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WSJ What’s News

ICE’s Expanding Authority Under Trump

25 Jan 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the current state of ICE's authority under the Trump administration?

0.031 - 10.066 Jason Garzadas

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20.982 - 25.809 Jason Garzadas

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28.313 - 32.856 Jason Garzadas

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36.667 - 51.587 Alex Ossola

Hey, What's News listeners. It's Sunday, January 25th. I'm Alex Osola for The Wall Street Journal. This is What's News Sunday, the show where we tackle the big questions about the biggest stories in the news by reaching out to our colleagues across the newsroom to help explain what's happening in our world.

Chapter 2: How has ICE's approach to immigration enforcement changed recently?

52.207 - 72.512 Alex Ossola

On today's show, the Trump administration's immigration tactics have been on display in Minneapolis. Residents have been pushing back and it's turned the city into a tinderbox. Now, as immigration officers deploy elsewhere in the country, we're honing in on ICE to understand the changing landscape of what agents are allowed to do and potential challenges to that authority.

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75.26 - 94.298 Alex Ossola

Earlier this month, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency sent more than 2,000 people to Minneapolis. According to the Department of Homeland Security, immigration agents have arrested 3,000 people with alleged criminal histories who they say were in the U.S. illegally since mid-December, calling the effort, quote, a huge victory for public safety.

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94.278 - 115.311 Alex Ossola

However, ICE's increased presence and the shooting of Rene Good by an ICE officer earlier this month have sparked protests in the city and across the country, adding to clashes between locals and immigration agents that have swept through U.S. cities over the past year. So it had me wondering, what is ICE actually supposed to do? And how has that changed during President Trump's second term?

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Chapter 3: What are the legal implications of ICE entering homes without a warrant?

115.992 - 133.506 Alex Ossola

I discuss these and more questions with Michelle Hackman, who covers immigration policy for The Journal. Michelle, it feels like ICE has been around for a long time, but actually the modern iteration of the agency was only created in the early 2000s. How did it come to be and what was its founding mandate?

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133.767 - 162.754 Michelle Hackman

So ICE was founded in 2003. It existed in another form before then, but after 9-11, the government really revamped its sort of law enforcement and particularly its law enforcement around foreigners and allowing foreigners into the country. And separated out this agency to really step up deportations and also investigating foreigners who were using the immigration process to commit crimes.

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163.355 - 167.383 Alex Ossola

And how does ICE differ from other border security, for example?

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167.465 - 186.452 Michelle Hackman

ICE's mandate is really specifically to go find people in the country illegally, arrest them, and get them out of the country. So it's interesting because they use a lot of the same law enforcement tactics as most other law enforcement agencies, but their mandate is civil. It's not criminal.

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Chapter 4: What training do ICE agents receive and how is it evolving?

186.492 - 206.179 Michelle Hackman

If you're here in the country illegally, that technically is not a crime. It's actually like a little bit closer, technically speaking, to getting a parking ticket. It's a civil violation of The consequence of it is deportation. But in the government's sort of really sterile legal parlance, deportation is not supposed to be like a criminal punishment.

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206.446 - 217.505 Alex Ossola

Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the tactics because that's something that really has come into focus a lot since President Trump started his second term. But I'm curious what kind of training ICE agents receive.

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218.106 - 239.168 Michelle Hackman

So the training is evolving as we speak. Traditionally, an ICE officer is supposed to get something like 16 weeks of training, and that includes everything from learning the basics of immigration law, physical training, law enforcement training, how to use a gun, for example, and also learning to speak Spanish.

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Chapter 5: What is reasonable suspicion and how does it affect ICE operations?

239.388 - 265.495 Michelle Hackman

And this administration, because they're trying to bring on so many new ICE agents, they're Thank you so much for having me.

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265.475 - 272.867 Alex Ossola

It seems like some of that training is evolving based on what agents are allowed to or expected to do. How have we seen that play out?

