Ross Douthat

Hey listeners, before we start, I wanted to let our friends out west know about an event I'm doing in the City of Angels next week.

On Tuesday, January 20th at 7 p.m., I'll be in conversation with my colleague, Jamel Bowie, and our boss, the head of New York Times Opinion, Katie Kingsbury.

And together, we're going to make sense...

The Library Foundation of Los Angeles is kindly hosting us.

You can find more information in our show notes, and you can buy tickets for the event online.

Just go to lfla.org calendar and check out the event for January 20th at 7 p.m.

From New York Times Opinion, I'm Ross Douthat, and this is Interesting Times.

The death of Rene Good in Minneapolis has put a spotlight on the aggressive tactics of immigration and customs enforcement agents operating in U.S.

cities.

And it's also spotlighted the groups organizing to observe and protest immigration enforcement.

I'm really interested in these small-scale efforts, which have led to people standing on street corners and blowing whistles to alert neighborhoods to ISIS presence, to following agents carrying cell phone cameras while the agents are conducting operations and making arrests.

It seems like a very effective style of protest in certain ways, especially since it generates footage of ICE overreach and abuse.

But it's also fraught with risk when it tempts protesters to interfere with law enforcement directly.

My guest today is training people for this kind of activism.

Francisco Segovia is the executive director of a Minneapolis nonprofit that's on the front lines of the anti-ICE operations.

And I wanted to talk to him about how he trains people for interactions with ICE agents.

What kind of risks it carries for protesters and what people like himself want from immigration policy.

Francisco Segovia, welcome to Interesting Times.

So we're going to talk about what it means to train people to protest.

We're going to talk about the goals, the larger goals of the anti-ICE protests.