This Week On ICE

Team TWOI
  • 5.0 (4)
  • News Commentary
  • Updated Weekly

A weekly podcast covering the latest developments of the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies, hosted by journalists Kelly Kimball and Matthew Kendrick. thisweekonice.substack.com

  1. 6d ago

    What an immigration lawyer wants you to know about ICE

    Welcome back to This Week on ICE. An immigration lawyer answers your biggest questions — This week, we welcomed back immigration attorney Robyn Nice of McAfee & Nice Law in Boston to talk about how the rapidly changing immigration enforcement landscape is impacting attorneys, immigrants, and families. We encourage you to listen to the full episode, but we’ve included a few highlights below. [Catch up: Listen to our first interview with Robin Nice here.] Take action: How to help yourself and your neighbors when ICE comes knocking Robin lined up a few concrete steps we could all take to uplift our communities. If you find this helpful, share it with your networks. For immigrants and families: If Temporary Protected Status (TPS) has ended for your country of nationality (you can check here), seek qualified immigration legal assistance as soon as possible, and look into whether another immigration pathway is available, particularly asylum or another form of relief. Know your rights, including the right to remain silent and request an attorney. The Immigrant Legal Resource Center has a vast collection of helpful webinars on these rights. “Unless ICE is coming at you with a judicial warrant, which is signed by an actual judge, you don’t have to talk to them. … You can carry around evidence of your immigration status or your citizenship if you want to. … Just shut your mouth. Don’t open the door if you’re in your car or your house or your building . And ask for a warrant. If you say anything, say, ‘I want a warrant,’ or, ‘I want an attorney,’ and that’s it.” — Robin Support This Week on ICE Podcast Do not assume that having lawful documents or a pending immigration case will prevent detention. Recent data reveal that ICE held over 65,000 in detention, with more than 70 percent having no criminal conviction. Reliable month-to-month ICE data tracking this can be found here. If detained or facing deportation, ask an attorney about possible federal court remedies, including challenges involving detention or due process. For nonimmigrant members of the public Learn basic immigration-rights information and share reliable resources with your community. On this show, we love the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the Immigrant Defense Project, and the National Immigration Law Center. Look for reputable local organizations offering immigration-rights training. We have attended the Hands Off NYC trainings and a smattering of other local NYC immigrant-rights workshops. “The immigrants themselves get exhausted. The number of times I’ve had clients just tell me, ‘I just don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t feel welcome here. … The barriers are huge.” — Robin Support nonprofits financially or help cover legal filing fees for people who cannot afford them. Consider volunteering in support of people at immigration courts, detention/processing centers, and community organizations. It is your First Amendment right to document ICE activity in a public space without interfering with enforcement operations. Support This Week on ICE Podcast On your way out: To close out our show, we asked Robin how she stays afloat when seemingly every option for immigrants and their families is being pushed to its limit. While Robin worries things will “get worse before they get better,” she has been putting more stock “in seeing those little glimmers of hope.” “It’s the judge who buys his own box of tissues because the court-provided ones either don’t exist or are too scratchy. … Judges who post a call for all immigration judges to resign. It’s talking to people who talk back in master hearings and push back on the judges when they’re deporting children or giving them a hard time. Every single one of those is just what sustains me. I think I have become more appreciative of those little tiny bits of human kindness or just humanity in general.” — Robin That’s it for us this week. Keep sending us your questions, comments or tips to thisweekonice@gmail.com. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, look out for your neighbors, and we’ll see you next time. — Kelly and Matt Get full access to This Week On ICE Podcast at thisweekonice.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Sep 2

