SIO505: The ICE Whistleblower Hearing Was Astonishing. It Needs More Attention.

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:12 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 505, I think. I'm Thomas. That over there is Lydia. How are you doing? Yeah, that's true. Well, I just forgot, actually. Thought this was one of the other shows. Yeah. Oh, I'll just come here and talk to myself like I would ever do that. Good.

0:00:18 Lydia: Hi sneaking in. I'm not always here. Thanks for letting me join. Yeah. That's why I was like, are you wanting me to be on this episode? And you're like, yeah, duh. And I was, like, not duh. I'm not always, here. Yeah, I'm here. I am good. How are you?

0:00:38 Thomas: Thanks for asking. Well that's actually why I had you here. I just needed somebody to ask how I was doing. Feels good to care. Yeah, if someone cares. Another reason that you're on is this is sort of a tweener.

0:00:43 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. Otherwise, you're asking yourself. It gets really awkward.

0:00:51 Thomas: It could be OA. We've touched on it a little bit, but we just have too much to do on OA all the time. Could be Where There's Woke, but kind of same story. We have too Much To Do over there and we're catching up. I'm putting out a lot, by the way. Check out Where There's Woke. We just put out a really good one on the Trump administration being weird about milk. It's very funny and they're very weird. So it was kind of a tweener and then I also just, I really want to talk about it. Like, not enough people have talked about the fucking ICE whistleblower hearing. There's

0:00:51 Lydia: Yeah Hmm. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I know nothing about it because no one's. Yeah. No.

0:01:23 Thomas: Too much now. Oh, you don't? Okay. I was gonna ask because, like, I know, I know some people have. I'm sure there's plenty of people listening. I'm sur- you know about it. I'm su- people have heard about it, but, like, I just haven't seen any talk about. Maybe I'm just missing it, but either way, I just, I want to do a signal boost. I want talk about what happened, but I also wanted to compare it, and this is maybe a little little bit of where this woke, but again, it's kind of all the shows combined in one universe, because I also wanted to compare and contrast to Republican hearings because like, Democrats have a hearing. I'm not a parliamentarian. I'm not sure how it works. Somehow Democrats had a hearing on their own and it's like smaller or something, or they're able to do that. There was a word for it they used. I think it was called, like, a shadow hearing or something, I don't know. They're able to Do it somehow. When Republicans do it, it's a big to-do because they control, you know, they They They got elected. We America failed.

We got, we elected more of them. So they get to have the full thing and all the rigmarole. And I just want to compare, like, what goes on when these two different parties are doing something, like, are running the show and are trying to call attention to something. Because I think the difference is

0:01:33 Lydia: Mm hmm. Yeah, totally. Hmm. Oh.

0:02:25 Lydia: Serious versus unserious.

0:02:25 Thomas: Telling. Yeah. You'll never guess which is which. That's what we're going to talk about. So we'll go to our first ad. patreon.com/seriouspod if you'd like to support the show. Please do. Do, please signal boost my signal boosting and help us keep it going and skip the ads. After this, we'll get to it.

0:02:30 Lydia: Yeah? Oh,

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0:02:56 Thomas: So first thing to say is this hearing is under two hours, which is, that's just nice. That's just, as a somebody who watches these hearings, it's just very nice.

0:03:06 Lydia: Yeah. Hearings, depositions, like, yeah, all the things.

0:03:08 Thomas: Yeah. No Republicans participated, which this is after, this happened February 23rd. This is after two murders and no Republicans wanted to take part. No Republican saw fit to even have a hearing about this because they were too busy having hearings about Minnesota fraud. At least three that I've seen. And sometimes they're referencing other stuff that I'm not sure if there was more than that, but three is what I've seeing. Each of those is like six to eight hours.

0:03:15 Lydia: Yeah! Geez. Hmm.

0:03:34 Thomas: So that's what they've done on that.

0:03:36 Lydia: That's so long.

0:03:36 Thomas: Yeah. But anyway, back to real life. I'll go more into that later, but this is short. It's to the point and it's like, absolutely. This is like a few water Watergate's worth of scandal, but it just, it gets squeezed into a back room, not even main show. You know, it's just, that's where we're at now. So this is Blumenthal, Richard Blumenthal leads it off. I guess maybe he's the ranking member.

0:03:47 Lydia: Hmm. Yeah, mm. -hmm.

0:03:59 Thomas: Again, it's a little unclear how this is working. I'm just realizing now I was confused for a sec, if this was the Senator of the house, because I was like, wait, he's, I think he's a Senator, but there's also house members in there. So like I said, I mean, this is like, this is like extracurricular at lunch, you know, know they all have pizza and they're like all right at lunch of the Congress.

0:04:07 Lydia: Yeah. No. It's like the brown bags, right, that you would do at work.

0:04:18 Thomas: Yeah, they're doing like a government club. Hey, since we don't have government, we'll do a little club here where we pretend, like, Model US, uh, that's a good joke, like Model UN, you know. That's okay. I don't think you got it because you didn't laugh really hard. You didn't laugh incredibly hard at how good of a joke it was, so I don't think you got it. That's a further confusion because I was like, okay, OK, Rashida Tlaib is going to be in this, and I don't think she's a senator. I'm pretty sure sometimes there's a few that I mix up. Mostly I can keep it straight, but she's great. So right there, that tells you it's like a mixed hearing. It's an unofficial thing. But anyway, he kind of leads it. I started off by saying I don't know if he's the chair of the Model

0:04:26 Lydia: Yeah, yes, yeah. I Gotcha. Oh. Boy.

0:04:57 Thomas: U .S. or whatever. I'm not sure why he's in charge of it, but it might be because normally, you know, you get the chair, the committee and then the ranking member on the other side and they're the first two to speak. That's always how it works. But in this, it's, like I said, it's a little different.

0:04:57 Lydia: Yeah, mm. -hm, maybe. It's, like, whoever came up with the idea, like, they get, if Blumenthal was like, guys, I think this would be a really good hearing

0:05:11 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, it's the treasurer and the president. Yeah.

