Ezra Klein

I mean, we are discussing, I think, the most significant change in policy under Donald Trump.

This is a place where they've put the most energy, where they've gambled the most, where they're putting the most new money.

It is very, very important to them.

Why?

When you listen to the Trump administration, its top officials, the people who seem to influence them and they listen to, what is their broad theory of immigration?

Why is it such a problem?

What are they trying to do?

What would be accomplished if they did succeed?

What is the macro narrative they seem to believe here?

I agree that power and ideology are braided for them.

And I think that's why I worry particularly about the way in which the scaling up of immigration funding of domestic law enforcement is

creates a kind of apparatus that can be used in different ways.

I mean, I look at the CBP and ICE, I think about what their recruitment videos and social media presence looks like.

I think about the people in the masks.

I think about who would join it now, given how controversial it is.

And it's very hard as somebody who's read some history of other places not to see the, at least, possibility of a domestic paramilitary force

How real or overstated do you find that concern?

I've seen a lot more discussion among particularly liberals of what was once just a social media hashtag, which is abolishing ICE, and the view that after this, given its leadership, given who it's recruiting, that there's not going to be a way to reform this organization, that it's a younger agency that you're just going to need to get rid of it, much like Trump got rid of USAID.

What have you thought about that discussion?

Then I'll ask our final question.