Ezra Klein

One of the things that surprised me when doing research for this episode was recognizing that now most of its enforcement agents are new recruits.

When you look at the way they're recruiting, when you look at the images they're using to recruit, the videos they're using to recruit, who do they seem to be targeting to you?

I want to play you a clip from Stephen Miller, who went on TV to deliver a message to ICE agents under fire for brutality and aggression.

What do you make of that?

Tell me about that high-level purge or turnover of leadership.

I'm glad you brought up Border Patrol because I said at the beginning that I think people have heard the most about ICE.

But a lot of the very aggressive raids we're seeing now are led by, certainly include, Border Patrol.

So tell me a bit about how that agency's mission and focus have changed over the past 18 months.

Let me pick up on what you said at the beginning there, which is that the border has been very quiet since Trump took over.

I mean, Trump did run for office promising to secure the southern border.

I remember talking to Biden administration officials often during his term, and there was a huge upsurge in people crossing the border, people being stopped at the border.

And you would get all these explanations that made it seem like it was quite out of their control, that there were all these things happening in Latin America and, you know, problems in Venezuela and people fleeing.

And they often treated it as outside the realm of policy.

Now, in the last year of Biden's administration, they began to change policy and border crossings seem to go down.

What has Trump done, though?

to basically, I don't want to say end people coming to southern border, but you look at the numbers and it is very, very, very low.

What is the lesson of that?

I don't think I would say only factors, but I think I would be...

Surprise, although tell me if this is your view, that the sense of American cruelty and the signal sent by the Trump administration and by these videos and by networks of immigrants coming here and what it is like to be here, I'm not saying it is good.

I don't think you should close the border through sheer cruelty.