0:05:18 Lydia: To have, and then, you know, he called

0:05:19 Thomas: Well, plus there's whoever the teacher sponsor is of the group, you know, like they might come in and be like, all right, Mr. Stevens is going to ask a few questions. So this is a hearing about ICE's official policy to be breaking the law. So, this is about their official policy, which we only know about because of this leaked memo. I'm sure you've heard about the leaked ICE memo. This is the weirdest thing. And there's more info about this in here. We touched on it on OA.

This is a situation in which a federal agency has a memo instructing people to break the law, as in to disregard the Fourth Amendment, basically, and to say, hey, who cares about that Fourth Amendment? Just if you want to go in someone's house because you think you should, go ahead. Because you think they look a little bit brown, then you can just go in. You just need need an administrative warrant, which is that is not true. Doesn't matter who owns the house, who's in the house.

Okay. Hypothetically, there is the extenuating circumstances or whatever. Like if a murderer runs in the House on fire, then sure, they can come in or whatever, but like in terms of immigration crap, this is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. It's a very important thing. It is a very serious thing.

And the allegation here, which entirely substantiated, but let's just look at the allegulation because this is something like if I'm just trying to, of in my head, I wish we could break through to people like the difference between right and left, you know, like I'm trying to find a way. I wish we could I know it's hopeless, but I wish we could like break through to some people and be like, here's what they're doing real stuff wrong.

And then the right because people are less informed about real stuff than ever. They do stuff that looks like a hearing that looks Like, you know they ask all the questions that you usually ask in a scandal,

0:05:24 Lydia: Dibs, basically, right?

0:06:12 Lydia: Right, right, yeah.

0:07:07 Thomas: You Know, and then they just keep the personal be like but that didn't happen. And then they'll just keep talking over how that happened. Whereas here, they're like, hey, we're concerned that it might be ICE's official policy to break the law. Here is a whistleblower who was an instructor for ICE, like was an inspector legally, not like, you know, firearms training, but like legally was one of the instructors on like how the law works, because that's part of their training. Here, I'll read his bio. Ryan Schwenk was formerly an assistant chief counsel with ICE. From September of last year until earlier this month, he served as a trainer for ICE, literally served as trainer for us. He dealt with recruits at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glenelg, Georgia. That's one of them. That is the main whistleblower of this hearing. There is also going to be a witness. We will get to that very heartbreaking story there.

And then there is also Steve Burnell as a former general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security and a former chief of the criminal division at the United States attorney's office in the District of Columbia. He's a distinguished longstanding prosecutor. He's less involved, but you know, so former general counsel at DHS. I don't think he's like a whistleblower. I think he is there to provide like context or whatever.

0:07:07 Lydia: Right. Oh, uh-huh.

0:08:18 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, that makes

0:08:20 Thomas: And so when you look at these folks, the stuff they're able to do with the Minnesota hearings is they call basically MAGA Republican, like, representatives in the state government. And they come in as witnesses and it looks all serious because, like, yeah, we're at representatives of Minnesota and here's what happened. Then you realize, like, oh, that's just like JV MAGA coming and making shit up. They're just being like, "There are hearings. We told Tim Walton he didn't want to do anything about it." And it's like, that would just be like, imagine that if it was Jim Jordan testifying about how the U.S. House told Biden to do something and he didn't. Do you know what I mean like it's that that level thing. But it looks like something.

0:08:41 Lydia: Sense. Yeah, the ones Yeah.

0:08:59 Lydia: Yeah, well. And these are the people that are there on their Twitter accounts, retweeting and wokeness and Libs of TikTok nonsense. Like these are, these are like you said, it's JV squad. And they're all trying to vie for attention from people from varsity that

0:09:08 Thomas: Yeah.

0:09:17 Thomas: Yeah, well, they're trying to take out the Minnesota Democrats. They're trying to, maybe, but it's also like they were called here to do this thing. And yeah, so they've got a whole, we have a lot of Minnesota listeners who will probably know more about the politics going on at that level, but the hearing, I watched two hearings, and I believe there was one before that, but I've been through 14 hours of it. I think I get it. So the one that was most recent has Walz and Ellison. The one One before that has these Minnesota Republicans that

0:09:21 Lydia: And also I think they're trying to show off to varsity squad, too. Yeah. Yeah.

0:09:36 Lydia: Mm hmm. Yeah,

0:09:52 Thomas: Makes it seem like a real thing. Like, oh, we have them there here, you know, here from Minnesota to tell the inside story of what's going on. But you realize like, oh they're just like political opponents of the guy they're trying to take down saying that he should have known and whatever, you know, and it's like there might be some truth to what they're saying. You can evaluate it. But the point I'm trying to make here is they are so wildly biased. Whereas these witnesses are not. This guy, actually, one of the exchanges I really want to play toward the end, Eric Schwenk comes across, I mean, he worked for ICE. Like, he probably is, you know, I don't know. Like, actually watching this whole hearing, I have no idea what his politics is.

I could see it either way. I mean he works for ICE, I doubt he's like, he's not a Bernie Sanders, you now, socialist. And he's a very serious guy. Steve Brunel is a very serous guy. I don' t know what his poltics are. This is people who are serious people who were doing the job they were doing, especially with Eric Schwenk, and is like blown away by the lawlessness that's happening.

0:10:05 Lydia: Mm hmm. Right.

0:10:54 Thomas: So it's the difference is just staggering. So then there's Representative Garcia. This is why it's confusing again, because it's it's model USA. This Representative Garcia, I like quite a bit. He's very good. I've seen him in a number of things. He's probably in the other oversight committee because he's in these Republican hearings. He's going to lay out, I think we'll play him for a bit because he lays out this hearing pretty well in the Fourth Amendment.

0:10:57 Lydia: Mm hm. Ha ha ha ha. Mm.

