The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3623 - ICE Camp Deaths Rise; CBC Backs Anti-Activist Spy Powers w/ Austin Kocher, Daniel Boguslaw

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

It's Hump Day at The Majority Report   On today's program:   JD Vance is the keynote speaker at a TPUSA event in an empty arena in Athens, GA. One of the few people who could be bothered to attend the event heckled Vance over his administration's role in the genocide in Palestine.   Austin Kocher joins Emma to discuss his work covering the death of detainees in ICE detention centers. For more coverage on America's immigration policy subscribe to Austin's Substack.   Investigative journalist, Daniel Boguslaw joins Emma to discuss his piece on the Congressional Black Caucus supporting spy technology that was used against BLM activists. For more from Daniel check out his Deeper States newsletter.   In the Fun Half:   Donald Trump gave another incoherent interview to Fox News. Maria Bartiromo tries her best to keep the president on message, but he cannot resist crying about perceived mistreatment from the public.   Zohran Mamdani announces that Kathy Hochul has agreed to a new tax on second homes worth $5 million or higher. During that announcement the mayor brilliantly dispels the lie that people will flee New York if the ultra-wealthy are taxed an extra 2%   Senator Rick Scott says that Mamdani is great for Florida and terrible for New York. Scott goes on to say that the idea of a city-run grocery store is laughable because the government can't run anything     All that and more   To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: NUTRAFOL: Get $10 off your first month's subscription + free shipping at Nutrafol.com when you use promo code TMR10 STORYWORTH: Get up to $20 off at StoryWorth.com/MAJORITY Z-BIOTICS: Go to zbiotics.com/MAJORITY to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use MAJORITY at checkout Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com

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Remember to head to zbiotics.com slash majority. and use code majority at checkout for 15% off. Link down below in the video and episode descriptions and at majority.fm. And now time for the show. It is Wednesday. April 15th, 2026. My name is Emma Vigeland in for Sam Cedar, and this is the five-time award-winning majority report.

We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the Heartland. of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Austin Coker will be back with us to discuss the rising death toll in ICE detention facilities. And later in the show, Daniel Boguslaw,

joins us again, to talk about the Congressional Black Caucus backing anti-activists spy powers. Also on the program, mediators move closer to an extent, of the ceasefire in Iran before it expires next week, but Trump is also sending 6,000 additional troops to the Middle East. Israel keeps bombing Lebanon to undercut negotiations. One day after Rubio hosted talks between Lebanon and Israel, which Hezbollah deemed illegitimate. Tonight, the Senate will consider Bernie Sanders' legislation that would block

$450 million in bombs and bulldozers to Israel. The U.S. illegally bombed another boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing four. We have now killed over 170 people that the White House claims without evidence are drug smuggling. Is this good? U.S. wholesale prices surged by 4% last month due to the Iran War. The largest year-over-year gain in more than $1,000. three years. Mortgage rates have climbed since the Strait of Hormuz closure and home sales hit a nine-month

low. Just more bad indicators about what is happening in the economy right now. 50 House Democrats joined legislation that would begin the process of invoking the 25th Amendment for Donald Trump. It should be 100% of the Democrats in the House, but here's where we are. Hockel begins to buckle on taxing the rich agreeing to tax second homes from wealthy out-of-staters. Easy money. Yep.

Russ' vote will appear before the House Budget Committee today to defend Trump's $1.5 trillion dollar Pentagon slush fund budget request. You know, to limit the size of the federal government, wasn't that his whole thing? Another accuser says Eric Swalwell drugged her and raped her in 2018. ICE deported over 440,000 people in 2025, up from 171,000 in 2024. And lastly, Tennessee's General Assembly passes the Charlie Kirk Act, which would force colleges to suspend or expel students for free speech. All this and more on today's majority report.

Welcome to the show, everybody. It is Hump Day. And yes, I am hosting today. Sam is out, but he will be back with us tomorrow and Friday. Don't worry, everybody. Sam will be back. We're just mixing up the schedules a little bit this week. Hello, Matt.

Hello, Brian. Hello, lovely audience, as always. Great to see you. yesterday turning point USA held an event at the university of georgia jd vans the vice president of the united states the big draw the star guest well he was a fill in yeah erika kirk was their first choice she was supposed to appear alongside him but she says that she received death threats we'll get to that in the second Send him the second in line to the presidency in case that's unsafe there.

This is here some footage of this barnstorming event at University of Georgia. This is from Jake Traylor. It doesn't bother me when he speaks on this to day. Frankly, even when I disagree

with how I was applying to you. For instance, so the number of, So rehearsal? Yeah. No, not rehearsal. That was in the middle of the event. It's they could have hosted that in like,

they don't even need to rent out the Marriott ballroom. They could have hosted that in like. At the 40 watt, which is like a rock club in downtown Athens. Right. Ryan flexing is Athens. Yeah, there you go.

