Who are the new deportation police?
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This is On Point. I'm Anthony Brooks, in for Meghna Chakrabarty. The Trump administration is employing the full power of the federal government to crack down on illegal immigration, drafting officers from multiple federal agencies to chase down and arrest migrants who are already in the country.

One of those arrests occurred last April in Kennet, Missouri, population 10,000. Officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, shackled a woman named Carol Mayorga and placed her in the back of a van. They handcuffed me and my waist, my leg, and took me in the van. And then the van was so dark, you cannot see anything.

Carol's legal name is Ming Lee Hui. Originally from Hong Kong, she entered the U.S. in 2004 on a tourist visa. Carol overstayed her visa, but she eventually got authorization to work legally in the U.S. after telling a court she was escaping abuse by her mother. She worked for several years at a local family restaurant. Then, at an appointment to renew her work permit, ICE officers detained her.

When Carol spoke to NPR's Midwest newsroom from jail last month, she said she was worried about her three kids, ages 14, 12, and 7. My middle son, he make all straight A. He make top 10 on his class. My daughter, she love the school. I don't want, I don't want to mix up their life. They're doing so good here.

Carol was released from jail last week and could still face deportation, though her lawyer plans to sue. Carol is among the tens of thousands of people arrested and detained by ICE in recent months. The Trump administration has said it wants to arrest 3,000 people per day and deport 1 million people per year.

To meet that demand, the White House is pulling in agents from across the government, from the ATF, the DEA, the FBI, and the U.S. Marshals Service, among other agencies, to track down and arrest migrants. Increasingly, those arrests target groups of people. In San Diego last month, federal agents wearing face coverings and carrying weapons raided a popular Italian restaurant.

Heavily armed agents can be seen in full tactical gear as cars block the streets off. In this video, you can hear loud booms and sirens as community members surrounded their cars. According to San Diego station KFMB-TV, four people were detained, three from Mexico, one from Colombia, who were working as dishwashers and servers. Protesters upset by the arrest took to the street outside the restaurant.

Pedro Rios with the American Foreign Service Committee was there and watched as people were taken away in handcuffs. The agents fired sound grenades, flashbang grenades at the crowd. KFMB reported that federal agents claimed 19 restaurant employees, or roughly half the staff, had fake green cards. The push for mass arrests and deportations have sparked protests across the country, including in Los Angeles this past weekend.

There, Trump is now called in the National Guard and the U.S. Marines to confront the protesters. This hour, we're looking at how Trump is reshaping federal law enforcement in his push for mass deportations. Nick Miroff is in Los Angeles and he joins us now. He's a staff writer at The Atlantic where he covers immigration. And Nick, thanks for joining On Point. Good to have you.

My pleasure, Anthony. Good to be with you. Yeah, so let's start with what's going on in Los Angeles right now. Tell us about the state of things. Are there protests going on? Give us the latest. Sure. I'm in downtown L.A. right now. I've been here the past two days. And most of the protest activity has been focused on a very small area of downtown around the federal building where ICE has its offices. That's about a block from L.A. City Hall.

And on Sunday, the protesters blocked the southbound lanes of 101 and set several Waymo self-driving vehicles on fire. Those images were the ones that made a lot of the headlines and captured the imagery and got the administration officials really threatening more severe resistance.

a more severe response. I should say, you know, a lot of people who have came out to protest, I would say there were thousands there in downtown yesterday, were doing so peacefully, calling for ICE to get out of L.A. But there has certainly been an edgy, rowdier, you know, element to the protests. And then, you know, again, yesterday, there was another crowd outside L.A.

standing off against National Guard troops who were really just blocking the entrances to the federal buildings and kind of guarding the buildings.

But then LAPD and California Highway Patrol in a much larger presence. And then they began clearing those protesters starting in the late afternoon. I see. Now, as we mentioned, President Trump called in the National Guard. He's also sent 700 U.S. Marines to Los Angeles. What is Trump saying about why he's doing that? What's the administration's thinking here?

I think that the administration wants to try to make a point that California's authorities, elected officials, namely Governor Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, can't control the city on their own and they need the federal government to step in. This is a way of kind of imposing the administration's

uh, will on, on a blue, a blue city in a blue state that, you know, is where his policies and his immigration crackdown is, uh, is very unpopular. Right. Yeah. Really making a point in a blue state around an issue that he ran on and, and, uh,

feels like a lot of Americans care about. So we're talking this hour about how President Trump is drafting agents from across the federal government to aid his deportation efforts. So that means it's not just ICE agents making arrests, but it's also DEA agents, agents from the FBI, Homeland Security investigations, among others.