0:11:23 Clip: ICE and DHS are operating like Donald Trump's personal and private military force. They're attacking communities, they're targeting people who are exercising their constitutional rights, and the results, of course, are all around us. We've heard testimony from teachers, from veterans, from people on the ground who have been arrested, shot, or attacked with zero justification. Now, as of February of this year, oversight Democrats have documented over 530 credible and verified instances of possible abuses and misconduct by President Trump's federal immigration agents, including 224 incidents just with use of force. This is chaos has been unleashed across the country. It's not Not just what we have seen, of course, in Minnesota, but everywhere, in my home state of California, Chicago, and places across the country. Now, as we look here today, ICE agents have been ordered to disregard the Constitution and to violate the rights of American citizens and immigrants in this country.

And we all understand why the Fourth Amendment is so important and why the Constitution is also so clear. Now, when you look at the Fourth Amendment, the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not And no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. Now, what's the most important here is the amendment specifies people, not just United States citizens, but all people for a specific reason.

0:11:40 Thomas: Let's see here.

0:11:56 Lydia: Wow.

0:13:04 Thomas: Someone opening their soda with their lunch.

0:13:08 Lydia: Yeah that wasn't me folks.

0:13:10 Clip: And that's been so important to our founders, to the Constitution, and for so many of us that all people are protected. Now, Donald Trump cannot legally send his private police force to smash down your door and take you away, or to enter your house without a legal warrant. Right now, the Trump administration is trying to take away that right. Instead of getting a warrant approved by an independent judge, under his worldview, he believes it's his right to go into any house in any city and do what he pleases. ICE wants to write its own permission slip without a judge to break down your door and to violate your rights, and this should terrify everyone.

0:13:10 Thomas: Yeah, his whole thing is good.

0:13:56 Lydia: Yeah really strong.

0:13:56 Thomas: I could play all of it. Yeah, I just need to play her testimony. So the witness is Teyana Gibson Brown. I pretty much have to play all this. I'm going to cut around so that we're not playing the whole thing, but it's hard because it's all good. But just the note that it might be a little bit tinkered with in order to get as much in, in the time that we can.

0:14:13 Clip: My name is Tiana Gibson Brown, and today I stand before you not just to speak, but to bear witness. I am here to share a deeply personal and painful experience how me and my family's Fourth Amendment were violated. Most days when I get off of my night shifts, the mornings have a usual routine for me. I know what to expect and I expected the same routine of my morning on January 11th. I Got off of work around 7 30 a.m. Got home and went to sleep at around 8 30 Except on this day. I was woken up to my husband Garrison William Gibson Brown at around 9 30 a M telling me that ice was outside of our home banging at the door. The second I woke up, I could tell how terrified my husband was. This fear intensified when the constant banging at the door woke our 9-year-old daughter, Miss Anna, up. And from there, the fear only intensified.

Garrison went to the door and asked the officers through the closed door about why they were at our home. He asked them if they had a warrant. The officers at the door told Garrison that they did have a warrant and it was signed by a judge. When Garrison asked to see the warrant, the officer simply ignored his request. My husband repeatedly requested to see the warranty. The circumstances outside of our home only intensified. We knew our rights though.

We knew no one could just barge into our homes without a warrant because this space was ours. The officers started surrounding our property. Our neighbors and other protesters started gathering around demanding that the officers leave. There was patent fear that filled our home, although me and Garrison tried to calm ourselves down knowing that no matter what, our constitutional rights could not be breached by authorities that claimed to be law enforcing bodies themselves. Cells. In no time, the scene only became more violent.

Officers from the truck started shooting pepper spray at the protesters, and with all of this, 10 officers approached my front door. They looked like SWAT agents, holding each other's shoulders like a barricade. One of them grabbed a protester that was in the front of my yard from the front, from the back of his neck, and the back of his head and slung him in the icy ground. The officers walked up to my door

0:16:41 Lydia: Oh my god.

0:16:43 Clip: And started ramming the door. They hit the door three times until the door popped open. My stomach fell. I heard the door pop and I realized we were no longer protected. The officer stood at the door and they were pointing their guns at us. Ten officers that were all armed were standing in front of me and my family. Words can never be sufficient for me to portray what sorts of horror we felt in this moment. I stood between the officers in garrison and I asked the officers yet again to show me the warrant. Despite all of this, they did not show me anything. My daughter and my little cousin, both children, were rushed in the room by my sister and were told to hide in the closet. The fear in my daughter's eyes is something you can't imagine.

0:17:38 Thomas: So yeah, this is a guy who has checked in following all the rules, doing what's asked of him, had just had the immigration appointment like whatever, a month ago or something, two weeks before that.

0:17:43 Lydia: Yeah. Two weeks, no, two weeks before this, yeah. And do again for two weeks after this incident.

0:17:54 Thomas: If they wanted to take him, they could just wait. Even that is messed up, but they could wait until then. They know he's going to be out of place.

0:18:00 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, and he showed up the last time, so there's no reason to think he won't show up this next time. Yeah, right.

0:18:05 Thomas: Yeah, he's not a criminal. It's ridiculous. They're busting down a door in SWAT gear. This is something that like, yeah,

0:18:12 Lydia: Just to traumatize people. That's the only

0:18:14 Thomas: It's just to be fascist. There's no, there's no legitimate purpose here. None. This has not a like, well, do we have a country? We got rules about this. This isn't now. Now, even if you're somebody who's like, we need to get every single undocumented person out of this country, which I think is insane and fascist and just doesn't make any sense because there's so many of them who live perfectly ordinary lives contributing to our society. I think they should just be able to be citizens pretty quickly, personally. But let's say you don't agree with that. And like, honestly, that's a lot of America. I think they simplify it down to, well, they broke the rules.

