Minneapolis Reveals Where Trump's Deportation Agenda Is Going

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

News, Government, Society & Culture

4.3 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2026

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There’s so much more happening than what you see in online video clips. Congress gave Trump a staggering, military-size budget for immigration enforcement. And it’s hard to keep the scale of what the administration is building in your mind all at once. There are all the additional boots on the ground, as well as a lot of things that are less visible. I wanted to talk to someone who has followed closely how the whole immigration system is changing under President Trump. Caitlin Dickerson is a journalist at The Atlantic. She’s been covering immigration closely since Trump’s first term, and she won a Pulitzer Prize in 2023 for reporting on his family separation policy. In this conversation, we discuss what the country’s new immigration enforcement infrastructure looks like, what it is being used to do now and what it might mean for the future. This episode contains strong language. Mentioned: “We need to take away children.” by Caitlin Dickerson “ICE’s Mind-Bogglingly Massive Blank Check" by Caitlin Dickerson “Hundreds of Thousands of Anonymous Deportees” by Caitlin Dickerson “How ICE Lost Its Guardrails” by Caitlin Dickerson “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” The White House Book Recommendations: Impossible Subjects by Mae M. Ngai Solito by Javier Zamora Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sarah Stillman and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The With every norm-busting move, with every boundary-busting decision. You get this debate around Donald Trump.
0:38.6	Is it authoritarianism now?
0:40.9	Has the nature of the American state finally changed into something else?
0:45.5	It's not going to be that clean.
0:48.6	There's no one moment where we phase from one thing to another.
0:51.5	But I think what we can say, what can't even really be argued,
0:54.6	is that the authoritarianism is here.
0:57.5	It's just unevenly distributed.
1:00.7	But you can see it.
1:01.6	You can see it in the video of an ICE officer
1:03.5	shooting and killing.
1:05.1	Renee Good in Minneapolis.
1:06.1	No!
1:06.7	No!
1:07.7	Shame!
1:08.7	Oh my fucking God! You can see it when you watch a disabled woman dragged out of her car on a way to a doctor's appointment.
1:16.6	Please, I can get up by police before I'm disabled trying to go to the doctor up there. That's why I didn't know.
1:21.6	You can see it when a family of eight on its way home from a basketball game is tear gassed and needs to give CPR to their six-month-old child.
1:30.6	I was giving them out to mouth and now I remember stopping and I said, I will give you all my breath till you get yours back because...
1:38.3	Nobody wants to see their kids like that.
1:43.3	You can see what Border Patrol agents tackle and detain, a U.S. citizen who is filming their activities, and then they accuse him of assaulting them. Look, look, look, look. They're grabbing him. You'll let him go, let him go, let him go. Let him go. Let him go. You can see it when masked men walk up to people with brown skin and just ask them to prove that they are American.
	...

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