How is this approach to confronting protesters in LA by calling in the National Guard, the Marines, linked to this overall effort? Can you sort of describe the connection there?

Sure. I mean, what the administration is doing across the United States is very aggressive. You know, what Trump has laid out is the most aggressive immigration crackdown we've ever seen. I mean, he literally said on the campaign trail that he wanted the biggest mass deportation campaign ever. And of course, that was going to produce a backlash and the backlash was going to be biggest ever.

in places like Los Angeles, in, you know, U.S. cities that have large immigrant populations that have developed for decades in this kind of balance in which people who come to this country without authorization and who work here can end up being contributing members of society and spend their lives raising families here and, you know,

For the most part, as long as they didn't get into some sort of criminal trouble with law enforcement, then they could make a life here. And that has been all, you know, dramatically upended by this campaign, especially as it widens and tries to pick up people who haven't committed crimes and, you know, who are

Like what we saw here, you know, standing outside the Home Depot, you know, looking for work. And so, you know, responding to that backlash and the protests that it triggers are a big challenge for law enforcement. And I think Trump, by mobilizing National Guard, gets to play the role of, you know, law and order president for the rest of the country, for his supporters in particular. Right.

What are you hearing from protesters on the streets of L.A.? What are they saying about seeing members of the National Guard and U.S. Marines in the streets of Los Angeles?

Well, I should say we haven't seen the U.S. Marines deployed on the streets yet. Just they're very rumored that they're en route, you know, was certainly on the minds of people yesterday who I spoke to at the protest. And the National Guard troops, again, were basically there to protect the federal building that houses the ICE offices that had been, you know, defaced with graffiti and that type of thing over the past couple of days.

But, you know, most of the engagement with the protesters, the clearing of the streets, the flashbang grenades, the tear gas, that type of stuff to clear the freeway, that's all been LAPD and California Highway Patrol, you know, with the support of some other local law enforcement agencies. So ironically, it's, you know, Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass,

whose forces are really responsible for engaging directly with the protesters so far. Right. And they're making the case that they have this situation under control. And in fact, Governor Newsom has called the use of active duty Marines illegal and said he would sue to prevent their deployment. Can you say a little bit more about Newsom's view on what's happening in his state?

Yeah, I mean, what Trump has done is to try to federalize the California National Guard. That's the first time since 1965 that a president has done that to a state's National Guard troops. And they're basically taking them under federal command and making them, you know, U.S. government troops rather than California National Guard troops.

Governor Newsom is suing and saying that that was an overreach. And, you know, I think for the time being, having them just protecting federal buildings certainly takes a little bit of a burden off of LAPD.

It allows the police to do, you know, some of their other work. There was some looting here in downtown L.A. overnight that everyone is just kind of waking up to. And so I don't want to paint too rosy of a picture to make it sound like there's no challenge here for the police to face. And certainly when you get, you know, large crowds of people and people really riled up.

then this kind of thing can happen. But if we were to see National Guard troops going out into the street and starting to engage protesters, which could happen today, I think that would really take things to another level. - Yeah, and we should note that we're having this conversation at 10:15 a.m. East Coast time on Tuesday, so it's early where you are in Los Angeles. What are you gonna be looking out for as this day gets up and running in Los Angeles?

I want to head out onto the streets to see some of the places that were looted. And then the main thing I'm going to be looking for is whether a large group of protesters will gather again downtown at these federal buildings, you know, whether the National Guard and the police have established a larger security perimeter to keep people away. And then if the crowd is going to continue to grow in size or if people are going to start to maybe hang back.

All right. That's Nick Miroff, staff writer at The Atlantic. Thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. And take care out there. Be safe. Thank you. My pleasure. And we are talking about how the Trump administration is really reorganizing American law enforcement in its campaign to crack down on illegal immigration. We're going to really dive into that issue coming up. Stay with us. I'm Anthony Brooks. This is On Point.

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Joining us now is Ted Hessen. He's a reporter who covers immigration for Reuters. And Ted, it's good to have you. Thanks for joining us. Hi, Anthony. Thank you for having me. So Trump has a pretty big goal here. He wants to arrest 3,000 people a day, deport a million people a year. Is he going to get there?