0:18:26 Lydia: Reason. Yeah, come

0:18:47 Thomas: They're not supposed

0:18:48 Lydia: In the right way, blah blah blah. Yeah,

0:18:48 Thomas: To be here. Yeah, and there is no right way. We all know any of that. But even if you've got somebody, you know, who's that, there's nothing that justifies this at all. It's not even close. Like this, this guy goes to his states when he needs to show up and check in, goes to every single one. If they wanted to deport him for some reason, this guys like a dad who just like, you know, works.

0:19:13 Thomas: If they want to deport them, they could do it in a way that's not the fucking storm troopers. You know, they can do it. In a way, that's Nazis. They could.

0:19:11 Lydia: I think There's also an element of it too where, when they create a scene like this, it's going to bring protesters to the scene. So then not only do they have the opportunity to create a traumatizing experience for the people that they're going after in that home, but now they get to up the chaos and potentially grab a bunch of people that are there trying to protect their neighbors and bait them almost into acting out in ways that they can say, well, that's illegal. Legal. You threw a sandwich at me, like all those kinds of things, and create the environment that they want to inflict as much harm as they possibly can. Yeah.

0:19:29 Thomas: Yeah.

0:20:02 Thomas: You know, there's a documentary called Andor that I think captured this pretty well. It's just, you know, I saw an interview with that guy who's a genius who was like, yeah, we filmed

0:20:06 Lydia: Documentary. Exactly. Just set on a different planet, but it's basically a documentary.

0:20:16 Thomas: This before. We wrote this all before. And everyone's like, oh, how did you nail everything with like creating the conflict so that they can then justify it? He's like, well, unfortunately, it's pretty easy. We just looked at what fascists do and then did it. Yeah, and it turned out to be exactly what the fascists did when they got here. Um, when they, you know, in the second Trump admin, because you got to think about when the writing stuff for that happened, probably before the, I would imagine before the second Trump election really, and it's like it called so much of this, because that's what they want. They want the scene, like you said, they want that conflict. Uh, they pretend that they care about this officer's safety, but they don't. They want to create that situation. And then they want a bunch of officers to be scared and hurt people because that serves their purposes and their fascism. But there's no justification for this.

0:20:28 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, and their playbook, and Yeah, yeah. Yeah, mm-hmm, yep.

0:21:06 Lydia: And the hope that it deters other people from ever speaking out and trying to protect their neighbors in the future.

0:21:10 Thomas: Yeah.

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0:21:24 Thomas: And then we got to go into Schwenk's testimony because it's really, really good.

0:21:30 Lydia: Too.

0:21:30 Thomas: I don't listen to this guy. Tell me he's a Bernie Sanders liberal who just came to, you know, to lie about what Republicans are doing.

0:21:37 Clip: Thank you, Senator Blumenthal, Representative Garcia, members of the committee. My name is Ryan Schwenk. I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution when I joined ICE on August 1st, 2021, as I followed that oath for four and a half years, working side by side with ICE officers. And I followed it when I resigned on February 13th, 2026, a little over a week ago, so that I could speak to you today.

I am here because I am duty bound to report the legally required training program at the ICE Academy is deficient, defective, and broken. Five months ago, I was asked to teach the law to new cadets at the Ice Academy in Glencoe, Georgia. Where ICE is training its new inexperienced recruits, those without law enforcement training. I volunteered to take on this assignment based on my experience in law enforcement oversight, including at the state and local level prior to my work with ICE.

On my first day, I received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant. For the last five months, I watched ICE dismantle the training program, cutting 240 hours of vital classes from a 584 hour program. Classes that teach the Constitution, our legal system, firearms training, the use of force, lawful arrests, proper detention, and the limits of officers authority. For example, they ceased all of the legal instructions regarding use of force.

This This means that cadets are not taught what it means to be objectively reasonable, the very standard which the law requires them to meet when deciding whether or not. Our jobs as instructors are to teach them so well that they can make split-second decisions about what they can and cannot do in life or death situations.

Yet in the name of churning out an endless stream of officers, DHS leadership has dismantled the academic and practical tests that we need to know if cadets can safely and lawfully perform their job, all to satisfy an administration demanding they train thousands of new officers before the end of the year. DHS told the public that new cadets receive all the training they need to perform their duties, that no critical material or standards have been cut. This is a lie.

ICE made the program shorter and they removed so many essential parts that what remains is a dangerous husk. No reasonable person would believe a training program suddenly cut nearly in half could meet the minimum legal requirements. New cadets are graduating from the academy despite widespread concerns among training staff that even in the final days of training, the cadets cannot demonstrate a solid grasp of the tactics or the the law required to perform their jobs.

Without reform, ICE will graduate thousands of new officers who do not know their constitutional duty, do not the limits of their authority, and who do have the training to recognize an unlawful order. DHS assures the public these cadets can get the job training compensated for anything. Many graduates go to their home office just long enough to get their gun, their badge, and their body armor before deploying to places like Minneapolis and other ICE operations with minimal supervision.

It's shocking that anyone would think this is safe or responsible. And this pattern of lies is not isolated. It extends beyond the training program to include deceiving Congress and the public about the rules followed by ICE officers once they graduate. On my first day at the Academy, I was instructed to read and return a memo in my supervisor's presence which claimed ICE officers could enter homes without a judicial warrant.

The acting ICE director authorized the very conduct that DHS in its own 2025 legal training materials had called the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed. That is physical entry of the home without consent or. Never in my career had I ever received such a blatantly unlawful order, nor one conveyed in such a troubling manner. Incredibly, I was being shown this memo in secret by my supervisor, who made sure that I understood that disobedience could cost me my job. ICE is teaching cadets to violate the Constitution. And they were attempting to cloak it in secrecy by demanding that I lie about it.

0:26:40 Thomas: So what would normally happen in the Republican mega version of this is we pause and then Lydia would tell me, okay, so I Googled Ryan Schwank, and he's actually a YouTuber who, uh, he applied to be in ICE, but he did, he actually, he did, I think he did one day, but Then didn't, you know, we're not sure if he even worked there, and, uh, also he's been doing this for 10 years. He's been doing fake, uh, interviews about his time, you know, like that's. That's what the right-wing version is. This guy seems like a Republican to me, or he might be a politician, but he's Very conservative, I should say.

