Caitlin Dickerson

You know, what I'm hearing now is just that people are living with a really high level of panic.

And that's exactly what the Trump administration wants.

And so people without legal status in moments like this keep in really close touch with one another.

You know, there are networks of communication.

People use WhatsApp.

People use Facebook to try to let one another know in advance information.

if someone has seen ICE or if a raid is going on.

I've talked to kids who've told me that they look outside in the morning before their undocumented parent goes to work and they watch them walk out the front door, walk to their car, and that they monitor their parents obsessively, like all day on Find My on their iPhones to just try to track their parents' location.

So it's just this 24-7 paranoia that people are dealing with.

And I've talked to law enforcement officials about this, too.

I mean, specifically talking about Renee Good's death, I spoke to a bunch of officials who reviewed the video there and said from the very beginning, you know, the first officer who runs up to her car, uses expletives, tells her to get out, starts trying to force open the door.

These officers said to me, there's no reason to not approach her and say, ma'am, can you shut off your car and please open the door?

And that's, in fact, how you want to approach a civilian, someone who has never been arrested before, isn't used to being screamed at in the face by police.

But they're coming at people in these arrests with such aggression that it's making people panic.

And I think that is leading to some of the more violent incidents that we're seeing, you know, people getting hurt and thrown to the ground or worse.

One thing that can be helpful is that the Trump administration usually signals what they want to do before they do it.

So, for example, with Title 42, the COVID era border ban, Stephen Miller tried for years to figure out a way to completely cut off access to the southern border and shut down asylum.

And then finally, the COVID-19 pandemic came around and gave him the pretense that made White House lawyers say, OK, now is the time we can shut down the border.

I think something similar is happening with the Insurrection Act.

Trump has been threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act since his first presidency, and it's coming up again now.