Seth Stoughton

This is Planet Money from NPR.

I would be...

shocked if some of what we see that's problematic in the way that ICE agents and CBP agents are handling these various tasks, I would be shocked if it's actually a training failure at this point.

Because some of the agents that have been publicly identified are longstanding veterans of

It doesn't matter how you're trained if your supervisor says, you run up to those cars, and if they don't get out immediately, you break the windows.

Even if you are trained to not do that, even if you are trained...

about why that's a really bad tactic, about why that's likely to provoke resistance, about how that's likely to contribute to an otherwise avoidable use of force.

If that's what you're told to do by your supervisor, and if that's what you think the peers around you expect you to do, that's what you're going to do.

One of the things that we've seen from ICE, at least, and from CBP, is...

an approach to accountability that I think communicates to agents that it's just performative.

That really removes one of the legs from the stool that we use to get officers and agents to perform as professionals.

The financial incentives alone probably aren't going to do anything, especially not with an agency that just views that as the cost of doing business.