Like he, and it's interesting. I really want to play an exchange later on because he's coming at it again from way far to the right of you or I. He's like, hey, they need the training they deserve in order to properly be fascist, you know, to be the normal amount of fascist. But like, yeah, I mean, that is, it's important to recognize the gradations of difference here. Like, I would rather have this guy than whoever the fuck replaced him. I think it's importante to not throw away this guy who's probably conservative and does definitely believe that, like, training

0:26:47 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

0:27:48 Thomas: Is the problem. We still need to recognize what he has to say because this is going to appeal to most of America, I think. I think the numbers are decent on abolishing ICE now, but I still think it's important to fight both fronts there. Like it's like, yeah, we should ultimately get rid of it. But also there's a difference between normal training and training people to literally violate the Constitution.

0:28:08 Lydia: Yeah.

0:28:09 Thomas: But this secret memo is really just mind-blowing because it's, it's real, and it's a thing that they on purpose have kept from being, like, on paper. You're going to hear about it again. This guy worked for ICE for four years. But before that, so then there's going to be, or to save time, I'm not playing from the third guy. I'll play a little bit maybe of his questioning later, but he's there as the, like, let's level set for what this was like from 2011 to 2017. Yeah.

0:28:15 Lydia: Absolutely. Yeah, right. How were things actually working?

0:28:37 Thomas: Again, it's not Bernie Sanders. It's not AOC's ICE. You know, it was like, this was still very conservative, but even that guy who was the DHS general counsel from 2011. To 2017, even that guys like, This is absurd. Like, here's how this would normally work. Like he's, he's mainly there for that. Like, Here's what this should be from my, you know, he is older gentlemen. And he's a professor. Like he's extremely well -respected and knows what he's talking about. He's not a mega podcaster.

0:29:01 Lydia: King.

0:29:05 Thomas: After the third witness statement, I think Blumenthal asked a couple questions that like aren't amazing. I mean, this whole thing, again, it's an hour and 53. Like really, you should just watch all of it. But I know people aren't going to. But skipping his questions, I want to go back to Garcia because he was really good. And also they're going to get more into Teony Gibson Brown's experience, so

0:29:13 Lydia: Yeah, yeah.

0:29:25 Clip: And the American people should understand and see exactly what this looked like in practice. Now, with your permission, we have asked to show a video so that people can understand what actually happened and what the federal government actually did to you. So this video is just a short minute.

0:30:01 Thomas: They are fully from the Iraq invasion circa 2003 or whatever, like full military SWAT-esque garb. I know I'm not an expert in that kind of thing. This is not what, you know, what would be crazy is to show someone from, like, 19, I don't know, 50-something, like, hey, here's what a police officer looks like now. You know, here's where an ICE officer. They'd be like, what's ICE? Yeah, never mind, I forgot we didn't have any of that. But like, back. Back in the day, if you ask a kid to draw a police officer, you know, and they were a good artist, they draw the, like, well, he's got that stick thing and he walks around on his beat, you know, like that's like, that's a police officer. Yeah.

Now it's like oh no. Well, he got his sniper rifle and his tank and his helicopter as fucking he's in the helmet and yeah, and they're just they're coming to some guy's house. Like it's not you could send what if they had sent one guy and been like, hey, and And they don't have a warrant, so they can't do this. But like if they'd sent one guy and had a warrant or something, they wouldn't have even gotten protesters. You know, they could just send one guy to be like, hey, we're going to arrest you. We're deporting you. You know? That's what they want to do. They shouldn't be doing it, but that's what we're doing. That's not what they wanted to do, but just to let you know, the video is, it looks like the fucking Marines are storming bin Laden's compound. Yeah.

0:30:05 Lydia: Yeah.

0:30:37 Lydia: The Baton. Kevlar.

0:30:57 Lydia: Yeah, right, right.

0:31:19 Lydia: Oh yeah, the bunker, yeah, yeah, I can totally

0:31:33 Thomas: Oh, they're entering the house. They don't Have a warrant to do this?

0:31:36 Clip: I'm not even touching nobody, get your hands off of me.

0:31:46 Thomas: A whole bunch. Now four of them, one guy with a big giant gun takes them

0:31:55 Clip: That's hard to watch, I think, for anybody, and I'm sorry, Miss Gibson Brown, that you had to experience that, but I think it's important for the American public to see that video that could could happen to any person in this country, and some of what, um, what you said. There are kids in this house. Show the warrant first. Where is the warrant? Shameful, what you had to go through and your family had to go through. Now, Miss Gibson Brown, you are an American citizen, is that correct? You asked for a warrant, is that, yes? And did they show you a valid warrant warrant signed by a judge? No, they did not. They did not? Now, Mr. Schwenk, before this new policy that you reported about, would it have been legal for these officers to come into Ms. Gibson's home without a warrant signed by a judge? Thank you, Congressman. No, the answer is it would not have

0:32:05 Thomas: Out

0:32:05 Lydia: Imagine

0:32:44 Thomas: This is a good answer here.

0:32:48 Clip: Been legal either before or after this memo came out for them to go into that home. Ms.

0:32:50 Lydia: Yeah, exactly.

0:32:52 Thomas: Yeah, the memo makes no fucking difference, but I do like that that answer.

0:32:54 Lydia: Exactly, that's not the way the law works. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:32:58 Clip: Gibson, ICE brought overwhelming military style force into your home. Is that not correct? They force their way into your home with no warrant. They put your children in danger. Can you think of any justification why this level of force, military force, would be needed to forcefully enter your home?

0:33:24 Thomas: Yeah, I already know.

0:33:25 Lydia: Yeah.