This is a really challenging endeavor, and it's what President Trump promised on his campaign, and he's really made it a central part of his administration. They took office really trying what they were describing as a whole-of-government approach to deportations.

And that meant really focusing the Homeland Security Department on the issue, but also pulling resources from other parts of the federal government and asking those agencies to focus on this. Whether he can accomplish it or not is another question. The administration and Republicans are asking for an enormous sum of money right now for immigration enforcement in the spending bill that's being debated in Congress at the moment and was previously passed in the House of Representatives.

And I think if that funding is delivered, then perhaps this goal becomes more plausible. If not, it could remain a challenge. Right. So I'm intrigued, and this is sort of what we want to focus on, this idea of pulling in agents from other federal agencies across the federal government to try to make this goal achievable. Can you talk a little bit about that? Which agents, from which agencies are being drafted for this cause?

Well, first of all, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, is essentially divided into two halves, and half of those are enforcement officers, the ones who are out making arrests of people in the country illegally and set

setting them for deportation and the other half are what's Homeland Security investigations, which is Isis investigative arm and historically that Investigative arm has focused on more serious crimes transnational crimes child exploitation drug crimes that cross borders and

Since Trump's taken office, there's really been a move to redirect that agency to focus on immigration work. And in some cases, that means detailing officers to actually assist with ICE arrests and go out, you know, in the early morning to arrest people. And in other cases, it means redirecting some of those agents.

investigative efforts they have to have more of an intersection with immigration. I see. Now, is there pushback from within ICE? In other words, those people who are doing those longer term, what some people might regard as more serious investigations around transnational terrorism, for example. Is there pushback to this idea that they're being drafted essentially to go out in the streets and arrest people?

Well, you're talking of an agency of thousands of people and hundreds who've been moved to direct immigration work. So I don't want to speak for everyone. And I don't think I could do that. But that said, we've certainly heard some degree of discomfort with it. I mean, you can imagine it's people who took a job thinking they'd be doing one thing, which is complex investigative work, serious criminals and being asked to do something quite different.

which is go out sometimes, and as we've seen recently, arrest people who may just be in their workplace or may just be at the Home Depot waiting for work. And it's a really shift. And I think that for some people, they're not comfortable with it or not happy with it.

And historically, this investigative arm, HSI, has wanted to distance itself to some degree from ICE because of its reputation and the contentious nature of the work that it does. Right. In fact, later this hour, we're going to be talking to a former agent from HSI who left ICE just for this reason. So we'll be getting that perspective in a moment.

Ted, I'd love to, if you could sort of explain what other agencies are involved. For example, the FBI. And I'm reading here from an article from NBC.com, and it says that the FBI, where it was once unusual for special agents to go on immigration-related law enforcement operations...

According to multiple current and former law enforcement officials, field offices around the country have been ordered to assign significantly more agents to assist with ICE operations to arrest people on administrative immigration warrants. So that's folks from the FBI. Who else is being asked to get involved in this effort?

That's right. We've seen the FBI, as you mentioned, and it's really been since the start of the Trump administration, this effort to pull resources from other federal agencies. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is one where there's been a significant amount of staff that's been assigned to work on immigration cases. Also, the Drug Enforcement Administration is another place. Also, some other agencies where you might not have expected it pulling resources.

law enforcement officers from the Treasury Department, also asking State Department staffers to work on immigration work. So there's really been kind of a broad effort to pull people across the federal government to bolster ISIS resources and to, you know,

give them more capacity to make these arrests and deportations. So while it gives ICE more capacity to make these arrests, it also raises the question, what about the work that these folks were doing before? I mean, who's doing that work? And is that a concern?

I think what you've seen with the Trump administration is immigration and illegal immigration is a major priority for them. And they're willing to sacrifice other areas of federal government and including federal law enforcement. President Trump took office. He said illegal immigration was a national emergency right off the bat.

And it really set the stage for this redirection of federal funding, federal resources to address it. Now, that said, there have been some questions raised about spending in this area. And I mentioned before this bill in Congress that would devote upwards of $160 billion

billion for immigration enforcement. And even some Republicans in the Senate have raised questions about the spending there and said that it may be excessive and that it might be just wasting money on an issue that President Trump does seem to have confronted. Certainly, he's taken an aggressive approach to it and that just pouring more money and federal government resources into it may not be the answer.