It's pretty famous. They could have hosted that in like the basement of a church, but not a Catholic church, obviously. because I'm not sure if J.D. Vance can enter a Catholic church right now without bursting into flames. Schismatics aren't welcome. So just a general kind of look at the enthusiasm or lack thereof right now with the Trump administration. You know, the campaign that in 2024 said that they were going to start no new wars and that they were going to fix the economy. and Trump tried to take Greenland, tried to take the Panama Canal,

captured Maduro, kidnapped him from Venezuela, and then started war and has been bombing illegally drug boats, or votes they claim are drug boats without evidence, off the coast of the United States, and has now started the war that every previous president was able to understand, would be a disaster. Trump was high on his own supply and started that war and in part is tanking the economy because of the price increases from his own war. So that was the campaign promise that

J.D. Vance and Trump ran on. And you can imagine that some of the core supporters aren't that kind of thing. May not be excited to show up for J.D. Vance's event. Just a quick aside before we get to what he said. Candice Owens pointed out on Twitter in her never-ending feud with Erica Kirk that perhaps Ms. Erica Kirk's claims that it was a security problem. I was so looking forward to tonight's event

at the University of Georgia, I already don't believe you, with our vice president, Jady Vance, but after all our family has been through, I take my security team's recommendations extremely seriously. Thank you to our amazing Georgia chapter for your support. Yeah, what were they guarding your feelings?

Candace says, stop. This is exhausting. You pulled out because of bad ticket sales. Sales, they were free. It's exactly right. They were free, too, subsidized by some billionaire. You couldn't make people, you couldn't pay people to come to this. Maybe you could, but it, what, that would have meant that the arena was 10% filled instead of 5%?

Candice Owen says You're selling all that merch For you know To give it back to You know these hogs You pulled out because of bad ticket sales For the same reason TPF TPF

TP faith had to reschedule the pastor Summit in various other events quietly People don't believe you And don't line up for you Because you struggle to tell that you're by The stupid feud is very funny to me But what's more interesting And exciting is the lack of enthusiasm

And the Hope this is all horrible for them. One of the ten people that showed up to hear J.D. Vance speak was a righteous heckler who decided to call him out about the administration's complicity in the genocide in Gaza, amongst other war crimes and atrocities. Here's part one of J.D. Vance's exchange with this heckler at this event. I like that the Pope is an advocate for peace. I think that's certainly one of his roles. On the other hand, how can you say that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword? Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated France from the Nazis?

Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated? Yeah. No, the godless communists were on the right side of that, by the way. Right. And just a little bit of logic here, like, just because maybe it was good to fight the Nazis after they had started the war. That doesn't mean every war of choice is good. No, the Nazis were committing genocide,

and that's why fighting them was just. You know who's committing genocide right now? You and Israel. So the invocation of World War II in the Holocaust is Holocaust denial. It denies the power dynamics at play. It denies the industrial scale of the general scale of the genocide that is comparable

to the industrial scale of Israel's genocide here. When you use the Holocaust and the Shoah in such a cynical manner, you engage in a form of denialism that, one, enables anti-Semitism, but two,

enables the continuation of the genocide that you are complicit in. So I love this completely smarmy loser, lecturing the when he converted to Catholicism, what, in 2018? For Peter Thiel?

2019? Yeah, just because... So it could be an Opus Day or whatever he's probably associated with, with his little cult crap, lecturing the goddamn Pope about what Jesus Christ thinks. Just get a grip anyway. Yeah, also, a reference in World War II is a subtle admission that Vietnam wasn't a righteous war. Yeah.

Of the Americans who liberated France from the Nazis? was God on the side of the Americans who liberated Holocaust camps and liberated those innocent people from those who had survived the Holocaust? I certainly think the answer is yes, and I agree. Jesus Christ does not, I agree. Jesus Christ certainly does not support genocide. Whoever yelled that out from the dark, he certainly does not. I think that's pretty easy. Because it's not real. I think it's a pretty easy principle. Brian, come on. Okay, so here's a guy.

Let me just say this. This is a guy. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, we can pause it there because the crowd starts booing. J.D. Vance continues to lecture him on the godliness of certain wars because... And what he accepts the Pope will do? Yeah, I'm shocked that this is the administration's posture. Pete Exxat has a crusades tattoo and has been, was caught chanting,

kill all Muslims at a bar. They view this as a holy war as we talk about how it's really the Iranian regime and all of their kind of religious fervor that's making them so irrational. Here, let's double tap a girl's school and commit countless atrocities. Now, this continued for a little bit, and the heckler came back for more, which I could not appreciate more. So if you want, sir, to complain about what happened in Gaza, why don't you complain about Joe Biden in the last administration? we're the administration that solved that problem. Oh, you solved it. Sorry, this is actually a really important point.

