote, "We are moving to targeted enforcement of aliens with a criminal history. This includes arrests, not just convictions." And then this is in all caps. "All targets must have a criminal nexus." Unquote.
12:58 Nick Capodice? A criminal nexus?
13:01 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, I actually learned a lot because of encountering this word. Nexus just means a link. In this case, an arrest, a charge, a conviction. This is a term that comes up a lot with criminal cases. A defense attorney might challenge the nexus, try to prove, for example, that there was no probable cause for search and seizure, or that a judge should have denied a warrant because of a lack of nexus.
13:25 Nick Capodice? And the administration is now saying there has to be a nexus?
13:28 Hannah McCarthy? Well, on January 29th, 2026, Borders Czar Tom Homan gave a press conference in Minnesota. He said that they were working on a, quote, "drawdown plan," getting more ICE officers working in jails and prisons and fewer on the street. He said agents who did not act professionally would be, quote, "dealt with." He said ICE is focused on threats to public safety and national security, with a caveat, of course.
13:54 Speaker 05 There is not going to be a focus on people who have no other crimes except for their status.
13:58 Speaker 07 If you're in the country legally, you're not, you're never off the table.
14:01 Hannah McCarthy? So in terms of the, quote, "all targets must have a criminal nexus" thing, that would be so big if true.
14:09 Nick Capodice? Why is that?
14:10 Hannah McCarthy? Well, under both Barack Obama's and Joe Biden's administrations, ICE's guidance was to prioritize non-citizens who posed a threat to public safety or national security.
14:22 Nick Capodice? Prioritize, but not like go after exclusively?
14:26 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, there's some wiggle room there. Now, you know, that memo stating "all targets must have a criminal nexus," again, we have no idea if that is an official order or policy, or if it's going to be the new way of doing things. In that press conference I mentioned, the one with Borders Czar Tom Homan, you heard him state that, you know, "nobody who is here undocumented is, quote, 'off the table.'" And while that memo, you know, if it really means anything, would mean a significant change, this administration and its agents and officers have also signaled in both language and action that crime and undocumented immigrant kind of go hand in hand.
15:08 Hannah McCarthy? I'm going to talk about that in a moment, actually, because, Nick, what is ICE's job? So if you look back to the beginning, right, I'm going to read you a quote from the first ever Department of Homeland Security Secretary Julie L. Myers. This is from 2007. She said that ICE's mission was, "to protect the United States and uphold public safety by targeting the people, money, and materials that support terrorists and criminal activities."
15:38 Nick Capodice? I want to make sure I get this right. ICE was established to, if I may put this extremely ham-handedly, to target, like identify, find, deal with, the "bad guys."
15:54 Hannah McCarthy? ICE continues to state that they go after the worst of the worst. And this is a big part of what I am trying to understand with this episode. The president says that ICE is going after criminals.
16:07 Speaker 06 Boy, these are rough characters. These are all criminal, illegal aliens that, in many cases, they're murderers, they're drug lords, drug dealers. They're the mentally insane. Some of them who are brutal killers, they're mentally insane. They're killers, but they're insane.
16:27 Hannah McCarthy? And then this memo comes to light that appears to say, you know, we're pivoting here. We're going to go after criminals, even though that is what, you know, the American public has been told ICE is already doing. And before this memo even came out, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that 70% of non-citizens in custody have been convicted of or charged with a violent crime.
16:52 Speaker 05 What's the breakdown of the percentage of those who you have in custody who have actually committed a criminal offense versus just the civil infraction? Every single individual has committed a crime, but 70% of them have committed or have charges against them on violent crimes and crimes that they are charged with or have been convicted of.
17:11 Nick Capodice? All right, I actually watched this clip. Noem was on Face the Nation, and journalist Margaret Brennan is like, wait, 70%? Because your agency says 47% of detainees have been charged or convicted of a crime.
17:25 Speaker 05 Okay, well, our reporting is that 47%, based on your agency's own numbers, 47% have criminal convictions against them. But let's talk about the other numbers. Which means you're wrong again. Absolutely. We'll get you the correct numbers so you can use them in the future. Well, that's from your agency.
17:41 Hannah McCarthy? Importantly, like, I just want to draw your attention to the fact that that piece of information talks about crime, not violent crime. A violent crime is, and this is according to the Department of Justice, a violent crime happens when, quote, "a victim is harmed or threatened with violence," end quote. This includes sexual assault, robbery, other kinds of assault, and murder.
18:02 Nick Capodice? But Noam said violent crime. Where is that coming from?