    An ICE surge in Springfield, and a third-country deportation gambit in Africa

    Welcome back to This Week on ICE. An “ask me anything” with immigration lawyer Robin Nice. — Next week, we’re inviting a former This Week on ICE guest and seasoned immigration lawyer Robin Nice to answer your most pressing questions about how immigrants are building their best defense against ICE surveillance, arrest, detention and deportation. Email us at thisweekonice@gmail.com with your questions before this Thursday, Sep. 3, at 3 pm ET, and we’ll incorporate them into our chat. There’s a lot to cover this week. Let’s get into it. Support This Week on ICE Podcast The top line: A new ICE surge in Springfield, OH On July 27, the Department of Homeland Security ended Temporary Protected Status for Haiti, Syria and Yemen — which allowed hundreds of thousands of people from these countries to live and work legally in the U.S. due to their home countries experiencing immense turmoil. Since then, federal immigration officers have surged in communities with large populations of people from these countries, including Springfield, which boasts between 10,000 and 15,000 Haitian refugees. We talked about the new frontline of ICE’s ongoing surveillance, detention and deportation scheme — including a surge in the use of ankle monitors. “This is a narrative decision. Springfield is not a place where the most Haitian refugees are located in the country. …  [The ICE surge is happening here] to undergird the racist misinformation Trump had said of Haitians during his 2024 presidential campaign. If he’s able to go into Springfield and the surrounding towns and arrest and deport a bunch of Haitians, he could then demonstrate to his base, ‘Look at what we did to make your country so-called ‘safe.’” — Kelly [Catch up: Inside the class action lawsuit attempting to protect immigrants from mandatory ankle monitors.] Support This Week on ICE Podcast Springfield and its surrounding towns are not the only places experiencing heightened ICE activity. Since June, immigrants across the five New York City boroughs — especially Queens, where the immigrant population is significant — have reported increased ICE activity. At 16:05, Kelly explained the current playbook ICE is using in the Big Apple. An “ICE Sighting Map” from NYC ICE Breaker [Catch up: We discussed a potential Springfield ICE surge in February. You can listen to that episode here.] Also on our radar: The Trump administration’s third-country deportation gambit in Africa Over a 10-day period last month, the Trump administration sent more than 100 deportees to eight countries across Africa, expanding its "third-country" deportation campaign. At 21:12, Matt explained  the scope of the government’s clandestine agreements with countries like Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Eswatini, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. “These agreements would allow the U.S. to deport people who are not from those countries to those countries. And this month really seems to be the month where all of these things kicked off.” — Matt [Catch up: We sat down with Refugees International to discuss the legal wrinkles in these third-country agreements and their human impact here and here.] Interview: A new Trump rule will make it harder for foreign journalists to work in the country. This labor union is suing DHS to fight back. Support This Week on ICE Podcast At 26:37, we sit down with Jon Schleuss, who is the president of The NewsGuild-CWA. The union has joined a coalition challenging a new DHS rule that changes how long international students, exchange visitors and foreign journalists can remain in the United States. The lawsuit argues that DHS exceeded its authority. If the rule is put into force on Sep. 15 as planned, the student and exchange visa periods would be no longer than four years, and the visa for journalists — which currently can last years — would be up to just 240 days or, in ​the case of Chinese nationals, only 90 days. Legal experts warn this new rule would be "catastrophic" for universities. Jon says this new rule is “an attack on journalists.”  “ It’s all part of a large, disturbed authoritarian push to try and silence a free press.” — Jon [Catch up: Listen to our episodes covering ICE’s threat to First Amendment freedoms here and here.] That’s it for us this week. Keep sending us your questions, comments or tips to thisweekonice@gmail.com. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, look out for your neighbors, and we’ll see you next time. — Kelly and Matt P.S. - We’re building a community with official TWOI Instagram, YouTube and TikTok accounts. Give us a follow if you’d like to get to know other fans of the show! Get full access to This Week On ICE Podcast at thisweekonice.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Aug 26