Yes. And this is reported that the reason that the ceasefire happened when it did was so both the Democrats and Republicans could claim credit for it. And flax like J.D. Vance and his counterparts in the Democratic Party have said this was actually Joe Biden that did it. Or actually, Trump actually did it. Israel did that to give both of these sides a bone to chew on. A hundred percent. We know this from. how Netanyahu was meeting with Trump periodically prior to the 2024 election.

Do you not think that he understood that Biden was so weak and captured ideologically by Zionism that he could elongate this as long as possible to hurt the part of the one party in this country that has a constituency that's actually activated on the anti-war left for anti-genocide purposes, that he could hurt that political party, get Trump in power and give him this win of the ceasefire, which, by the way, Israel has violated almost every single day since it was agreed to in the fall. You don't think that that was a part of the political calculation

so he could sit up there and cynically, smugly say, we ended this. They're literally selling off the real estate with the bodies of hundreds of thousands of people unaccounted for under rubble, babies crushed, to Trump's son-in-law. and Israel is ethnically cleansing cleansing Lebanon right now.

And the Iran thing, this is all part of the same issue, which is the construction of greater Israel. Yeah. The Gaza stuff and everything we're seeing with Iran. And J.D. Vance's administration just helped them chew off the bigger part, which was Iran. Because if it wasn't for us

going to war with Iran right now, Israel wouldn't be so free to go at Lebanon. Let's keep going. And by the way, not only was our administration like the administration that solved the problem. But the president... Excuse me, sir.

Right now, right now, you see more humanitarian aid coming into Gaza than it has any time in the past five years. That's a lie. Because we have taken that situation seriously. And that's one of the things that I'm proud of about our administration is whether it's there or Thailand and Cambodia. we have consistently tried as much as we can to solve these problems, not just complain about them like the guy who just ran away. Oh, yeah, yeah, just complaining the guy who just ran away. All right, you're the vice president.

But go on Theo Vaughn and clutch your pearls a little bit more when he tries to like tepidly ask you about that genocide that you're in favor of or that you're supporting actively. So smug, it's unbelievable. He's a genocide denier. Yes. The thing saying Jesus, yeah, I think Jesus would be against genocide. But you are going to hell by your, I mean, understanding.

Yes, you are killing children, J.D. Vance, as that brave person said in the crowd. And he's lying about the aid. We just had Dr. Tarrick Lubani on for a very difficult interview that people should still check out if they can. I know we've clipped it recently, and I'd love for people to share it. But Lubani had said to us that the only aid that had been medical supplies that had come in, was around six weeks ago because somebody was able to bribe the son of an Israeli commander or something like that or someone, a family member of an Israeli commander. And that they're still not letting in baby formula or any pain medication.

And he was operating on a little girl with her intestines outside of her without any pain medication. And that he had to make the choice between two children who both had severe injuries. And he chose the girl with the intestines that were falling out. And then they both died. And he had to bear that. that's what's actually happening in Gaza right now they're striking camps intense

so yeah you're killing children starving children and you're selling the land and participating in ethnic cleansing campaign and look in terms of a political constituency for Palestinian liberation it's always going to come from the left

but I am still immensely grateful that there are actually still true Christians out there that may have views that I don't agree with and believe things that I don't agree with that understand that they need to call out this administration for its complicity in these atrocities.

In a moment, we are going to be speaking with Austin Coker, friend of the show, about what's happening in ICE detention, but first, a word from some of our sponsors. You know, everybody's got a can't miss fitness training hack, but most of them don't actually move the needle. And a lot of people feel that

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And when we come back, we'll be joined by Austin Coker. We are back and we are joined by Austin Coker. Once again, friend of the show, research assistant professor at Syracuse University, who writes about America's immigration. enforcement system on substack. I would highly recommend everybody subscribe to Austin's substack and you can get real-time updates on detention centers on ICE across the country. Austin, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me back, Emma. Of course. So ICE has now reported the 16th death of somebody in detention in the year 2026 so far. We're in the middle of April.

So we know of at least 16 people who have died just this calendar year in ICE detention. This is a 49-year-old man from Mexico who died a few days ago in the Wynn Correction Center in Louisiana. Tell us about what happened. Sure. So I first found out about Alejandro. Alejandro Clemente is the individual that passed away in Wynn Detention Center. When in rural Louisiana is what we call the – detention center alley.