18:07 Hannah McCarthy? I will tell you that a lot of people are trying to understand where exactly that is coming from and what period of time Noam might be referencing, and whether she's referencing arrests or detentions. Those are two different things. Not everyone who's arrested ends up in detention. But she was being asked a question about the people currently in ICE custody, the people currently detained, and that was the answer to the question. So, you know, as soon as ICE or DHS releases the data that supports that, I will add a little addendum to this episode. Currently, there are no numbers available from DHS that have been leaked or FOIA requested that remotely suggest that much non-citizen violent crime,
18:49 Hannah McCarthy? be it a conviction or a charge, which are two different things.
18:54 Nick Capodice? All right, the other thing that Noam also said was that everyone detained by ICE has committed a crime.
19:01 Hannah McCarthy? What Noam meant by that is not clear to me, but this does seem like a good time to share with everybody that it is not a crime in and of itself to be an undocumented person in the United States.
19:14 Nick Capodice? And you're not speaking colloquially here. You are speaking literally, Hannah.
19:18 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, it's not like a, "that's not a crime" thing. It's like, this is an actual legal definition. Being undocumented in the United States, which means you do not have a form of legal status, like a visa, is a civil violation. Civil violations have civil penalties. Criminal violations have criminal punishments. Overstaying your visa puts you under the civil violation umbrella. Undocumented status only becomes criminally punishable if someone has already been deported and then reenters, attempts to reenter, or is found within the United States.
19:54 Nick Capodice? And just to be clear, you can be deported if you overstay your visa.
19:58 Hannah McCarthy? Absolutely. That is the civil penalty for the civil violation of being undocumented in the United States. You could also face reentry bans and you could, you know, have future visa applications denied, depending on how long you've overstayed, et cetera. But it is not, again, in and of itself, a crime. Congress has established it as a civil violation and the Supreme Court actually upheld that in a case called Arizona v. United States, when Arizona essentially tried to treat being an undocumented immigrant like a crime.
20:32 Nick Capodice? Hannah, so why is the Secretary of DHS saying everybody in detention has committed a crime? And on top of that, most of them are either guilty of violent crime or facing violent crime charges.
20:44 Hannah McCarthy? Again, Nick, I am really looking forward to the data that explains where that piece of information is coming from. It is really confusing when internal reporting says one thing and the person in charge of the people who did that reporting says something entirely different.
20:59 Nick Capodice? So the administration says this is about criminals. But the data from the administration, or at least the data that's been reported, shows that it's about, well, not just criminals, or criminals as far as the law defines criminals.
21:16 Hannah McCarthy? Right. As opposed to the statement that everyone detained by ICE has committed a crime, which is, according to United States law, how we define a crime, untrue, unless Kristi Noem knows something we don't. Of all the many, many data sets and analyses I have read, and I will post links to those in the show notes, the highest percentage of detainees convicted of or charged with a crime that I could find was in this time period between Trump's inauguration, that was in January of 2025, and October of 2025. So total, that was 64%, 64% of detainees convicted or charged with a crime.
22:02 Hannah McCarthy? And that is according to a PolitiFact analysis. But then, if you look at who ICE was booking into detention as the year went on, fewer and fewer people had that criminal nexus, as they say.
22:21 Nick Capodice? Hannah, how many undocumented people are there in the United States right now?
22:26 Hannah McCarthy? I do not have an exact number for you, but the most recent numbers, this is from the federal government, from state governments, show between 10 and 11 million.
22:35 Nick Capodice? All right. I have seen reports that say this administration has an internal goal of deporting a million people a year. Is that true?
22:44 Hannah McCarthy? Well, that number comes from anonymous sources in the administration, so who can say? But I can tell you that Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller and DHS Secretary, again, Kristi Noem, set a target of 3,000 arrests a day earlier this year, which would be just over a million people over 365 days if everyone arrested was detained, which they are not, and if everyone detained was deported, which they are not.
23:18 Nick Capodice? All right. And how many of those people have a criminal nexus?
23:22 Hannah McCarthy? That I cannot even begin to tell you, but here is another I can tell you. I can tell you that of the people who were booked into ICE detention last year, who either had criminal convictions or charges, and I bring this up because, again, we are talking about what the purpose is here, and the purpose is public safety and national security. Most of them were not charged with or convicted of a violent crime. For the most part, it was either vice, traffic violations, or immigration violations. And again, because it is not a crime to be undocumented in this country, in that case, we are talking about things like crossing the border without going through the proper channels, or being
24:06 Hannah McCarthy? in the country after being deported.
24:08 Nick Capodice? So there are a lot of things, nonviolent things, including traffic violations, that could amount to a criminal nexus.
24:17 Hannah McCarthy? If you want to better understand, by the way, how low-level offenses became a much bigger deal for undocumented immigrants, I warmly, again, recommend that you go back and listen to our first episode on ICE from 2018. There was a 1996 immigration law that really shook things up. Okay, let's take a break.