    The team tracking “ICE-free zones” across the United States

    Welcome back to This Week on ICE. Farewell to Dolly Parton — a true legend not only in music but also in the power of kindness. Hours before recording this week’s episode, we learned of the passing of country music star and humanitarian Dolly Parton. Through building up countless charities and donating to important causes, Dolly was a firm believer in giving everyone in this country a chance to thrive. It was this same dedication to making the lives of others better, her insistence on compassion and generosity toward others, and her ethic of goodwill that underpins the mission of this show. Rest in peace, Dolly, and may we all tumble out of bed and stumble in the kitchen tomorrow, ensuring our “9-to-5” fulfills the massive legacy you have left behind. There’s a lot to cover this week. Let’s get into it. Support This Week on ICE Podcast The top line: The Trump administration makes a historic mass visa revocation gambit. On Monday, the U.S. State Department announced the Trump administration is preparing to revoke the business and tourism visas of foreigners who applied for or are currently seeking asylum in the country between 2016 and 2026. While the Department itself didn’t confirm how many visas would be affected, the Associated Press found that this could affect up to 200,000 people. If carried out, it would be the largest single mass revocation of visas in U.S. history. “This seems to underscore the Trump administration’s goal of making asylum virtually impossible to obtain, and to create a narrative in which asylum is perceived to be a lax and unvetted process. It isn’t.” — Kelly The Trump administration is likely to face a mountain of legal challenges against this move, especially given that it is not illegal to apply for asylum after entering the United States on a B-1 business visa or a B-2 tourist visa. Per the USCIS website, “any person who is physically present in the United States may request and apply for asylum regardless of their current immigration status or how they entered the country.” “If we look back at the Cold War, many people who did manage to defect from behind the Iron Curtain or from other totalitarian regimes were able to do so initially on tourist visas and [later through asylum] in the United States. There was no problem with it then. Sometimes you have to hide from your own regime when you want to leave the country. There are plenty of good reasons to go through this specific route that involve the person in question’s safety.” — Matt Support This Week on ICE Podcast As we saw with the Trump administration’s failed attempt to revoke birthright citizenship earlier this year, a consistent tactic has unfolded: hit the public with something outrageous — like revoking B-1 and B-2 visas for those who have claimed asylum in the last 10 years — then drag it through the courts, and lose. “But in this process, the administration ultimately emboldens its strongest base and then creates a narrative that is undergirded by misinformation about immigration and immigrants in America,” Kelly explained. [Listen to our episode about the SCOTUS birthright citizenship debate here.] Also on our radar: A new and expensive era for highly-skilled immigrant workers On Monday, the White House announced that it was rolling out a plan to charge $103,000 for H1-B visas,  which allow about 65,000 foreigners, plus another 20,000 foreign students attending U.S. universities, to work and live in the United States full-time. (It is also a major way U.S. companies can hire workers from abroad, especially in specialized roles.) If you’re having a bit of déjà vu, that’s because courts already struck down a previous attempt to charge six figures for the visa back in June, but the White House is insisting this plan is necessary “to recover the costs” of immigration. “  Why the Trump administration is going after them, I think, is part of a larger project to discourage migration. …  We’re talking about [targeting] people who help design frontier, breaking-edge technology that helps the U.S. stay the most competitive economy in the world.  If you were thinking about this in terms of a college sports team, you’re ruling out your best possible recruits. ” — Matt Interview: The team tracking every city taking creative measures against ICE. At 20:24, we sat down with Hannah Alexander, who is the Deputy Legal Director at Local Progress. Local Progress is a vast network of elected officials — from mayors and district attorneys to county commissioners, city council members, and school board members — across 47 states and Washington, D.C., all working to advance racial and economic justice. With ICE arrests surging to 50,000 in July alone, Hannah and her team have been closely tracking what elected officials and community members across the country are doing to protect their communities, such as creating from so-called “ICE-free zones”, non-cooperation policies, and restrictions on detention infrastructure.  “ This is the manifestation of communities and their elected leaders saying that they do not support the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, thinking very critically about their local power, wondering ‘how can we ensure no local infrastructure is used for that agenda, and what local power do they have to protect their residents?’” — Hannah Support This Week on ICE Podcast Here are just a few cities they’ve tracked: Monterey, CA, prevented county employees from collaborating with ICE; ended the county’s participation in the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP); and explored ways to limit local law enforcement’s collaboration with ICE. Lehigh County, PA, banned ICE agents from using county-owned property as staging areas or operational bases for immigration enforcement. Minneapolis, MN, rejected a pilot drone program involving the Minneapolis Police Department and Skydio, a surveillance company with ties to DHS. Newburgh, NY, approved a resolution opposing DHS’s use of a local warehouse for detention enforcement. [Catch up: Listen to our episodes covering how local law enforcement is incentivized to cooperate with ICE here, here, and here.] “Based on research done by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the capacity in your community dictates enforcement. So, if you want to protect your community from ICE patrolling through your communities,you should make sure you don’t have ICE using your local infrastructure.” — Hannah That’s it for us this week. Keep sending us your questions, comments or tips to thisweekonice@gmail.com. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, look out for your neighbors, and we’ll see you next time. — Kelly and Matt P.S. - We’re building a community with official TWOI Instagram, YouTube and TikTok accounts. Give us a follow if you’d like to get to know other fans of the show! Get full access to This Week On ICE Podcast at thisweekonice.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Aug 19

