S6 Ep22: Put Excuses on ICE (with Adrian Carrasquillo)
The Focus Group Podcast
The Bulwark
4.8 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 31 January 2026
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We saw an ICE officer kill an American citizen for the second time in less than three weeks. This time, it was harder for some of the voters we talked to to make an excuse for it. Bulwark immigration correspondent Adrian Carrasquillo returns to the show to discuss his reporting and listen to voters' raw reactions to what they're seeing in the news.
Show notes:
The abhorrent power of the photograph of a 5-year-old held by ICE
By Adrian Carrasquillo:
Why a Scared 5-Year-Old Boy Shook Our National Conscience
Portraits of the Minneapolis Resistance
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the |
| 0:12.1 | bulwark, and this week we are covering yet another killing of an American citizen by our own |
| 0:18.4 | government. We've heard a lot from Republicans calling for investigations, |
| 0:23.2 | a lot of finger pointing inside the Trump administration, and today you're going to hear from |
| 0:27.9 | some of the real people driving Trump's declining poll numbers on immigration. |
| 0:33.5 | A majority of the country now disapproves of how ICE is handling its job right now, |
| 0:38.2 | according to a recent UGov poll, including about one in five Republicans. |
| 0:43.2 | Today, every voter you're going to hear from voted for Donald Trump in 2024, and a lot of |
| 0:49.0 | them are not happy. |
| 0:51.2 | I think this group is interesting because while you, dear listener, were probably extremely |
| 0:57.1 | mad, as I know I was, about the killing of Alex Pready this past weekend, many of the voters |
| 1:03.1 | we talked to were more like sad and anxious and also confused. And we're going to try to make sense of |
| 1:09.6 | all of it. My guest today is Adrian Caraskeo, the Bullwarks Immigration Correspondent and author of the excellent Huddled Masses newsletter. If you're not reading that, you got to be. It's so good. One of the best things we're producing here. Adrian, thanks for coming back, man. Sarah, it's great to be all with you. Yeah, I know. Thanks for coming back. You have to be here. |
| 1:28.3 | I make you come. Yeah, yeah. But, Adrian, you were in Minneapolis over the last few weeks |
| 1:33.8 | because of the Renee good killing. Well, just tell me about your time there. What were you reporting on? |
| 1:40.5 | What did you find out? What did you see? I always think about these trips. What are the |
| 1:45.1 | stories if I never run into an ice agent? If they're hitting people in the face with tear gas, |
| 1:50.2 | we kind of know what the story is. And I just feel like we want to know what this has been from the |
| 1:55.7 | beginning, which is if you're doing interior enforcement, what does that look like in communities? |
| 2:00.4 | And how are you affecting businesses and how are you affecting organizers? |
| 2:04.3 | People, I think, in the last few years, particularly, I've heard the word activists, |
| 2:07.4 | and it's all of a sudden this big, scary word. |
... |
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