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28:31 Hannah McCarthy? We're back. This is Civics 101. We're talking about ICE. And before we try to further understand what exactly ICE's job is, just a reminder, Civics 101 is a public radio show. We do not receive any funds from the federal government because there is no longer the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. We rely on contributions from listeners. That is you. If you are someone who is able to contribute to Civics 101 to help keep us going in trying to understand what is going on here, you can always go to our website to make a contribution. That is at civics101podcast.org. Every little bit helps. Thank you so much. It's the same situation that we've seen happening over the past several weeks since the shooting death of Renee
29:16 Speaker 05 Back on January 7th and the shooting of Alex Preddy, one week ago today. Minnesota state and local officials are going to try to argue in court that the federal deployment of immigration agents in Minneapolis is illegal. Two separate hearings today will focus- To a person, to almost a case, with one exception, every time the judges are saying, "You have no right to detain these people," it sort of underscores what we're seeing on the streets.
29:41 Speaker 02 Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frye said he told President Trump that the city would continue cooperating in what he called "real criminal investigations," adding that people should be prosecuted for the crimes they commit, not where they're from.
29:55 Hannah McCarthy? So, back to talking about ICE. We have talked about ICE before, things are different now, we are talking about ICE again. We are in the midst of an immigration crackdown, promised and consistently executed by the Trump administration. The DHS secretary told us recently that everyone who was in ICE's attention at the time was a criminal. The government's own data contradicts that. Recently, there has been a move to de-escalate ICE-related tension following protests and the killing of American citizens and non-citizens alike in Minnesota and elsewhere. So Nick and I are trying to figure out what ICE's job is, what their purpose is.
30:33 Nick Capodice? Yeah, that's what I want to know.
30:34 Hannah McCarthy? All right, so ICE has been around since 2003, and the big goal from the beginning for this agency, within the Department of Homeland Security, a department created in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks, was public safety and national security. As to whether or not that is the actual role ICE plays, that has always been a question, but never a question to the degree that it is today. They have always arrested, deported, and detained both criminal and noncriminal undocumented immigrants. But the numbers, the percentages of noncriminal detentions and on-the-street arrests vary wildly, from Barack Obama's administration to Trump's administration, and then from
31:16 Hannah McCarthy? Joe Biden's administration to Trump's second administration.
31:20 Nick Capodice? As in, I'm just spitballing here. Based on what we've been talking about so far, the numbers of noncriminal arrests and detentions are higher under Trump.
31:30 Hannah McCarthy? That is right. That is an accurate spitball. Both Obama's and Biden's ICE policy had two significant points. Prioritize terrorists, national security threats, violent criminals, and exercise prosecutorial discretion.
31:45 Nick Capodice? And what does that mean?
31:46 Hannah McCarthy? Meaning, don't go after everybody. Don't get distracted by the millions of noncriminal undocumented immigrants. Focus on the ones who pose some kind of safety threat. And it seems that ICE did not like this. In 2012, for example, Obama was sued by ICE agents for preventing them from deporting DACA recipients. Do you remember DACA, Nick?
32:08 Nick Capodice? I absolutely do. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. It was a policy that protected certain undocumented immigrants from deportation if they'd come to the United States when they were children.
32:19 Hannah McCarthy? Right. ICE agents said that Obama was stopping them from enforcing immigration law. They also said that his, quote, "prosecutorial discretion" policy made it hard for them to do their job. Now, I do just need to add here that Obama was labeled by critics as the, quote, "deporter in chief" for removing more undocumented people from this country than any other president in US history. Now, reports say that Trump has yet to surpass the numbers under Obama, though he does appear to have loftier goals. So we will see if that changes. My point is, lawsuit or no, immigration law enforcement was very much in full swing under Obama. Agents and officers were able to do a big part of their job.
33:03 Nick Capodice? Hannah, what is their job?
33:09 Hannah McCarthy? Well, you know, I guess I would say it's not that much different from any other workplace. What ICE's job is very much depends on what their boss says it is. When Trump was first running for office, he employed a lot of anti-immigration rhetoric. Now, whether that was exactly what ICE liked about Trump, I don't know. But I can tell you that their union endorsed him for president. And then, when Trump first became president, he got rid of that prosecutorial discretion thing. In fact, he decided to leave a whole lot up to ICE agents. They could target not just people who had committed a crime, but those who they deemed to, quote, "have committed acts which constitute a chargeable criminal offense," unquote, or who, in ICE's judgment,
33:54 Hannah McCarthy? otherwise posed a risk to public safety or national security.