Reading a quote here from Abigail Jackson, White House spokesperson. She said in a statement that, quote, immigration security is national security. She went on to say enforcing our immigration laws and removing illegal aliens is one big way President Trump is making America safe again. Ted Hessen, stand by. I want to introduce Jessica Vaughn. She's director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. And she joins us now. Jessica, good to have you.

Hi, Anthony. And hi, Ted. And Jessica, I understand that you feel pretty good about what the Trump administration is doing. But let me ask you sort of the first question that I asked Ted. Is the goal of a million deportations a year achievable?

Well, I think it's pretty ambitious, but we have to put this in the context of what the country has experienced over the preceding four years. And we've experienced an unprecedented surge of illegal migration, right?

Probably about 9 million people have arrived outside of legal channels. So this is no doubt a crisis that needs to be addressed. The strain on American communities has been huge. So I think it's appropriate to be focusing on this, making it a priority and drawing all the resources possible from the federal government and even state governments to help

considering what a problem it's been. And, you know, we'll have to see if it's, if the funding issue is addressed in the spending bill. But I also think the, you know, the institutional cooperation is a good thing over the long run. And by the institutional cooperation, you're talking about the point that I was talking about with Ted and Nick Miroff earlier in the hour, and that is drawing in resources from other agencies, from ATF, from the FBI, as well as agents like

from HSI, for example, which is supposed to be focused on things like transnational crime. That's a good idea, according, in your view?

It is a good idea, and many of these agents and officers have been used to working together on federal task forces, on counterterrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking, gangs, and so on. And the people who are the highest priority for ICE right now happen to be a lot of individuals involved in those kinds of crimes. So I certainly am not hearing a lot of grumbling from ICE

I'm sure there are some people who may be, you know, a little bit unhappy about it, but I think most of them see this as a common mission on behalf of public safety. Yeah.

Is there a risk, though, and I brought this up with Ted, and we have heard, and it might be fair to characterize it as some grumbling. Maybe it's a little more widespread, but maybe that's a good way to characterize it for the context of this conversation. Is there a risk in your view, though, that this will come at the cost of other important law enforcement work? In other words, if you have an agent at HSI who might have been focused on transnational terrorism, which is an important issue for sure,

and they're being essentially drafted to go out on the street and arrest people, doesn't that come at a cost that we should be concerned about?

Well, I'm not sure that that's really happening. I think there's a lot of overlap in the work that these officers and agents have already had. So it's not clear that there's a cost yet. I think that the view from the White House and from the leaders of these enforcement agencies is that

You know, this surge of illegal migration that we've had has created new threats within our country.

need to be addressed and that that's a high priority. So, you know, that's why they have to be nimble and shift resources and attention to shifting threats and vulnerabilities. And that's what's happening here. Ted Hessen, let me bring you back into this conversation. Respond to what Jessica said. Does that sound reasonable to you as someone who covers this issue? How do you respond to what Jessica is saying?

Well, I should start off by saying the Trump administration has not said explicitly how many federal agents have been moved from each agency to assist immigration work. So we don't have a completely clear portrait of it. And beyond that, as I mentioned before, there are those who are doing direct immigration work, literally just helping out immigrants.

ICE as they go and make their typical arrests that they would be doing, and then those who've just redirected the work they're doing to focus more on immigration. So it would be, it's really complicated to take all that into effect and then to say, what's the work they're not doing? And I think we don't have a good idea of that. And you can't say, especially, I mean, look at HSI, the mission of trying to hunt down child trafficking or child exploitation online.

We don't know what they're not finding because they're not sitting there doing those complex investigations. So I don't think it's so easy to say what's being missed. I think we can assume that something is. And particularly when you have...

federal agents who've been detailed to work with ICE and I've seen it myself firsthand and they're essentially there sometimes doing grunt work, you know, assisting with processing someone who's been arrested. They're just one extra body who has the law enforcement authority to make that immigration arrest. So I think it's clear that something's missing because you pulled somebody out of their job and you sent them somewhere else, but we don't know exactly what it is. Right.

Ted, I wanted to follow up, and I'll ask you this as well, Jessica, but Ted, let me stick with you. And that is a question about accountability around some of these arrests. I covered a story a few weeks back in southern New Hampshire.

about some ICE arrests at a restaurant in the southern part of the state. They were carried out by ICE agents as well as agents from DEA, which is sort of central to what we're talking about here. The local community was very concerned because nobody really knew why these agents were in town. It surprised a lot of people. There wasn't a lot of information about it. And when I tried to find out, I put out calls to the DEA and to ICE.