0:33:28 Clip: This is what happens when we disregard the Constitution, when we disregard the rights of people in this country. This is wrong, it's outrageous, and every person should be ashamed of our own government for causing this kind of terror, not just to you and to your own family and neighborhood, but to folks across this country, there's no other way to describe what they're trying to do than to terrorize communities and neighborhoods.

0:33:57 Clip: Thank you, Congressman Garcia. I'm going to hold up two posters. One of them you've just seen is what happened at your home. The other is of a memo. Mr. Schwenk, I think you'll recognize this memo. It is a memo written by Acting Director Lyons. We've seen it before at this hearing. It says, in effect, ICE officers should violate the Fourth Amendment. Were you taught or told that you should train ICE agents in accordance with this memo? Yes, on the very first day I arrived at Glencoe to teach, I was told that we were to instruct cadets to follow the instructions in this memo, but that we would not write down any of those instructions, that we Would not keep a record that we taught it to them.

0:33:56 Thomas: Okay, yeah, this is the Memo. Isn't that insane? Oh, but you gotta remember, this guy is just a podcaster bro who Got in here, pretended that he worked for. Nope, this is this guy. I, good, you Google this guy, there's no results.

0:34:54 Lydia: Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah.

0:35:06 Thomas: You Google everyone, you know, besides this, you Google everyone in every single fucking idiot Republican hearing, and they're a YouTuber or a, or a MAGA politician or a what, you Know, it's a joke. Like this is, this is it's not really in the same category as Watergate. So it's doesn't totally make sense, but this is a massive, massive scandal.

0:35:07 Lydia: Yeah. Tick tocker. Yeah.

0:35:28 Lydia: Yeah.

0:35:28 Thomas: This is them. I mean, we don't, we, I don't even, I don't know what we have an analog for this really. Like Like, I can't, I mean, I know lots of messed up crap has happened and some of it, most of it probably we don't know about or stayed relatively secret until later.

So we don't, I don't know how much we have, you know, hearings like this about, I don't know, hearings about a federal agency actively violating the Constitution in a willful way, in an ongoing way, concurrently, you know, like as it's happening, I do not know how much of this we've ever had in this country. I COULD BE WRONG. I CAN'T THINK OF IT. I'm trying to make comparisons.

But the point is, this is a massive scandal like this is to call it a scandal isn't even the right word. Like it's it's just it's incredibly wrong. And in a just world, anything like previous America, even 20 years ago, even 10 years ago practically, although I guess we're getting on in the Trump era, maybe 15, multiple people would be fired and this would be changed at least somewhat. What, you know, it's still not obviously would still suck, but they're teaching people. They're having instructors look at a memo, but then nobody got it. You can't actually have it, but they can look at it and say, this is what we're teaching. People don't tell anybody. You can'T keep a copy of it. It's insane.

0:36:06 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:36:41 Lydia: Well, I mean, like nothing tells me that they know what they're doing is illegal more than don't write this down, you know, teach it, but don't tell anybody you're teaching it. Obviously, red flags. You know, it's illegal and you don't want to get caught. Yeah. Yeah.

0:36:52 Thomas: Yeah. I've never heard of it and never heard of anything like this. That's why when Matt first brought up the secret memo, I was like, how is it? How do we not have that? Like it, it'S almost hard to believe. Part of me is like, why is it even written down at all? That like, why is IT a memo? I still don't understand, But I mean, I'm looking at it. So I guess they had to have it in order, maybe in order for it to be. Yeah, maybe that's it. Like in order for it be the official like directions. Yeah. It must be some government thing where it's like, well, here's what you're officially supposed to do, but I'm not going to send you this. I'm just showing you it to. Yeah I guess that. Yeah weirdly I think that might be what it is.

0:37:17 Lydia: Implementation. Yeah. I have the one copy and I'm just going around to everybody sitting down for office hours.

0:37:28 Clip: That's a critical point, because I asked Acting Director Lyons whether this memo was distributed, and he said, in fact, that it was, with an email that so far they have failed to produce. What you're saying is that you were told not to reveal it. Correct? Thank you, Senator. Yes, I was told not to discuss this memo. In fact, when it was shown to me, I was taught not to take notes on it, that I was not allowed to write down any part of it. And for the record, as an attorney for ICE and someone who routinely receives memos and memoranda issued by the agency, this had never crossed my desk before I arrived at the academy. So in effect, you were told as an instructor on the law that you were to train ICE agents how to break the law. I think every American should be absolutely horrified by that fact. And you were not alone. This memorandum was the basis for training ICE agents generally, hundreds, thousands of them during this fiscal year.

0:38:32 Lydia: Yeah, right.

0:38:39 Thomas: So he also goes on to talk a lot about the training. I think that's the parts we'll have to skip. The tests are now, there is some good stuff about like, well, we used to have this many training hours and this, these kinds of tests. We touched on this on OA, but it was very quick. And now it's an open book test. You can try as many times as you want.

It used to be if you failed like once, or maybe, maybe you got one more try, but he said, if you, he says in here, if you failed, you were out. And then maybe six months later, you could apply again and start the whole process again. Like, so at the, you know, again, there's such, there're so many levels of bad that they're all bad.

You know, like I, again, we're all of the opinion here, at least, you know, Lydia and I, and most of the listeners, I think, that I shouldn't even exist, granted, but there's also, like, in the spirit of you have a country and you don't always get everything you, you exactly want, I'll still take, okay, well then we should have highly trained people who don't violate the fucking Constitution. You

0:38:57 Lydia: God, such a joke. Wow.

0:39:36 Lydia: Right. Exceptional standards. Yep.

0:39:37 Thomas: Know, like, it's like that'll be the next step, you know, of the compromise. Yeah.

0:39:40 Lydia: Yeah, and someone who can, like, yeah, the expectations on training, that it being an open book is insane to me, because when you're out in the field you You don't get to just pull out your textbook materials and, like, peruse it. Right. I mean, I think it's something that should be in your bones to some degree. Yeah. And the open book, try as many times as you want. Like that's a joke. That's a trick. That's not a joke for anything in which that's set up. That's like just a BuzzFeed quiz, basically. Like it's stupid.