    ICE spying in Minnesota, deportee bounty hunters, and a journalist’s 300+ days in detention

    Welcome back to This Week on ICE. A third ICE detention death in Delaney Hall: The troubled ICE detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, is back in the headlines this week for tragic reasons — this time following news of the death of Guatemalan immigrant José Chajón-Raxón. His death reportedly occurred over one month ago, but the public only learned of it last week, after New Jersey Democratic Rep. Rob Menendez brought it to light. Chajón-Raxón was arrested by ICE on July 18, and the following day, while detained in Delaney, he reportedly suffered seizure-like symptoms; was hospitalized on July 22. At some point around this time, Chajón-Raxón died — though questions remain about exactly when, whether he was discharged before his death, and what condition he was in when ICE released him. At the top of the show, we break down how Chajón-Raxón’s case connects to recent ICE directives to cease documenting certain ICE-related deaths. [Catch up: Track our coverage of Delaney Hall here, here, here, and here — and our interview with the investigative team tracking every ICE-linked death here.] “ Over a month ago, ICE changed its policies so that it is no longer reporting deaths of recently released detainees.” — Kelly Support This Week on ICE Podcast The top line: New financial incentives arise for law enforcement units (and civilians) deputized by ICE We’ve talked a lot on this show about local law enforcement’s increased cooperation with ICE — but it’s about to get even deeper. ICE is now planning to offer local police departments insurance (to the tune of up to $500,000 per officer) to cover liabilities and legal fees that officers may incur while making immigration-related arrests. Critics say this practice could further erode accountability by encouraging police with financial protection for their actions helping ICE. At around 6:36, Matt discusses what the pitch is and how ICE is spending the enormous budget Congress has set for the agency. “It’s a tool to remove accountability, right? Local police in the past may have not committed certain immigration-related arrests or not taken the risk to help ICE carry out its enforcement activities if they felt that they could be held personally liable for the consequences of that arrest.” — Matt But local law enforcement is the only ones receiving incentives from ICE. The Department of Homeland Security is reportedly hiring bounty hunters to find and photograph deported people’s homes abroad. It’s part of a far wider scheme called the Tracing and Payment Recovery Services to collect unpaid immigration fines. (So far, DHS has issued more than $84 billion in fines to immigrants it has accused of failing to depart the United States, citing an obscure 1996 provision of immigration law.) Also on our radar: Documents reveal a sweeping undercover operation in Minneapolis, where agents tried to entice anti-ICE activists to commit violence A court filing on Thursday showed that ICE attempted to infiltrate activist groups resisting their crackdown in Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota earlier this year, which resulted in the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Not only did the agency penetrate Signal group chats and in-person, rapid-response trainings in order to collect evidence of violent dissent against the government, but at least one agent made an offer to “build items that might assist other groups with more ‘direct-action’ protests.” At around 10:50, Kelly discussed what these documents reveal about the extent of ICE’s surveillance of groups attempting to resist their enforcement activities. So, what were undercover agents trying to find out? A DHS report from February said the agency was looking into people who were “providing material support to violent opportunists and agitators.” But, this follows an earlier executive order issued by Trump that designated “Antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization. “ The question that I am asking myself is: ‘what happens to First Amendment protections when an ordinary political organizing project criticizing government policy becomes the subject of federal criminal investigation?’ When you put these two in the same space, there is no space left for First Amendment freedoms.” — Kelly Interview: The journalist spending over 300 days in an ICE detention facility At around 18:45, we sit down with Adam Rose, who is the deputy director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation and a board member of the Los Angeles Press Club. He recently wrote a piece in The Intercept about the case of undocumented journalist Carlitos Ricardo Parias, who has been held at the Adelanto ICE Detention Facility in California for over 300 days. It’s the longest known period a journalist has ever spent in U.S. custody. In Adam’s own words, “Parias’s case is extraordinary. Perhaps no journalist has endured such a sustained sequence of violence, prosecution, and imprisonment at the hands of the U.S. government.” “He is continuing to commit acts of journalism behind bars and informing the public about what he and fellow detainees are going through.” — Adam That’s it for us this week. Keep sending us your questions, comments or tips to thisweekonice@gmail.com. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, look out for your neighbors, and we’ll see you next time. — Kelly and Matt P.S. - We’re building a community with official TWOI Instagram, YouTube and TikTok accounts. Give us a follow if you’d like to get to know other fans of the podcast and receive up-to-the-minute developments on ICE and immigration outside of our weekly episode drops. You can also follow Kelly and Matt on Instagram. Get full access to This Week On ICE Podcast at thisweekonice.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Aug 12