DEA responded immediately and said, oh, no, that's an ICE operation. We don't have anything to say about it. Our agents were there, but we weren't involved. I tried to reach out to ICE. They wouldn't respond. So there was, because the responsibility for these arrests was sort of fanned out across two agencies, there was a question of who's responsible and who's accountable in terms of what actions are being taken. And I'm wondering if you've encountered anything like that or what your thoughts are about that.

I mean, when you see an ICE operation, they're the lead agency that's organizing it and running it, at least in what I've seen in my experience. So at a minimum, they should be responding and speaking to it. And I think that's a question of accountability and transparency. Despite all the focus on President Trump's immigration agenda,

The Department of Homeland Security and the Trump administration have put out very little statistics and information about the actual arrests that they're making. So there is kind of a question about what exactly is going on, the scope of it. And I think even regular reports that had been issued for years under previous administrations have stopped at this point. So I think it does raise some questions about what's going on. And with

Particularly with things being sped up so much and pushing ICE to do more, there is kind of a frantic scramble by the media and others to learn about what's happened. And it's not always so quick to easy to do it in a timely fashion. You know, from those other agencies perspective, you would think they would also want to weigh in on the behavior of their agents and what exactly they're doing when they're out there.

Of course, you know, that may be their discretion to just defer to the lead agency. You probably know in law enforcement that they'll sometimes do that. Sure. Jessica Vaughn, your response to this general idea of where we're sort of witnessing this very ambitious program, as Ted said, zooming along at light speed. And sometimes it's not always clear what exactly is going on.

Well, I agree with Ted. I would like to see some more transparency and statistics released on not just the operations, individual operations, but how things are progressing generally in terms of arrests and deportations. But I have seen ICE be pretty proactive in releasing information on individuals, but

that have been picked up in certain operations when there has been some disinformation in the media. So, you know, that's helpful, but that's sort of on a case-by-case basis, really not giving us the big picture, which I think is important for everyone to have. Jessica, we started this hour talking about the situation in Los Angeles and President Trump, of course, calling in the National Guard as well as deploying active service Marines.

As someone who is concerned about this issue of dealing with illegal immigration in this country, is that an important set of resources to bring to this problem? Because arguably, I mean, from Governor Newsom's point of view, it's sort of a distraction and it's creating a lot of political noise, but not necessarily helping the situation on the ground. What's your view?

Well, I think it is appropriate to bring in these resources to protect the federal building and to protect the public and to give ICE space to do its job. And I think it's important for people to understand also why it is that ICE has been active in making street arrests in Los Angeles in particular. And that's because they are not able to get...

cooperation because of the state sanctuary policies and the local sanctuary policies to make their arrests in safe places like jails. I mean, over the last two and a half years,

More than 13,000 ICE detainers have been blocked and ICE couldn't get custody of people. So that's why they're on the streets more is because of these sanctuary policies. I hope that will change. All right. We're going to talk about those sanctuary policies a little bit later. Jessica Vaughn, Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. Thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate it.

Thank you, Anthony. And Ted Hessen, reporter at Reuters, stick with us. We're going to come back, talk more about this after a break. I'm Anthony Brooks. This is On Point.

Ted, I want to pick up on a point that Jessica Vaughn raised talking about so-called sanctuary communities, states and cities that don't want to cooperate, have their local law enforcement folks cooperate with federal immigration officials. And, you know, this really raises, I mean, there are lots of questions about Trump's push for mass deportations, but at the end of the day,

Do you get the sense that this issue continues to be a political win for the Trump administration? That is, crossings on the southern border are down. And to the extent that Democrats are pushing back, you're hearing from blue states like California and like Massachusetts, where I'm reporting from now, where the message is about sanctuary communities and how local law enforcement shouldn't cooperate with ICE, which is a politically difficult needle to thread, it seems to me. I mean...

It seems like it's difficult to say we're for the rule of law, but we don't want our local law enforcement to help federal agents uphold the rule of law. What's your view on this sort of thorny issue, this thorny political issue for Democrats?

