The Daily - Inside Trump’s Immigration Crackdown

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

This episode contains strong language.After Donald Trump was elected president, two filmmakers were granted rare access to the operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Since Mr. Trump had campaigned on a hard-line immigration agenda, the leaders of the usually secretive agency jumped at a chance to have their story told from the inside. Today, we speak to the filmmakers about what they saw during nearly three years at ICE and how the Trump administration reacted to a cut of the film. Guests: Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz, the filmmakers behind the six-hour documentary series “Immigration Nation.”For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: The Trump administration has threatened the two filmmakers with legal action and fought to delay the release of “Immigration Nation” until after the election.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, at the start of the Trump presidency, leaders within ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, jumped at the chance to give two filmmakers, Christina Clauso and Shaul Schwartz inside Access to document the agency's new hardline agenda. Four years later, and with the election approaching, the agency tried to block the release of their film. It's Monday, September 14th. Christina and Shiloh, we know that ICE is a notoriously secretive organization. It is very rare for them to allow journalists or filmmakers access to their operations. But you were able to follow them for nearly three years with a tremendous level of access.

So how did you go about getting that access? What's the story? Yeah, I originally started working with ICE almost a decade ago, doing stories about the drug war. And as part of that, I met an ICE spokesman who was at the time a local Arizona spokesman. As the years kind of progressed, he had moved up the ranks. And actually during the Obama time, they were not so interested in somebody really taking a deep dive into the agency. And so I want to recognize the ICE and Border Patrol officers in this room today and to honor their service. And not just because they unanimously endorsed me for president.

When Trump got elected. That helps, but that's not the only reason. Me and Christina thought maybe ICE would be interested now. They seem to be looking at getting a lot of heat. You know, the campaign of Trump was so on the nose on how tough he's going to be on immigration. For too long, your officers and agents haven't been allowed to properly do their jobs. You know that, right? Do you know that? Absolutely. But that's all about to change. So we approached the spokesman who I had at this point a long relationship with and at that time was already in D.C.

And we pitched him. We said, listen, we think the agency is going to come under a lot of heat, and we would like to see what the men and women of ICE will be up against during this administration. And that's how it started. So kind of counterintuitively, the organization was not interested in having you document them

during a relatively low heat moment, the Obama administration. But at its low heat moment, the Obama administration, but at its most heated moment, when ICE was under the most scrutiny, they were willing. Yeah, I think that under this administration, they realized very quickly that enforcement policies were changing. And I'm very happy about it, and you're very happy about it. From here on out, And I'm very happy about it, and you're very happy about it. From here on out, I'm asking all of you to enforce the laws of the United States of America.

They will be enforced and enforced strongly. And that they were going to be looked at under a different light. And I think a lot of the officers, at least when we started filming, were feeling that there was a lot that they were up against and they felt that they wanted to tell their story from the inside. It's almost like when you're hated, you have to talk about it, right? So you think of an agency that suddenly, on one hand, the gloves are off and they have the support. On the other hand, that suddenly, on one hand, the gloves are off and they have the support, on the other hand... We need to occupy every airport.

We need to occupy every border. We need to occupy every ICE office until those kids are back with their parents, period. Everybody were up in arms with them. Together, we will abolish ICE. This is for our people. And then, of course, zero tolerance happened, and then they really were in the hot seat.

This is family separation. Yes. We need to abolish ICE and end all inhumane deportation and detention programs. This is for our people who are locked inside together. And, of course, that kind of gave birth to the Abolish ICE movement and a huge outrage that really sparked the debate. And what were the specific terms of the agreement that you had with ICE? Once they said that you could come in, what did they ask for, if anything, in return for granting you this access? Yeah, the basics of the agreement was that ICE would see the cuts that we are putting forward

and that they would have, say, in three categories, law enforcement sensitivities, which is really, if we are showing kind of how they're doing their work and kind of giving away police secret tactics and stuff like that, it was privacy issues, meaning everybody in the show had to agree and sign releases that they are willing to participate, both on DHS and the immigrant side. And it was factual incorrectness if we were just making a mistake. And other than that, the contract stated very clearly

that we had the first right amendment to tell our story as we see fit. And really those were what they were going to be allowed to comment on. So based on that, it sounds like you had real confidence that you would be given free reign to document what you saw and ultimately include it in whatever you produced. Yeah, overall, we were happily surprised. They said we're going to get a carte blanche look, that they're going to introduce us.