    Inside ICE's new body camera policy — and the surveillance concerns it raises

    Welcome back to This Week on ICE. ICE will release body camera footage, but only on their terms: The killings of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero last month renewed calls for ICE to equip its officers with body cameras, which the agency had promised to do earlier this year. Now, ICE claims it will roll out the cameras completely by the end of September — but that doesn’t mean it’s going to let you see the footage. The agency says its policy requires releasing footage only after determining if “it is in the best interests of the agency.” Matt broke down the new policy and what it says about the shape surveillance could take moving forward. [Catch up: We dove into the Congressional debate that occurred earlier this year over ICE body cameras here.] “ If ICE is not releasing body cam footage, and there’s not a good way for people to access that body cam footage, that kind of indicates to me that the body cams are going to be used for another purpose. … If ICE is walking around all day with a live feed feeding into facial recognition software, they can build a database of who lives in neighborhoods they’re targeting, their routines and patterns. [That feed] can build license plate databases based on that video footage. It can build databases of activists and journalists who are covering ICE.” — Matt Support This Week on ICE Podcast Also on our radar: Five border wall projects bulldoze through Big Bend National Park The Trump administration has begun construction on a new stretch of border infrastructure through Big Bend National Park in southern Texas, one of the country’s most ecologically significant protected landscapes. The project is part of a broader effort to expand the administration’s border wall strategy into environmentally sensitive areas. At 9:57, Kelly explained the scope of the construction, the 31 environmental laws that were waived to expedite it, and why both immigration activists and environmental advocates say the project offers little security benefit despite its $1.7 billion price tag. [Catch up: We spoke to James Cordero of Al Otro Lado about his efforts to leave life-saving supplies for migrants crossing the southern border.] Interview: Sophie Hurwitz of Mother Jones on her reporting of one family’s deportation tragedy Kelly sat down with journalist Sophie Hurwitz, whose recent report in Mother Jones tells the story of 27-year-old asylum seeker Glendy Marisol González de la Cruz, who took the advice of DHS officials to self-deport with her three young children back to her native country of Guatemala to reunite with her husband, who had already been deported one year prior. Just weeks after the family reunited, they were both found shot and killed in a sugarcane field. At 17:22, Sophie talked about what happened, how the family’s circumstances are linked with the Trump administrations broader deportation scheme, and how it’s part of a growing phenomenon, where ICE’s deportation surge presents a budding financial opportunity for local law enforcement. “Despite the fact that [Glendy] had so much community support, despite the fact that she had such a network, that she was part of this group, Fuerza, where she and a bunch of other mostly immigrant women would get together and try to figure out how to collectively advocate for their rights. … she was essentially economically coerced and coerced by fear into leaving the United States in July of this year.” — Sophie That’s it for us this week. Keep sending us your questions, comments or tips to thisweekonice@gmail.com. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, look out for your neighbors, and we’ll see you next time. — Kelly and Matt P.S. — We’re building a community with official TWOI Instagram, YouTube and TikTok accounts. Give us a follow if you’d like to get to know other fans of the podcast and receive up-to-the-minute developments on ICE and immigration outside of our weekly episode drops. You can also follow Kelly and Matt on Instagram. Get full access to This Week On ICE Podcast at thisweekonice.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Jul 29

    Her ICE arrest at SFO went viral. Now, her friends are working to bring her home.