There's a whole lot of detention centers in that region. A lot of them are staging grounds for deporting people out of the Alexandria airport, rural airport right there in central Louisiana. And I found out about Alejandro through a woman I've been talking to Angela de la Valle, whose husband is in that facility and actually found out about this person first. So just imagine, you know, your husband is inside of a facility. You're trying to get him out and you're learning about detention deaths around. him. He was almost 50 years old. He's been held in the facility for quite some time, and the

official account about his death does not include a lot of information. It doesn't include a lot of information about the full cause of death. One of the things that we are learning, and we've known for a long time, but we're learning in greater depth now is the information that is available in ICE's initial press release is sometimes inaccurate and incomplete. And when you really look at the full scope of medical records, we often find. that there are all kinds of issues with, you know, not being responsive to people's medical concerns, calling 911, but calling 911 too late, things like that. So just another tragedy that represents really, you know, what I would characterize as systemic violence and the treatment

of immigrants as disposable. The systemic violence is important. I mean, it's important to frame it that way because I remember and it still kind of rattles around in my brain and I'm wondering if you can update me on it. Popular information had a report a few months ago that basically DHS and ICE had stopped paying all medical bills in some of these facilities, which when you're warehousing these people in these conditions, it's obvious that medical issues are going to come up.

That was horrifying to me in terms of what it indicates about just perhaps letting people die, letting people fall into horrible health circumstances, What are you hearing on that front? Yeah, so that report really focused on ICE's announcement that it was asking all of his medical providers or many of its medical providers to delay submitting reimbursements for months and months. It's not clear that all medical services were necessarily terminated.

They were still being provided. But yes, there was a delay in financial reimbursement. It appears to those contractors. And regardless of the details of that, the larger issue is simply. you know, even medical providers who are, you know, there, many of whom may want to do the best that they can, once you start getting questions about whether or not the government is actually going to compensate you for your time and your effort, it does raise questions about, you know, how serious, seriously people are going to respond to medical issues. And, you know, one of the

broader systemic things that we see is, you know, most of these facilities, virtually all of the facilities that, where people have died this year and during the Trump administration are for-profit facilities. So there is down the pressure. Including this one, right, in Louisiana. Absolutely. Wynn has been a private detention facility for some time. It's been a private state prison for a period of time before that with a well-documented history of abuses, neglect, and oversight. In fact, there was an entire book written about it from a journalist who went undercover. Well, I wouldn't say undercover. They did good investigative work, actually working in a facility. And, you know, what we see,

is just because they're for profit, there's downward pressure on providing resources and emergency services that may be expensive to the facility. Somebody has to eat those costs, and that means that there's often delays and neglect that that many, much, much of the research suggests contributes to these deaths. Tell us a bit more about this facility in Louisiana, and perhaps you could expand a little bit more on where, these facilities are located camps or, I mean, concentration camps, where these concentration camps are located, why are they located where they are, and what these for-profit prison companies are looking for when they're trying to look for a place to warehouse these immigrants.

Sure. So when it comes to where these camps are located, and I think we are certainly moving towards that language of camps across the board. They tend to look for places where they can buy cheap land. I mean, many of these contractors, it's as important to think about them as government contractors first and immigrant, you know, detention center operators second. They are essentially, you know, property owners in some way. So they look for cheap land in compliance spaces where there isn't going to be local pushback and people in those sort of sacrifice zones of rural America where people don't have access to other jobs. So they're just very often located in rural parts of the country,

which makes it hard for attorneys to get to them. It makes it hard for family members to get to them. You know, Angela, I mentioned at the top of the conversation, I mean, at great expense to herself and her family and community is down there near when going in visiting her husband every single day and trying to do everything she can to get him out, again, at great effort and great sacrifice. but not everybody can do that, you know, because it's so so difficult in such rural areas.

And compounding all of this, of course, is once you're, once you are in a place that that is that rural, it's that much harder to get access to emergency, medical care, and infrastructure that could be life-saving. When we're looking at the ICE detention death count, can we trust that these numbers are anything but, like, immensely conservative? your estimation and your research that likely these death toll numbers are higher? They're likely higher in terms of, it depends a little bit on how we define it. So we feel pretty confident that if a death happens inside of one of the camps or while they're in ICE custody,

that's a pretty hard thing to completely cover up. There's a lot of people in these facilities. Somebody would know and find out. So the official number, I feel pretty confident about. I think where I feel less confident and more concerned is like the individual outside of Buffalo that was released and left at a fast food restaurant or a waffle house or something like this. There's a lot of cases of people, one, almost dying in detention for all of these issues and somehow they survive. So that gets overlooked that there's no report for, oh, we almost killed someone. There's also a lot of cases of ICE releasing people. There's one case of ICE discharging someone while they were in a hospital. hospital laying in their bed, hey, that person's not in custody anymore. Well, now if something

happens to them, they're not really part of the official death count. So the question is, how many people leave detention, either with worsening conditions or possibly dying as a result of their detention, whether they're in the United States or increasingly what we're seeing, Emma, is people after they're deported. People are landing back in their countries, Latin America, Africa, South Asia, around the world, and they have complications that potentially lead to death or near death. And again, how are we going to get record of that's really hard? Yeah. And you have some examples of some of these pre the releases that result in death on your substack. And some of these are just like, you know, horrible, horrible stories. And people

that had been discriminated against that were subjected to, because of their deportation. violence. I believe if I'm not, if I'm remembering correctly that you had an example of a trans person that this happened to. That's right. Yeah, there's a whole sort of study of post-deportation death. And it very often are minorities, people who are subject to political violence or social violence in some way who very often they have humanitarian claims and they're denied when they are denied and if they're denied and deported, will face persecution and impossible death back in their home countries. And, you know, trans detainees, trans deportees are absolutely one of the most statistically vulnerable group.

