ICE's America: Obey or Else.
The Lincoln Project
The Lincoln Project
4.6 • 9.1K Ratings
🗓️ 16 January 2026
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Coming off last week’s examination of the killing of Renee Nicole Good, Rick lays out how the United States is sliding into an American police state—one powered by ICE intimidation, fear-based propaganda, and a rapidly expanding government surveillance apparatus. Rick breaks down how ICE relies on spectacle, misinformation, and selective enforcement to force citizen compliance, while the Trump-era state deploys AI surveillance and facial recognition, license plate readers, and Flock Safety cameras to monitor Americans in ways that openly undermine the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment, and basic civil liberties. This isn’t about public safety—it’s about control. This isn't a flaw, it's a feature. It's no longer about equal protection under the law, but about protecting power, punishing dissent, and enforcing political obedience. When agencies like ICE are shielded from accountability while technology is used to surveil citizens instead of defend their rights, justice stops being blind and starts taking orders.
For best practices on dealing with ICE, this week's episode of The Breakdown features our legal counsel, Mario Nicolais, and is also worth a watch.
https://youtube.com/live/eRihj_qXUYw
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Rick Wilson is on X at @TheRickWilson, on Bluesky at @TheRickWilson.bsky.social, and you can check out Rick's Substack at therickwilson.substack.com. You can check out more of LP's work at www.lincolnproject.us and on X at @ProjectLincoln.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Your task will not be an easy one. |
| 0:02.5 | Your enemy is well trained, well-equipped, and battle-hearted. |
| 0:06.3 | There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. |
| 0:09.9 | There is the United States of America. |
| 0:14.8 | Good night and good luck. |
| 0:16.5 | Hey, everybody. |
| 0:17.9 | Today's elephant in the room is the American police state. |
| 0:25.5 | You know, I found it hard to say those words. I had to record this opening a couple of times because |
| 0:30.0 | I don't want to believe we live in a police state. You don't want to believe we live in a police |
| 0:34.3 | state. One of the fundamental things about being an American is that we don't live in a police state. One of the fundamental things about being an American |
| 0:37.6 | is that we don't live in a police state. We live in a big, messy republic based on democratic |
| 0:42.5 | principles, based on the constitution and the rule of law, and the bill of rights, and the things |
| 0:48.5 | that generations of Americans for 250 years have fought to protect and preserve and expand. |
| 0:54.7 | But I can't tell you a pretty little lie anymore about that because we do live now in an |
| 0:58.9 | American police state. |
| 1:00.1 | I want to break it down in three levels. |
| 1:02.7 | The first level is the political intent level. |
| 1:08.0 | The reason DHS and ICE and Border Patrol and this entire clack of federal agencies are in the streets pulling American citizens from their cars, from their homes, rounding them up, demanding their IDs, searching them illegally, seizing their property illegally is the political intent. |
| 1:32.7 | You need to understand that no police state forms based on law enforcement. |
| 1:39.4 | ICE and DHS and Homeland Security and other people that are in the streets right now, |
| 1:46.1 | masked and anonymous and unaccountable, are not there to enforce the law. |
| 1:53.2 | Yeah. |
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