    Welcome back to This Week on ICE. TPS ends for Haitians and Syrians: On Monday, at least 300,000 Haitians in the United States lost their Temporary Protected Status (TPS) — a special humanitarian protection for nationals originally from countries deemed far too dangerous to return to. They are now subject to imminent deportation, and the Department of Homeland Security says it is already in the midst of an operation to begin rounding up and expelling Haitians. Nowhere is this more evident than in Ohio, where the community was the subject of national scrutiny raised by President Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign. [Listen to previous episodes about TPS for Haitians and Syrians here, here and here.] But it’s not just Haitians. About 6,000 Syrians also lost access to TPS on Monday, and people from over a dozen of the most unstable countries on the planet are in the crosshairs for deportation too. Matt dove into the historic consequences. “An entire community — I mean, this is even larger than the town I grew up in — is now being forced out of the lives they have built, oftentimes over the course of 10 years here. … My suspicion is that the President will take advantage of this and end TPS for essentially anybody who enjoys that status now.” — Matt Support This Week on ICE Podcast Also on our radar: New government agencies are cooperating with ICE. A July 2026 map of all participating agencies that have signed up for the 287g program. The most agencies are located in Texas and Florida. Source: ICE From local police departments to airline safety authorities, ICE is getting a lot of outside help these days. Kelly broke down how cooperation across wide swaths of government is driving record arrest levels for ICE. One of the latest offices to cooperate with ICE is the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is responsible for resettling refugees in the United States that are fleeing war and persecution, as well as unaccompanied migrant children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. This week, a Reuters investigation found that since January of last year, ORR has shared more than 460,000 leads with ICE about unaccompanied children, their parents, their relatives, and even their household members. “The safeguards against sharing data with ICE have been completely reversed,” Jen Smyers, who served as deputy director of ORR during the Biden administration, told Reuters. While new government agencies are forging bonds with ICE, other agencies appear to be deepening ready-made programs with the agency: A federal program known as 287g gives local police officers the authority to arrest undocumented immigrants on behalf of ICE. This year, 287g programs have expanded rapidly. “When Trump began his second term, there were about 135 police precincts signed up for 287g. As of Monday, ICE has signed 2,179 memorandums of agreement in 39 states and two U.S. territories.” — Kelly [Catch up: Journalist Ava Sasani on her investigation into ICE-involved shootings, and how ICE is deputizing law enforcement to do its bidding.] Interview: Andy Eblin on what it takes to get a loved one out of ICE custody. Andy Eblin (left) whose close friend Iryna Gorb was detained by ICE last week, sits down with This Week on ICE co-host Matt Kendrick (right). Iryna Gorb, a Ukrainian national, was forcefully detained and arrested by plainclothes ICE officers at San Francisco International Airport last week for overstaying her visa. A video of her arrest has gone viral online, and since then, Gorb has been detained at the California City ICE detention facility north of Los Angeles. Andy Eblin, a close friend of Iryna, has been working tirelessly alongside nearly two dozen friends to bring her home. Matt sat down with Andy to talk about the circumstances of her detention and offer a firsthand perspective on what it is like to try to get someone out of ICE custody. “That video has been really central to getting attention on her case in a way that a lot of folks haven’t gotten… Her case is part of a much, much larger situation — one that is escalating, one that is having untruth after untruth after untruth told by the [Trump] administration. One that requires all of us and all of our attention.” — Andy That’s it for us this week. Keep sending us your questions, comments or tips to thisweekonice@gmail.com. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, look out for your neighbors, and we’ll see you next time. — Kelly and Matt P.S. - We’re building a community with official TWOI Instagram, YouTube and TikTok accounts. Give us a follow if you’d like to get to know other fans of the podcast and receive up-to-the-minute developments on ICE and immigration outside of our weekly episode drops. You can also follow Kelly and Matt on Instagram. Get full access to This Week On ICE Podcast at thisweekonice.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Jul 22

