Caitlin Dickerson

But I noticed that people seem to be thinking of them as unique when, in fact, if you spend a day in immigration court, as I did, you will see that they're everywhere, that people who've been in the United States for decades, who have no criminal record, who are beloved members of their community, either because they're active in their church or they're business owners or they've been their boss's greatest employee for 20 years.

These folks are going through immigration court every day.

Most of them are going through court without a lawyer, which makes them far less likely to win their cases.

I saw people who are being removed after all these decades in the United States and all these local community ties that they'd established because they simply didn't have the ability to be represented by a lawyer to try to fight back against their case.

And they weren't getting the attention that these other individual cases were.

So I think

The administration is adding to this kind of myopic view of the enforcement campaign in that they're talking about one particular city at a time.

You know, first it was Chicago, then it was Los Angeles, then it was New Orleans, now it's Minneapolis.

ICE is working like gangbusters across the country.

And so it's really important to not forget that what's happening in Minneapolis is likely happening elsewhere too, and that we're just not seeing it.

I would say that's something I think people should keep in mind.

Even some of the president's staunchest supporters are really coming out and criticizing ICE's work now.

This moment reminds me a lot of the years I spent reporting on family separations.

You saw Republicans in Congress, some of the furthest to the right Republicans you can imagine, saying that this policy was abhorrent and that it needed to be outlawed.

And then it was gone.

The Trump administration got rid of it.

I was reflecting over the weekend that I felt like we were heading into such a moment.

very much an open question you know how big of a change are they going to make are they going to completely revamp ice's goals and give this deportation campaign a different look and feel and even language associated with it or are they going to put into place a temporary pause hoping that the intensity of criticism dies down and then really continue with business as usual

We don't know for sure.

And I think, frankly, nor does President Trump.