And once we got to the field and these places that agents were keen on having us ride along, we got to spend endless time and really see them work and be with them in the field by ourselves and really do the work we were hoping to do. So we were really grateful for the agents for being kind of doing their thing and letting us, you know, do our thing, be flies on the wall and document. I didn't call you. Yeah, you please open the door. We're not going to yell out in the hallway through a closed door, man.

That's not how we do business. Please open the door so I can talk to you. Well, let's talk about that documentation. What did you see in those first months in terms of exactly how the agency was changing under this new Trump administration? We saw that the scope of ISIS mandate under this period of time had expanded. I need to come in and talk to you. We don't all have to come in, just a couple of us, but I want to show you some pictures. Somebody we're looking for has been using this address. Oh, okay. All right. You know, and I think these days were also when the tactic of installing fear were really at its height. You know, under the previous administrations,

there were specific priorities that you could only pick up a felony charge or an egregious criminal. But now, because this idea of installing fear, of pushing people into the shadows, they expanded that mandate to say there are no more priorities. If you're here illegally, we can come after you.

And I think that really put fear into communities. And I think they were successful at it. Okay, but I need, can I see any paperwork? Yeah, I'll give you a card. No, I mean like a paperwork saying that you guys have permission to come in here or something. Oh no, I have a warrant for him and I know he lives here. So that's why I'm in here. Plus you open the door and let me in. One of the more notorious examples of this fear tactic under the Trump administration was an increased focus on collaterals, which is ICE speak for undocumented people who are not the target of raids, but who agents find by accident

along the way. And there's this moment where you're sort of witnessing agents adjusting to this new approach. Can you tell me about that? You know, I think you're referring to one moment that we were in a car with an agent and he was kind of telling us how he typically does not do collaterals. I don't really, I don't do collaterals. I just don't think it's right. I don't really, I don't do collaterals. I just don't think it's right.

He really wants to catch real criminals, his targets. When you're part of fugitive operations, you have targets of people who committed crimes, and that's who you're going after. I know it's my job, but I've, you know, I've got guys that are aggravated felons that I'd like to catch. I don't care about the guy that's minding his own business and cooperating with me. And literally kind of as he was finishing to tell us that... Yeah, what's up, man?

I'm going to start taking call-out rolls, man. I don't care what you do, but bring at least two people in. Okay. The supervisor came on the radio, and he's heard clearly saying, I don't care what you do, get me two people. He knew you guys were with me, right? Yeah. Yeah, because that's a pretty stupid,

I'm like, I'll feel the same. It's very clear when you see that scene and what he meant, just get me two people because they wanted to show numbers. So what you were seeing here was an individual ICE agent saying that,

left to my own discretion, I would like not to arrest a collateral. But you're kind of seeing this prevailing culture of ICE in that moment under this administration kind of winning out because here is a boss coming on the radio and making clear that what he's interested in is just detaining people. Get me people. Collaterals was something we saw on a daily base for years. Fear will equal don't come here. Fear will equal make it as hard on them,

as bad on them, maybe they will leave. There has been a significant increase in non-criminal arrests because we weren't allowed to arrest them in the past administration. But you see more of an uptick in non-criminal because we're going from zero to 100 under the new administration. And Tom Holman, the director of ICE at the time, basically his message was you should be scared. As I said earlier, if you're in this country illegally and you committed a crime by entering this country, you should be uncomfortable. You should look over your shoulder and you need to be worried. If you're here illegally, that's the way it should be. That was part of what they were trying to put out there. And I think some did it happily and I think some did it less happily and some did it in certain moments. And I think some did it happily and I think some did it less happily and some did it in

certain moments. And I think the agents grappled with it. Yeah. I mean, I do think, you know, we did see them grappling with it. That's for sure. You know, on one side, they are the ones that really know what it means when you take somebody into the system, because a lot of times when you pick up a collateral, their entire world begins to crumble because they get stuck in the system, whether or not they're going to be detained and deported or they have a court case or all of these small things now come into the fold,

whereas before they were just going to work minding their business. But that deterrence equation of creating fear, of letting a story be heard, of letting people know that we're going to hold you for long times in detentions, that was by design. So as we talked about, this is unfolding during the era of family separations. And here, too, you captured the agents adjusting to this new reality. There's this scene where you're with these agents in New York discussing the policy.