0:39:54 Thomas: Certainly for some stuff. Yeah, yeah.

0:40:05 Thomas: And I made the point in a way that even that doesn't fully tell the story because you could imagine what if it's one of those multiple choice tests where like three of the answers are so fucking stupid that you obviously can just guess it. Like I genuinely wonder it could be that. I mean, it could be hard. There are hard versions of multiple choice tests. They're like each answer is like slightly off the real one. It's like that could be hard or it could be the easiest fucking bullshit ever. And this is even more horrible and ridiculous. Yeah, you should not violate the Constitution, true or false.

0:40:17 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What year did I start? 1776, 2001, 2025 or. True or false?

0:40:44 Thomas: And the answers are true, false, true, winky face.

0:40:46 Lydia: No.

0:41:01 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:41:01 Thomas: Oh man, there's so much. I did have, just because I felt bad, I have a note to play some of the other guy, the third guy. I also love the YouTube transcript says Secretary Noem everywhere, which is great. It's just what the transcript does.

0:41:16 Lydia: Oh, my God. Perfect. Oh, my God, merch idea.

0:41:20 Thomas: Here's some questions for that guy, because I feel

0:41:22 Clip: My first question is for Mr. Bunnell. Yes or no, in the absence of an emergency, are ICE and Border Patrol agents legally allowed to knock down someone's door without a judicial warrant and probable cause? They are not. And yes or no also for you, have ICE and Border Patrol agents acted illegally in forcing entry to private homes over the past year without judicial warrants and probable cause? Based on the reports that we've seen today and what we've heard about, it sounds like they are. Yes. And Miss Gibson Brown, yes or

0:41:59 Thomas: Bad. So I just got a couple in there. He's basically like this older guy, it's like, I can't, yeah, no, this is illegal, I can't believe it. I'm here to just say, like, yes. I do think that Klobuchar's questions were pretty good. I have a note to play these. Let's see.

0:42:02 Lydia: Yeah.

0:42:17 Clip: No. Did federal. Thank you very much. And I would know, we've had, happened numerous times. It wasn't just in the case of, sad case of Miss Gibson Brown, in front of her nine-year-old daughter, husband, sister. It also happened to a Hmong elder who was dragged out of his house by mistake, and the coldest day ever, in his underwear, and thrown in a car and driven around for 24 hours. So Miss Gibson Brown, you had just come back from your night shift as a nurse, is that right? Yes, ma'am. And that's why you're wearing the scrubs in the video. I had fell asleep,

0:42:52 Thomas: You know, it's so interesting because I actually noted and almost mentioned, like, oh, it's me, she was woken up at 9:30 a.m. because that was when the stuff happened. And then I wanted to play this because it's like, and then you find out, no, this is a dedicated person. So just in case any conservatives, conservatives were going to, like, attack this saintly person who works a night shift, like, is probably up all night. Yeah.

0:43:00 Lydia: Yeah, who works night shift. Yeah. In the ICU. Yeah.

0:43:14 Clip: Sleep with my scrubs on. And you work in intensive care unit, is that right? A pediatric intensive care. Yes. And how long have you been doing that? 21 years. So there you are, your home, and then suddenly your husband wakes you up and tells you that this has happened. Could you talk about how you felt at that moment? I just didn't understand because he had just checked in, and then he had another check-in for the 26th, and it was my son's birthday that day, so I was just in shock. And is it true then that Judge Bryant, who used to, for my colleagues should know this, he was a assistant U.S. attorney, worked as a prosecutor, and then in the last few years this went through a confirmation hearing and became a federal judge, he's the judge that then issued an order that this was illegal. What happened to you, is that correct? Yes. Thank you. Thank

0:43:21 Lydia: Oh, geez. Oh, my God Yeah.

0:43:25 Thomas: Yeah.

0:44:11 Thomas: This breaks my heart so often, like the literal best people in society. Like, OK, you're a pediatric nurse. Intensive. Was it intensive care? 21 years.

0:44:20 Lydia: Intensive care unit. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

0:44:22 Thomas: There's nobody better. Like, there's just like, what are we doing? What are we going? So again, oh, if it was the MAGA version, you'd Google her and she'd be, oh she's actually a YouTuber trying to make her, you know, she's some like, nope, it's,

0:44:34 Lydia: Mm-hmm. Peddling her wellness brand or whatever. Yeah.

0:44:37 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's just the difference is just, it's just staggering. It's really heartbreaking too. It's like, what are we doing here? It's just so illegal. The amount of suffering that is inflicted, I think this is another thing, like, as white Americans that we really need to contend with, the amount of suffering that we never hear about. This black woman who's like just the best person and we're only hearing about it because of this hearing, and, you know, some of the news coverage, but think of how often stuff like this happens and we never care about it. Like, we just never do. Like regular police stuff over the years, you know, like police misconduct stuff that, yeah, the stuff that goes down is like, well, the police said he had a gun or whatever, and then like, oh, they got the body cam and he actually didn't. And none of that is true. And that's the one you hear about.

0:45:01 Lydia: Yeah.

0:45:14 Lydia: They're expected to absorb it.

0:45:28 Thomas: It's like, how often is this crap happening? It's really, it's really horrifying. I wish we had a better understanding this, more education on it. Even when we're taught stuff like this, I guess it's hard. I speak for myself. Cause like, I don't know how consistent the education is everywhere, but we're talked about stuff as anomalies. We might be taught about Rodney King or something. Yeah. Who knows? Like we might be talked about these flash points, but they're taught as flashpoints. They're taught as, like, anomalies, and then, you know, here's what, I just, I never had any education at all that this was a systemic problem in the proper context, you Know, it's just the reason we're here now, I think, is because so many people are not taught this, and when they hear people of color complaining about it, they think that it's, like made up.