I think, well, we can start off with the issue for President Trump. He ran on this issue and it was a priority during his first term in office and even more so now. And when we look at polling, we see that he's polling better on immigration as a topic than some other really important areas for him, such as the economy or his tariffs. So it does seem like something he's he

he and his administration are willing to come back to and focus on. Now, that said, when you dig into that polling, quite a bit of that support is coming from Republicans in his base. So while he may be doing better on that, it's mostly from the Republican side of things. And then, you

And, you know, on this issue of sanctuary cities, which is more complex, I think, first of all, there's a bit of a debate over what is a sanctuary. The Trump administration about two weeks ago or so came out with a list of places that it said were sanctuaries. And it received a lot of pushback, both from the cities themselves and from sheriffs around the country who said, how did they end up on this list? First of all, they really

had no idea. They had never passed a sanctuary law and they weren't really clear what the criteria was. And it became actually a bit thorny politically for the Trump administration, which actually pulled down the list of cities and hasn't reposted it since for about a week now.

So it can be complex. And we should also come back to the idea of these sanctuaries. For the most part, the main thing that's happening there is that they are not cooperating with ICE to alert them when someone's being released from their jail who's in the country illegally. And what ICE is asking for is full cooperation so that they can come to the jail and pick that person up and

process them potentially for deportation. So that's really the crux of things. And I'm wondering more and more now as these ICE operations expand and they become broader, how much that can be

used as a rationale for why ICE needs to go into the streets. I know Jessica said that, and it's the Trump administration's talking point that they wouldn't have to come into Los Angeles and Chicago and New York if these cities just cooperated with them and released people in jails. Well, a lot of the people being picked up off the street aren't coming out of jails. They're people with no criminal records in the U.S.,

So it is a much different dynamic. And it's not clear that even if they were cooperating, would that mean ICE wouldn't be coming into the streets and making those non-criminal arrests? Right. It's a really good point, a really good question. Ted, stand by. I want to introduce John Tobon. He's a former assistant director of Homeland Security Investigations in Honolulu. He retired in January 2025. And John Tobon, thanks for joining us. It's really good to have you.

Hi, Anthony. Thank you for having me on. So we wanted to talk to you because one of the focuses of this hour is, you know, really how the Trump administration is reorganizing law enforcement in the U.S. as he focuses on this campaign to detain and deport folks. And you have an interesting point of view about this because

You spent more than 30 years, if I have this correctly, 30 years in your career. You worked for Homeland Security Investigations, before that U.S. Customs. And so start off by telling us what was the focus of your work.

Well, and I think you've covered it already. The focus of my work as part of the U.S. Customs Service and the Office of Investigations and then later on Homeland Security Investigations was transnational crime. Our goal was to find violations of criminal law that find contraband that cross borders, whether it was a virtual border or physical border, and obviously deal with

with the individuals behind that. And when I say that, I'm talking about major cartels. So HSI and the U.S. Customs Service have had a role, a very important role, in taking down most of the major cocaine cartels and identifying people

high-level transnational criminal organizations since the inception of the agency in 1789. So this is not something that we, you know, that has only been going on for 10, 20 years or even since the beginning of DHS as a department. So when you were working, doing this work for HSI most recently, your focus wasn't making arrests of people who were in the country illegally, for example, right? It was absolutely not. And it's not to say that we did not support the

immigration mission because our focus was criminal investigations. Our focus was to look at the networks that are utilized and the individuals that run these networks that allow people to be smuggled in, that provide fake documents to these individuals, and also focus on the employers that look for this population who

to really compete unfairly in the marketplace. That was our focus. So how did that focus shift with the start of the second Trump administration and its push to ramp up deportations? Did it shift? It shifted pretty suddenly. And obviously a lot of it was driven because of the rhetoric that was heard on the campaign trail.

It was also through the experience of those of us that were around in 2016 during the first Trump administration and the shift that we saw there. And we had a feeling, and in some instances we're told, that this time it would be significantly different. And it has been. And describe that in a little more detail. How is it different? There would be no room for

for trying to reason or trying to dissuade people from doing what they wanted to do. That it was, this is what has to be done, this is what they want done, and nobody's asking for their opinion. - But, sorry to push you a little bit here, but when you say that they wanted things done in a certain way, what are you referring to specifically? What kind of work here?

That the focus of the agency would shift to immigration work and a lot of the other programs that we were focusing on would go away. And one of the biggest things that went away was we had achieved a level of independence because HSI as an agency did not and has not wanted to be associated with any type of civil immigration enforcement.