33:57 Nick Capodice? So essentially, they got to decide who the real threat was.
34:01 Hannah McCarthy? Essentially. And under the current administration, you can find a lot of ICE policy in the executive order called Protecting the American People Against Invasion.
34:15 Hannah McCarthy? Nick, do you remember HSI?
34:18 Nick Capodice? Homeland Security Investigations, right? In 2018, some of them were like, "Hey, we are not the same thing as ICE officers. We want to make that clear."
34:28 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, I want to read you another quote from that letter that they wrote to the DHS secretary in 2018. Again, some agents from HSI explained, quote, "HSI investigations have been perceived as targeting undocumented aliens instead of the transnational criminal organizations that facilitate cross-border crimes impacting our communities and national security," unquote. In that executive order from Donald Trump that I'm talking about, he writes, quote, "The Secretary of Homeland Security shall ensure that the primary mission of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations Division is the enforcement of the provisions of the INA
35:12 Hannah McCarthy? and other federal laws related to the illegal entry and lawful presence of aliens in the United States and the enforcement of the purposes of this order."
35:22 Nick Capodice? And what is the INA?
35:24 Hannah McCarthy? That is the Immigration and Nationality Act. I think we should probably do an episode about it.
35:29 Nick Capodice? Okay, so here, Trump is saying that DHS will make sure that the primary mission of HSI is enforcement of a legal entry and unlawful presence.
35:40 Nick Capodice? That sounds like targeting undocumented people, the thing those agents were worried about being perceived as doing back in 2018.
35:49 Hannah McCarthy? Right. In 2018, there were HSI agents who were worried that the public, the press, and the law enforcement agencies they needed to work with would think that they were doing the same thing as enforcement officers. Now, I don't know enough about HSI policy or internal direction right now to say for sure, but this executive order suggests that now they are supposed to do the same job. But what that job is?
36:14 Nick Capodice? Yes, Hannah, please. What is their job? What is it?
36:17 Hannah McCarthy? Okay, there is some language in this executive order about cartels, human and drug trafficking, transnational criminal organizations. You know, that's the bad stuff, right? Perhaps if you want to find the worst of the worst in here, that is where you find it. But before you get to that section on these people who may be causing harm in the United States, there is this section. Trump writes that the executive departments and agencies, quote, "shall employ all lawful means to ensure the faithful execution of the immigration laws of the United States against all inadmissible and removable aliens," unquote.
36:59 Nick Capodice? All inadmissible and removable aliens. And again, to be clear, the penalty for being undocumented in the United States is deportation.
37:10 Hannah McCarthy? That is correct. So the term removable aliens applies to all undocumented immigrants in the United States. You know, this is barring a couple of options you have if you actually get to go to immigration court. But yeah, and ICE is fully legally permitted to identify, arrest, detain, and deport undocumented immigrants regardless of criminal history or charges.
37:33 Nick Capodice? So I think, Hannah, if we want to figure out what ICE's job is, we have to ask, in lieu of Congress passing or amending laws, what does the president tell them they should be doing and what they should not be doing?
37:48 Hannah McCarthy? Which is why, Nick, this could be a moment to watch. You know, Trump did replace top Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino, who had been commanding ICE operations in Minnesota, with Border Czar Tom Homan. Now, of course, this is following massive backlash and escalating tensions after the deadly shootings of Renee Good and Alex Preddy. But in terms of that de-escalation, Homan has said that change is contingent on cooperation. What kind of cooperation remains to be seen? Homan has also said that, quote, "mass deportation will continue." The administration seems to be suggesting a possible shift in its approach with ICE, but Trump has not revoked that sweeping executive order that I mentioned.
38:31 Hannah McCarthy? The Department of Homeland Security has not said if or how their operation is changing. One thing that has never changed, though, in terms of ICE's job description, in terms of the way that administrations have talked about ICE, is this focus on public safety. Who and what ICE is keeping the public safe from and how they go about it? That is not up to the public. That is up to the federal government and to the President of the United States.
39:15 Hannah McCarthy? This episode was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy, with Nick Cappadicei. Marina Hanke is our producer. Rebecca LaVoy is our executive producer. Special thanks to Heidi Altman, the Vice President of Policy at the National Immigration Law Center, who spoke with me to help me understand this very complex picture. Music in this episode comes from Epidemic Sound. There is a lot that did not go into this episode, but we here at Civics 101 are going to keep trying to understand as much as we can and share what we learn with you. If you have questions for us, you can submit them at our website, civics101podcast.org. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.
39:59 Hannah McCarthy? What does it really take to start a startup? I'm David Aronsonko, entrepreneur, investor, and the host of Lead Forward. In each episode, I go behind the scenes with successful founders.
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