Obviously, it's a relatively small group in the numbers and the overall number of people detained and deported. But within that group, very high risk factor. And of course, under this administration, which is, you know, as transphobic as we've ever seen an administration, those people are really not getting the hearing and the protection they deserve. There was another, there was a study that you cited in one of your pieces on your site about ICE detention deaths, even prior to this administration, they're almost always preventable,

almost always preventable. So just to the Trump administration is immensely callous, cruel, sadistic and is, is has accelerated this. But ICE detention always was deadly because they're, because of the incentives that you're talking about, the privatization and the lack of care that was, care not being provided for people because it would cut into profits. Can you talk about that dynamic more broadly? Absolutely. So there was a report a few years ago by the ACLU and some partners that showed reviewing all of the death records that they had at the time. There's the public press releases that we get from ICE.

ICE is also required to report to Congress within 90 days with a more detailed report. Both of those announcements have gotten progressively shorter and has progressively less information than before. And there is also an internal investigation that's required to be done. And folks like Andrew Free, who really specializes in detention deaths and others, have been able to get copies of those reports before your request and, and, and, and, And those often give us even more information. But that previous report found that over 90% of the detention deaths that they reviewed

appeared to be preventable. Someone should not die. During the Trump administration, there was an individual who died of sepsis that began with complaining about a toothache. A toothache had serious dental issues, and then it was never fully treated. So it's an example of one of those cases that nobody should die in a controlled facility. of sephths. That's highly unusual. So a lot of these things, a lot of these cases, there's real interventions. And, you know, there's a great update to that report that the San Francisco Chronicle did,

two reporters there did a really great investigative piece that basically updates our understanding and finds very much the same thing. As long as we have enough records to really fully review a case, medical professionals very often say, look, they should have been, 911 should have been called two hours before then. Someone who is seizuring on the floor of a detention facility should not be laying there for an hour before they get into an ambulance. In that particular case, by the time that individual made it to a hospital, the doctors essentially decided that this person was brain dead. People do not just routinely die from seizures, particularly when you're, you know, it's really important to remember that ICE has a legal obligation to provide care and medical services and

life-giving care. These are civil detention facilities. We are holding people purely for procedural grounds. No one is doing time in these facilities. This is basically like supposed to be a kind of airport waiting room of sorts, but they are so over-packed. There's so much emphasis on growing capacity rather than growing care that we're seeing people face these really serious medical issues. Some of them are coming in with medical issues and saying, hey, I'm, I've type 1 diabetes. If I don't get my medication in 72 hours. We don't know what's going to happen. Some people are showing up in either result of the conditions of arrest, maybe things that they

had experienced, such as the individual who was, got rammed into by an ICE officer here in Maryland and is in detention, is in ICE custody now, but has not received adequate medical care. Sometimes they're coming into detention with medical issues that aren't getting treated. So it's really a systemic failure. And one can address these problems without even, you know, we know, we're going to be a medical claiming to want to abolish detention altogether. It's like we have to be able to agree as a country that we can at least like meet this floor

of not having people die in civil facilities. Well, isn't it likely, though, Austin, that they're attempting to, for some of these people, essentially torture them into giving up asylum claims or agreeing, trying to force them to self-deport? Absolutely. I mean, part of the broader goal of, neglect is convince people to give up, give up, agree to leave the country. That doesn't even do people a lot of good, Emma, because even those who are saying, yes, I'm done, I will leave. I can't, we can't go through this. Even then, there's no guarantee that they'll be deported.

There's so many backlogs within that system itself. They're holding people there even past the point of people wanting to even just leave the country. So absolutely. I mean, I think the cruelty and the neglect is part of a strategy of convincing people to not fight. But also to send a message to other people who aren't in detention and say, leave now, or you could end up like, you know, this person and this press release and that press release. And I can tell you, Emma, from talking to families, U.S. citizen families of immigrants who are in the country trying to pursue legal status. Those families are also saying, you know, there's wives who are saying there's no way. We're going to figure out a way for our family to live abroad or for our husband or wife to go back to their country or go to a different country. because, you know, one woman told me there's no way my husband is going into a detention facility and not coming out.