    The journalist documenting her uncle's self-deportation

    Welcome back to This Week on ICE. The FBI stops investigating ICE encounters: On Monday, the New York Times reported that the FBI has stopped investigating ICE-related incidents, and all such issues will be handled internally by the Department of Homeland Security. The reported plans signal a grave shift away from accountability for ICE in the wake of two deaths by shooting in less than a week. We broke down what we know so far and what it says about the state of justice and accountability surrounding ICE encounters. “ It’s part of a larger sweep that we’ve seen since the shootings of Joan Sebastian Guerrero and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo —  where this kind of ‘quiet’ approach that DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullen publicly espoused is being just completely done away with. … Independent oversight is falling away.” — Matt Support This Week on ICE Podcast Interview: Kimberly Avalos on documenting her own uncle’s self-deportation to Ecuador This Week on ICE co-host Kelly Kimball (left) speaks with The News Movement’s Kimberly Avalos (right) for Episode 23. The News Movement’s Kimberly Avalos has been reporting on immigration for several years. But she never expected the day would come that her beat would hit so close to home. Earlier this year, her uncle received a notice from ICE requiring him to appear in court for a routine check-in related to his pending asylum application in the United States. But with the flood of news about arrests at immigration courts, Kimberly’s uncle took it as a sign that something had to be done — that it was time to make the difficult decision to return to his home country of Ecuador. “My worlds kind of clashed, and a story that I was covering at work was also something that was happening with my family.” — Kimberly This process has come to be known as “self-deportation.” David’s story reflects a growing reality for many immigrants who face an impossible choice: remain in the United States despite the mounting risk of arrest, death, detention, or third-country deportation, or return to the very country — and the dangers and challenges — they had tried to escape. Kimberly produced a documentary for The News Movement tracking her uncle’s journey from his final days in the United States,  through his flight back to Ecuador, and into the early days of rebuilding his life there. “[My uncle] always thought that if he were ever to go back to Ecuador, his son would be there to greet him at the airport.” — Kimberly David sought asylum in the United States after cartel members kidnapped two of his children for ransom, releasing them only after he surrendered his car as collateral. He hoped that obtaining asylum would eventually allow him to bring his entire family to the United States to live in safety. But a few years into this process, the worst happened. David’s son, Alexis, was working as a taxi driver when cartel members targeted one of his passengers, killing both the passenger and Alexis. David could not return to Ecuador for his son’s funeral, as leaving the United States while his asylum case was pending would have jeopardized his ability to return. He never got to bury his son. “He never saw him again. … [He said] the first thing he would do when he got to Ecuador was go to see him at the cemetery. I could actually kick myself because as I was recording I stopped, and that’s when he started saying things like, ‘This was the price I paid for the U.S. Was it potentially all for nothing?’” — Kimberly On your way out: Follow us on social media  We’re building a community with our brand new, official TWOI Instagram, YouTube and TikTok accounts. Give us a follow if you’d like to get to know other fans of the podcast and receive up-to-the-minute developments on ICE and immigration outside of our weekly episode drops. You can also follow Kelly and Matt on Instagram. That’s it for us this week. Please keep sending us your questions, comments, or tips to thisweekonice@gmail.com. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, look out for your neighbors, and we’ll see you next time. — Kelly and Matt Get full access to This Week On ICE Podcast at thisweekonice.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Jul 17

