Caitlin Dickerson

That's a good way of putting it, just to look at the standard for what asylum requires.

And that's why, you know, we're seeing people leave.

And we don't know the exact numbers of how many people have left the United States.

And we don't really have reason to believe that the 1.9 million number that the Trump administration is touting is accurate.

But I am hearing on a regular basis about people, especially people in so-called mixed status families where you have a mom or a dad who's undocumented and the rest of the family who are United States citizens who are deciding that it's no longer worth it to stay in the United States.

I think it's going to be years before we have a good sense of how many those people are.

But it does feel like the calculation is changing.

So operationally, it means a lot more boots on the ground.

It means a lot more arrests and a lot more deportations.

I think that because ICE and ICE field office directors are primarily dealing with people who have longstanding ties to the country and direct relationships with American citizens are often represented by lawyers, they're used to being held to a higher level of scrutiny.

People who work along the border are mostly dealing with folks who are trying to enter the United States for the very first time

may not speak English, are not represented by lawyers, and people who just don't have an expectation of basic rights and protections in the way that American citizens do.

And so when you put officials from that agency into American cities, you have this incredible clash of expectations versus how these border officials are used to working.

To your question about the deeper meaning, the Border Patrol is a law enforcement agency that is supposed to fortify the exterior of the United States and keep people who are unwanted out from entering the country in accordance with the laws and the policies that we have, etc.

Now you have that force of people moving into the center, moving throughout our cities and communities and really creating this impression that

there are outsiders, that there are others, that there are unwanted everywhere among us.

And we see them, in fact, taking into custody American citizens.

We see them taking into custody people who have legal status, stopping people and openly acknowledging that they're stopping people because of their physical appearance, because of their race, because of their accent.

And so it really is sending this message of a sort of enemy within, and I think helping to foster fear and division.

Yeah, a million and a half people lost their temporary legal status from the Biden administration into the Trump administration.