I'm not going to let that happen. So it's having that effect, and I do think that's part of the strategy. Lastly, the numbers I headlined it this morning, but it came out in terms of deportations, 2025, over 440,000 people deported, according to government data. It was like 170K in 2024. What do you make of those numbers from your analysis? Sure. So the government's been a little bit fishy with some of their data on removals, and they've expanded the definition to try to pump up the data a little bit. Here's what I'll say.

There was not a huge leap between, in the number of removals, between the last fiscal year of the Biden administration and the first fiscal year of the Trump administration. It increased about 15%. It actually was not that big of an increase. We have already seen, however, this year, fiscal year 2026, so from October 1st to today, we have seen a substantial growth in the number of removals happening. So it's definitely, they are definitely trying to ramp up, and I think they're trying to do as much as they can. As long as Stephen Miller has access to the levers of power, he is going to try to do as much as possible

because he knows this is unpopular. He knows they're going to lose in the midterms, and he knows that this is not really what most people want. Austin Coker, everybody please check out his substack. You can get all the up-to-date information that you need on ICE detention, on immigration enforcement. And we do have somebody writing in, and I think this is good advice, Tempe from Maryland. Anyone listening who wants to help and doesn't know how Google your location plus immigrant support network. It's likely that support is already ongoing. If you can't find anything, do the same search with the name of the nearest large city

and reach out to their leadership about forming a branch in your area. Would you say that's good advice, Austin? Absolutely. You got to start local. And if you're interested in detention, you can go to Detention Reports.com. Find the nearest facility near you. And what we need you to do is document conditions, work with existing infrastructure, and try to get the word out about what's going on in these facilities. Really appreciate your time today.

Thanks so much, Austin. Thanks. Quick break, folks. And when we come back, we'll be talking to Daniel Boguslaw. We are back and we are joined once again by Daniel Boguslaw, investigative journalist, publisher of the deeper state's newsletter on Subsack and his latest piece in the American Prospect, co-written with James Barada is entitled Congressional Black Caucus to support spying powers used on BLM activists. Daniel, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me.

So your reporting has found that the Congressional Black Caucus is set to support this reauthorization of Section 702 of FISA, but a clean reauthorization, which, is key here because they're, uh, this is about giving kind of unchecked power to the Trump administration to surveil activists. Yeah. I mean, it's deja vu all over again. I feel like this is the third time I've covered one of these reauthorization fights. It's the same pattern over and over and over again for the past decade and well beyond that where, uh, you know, they push this off to the last minute. They try to squeeze it into a really tight vote deadline. And inevitably, I see components come out and they start doing classified briefings about horrifying threats, which are then inevitably leaked to the public and to news media.

In this case, it was a threat posed against a Taylor Swift concert, which was allegedly thwarted using 702. Before that, two years ago during the reoff fight, it was the threat of Russian nuclear weapons that would be used in space against U.S. surveillance satellites. So it's a familiar pattern where it is a very powerful authority. It's used across the intelligence community, although the FBI's misuses are often the most prevalent. I believe Lauren Bobert raised this week a revelation about an NSA analyst using, illegally using 702 to conduct research of someone they met on a dating app. But we also know that in 2020, 702 was used to surveil Black Lives Matter activists. And so that makes the fact that the Congressional Black Caucus is coming out in support of this clean reauthorization,

which does not have any significant or meaningful reforms attached to it, all the more concerning. I know the Hill reporter from DropSai was out there yesterday, I believe, speaking with members of the CBC, trying to confirm parts of my reporting. And I think he did. Most of them said we have to balance the threats to our nation and civil liberties. And I'm going to think long and hard. Meanwhile, the report I did show that Gregory Meeks, one of the most powerful members of the CBC has been lobbying. He leads their PAC.

He leads their the Congressional Black Caucus Political Action Committee. Yeah. That's right. And they were a little shakier on that explicitly. Seven hours after our story ran, Meeks got back to us with comments saying he was not the official Rules Committee whip. I think that's what he was trying to say. and was using a kind of classic Washington logic to try to wriggle out of my reporting, you know, saying that because he's not on the relevant committee,

he couldn't be the official committee whip, which, of course, is not what I reported. And so it's shocking to see not only that, you know, there's no effort to attach significant reforms to this, but that they just seemed to be aligned with voting it through. Now, the head of the CBC, you bet Clark did sign on to a last. letter in the 11th hour, you know, kind of coming out against the clean reoff of this powers, but notably absent on that letter was, was, you know, the entire thrust of the CDC. And the Asian Pacific Islander caucus and the Hispanic caucus were both, you know, right there at the top.

And yeah, yeah, I just want to point out, like, there are, Jamie Raskin, the ranking member on judiciary, it wants reforms. But you have Jim Himes, who's featured in your reporting, who is the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, just to show, like, where these powerful House members are at, who is pushing for this. He's a white guy now a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, but he's also been essential in trying to push for this clean reauthorization.

