Ira Glass

I want to ask why these things are happening.

As we've all seen, we don't exactly get a frank and honest account from officials, but we get our talking points, many of which don't turn out to be true.

But recently, refreshingly, two different lawyers who work for ICE stepped forward separately and lifted the curtain to reveal all kinds of details about what is really happening right now inside our immigration system.

And I know there have been a couple of quotes from each of these people in the news, but I have to say, when you dive into the details of everything that they witnessed...

It's satisfying in this way that I really didn't even know I craved, because they're not talking about, like, this or that specific incident, but about the entire system being broken, and they lay it out.

Today on our show, what we're going to do is we're going to bring you their stories, and I think you'll see what I mean.

I'm WBZ Chicago.

It's This American Life.

I'm Ira Glass.

And we're just going to jump right in right now with Act One.

Act One, I Got the Memo.

OK, so this thing just happened two weeks ago that this lawyer from ICE walked into a room full of congresspeople and gave testimony that basically just blew up his entire life, like everything he'd worked towards for years.

What was so extreme?

They decided to stop training ICE agents and stop lawyering for ICE agents and instead became a whistleblower.

Our producer, Nadia Raymond, talked to him.

Coming up, while Ryan stays at his job, he witnesses all kinds of other things in the cadet training that he finds very, very worrisome.

As somebody who wants capable ICE agents out on the street, stay with us.

This is American Life.

Nadia Raymond's story about ICE whistleblower Ryan Schwenk continues.

Nadia Raymond is the producer on our show.