How ICE Became Trump’s Very Own Paramilitary Force

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The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

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4.7 • 8.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

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Summary

More To The Story: Over the last few weeks, Minneapolis has looked like a city under siege. The Trump administration has sent roughly 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota in what Todd Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has called the “largest immigration operation ever.” This all comes as protests have spread around Minneapolis and across the country demanding that ICE leave Minnesota and other states following the death of Renée Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident and US citizen who was killed by an ICE officer as she observed federal agents. ICE and other immigration agents are operating in ways we’ve never seen before in this country. But their tactics and weapons are not entirely new.

Investigative journalist Radley Balko is the author of Rise of the Warrior Cop and host of Collateral Damage, a podcast about America’s war on drugs. He’s been tracking police militarization for decades and how it's tied to America's long-running drug war. On this week’s More To The Story, Balko tells host Al Letson that how law enforcement is operating today is beyond anything he ever imagined.

Listen: Lessons From Trump’s “War” on Chicago (Reveal)
Read: How Trump Is Using Violent Tragedies to Divide America (Mother Jones)
Listen: A Dictator Deposed—What Now for Venezuela? (Reveal)
Read: Rise of the Warrior Cop (PublicAffairs)
Listen: Collateral Damage (The Intercept)
Read: The Watch

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Transcript

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0:00.0	He is using these forces as basically the way authoritarian uses a paramilitary force, right,
0:09.3	to kind of carry out his own personal grudges to inflict pain and violence and discomfort
0:13.9	on people that he sees as his political enemies.
0:17.8	On this week's more to the story, investigative journalist Radley Bauco.
0:21.6	We discuss how President Trump's immigration raids, the militarization of the police, and America's decades-long drug war are all connected, and upending America in the process.
0:33.1	Stay with us.
0:36.2	The assignment with me, Audie Cornish.
0:39.1	The Oscars will be out, like the Golden Globes will be out.
0:41.6	There's a Super Bowl coming up with Bad Bunny.
0:43.9	Yeah.
0:44.2	The start of the year every year is really a time where some of these water cooler moments kick off.
0:50.1	People really need anything that's galvanizing or hopeful.
0:54.5	You seem like you're embodying cringe right now.
0:57.2	Yeah, it's weird to see the cringe process running course through me in real time.
1:02.8	Listen to The Assignment with me, Audie Cornish, streaming now on your favorite podcast app.
1:20.6	This is more to the story. I'm out Ledson. If you live in an American city right now, it might seem unrecognizable.
1:26.6	Just look at Minneapolis.
1:28.5	Masked ICE agents are roaming the streets,
1:31.7	dragging people from their homes,
1:33.5	pulling them from vehicles,
1:35.0	detaining them, even killing them.
1:37.7	Earlier this month,
	...

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