He's deeply tied with intelligence, like that that that's where that that is coming from sure but i mean it's important to remember that everyone gets to take their little votes on the things that are going to panor to their constituents and yet somehow year after year 702 is reauthorized and you know i just think it goes to show that you know the i see is extremely powerful and intelligent you know every i c division has a congressional liaison whose entire job is to sort of massage the heads of the relevant committees you know one piece of my story that didn't really get as much pickup as the top line is the fact that on March 26th, the staffers for the House Intelligence Committee were briefed

on a ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which is effectively the rubber stamp court that authorizes FISA warrants, although, you know, there's not ever really much debate and they basically rubber stamp at the request. Now, shockingly, right before they knew that this FISA reauthorization was going to come up to a vote, they created a warning, and they actually communicated to the House committee that there were serious problems with the way that query data was being filtered during the FISA process. So effectively, a rubber stamp body whose entire purpose is just green lighting, warrantless surveillance, found something that was so alarming that before the vote, reauthorizing this power, they flagged it to the

committee. Now, my reporting showed that that committee then failed to relay those warnings in both classified and unclassified briefings to the rest of Democrats. So, I mean, already you have these CBC members who are totally unwilling to step out of line on this, but then you also have a huge information. Can we just slow down for just a second? I want to emphasize this for the audience because this is quite remarkable. So this is a FISA judge. They're normally rubber stamping everything that is essentially saying, hey, slow down for. for a moment, we need to have some changes in the way that the Section 702 data is filed when they're combing through intelligence for Americans. And this information was not relayed to the relevant Democrats

on purpose, it seems like, yes? Well, it was related to the Democrats on the Intelligence Committee, which is its own black box. Right, right. And which remains on with all the IC components. So, you know, at every level, there is a concealment and a secrecy, right? Like, there were settings, there were unclassified settings. I mean, the New York Times ran with this information, right? So we know that there were unclassified versions of this information because it got leaked to the Times.

But at every step, you know, that was rejected. And, you know, a big part of the FISA reform movement hasn't just been adding more safeguards onto the process of going to the FISC and asking for clearance to run these queries. It's also been trying to introduce a comprehensive reform effort to limit the purchase of private, privately obtained data into the IC. And when I talk to current and former IC officials, you know, 702 is sometimes a drop in the bucket compared to the fire hose of shit coming out of the app companies coming out of your browser

history. And, you know, one thing I'm a little frustrated by is the fact that I've, like I said, I think this is my third time around the FISA reoff battle. And D.C. always lights up for two or three weeks. The think tanks get chugging. They put out their white papers talking about how it's bad. Do you know the easiest, fastest way to reform FISA and get Americans talking about surveillance reform? By the data on the House members of and Senate members of the relevant intelligence committees.

The reason the I see can do this is because it's an open market. And I've seen these marketplaces, okay? You can literally, with enough money and legal backing, buy anyone's data. So to any nonprofits listening in the Beltway right now who are civil liberties organizations, you know, we're tired of seeing this fight happen over and over again and get stymied. If you really want to get politicians on board, let's buy and publish their data the same way the IC does and show them what the risk is. Is TMZ DC on that? I know. We should pitch them.

We should pitch them, Daniel. Can you explain to people what role Section 702 played with the Black Lives Matter movement and why it's especially egregious for the Congressional Black Caucus to be supporting it? I mean, my understanding of the specifics is that there was a backdoor query of something like 130 activists who were arrested and then those names were basically run through the sort of 702, you know, bulk collection. And that's the issue, right, is that there's all this data coming in and then you go and you get a warrant to kind of pick through it, but it's all sitting there.

And again, 702, the idea the way it's sold and the way it's talked about is that it's, you know, this foreign targeting non-U.S. persons, but of course, we know over and over and over again from the violations that, you know, emerge from the PCAOB oversle. board, you know, the intelligence oversight boards, you know, the OIG, you know, all these different watchdogs year after year, you know, show that there are massive oversights, whether they're the oversights that were depicted, you know, described by Edward Snowden of NSA analysts, you know, flipping on people's cameras, using these vast godlike surveillance powers for their own personal gain, or whether it is, you know, governments querying activists. And look, the reality is,

I think for a lot of young people, you know, who maybe weren't alive in the 70s, some of these surveillance issues become very abstract. You know, they're more based on first principles maybe than the felt impact in our day-to-day lives. But the reality is we know now that that switch has been flipped. You know, if it was going and bubbling under the surface with NSPM 7 and the presidential directives that classify things like anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism, anti-Christianity as terrorist threats, you know, we're living in a new era where the warnings that have been happening for the past 20 years around the Patriot Act are starting to really gain teeth in a highly visible way that's going to affect huge swaths of the population.