And I wonder if you can talk us through that. Yeah, we were in the car with Judy, an agent. We spent a long time with... We constantly look like we're the bad guys when all we are doing is enforcing the laws and doing our job. And she was grappling, I think, with this idea of family separation. And luckily for us, we haven't really been involved in any of that family separation thing. Being part of fugitive operations, she kind of hinted that they don't do that. We don't rip children out of families' arms and things like that. We don't do that. It's just, that's not what we do. But we proceeded to go to a house, was her,

where she had actually found that target, that person that ICE was looking for. Good morning, sir. How are you? Good morning. How are you? We're doing an investigation. Can you give us an identification, please? And she ends up arresting them, but... Some of the targets are parents.

This is not going to be easy. The mother asked that the child say goodbye to the father, and she let that happen. Listen. She wants him to say goodbye to his daughter. And I honestly think it hurt her. She's a parent. She's a daughter of an immigrant. She's a parent. She's a daughter of an immigrant. We always take into consideration the children and the family.

And we try to make this probably unpleasant situation just a little bit easier for everyone. But in that morning, Judy was doing exactly her mission. And her mission was different than the systemic separation that was happening at the border at the same time. Just as a human, you have compassion towards other people. But, you know the saying, right? It's a job and somebody has to do it. So, that somebody is you. And you just have to kind of learn how to separate, you know, your personal feelings or your personal emotions from doing your work. Yeah, I mean, I think that we have to remember a lot of these ICE agents are career officials. Many of them were ICE agents under the last administration. They're ICE agents under this administration, and they're going to be ICE agents under the next administration.

The policies and the mandates do shift within whoever's in the presidential office. And so I think that's something to recognize is the fact that they, you know, they had different mandates under Obama. They couldn't do certain things and they could do other things. And then same under Trump. And I think that's something that they grapple with. They are federal jobs.

They are federal employees. They have federal positions. And I think, you know, there is something to be said that maybe there are a few that say, you know what, I just can't do this anymore. You know, I don't agree with the policies. I'm going to quit. But there's a lot that don't. There's a lot that just grapple with it. They just continue doing their job. They do their mission. And that's it. We'll be right back.

So when you went to publish this film, as you said, you had to first run it by ICE and they were going to put it through their various filters. How did that process go? So initially, we handed off the first cut to ice, and about a week later, we got a phone call from the spokesperson that we had been dealing with throughout the entire process of the show, and he immediately said, we do not like it. This does not portray us in a favorable light.

In the 15 years, I've never been called up to the front office in order to talk about a series such as this. And there's things that we do not like about this. And we need you to relook at some of these issues. He expressed anger that came from all the way to the top. He expressed that this is not what they expected. He brought up, even in that initial phone call, some stuff that legally just didn't make any sense. It didn't

fall under the three, you know, things that they were allowed to comment. He brought stuff like the Hatch Act. That is an old rule that during Soviet times, during the Cold War, government employees cannot try and overthrow a government. It didn't make any sense. Does he mean that he would be accused of violating the Hatch Act or that agents? No, that agents in the episode because they were speaking about Trump. You know, there was examples of them kind of coming back was pushback.