    A second ICE shooting in less than a week

    Welcome back to This Week on ICE. An ICE killing in Maine: If you received our newsletter last week, this introduction may feel all too familiar. That’s because in less than seven days, ICE agents have killed another person. Joan Sebastian Duran Guerrero, who was shot and killed by ICE in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday, was a 26-year-old Colombian national with a valid U.S. work permit and a Social Security number. He was not the target of the warrant ICE agents say they were attempting to serve. His wife and three-year-old daughter witnessed the killing from their front yard, where Joan had just left for work. ICE alleges that Joan attempted to use his vehicle to ram federal officers — the same claim officials made after ICE officers shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas last week and Renee Good in Minnesota in January. In its statement, ICE described Joan as a “threat to public safety” without providing any additional details. The killing prompted a rapid response from the Maine community. Protesters attempted to enter Senator Susan Collins’ office in Biddeford and took to the streets to demand that ICE leave the state. The backlash also led ICE to announce Tuesday that it was halting most of its traffic-related enforcement activities, although President Trump said in a statement Thursday that he encouraged the agency to continue making traffic stops.    “All I have left are the photos and a blanket with the three of us on it that he gave [our daughter] a few weeks before. My soul is broken. He was everything to me.” — Karolina Rojas Alvarez, Joan’s wife, during a press conference Thursday. [Catch up: What we know about Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s killing in Houston.]  The ICE agent who allegedly shot Joan, identified by the Associated Press as Army veteran David Brouillette, has a long history of mental health struggles and violent behavior, according to family members interviewed by the AP. Relatives told the AP that Brouillette had experienced serious mental health issues since childhood and “never should have been given a badge and gun.” They also described a history of domestic violence and accused him of assaulting women over many years. The family shared a voicemail with the AP in which Brouillette allegedly told a woman that he thought “someone should slit her throat.”  “It really goes against what the Department of Homeland Security has said about how it closely vets recruits, how it trains them, and the hiring spree that we have seen since the beginning of Trump 2.0.” — Kelly There’s much more to cover. Let’s get into it. Support This Week on ICE Podcast Exclusive interview: Camilla Forte discusses her months-long investigation of a Chicago street corner, known to be a popular spot for day laborers. Camilla, who reports for Borderless magazine, sat down with us to discuss how ICE's Operation Midway Blitz and immigration raids have deeply impacted both day workers and the contractors that hire them, how immigration enforcement has impacted the local community and economy, and what the grassroots response has been so far. This conversation starts around 9:59. “Because [street corners like this one] are known sites, they were being targeted [by ICE] pretty heavily during the height of Operation Midway Blitz. That created a lot of disruption to the day labor workers. There were violent arrests, there was pepper spray being deployed, all sorts of things. I think that made business owners and people living nearby these corners maybe warier of workers and made the contractors who were going to pick up folks wary of being in these areas because they were not sure what would happen. The situation was very volatile, and it made workers very scared to go and try to seek out work at these corners.” — Camilla [Catch up: We speak with a legal expert on third-country deportation deals, and the leader of a team that leaves water for migrants crossing the southern border.] On your way out: Rachel Schmidtke on documenting third-country deportees stranded in Costa Rica  We're here with Rachel Schmidtke, who is a senior advocate for Latin America at Refugees International. She is currently working in Costa Rica, where she and Refugees International are among the only organizations documenting the new realities of hundreds of third-country deportees from the United States, many of whom have no connection whatsoever to the Central American country. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, BBC, the UK's Channel 4 News, El País, and The Hill, among many other outlets. This conversation begins around 22:22.  “I spoke with one person who didn't even know the name of the country that he was in while we were interviewing him. People arrive here often not knowing that they're coming. So, part of the work that I'm doing is just trying to monitor how they were treated while they were in the United States, [whether] they had applied for asylum, and how they ultimately arrived here to Costa Rica, as well as how they're being treated currently.” — Rachel That’s it for us this week. Please keep sending us your questions, comments, or tips to thisweekonice@gmail.com. Thanks for listening. Stay safe, look out for your neighbors, and we’ll see you next time. — Kelly and Matt Get full access to This Week On ICE Podcast at thisweekonice.substack.com/subscribe

See All (30)

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

A weekly podcast covering the latest developments of the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies, hosted by journalists Kelly Kimball and Matthew Kendrick. thisweekonice.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Team TWOI
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    30
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © This Week On ICE
  • Show Website
    This Week On ICE

You Might Also Like