Lastly, Gregory Meeks is a name that is coming up a lot in the news. Recently, you know, Ryan Grim of Dropside has been on top of the fact that Meeks was a part of slow walking the war powers resolution, allowing, not pushing for a vote prior to the recess. and we've now seen what Trump has done with without being curtailed in Iran. So Meeks is just really not doing the American public well right now. Can you just talk a little bit about him and wrap? I know you have to run his role in this, in particular, just expand on that. Yeah, well, I mean, he just kind of served as the conduit, right?

I mean, he is the ghost whip, right? He is the one taking calls. I think Drop Sides Hill guy again got someone, you know, got a couple CBC members to say that they had had conversations with Meeks in addition to Jim Himes about this. But, you know, he, there are multiple meeks across, you know, across the Hill, whether it's, you know, whether it's a Richie Neal-like figure on Ways and Means who I've been a lot of reporting on, you know, there's all types of players or Jim Himes. It was another great example where, you know, they kind of often keep a relatively low profile. But the way they maintain power is by working behind the scenes and not having that super public persona so that they can maneuver in a way that's highly effective and secretive. So I think there's a lot of power nodes like Meeks on the Hill. And in this instance, he got caught.

Daniel Boguslaw, investigative journalist, publisher of the deeper states newsletter on Substack. And you can read his recent piece in the American Prospect, co-written with James Barada, Congressional Black Caucus. to support spying powers used on BLM activists. Daniel, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks, all right. With that, we are going to wrap the first hour of this show and head into the fun half.

Matt had to go. They're dropping like flies here. It's just me and Brian. What will we get up to? People are going to have to figure it out by going into the fun half. Join and find out. Yes.

Let's see. if we can fill an hour and a half and not talk about football or other things that we like to talk about. Brian, what's happening on Left Reckoning? Do you know? Did Matt leave you with a little bit? Yesterday, they had an episode with the

Egg Commissioner of Texas. Okay. Which doesn't sound that juicy. But it turns out he's got a lot of influence. Okay. All right. I didn't know there were egg commissioners. Oh, I thought you said ag.

Egg? Maybe he said ag and his Midwestern dialect translated to egg. Egg. Brian's hungry. I'm very hungry. Egg commissioner. All right.

Well, that does sound. But apparently he's got some kind of role in the ability to fight data centers in Texas. And that's what the interview centers around. All right. Check out Left Reckoning. Check out the Jacobin Show. Justcoffee.coop. Fair trade coffee and something else.

You can go support. I get the majority report blend. They have other stuff there, but I don't remember what it is because Sam kept saying, tea and chocolate, and one of those things is not on the site. So I don't remember which one it is. There's no chocolate, right? Okay. Tea, just, there's maybe tea.

You can figure it out. If you go to them, just coffee.com. And join the majority report. Dot com become a member. Keeps us resilient. Keeps us chugging along, especially when we're on third-party platforms that could decide to end our business tomorrow if they chose.

and we're trying to goad them into it. No, not really. Please become a member. It helps us out if you can, and you can IAM the show. I am bad at pitches today. What is happening? I don't know. You're falling apart, but I'm no good backup here.

I can't pitch anything. You know what's concerning is that it's 82 degrees today in New York. Our AC is already not working. It's April. And I am a little panicked. I'm worried that this is going to be a repeat of that horrible summer that many in our audience will remember. So we'll see. We'll see.

It's like Radio Hanoi in here. It's not great. All right. See you in the fun half. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now. but I think around 18 months out we're going to look back and go like wow

what what is that going on it's nuts wait a second hold on for hold on for a second Emma welcome to the program hey fun what is up everyone no me keen you did it fun let's go brandon let's go brandon on. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint. Everyone, I'm just a random guy.

It's all the boys today. Fundamentally false. No, I'm sorry. Women's... Stop talking for a second. Let me finish. Where is this coming from, dude? But dude, you want to smoke this?

7.8? Yes. Yes? It is you. Oh, it's me. I think it is you. Who is you? No sound.

Every single freaking day. What's on your mind? Sports. We can discuss. We're doing markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm going to just know why. Libertarians. They're so stupid though.

Common sense says, of course. Gobbled e gook. We fucking nailed him. So what's 79 plus 21? Challenge met. I'm positively quivering. I believe 96, I want to say. 857.

210. 35. 501. 1⁄2. 380s. 911 for instance. $3,400. $1,900.

$6.5,4, 3 trillion dollars sold. It's a zero-sum game. Actually, you're making the glass of it. But let me say this. Poop. You call it satire. Sam goes satire. On top of it all, my favorite part about you is just like every day, all day, like everything you do.

Without a doubt. Hey, buddy, we've seen you. Folks, folks, obviously. Yeah. Sundow guns out. I don't know. But you should know. People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore.

I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled, folks I love it I do love that I'm gonna jump I gotta be quick I get a jump

I'm losing 2 o'clock We're already late And the guy's being a dick So screw him Sent to a gulaw Outrageous Like what is wrong with you

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