State of the Union with Journalist Jacob Soboroff
Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Higher Ground
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 22 February 2026
⏱️ 79 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Journalist and author Jacob Soboroff (MS Now) has spent the better part of a decade reporting from inside America’s fractured immigration system. He joins us this week, fresh off the plane from Minneapolis, where he’s been on the ground covering the ICE raids that continue to sweep across the city (and the nation).
We discuss the evolving operations (3:00) and protests on the ground (6:00), the gulf between conservative media’s portrayals of unrest and the reality he’s witnessed (14:00), and the potential for accountability in the shootings of Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti (23:00).
Soboroff then offers an abridged history of immigration enforcement (31:00), dispatches from his 2018 visit to a family separation facility in Texas (38:00), and insights on ICE’s online recruitment campaign (46:00). To close, we unpack the next phase of ICE (1:01:00), Jacob’s reporting on the LA wildfires in his new book Firestorm (1:05:00), and whether Bad Bunny’s call for unity will be heard (1:11:00).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Talk Easy. I'm Stan Forgoso. Welcome to the show. |
| 0:34.5 | Today, journalist Jacob Soberoff. |
| 0:45.5 | Soberoff is a senior political and national reporter for MS Now, and the author of the new book, Firestorm, The Great Los Angeles Fires, and America's New Age of Disaster. |
| 0:52.2 | Growing up in the Pacific Palisades, Soberoff watched his childhood home go up in flames while reporting on the story. |
| 0:54.5 | And while Los Angeles continued to burn, |
| 0:59.5 | he was on the ground interviewing Governor Newsom and, most importantly, displaced residents and workers searching for answers. In recent months, you may have seen Soberoff reporting from |
| 1:04.9 | the streets of Minneapolis, where he's been on the ground covering the ongoing ice raids. |
| 1:09.8 | It's a subject Soberoff knows intimately. |
| 1:12.4 | During Donald Trump's first term, Jacob was one of the leading reporters covering the family separation |
| 1:17.6 | crisis at the border, resulting in his award-winning book, separated inside an American tragedy. |
| 1:24.5 | His reporting was then adapted into a documentary of the same name by the great |
| 1:28.9 | Errol Morris. Ahead of the State of the Union this week, I wanted to sit with Jacob to discuss |
| 1:34.3 | what President Trump has recently been heralding as, quote, the new golden age, an era marked by |
| 1:40.8 | aggressive ice raids, expanding detention centers, and a sweeping and seemingly |
| 1:45.7 | indiscriminate promise of mass deportation. We also discussed the complicated history of America's |
| 1:51.5 | immigration policy, how both Democrat and Republican administrations have contributed to the broken |
| 1:57.3 | system we have today, and what on the other side of Minnesota and the Super Bowl |
| 2:02.2 | we can do about any of it? |
| 2:04.9 | That's coming up next with Jacob Soberoff, welcome on the show. |
| 2:24.9 | Thank you, Sam. |
| 2:25.9 | It's an honor to be here. |
| 2:27.4 | How are you doing? |
... |
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