And so this is also something that is not new. This goes back to the previous Trump administration. And even before then, when our goal has always been to separate from immigration and customs enforcement so that we can conduct our investigations and do our work without having to deal with

all of the negative connotations that come about as a result of that association with ICE and with civil immigration enforcement. Got it. So you worked a full career and then decided to retire. So, you know, working 31 years, you know, you're within your rights. Anyone would say, wow, well done. Thank you for your service. That makes a lot of sense that you've decided to move on. But did your decision to retire have to do with ICE?

this concern about the shift, this shift of priorities? Yes, it came into play. So I retired as assistant director for countering transnational organized crime. And so I was getting ready to move back to D.C. to take over that role on a permanent basis.

And it's as we have seen, that is a portion of the agency, that is a role that has not been the priority when it was the priority before. So I went from being the assistant director of the tip of the spear, if you will,

to being the assistant director of a portion of the agency that was not going to be a focus or even a priority. Right. And are you worried about that? I mean, to the extent that with this new focus on rounding up, deporting, you know, trying to get to a million deportations here, what important work are you concerned about the important work that is not being done because of that new focus?

Absolutely. And the other point which hasn't been mentioned and was brought up when you guys were discussing the collaboration between all the federal agencies, every single federal agency, every single one is facing and has been facing for the last five or 10 years significant staffing shortages. So everybody was already operating with less than they could to do the job that they were assigned to do.

And so now we are adding this additional requirement, but we're not bringing in additional personnel. So there is a lot of important work that isn't being done. And this is actually where the rhetoric does not meet the statistics in a lot of senses, right? The number of criminal aliens is not the number that individuals had spoken about or had promised.

And so therefore it was like, okay, that's not enough. Let's just go get the number to meet the number. And so that means that, you know, important drug trafficking investigations, human smuggling, human trafficking, cyber crime investigations, fraud investigations, financial crime and money laundering investigations are not being, they're not being investigated, which is bad enough, but they're also not being funded.

Because the funding is being siphoned off from those programs to support this effort. And this is an expensive effort. Yeah. Because when you have individuals out there Saturdays and Sundays, which now the agency is working seven days a week...

labor laws require you to pay Sunday pay, overtime and all of these. So it actually becomes a very, very expensive endeavor to take on. Got it. Ted Hessen, I'm wondering what you're thinking as you listen to John Tobon. What comes to your mind as someone who's been reporting on this for a while?

Well, I think in the longer term, there will be morale questions, certainly for those federal officers who were redirected from their home agencies to assist with this work. And if it

keeps going on for months or even years. There'll be questions as to whether they want to keep doing it. And I think there are also questions about the tempo of the work, even for the core ICE agents who are doing it. As John mentioned, being asked to work through weekends. Some people like the overtime and some don't want to be working, you know, six, seven days straight. So I think there will be questions as to, you know, how things go forward. And one thing we should keep in mind, this

bill that's in Congress right now that would really super fund immigration enforcement would take ISIS staff from about 20,000 people, a little more than that right now, and add 10,000 more ICE officers. So there'd be a question, you know, can you hire that many? Are there that many people interested in jumping into this work? And John may be equipped to answer it a

But I think that they'll be faced with some challenges in the longer term if this is going to be a permanent redirection where you have HSI.

mostly focusing on immigration work and other federal agencies redirecting some of their resources towards it as well. You know, will people want to keep doing that job if that's not what they signed up for? Sure. Yeah. John, respond to that. I mean, do you think the people are out there to do that? And by the way, just to clarify, when Ted was referring to that bill, it's that one big, beautiful bill. It's the sort of Republican blueprint for Trump's agenda, which includes Biden's

big money for immigration enforcement. But John, respond to what Ted was talking about. I'm particularly interested in this idea of it raises questions of morale within the agency, challenges morale within the agency. So there have been morale issues within HSI because of the association with ICE since March 1st of 2003. Wow. So this came with the agency. There was a lot of issues with

legacy immigration special agents and legacy U.S. Customs special agents because it was a different culture and it was different training requirements and different qualifications to get those jobs. So the morale issue is sort of, is built into, is baked into the cake, if you will. In terms of the process of hiring large numbers of individuals, this is not a position where you go through two interviews and then you show up and you do your work.

there are several weeks, months of training at a location that has already space limitation. So to become an HSI special agent,

The process of getting hired on is about a year and a half, which includes a background investigation, which includes all sorts of preliminary checks. And then it requires a four-month stay at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glencoe, Georgia.

And there you go through a process, you go through two separate phases where you can actually fail out because you don't meet the physical requirements or because you do not meet the academic requirements. And then you come out into the workforce.