We talked a lot about that collateral scene. One thing they do is use a fingerprinting machine. And they said, well, that machine is law enforcement sensitive, something they had a right to comment about. And so you have to take out the whole scene, which we were like, all right, take out that shot, but why the whole scene? And then Christina proceeded to Google to see if anybody else had covered that. And we saw that not only that it was widely covered, that the same ICE DHS spokesman had actually put that same machine picture

and wrote a story about it and send it to the press. So, you know, and once we would bring these issues, of course, they would crumble legally and try to find another. So there was a lot of pushback that really started to draw a quick, clear line. So they were trying to knock things out of the film. Yes. Yeah. But there was something that felt familiar

in that mechanism of push. Familiar in the sense that you had seen it in operation on the ground in your time with the ICE agents? Constantly. It was part of the machine that we saw. We understood from the things we saw exactly what they were trying to do to get us to fold and to comply and to give up. And I think that's something that we understood from the years

of spending with them is that these tactics are something that they use. And I'm speaking now more about leadership and not about the individual agents on the ground, but how these tactics of weaponizing bureaucracy come into the fold. And it's not just the ground, but how these tactics of weaponizing bureaucracy come into the fold, and it's not just for us, but it's for everybody. In some ways, it seems surprising to me that ICE would find itself surprised by what you captured and depicted in the film, right?

Because on some level, it seems difficult for me to imagine that ICE wouldn't have imagined that the documentary would capture what it captured. The rules and the policies and these enforcement actions were not a secret. Yeah, we were surprised too. You have to remember also, we started when pretty early in the Trump days. And a lot has changed in DHS.

And a lot of people who are now at the leadership have been reshuffled there. And as in many places in this administration, but we could definitely attest to DHS, it's a little bit the yes-men that have stayed. And this is an election time. And this is an election time. So I think a lot came into that. And we have a very different relationship with ICE agents that we spend time with than with leadership and spokesmen. And they had a very different reaction to the show they ultimately saw on Netflix. What was their reaction? This is mainly the individuals that we were fairly

close to throughout the production and that we've kind of stayed close to. Those ones, you know, came back and some of them liked what they saw. Others didn't like what they saw. It was quite a variety, but I think they understood that we did profile what we saw day to day and what they do day to day. You know, we had an officer who told us in the show... You know, it's an unfortunate situation because a lot of these guys are hardworking individuals. That he understands the people he's arresting. And maybe it's hard for him because he would do exactly the same. They're here to work and provide for their family. They just get caught up in politics if you look at it.

That's how it is. And when we checked in with him after the show had been published, we kind of asked, hey, how was the portrayal? What do you think? He's like, no, it was fine. This was the real world. But that line wasn't so good for me. And I said, why?

You're showing empathy. And he's like, yeah, but empathy in these days could be looked as you're not supporting the mission. Yeah, we didn't see that one coming. The attitude that in our minds, we were putting this individual in a place where he was having compassion and empathy towards those that he detained. And in his mind, he was not supporting the mission. But I could see what he meant. And I think that surprised us. What we were gratified is most agents felt that we portrayed the world as it exists. And certainly it's not easy to always look in the mirror, but it was a very, very, very different reaction than...

We anticipated. Well, Christina and Shaul, thank you very much. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. ICE has disputed Shaul and Christina's account of efforts to block the film, Immigration Nation, from being released until after the election. In a statement to The Times, the agency said, quote, the statement continued, professionally, consistently, and in full compliance with federal law and agency policies.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to nerdy. It is apocalyptic. I drove 600 miles up and down the state. I never escaped the smoke. We have thousands of people who have lost their homes. I could never have envisioned this. At least 25 people have died from the wildfires in California, Washington, and Oregon, where the fires have now consumed more than one million acres. The east winds came over the top of the mountain, proceeded to turn the fires into blowtorches that went down and just incinerated a series of small towns like Blue River and Phoenix and Talent.

Just you have community after community with fairgrounds full of people, of refugees from the fires. In an interview with ABC News on Sunday, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley blamed the fires on decades' worth of climate change. And... Seeing somebody just walk up and just start shooting on them, it pisses me off.

It dismays me at the same time, and there's no prettier way to say it. Authorities in Los Angeles are investigating what they said was the unprovoked shooting over the weekend of two sheriff's deputies sitting in their patrol car in an incident caught on surveillance tape. The officers remain in critical condition, and the shooter remains at large. But Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva suggested that the ambush was linked to rising antipathy toward police.

This is just a sober reminder that this is a dangerous job, and, you know, actions, words have consequences, and our job does not get any easier because people don't like law enforcement. It's going to be a challenge day after day. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. My colleague, Megan Toohey, will host tomorrow.