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273.148 - 282.724 Michelle Hackman

There are several ways, but critics of ICE have always had this sense that it's a little bit of a rogue agency. But I will say, as someone watching ICE—

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282.704 - 303.345 Michelle Hackman

In the past, even under the first Trump administration, largely speaking, the way ICE would operate was a little bit closer to a traditional police agency where they would put in a decent amount of police work before they try to go arrest someone. They do some work to figure out, OK, we know this person is in the country illegally because they have a final deportation order.

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303.325 - 307.09 Michelle Hackman

They have this address on file with the government. We know who they are.

Chapter 6: What happens to individuals detained by ICE during enforcement actions?

307.13 - 325.873 Michelle Hackman

We know where they live. So we're going to go try to get them. Now what's happening more and more is ICE officers is really being driven by the pressure that they're under to arrest lots of people. And so what we're seeing is they're actually using basic profiling tactics to see if they can't find immigrants a little bit more quickly.

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325.853 - 337.168 Alex Ossola

One of the things that's come up over the past year or so, especially in some of these legal challenges of ICE's actions, is this concept of reasonable suspicion. What is that and how is that kind of shifting?

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337.649 - 355.793 Michelle Hackman

So there are two steps to making an arrest. You need to have reasonable suspicion to stop someone and question them. But then you need to have what's called probable cause to actually take them into your custody. You can't reasonably suspect that someone's in the country illegally just because they're Hispanic.

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Chapter 7: How are asylum seekers treated under ICE's current policies?

355.773 - 376.414 Michelle Hackman

But what the Supreme Court has said recently is that you can actually take a number of those profiling factors. Let's say you're Hispanic and you look terrified when you see the ICE officer. That suddenly now does rise to the level of reasonable suspicion to then stop someone and say, OK, do you have proof of your citizenship?

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376.715 - 383.962 Alex Ossola

I understand that there's a pretty changing standard around whether ICE is allowed to enter your home without a warrant. What's going on there?

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384.122 - 406.722 Michelle Hackman

Yeah, this is a huge deal. Typically in the past, you would need the sign-off of a judge who sort of independently evaluated the evidence and decided that level of force was needed. But ICE has just decided we need to be making more arrests. We're going to disregard that. And we're going to argue that this administrative warrant that ICE itself produces is enough to force down someone's door.

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Chapter 8: What legal challenges are being raised against ICE's expanded powers?

406.702 - 408.206 Michelle Hackman

break in and arrest them.

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410.21 - 418.129 Alex Ossola

Coming up, what happens to the people that ICE detains and potential impacts of legal challenges against the agency. That's after the break.

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445.909 - 468.956 Alex Ossola

Pro's number one most trusted app, based on August 2025 proprietary survey. What is happening these days to people who are detained? I remember back to the first Trump administration, there was the child separation policy that got a lot of attention. But let's say that you are in the country illegally. What happens to you?

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469.437 - 482.217 Michelle Hackman

ICE is moving quickly to try to deport people as fast as they can, because once someone is out of the country, it's harder to force ICE to bring them back. They have admitted to wrongly deporting multiple people.

482.277 - 497.644 Michelle Hackman

There are lots of sorts of procedural and human rights arguments that people can make when you're in ICE custody in the United States to say your detention is illegal, to get you out of ICE custody on bond, for example. But once you've been deported, your recourse is very limited.

497.742 - 504.329 Alex Ossola

There have been reports of people who have died in ICE custody since President Trump took office. How common an occurrence is that?

504.91 - 527.421 Michelle Hackman

I haven't really done the proportionality, but because ICE is just so much more ubiquitous and visible now, it does mean that they're getting into more of these confrontations with people. And so most famously, you have the shooting death of Rene Good. And we've seen a really high number of deaths in ICE detention. And that's partially because there are just so many more people in ICE detention.

527.822 - 535.461 Michelle Hackman

You will have more people who end up really sick and die. The conditions inside ICE detention have been reported to be pretty poor as well.

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