I oversaw our academy when I was assistant director for CTOC within HSI. And I can tell you that the capacity of the academy to provide seats for us to put people through training is less than 1,000 a year.

because of the intensity, the length, and obviously you're going to have a high failure rate because the standards are very high. All right. So, John, we're going to have to stop there, but we take the point. Big challenges here to come up with the personnel, and this is all related to big shifts in priorities at the federal level.

John Tobon, former assistant director of Homeland Security Investigations in Honolulu. Thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciated your perspective on this. It was an important one to have. Thank you. And Ted Hessen, reporter covering immigration for Reuters. Ted, thank you for joining us today. It was great having you as well. Thank you for having me. I'm Anthony Brooks. This is On Point.

Support for this podcast comes from It's Revolutionary, a podcast from Massachusetts 250. Listen on for the story of one drag king's self-expression, pride, and transformation in Northampton, Massachusetts. You're listening to It's Revolutionary, a podcast celebrating 250 years since the shot heard around the world was fired right here in Massachusetts. I'm Jay Feinstein. ♪

From revolution to revolution, we're exploring the people and places in Massachusetts that shape America. Today, we found ourselves in Northampton, Massachusetts, home of some pretty rad rainbow crosswalks. They're nothing small. They're pretty, it's a pretty chunky, very obvious rainbow. That's Ross, better known as the drag king Victor Evangelica. I

I carry the spirit of Victor everywhere I go. He spreads the good word. I met up with him at the Cafe T-Roots on Main Street, the city's main drag, to talk about how Northampton might be revolutionary as an oasis of queer life. I want to make sure they know that they can bother us for food. Of course, after we ordered some delicious food. Oh, thank you so much.

Oh, that looks so yummy. And he said revolutionary doesn't even begin to describe Northampton. You know, this is a place where Sojourner Truth lived, Frederick Douglass visited. There is a long history of people who have been critical to our understandings of the human experience and people's struggles that have found refuge in this area.

Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays, best known for Shays' Rebellion, lived around this area too. And today, Northampton continues to be an oasis for artists, queer people, and anyone who might not have somewhere else to go. You know, it's a very zany population here, I'm very proud to say.

It's a place he feels he can really be himself. The queer joy and honestly like self-expression that I can have here is something that I genuinely feel it's some of the best in the world. This is like one of the best places in our world to be queer.

I think about that and I think about the struggles I still face and sometimes it's disheartening, but it's also, it brings me so much joy that there is such a resilient group of people around here who are very friendly, you know, want to help you. If you talk to somebody about confusing parking meters in this area, somebody's going to help you out. If you talk to somebody about where's this thing or that that's a local, they're probably going to know where to point you and what's the best place to eat.

And he's right, it was Victor's suggestion that brought me to T-Roots in the first place. But I was also in town to see Victor perform, where he dressed up in a costume made of wires and chains and Super Nintendo cartridges. One of the parts of the big reveal is I take off this like inhibiting jacket made out of wires and I shed these things and I'm able to move more freely throughout this number and

show people that act of transformation and freeing yourself from that kind of personal bind you might have. I mean, it just sounds like it gives you a level of joy. I'm just watching the smile on your face as you describe the character. Yeah, I kind of do a lot of 80s riffs that are nostalgic for me, just based off of what my parents were into a lot growing up. And that's really what makes me

feel the most at home I feel and is the easiest for me to fit into. It's a lot of fun. So that night we joined an eclectic crowd in an arcade called The Quarters to see some drag. Before the show we caught up with a few audience members. Yeah, what are you hoping to see tonight?

Craziness, fun, queer love, joy, you know, that kind of thing. Most of the time there's usually a drag show happening somewhere. So whether it's like here, a couple towns over, there's usually like some place to go to see it. I just love drag as an expression of like individuality and what people can do with their craft and their skills. It's fun to see how creative people get with it.

I mean, the way people do their makeup and what they wear, it's amazing to see people just go up there and just be their authentic selves. And being authentic is what it's all about, says Victor. The best drag that people see is truly reflective of people who know themselves and reflective of people who are so proud of the person that they are that they're able to go on stage and serve a fantasy.

And he sees drag like that and art like that all over the Northampton area. I think when you get people who can live as their authentic selves as an area, you get art. You get people who are doing things for real. And I'm, you know, I really do think about it all the time. Like, I don't think there's anywhere else I could have lived my lived experience and do what I do besides Massachusetts. Woo!

It's Revolutionary is a podcast from MA250. For more stories, check out massachusetts250.org or wbur.org slash ma250. ♪