0:45:27 Lydia: Yeah, it ends up quieting a lot of young adults when they should be, and all of us should be insisting on something better.

0:46:21 Thomas: So, I have, goddammit, I need to play all of this questioning, it is so good, at 52 here, so I forget what that is, but I gotta do it.

0:46:29 Lydia: I bet it's good.

0:46:30 Clip: You so much, Senator, and thank you to our witnesses for being here today to shed light on the blatant disregard of the rule of law that we have seen from this administration. They're executing illegal warrants in violation of the Fourth Amendment, preventing members of Congress from exercising their lawful congressional oversight duty, and failing to uphold tribal sovereignty by rounding up and detaining tribal citizens.

I visited the Northwest Detention Center in my district six times to ensure that immigrants are being treated with dignity, with humanity, and with care. And what I've seen on each and every visit is a stark reminder of the chaos, the pain, and the confusion at the hands of Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, and Kristi Noem, and what happens when policy is is developed from a place of hate and not a place effects.

I've heard report after report of the denial of basic rights within the facility in my district, and twice I've been illegally denied entry when attempting to conduct an unannounced oversight visit to further investigate these concerning reports. And we know that this is only one of the many ways in which this administration is acting illegally.

There are 12 tribal nations in my District, and I've had concerns from so many of them about how ICE and CBP are racially profiling tribal citizens and detaining them, people who are indigenous to this country. I've had tribal citizens tell me they're sending their kids to school with their tribal IDs on them out of safety and fear and when tribal members show their tribal ID's to ICE and CBP those officers lack any understanding of tribal ID cards.

Last week Secretary Noem wrote to tribal leaders claiming that no enrolled tribal citizen has been detained and that no ICE operations have occurred on tribal lands, and this is a pure lie. She's calling every tribal citizen who has spoken out about their experience liars, and it is disgusting.

We've continued to hear concerns not just in my district. When we were in Minnesota, or the same thing from tribal leaders there who were looking out for and advocating for the safety of constituents, of their neighbors, of tribal members who are stopped because they are brown and forced to prove that they are not only indigenous to this land, but that they're citizens.

Our members to carry tribal IDs to show ICE and CBP in case they're detained, do you know are ICE and CBP agents trained on how to identify a valid tribal ID? I do not, thank you for the question, but I do not have any particular information on how they're trained to identify a tribal ID. I do know there are general classes on identification documents that they take, but again, because we have eliminated practical testing, I have no idea if they're actually learning it.

In the materials I teach, or I taught for the academy, the only things we discussed involving Native Americans were the possibility that some Native American tribes have the ability to cross the United States border. That was really all we ever covered in that side of it. Thank you. What about racial profiling? Can you tell us what guidance was provided to ICE agents regarding racial profilling? Yes, Representative.

In the training material that we taught, the material calls for the department to follow the Department of Justice's guidelines on the use of race and other factors in law enforcement operations. Operations. But in practice, what the cadets are taught is to follow what's called the Kavanaugh stop. That is that they are allowed to use race as a factor, not the sole factor, but a factor

0:50:07 Thomas: Yep. Yeah. And how do you think that training goes when you tell a bunch of idiots who don't know what the fuck they're doing, and they're like 18-year-old uneducated people essentially, "Let's teach the finer points of the Kavanaugh stop. You're allowed to use race as a factor." Can't be that. Okay, they're just hearing, like, just if you see someone brown, you can do whatever.

0:50:17 Lydia: Yeah.

0:50:34 Lydia: The lowest barrier to being able to stop somebody, use your eyes and see if their skin is a different color than yours. There you go.

0:50:42 Thomas: So obvious. This is Emily Randall, who is the first queer Latina to serve in the House of Representatives. She's married to her partner, Alison Leahy. Super cool. Ooh, she works as a carpenter in construction. So I really wanted to get her in there because she's bringing up this issue of Native tribes and stuff. Every single time that comes up, it's such a slap in the face of like, oh my God. So a bunch of fascists are policing the goings on, the whereabouts of Native Americans who are here before this fucking country and being like, do you have your papers? And like, fucking it's just it's so disgusting. Everything about it sucks.

0:50:49 Lydia: Oh, cool. Very Cool Yeah Yeah

0:51:24 Thomas: Like, it's it's juste ridiculous because they often don't pass for white or whatever. Sometimes they appear to be like Latino or whatever, they're going to get profiled by idiots who were barely trained on Kavanaugh stops. One thing that also has become clear that's really just really sucks is how many of these ICE agents are immigrants or children of immigrants themselves. Like, it's actually it's staggering. Like the whole group of people who were responsible for the Alex Preddy murder, you know, when you look at, they're like all nonwhite. And I don't I don'T understand. It's just I think a big part of it is, for one, I think there are many, especially when you're talking about men. We saw this in the last election. Latino men, I think, broke for Trump in a way that was very unexpected, or at least you wouldn't think it. But I think there's a lot of conservatism there, especially when it comes to gender politics and stuff that comes up. That's really shitty. But also the other thing is in a

0:51:29 Lydia: Awful. Oh.

0:51:45 Lydia: I know yeah

0:52:22 Thomas: Capitalist system where you've offered a bunch of high money bonuses to come be the new fascist bounty hunter, I think that's going to appeal to a lot of people who socioeconomically aren't doing as well. And we've also made that such that it's disproportionately non -white. And so ultimately you have this horrifying thing of many non -White people being paid to inflict further harm on non - White people by the White Christian nationalist state. It's like disgusting on every level.

0:52:22 Lydia: Yeah Yeah Totally like how in the world you were able to create an us versus them out of essentially the same group of people heart

0:52:56 Thomas: And it's obviously it's white America as a whole does that, too, where it's like, well, we got here a little bit before, you know, my European ancestors got here slightly before this latest wave of immigration.

0:53:09 Lydia: -wrenching. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

0:53:09 Thomas: So I'm better for some reason. You know, it's just an absurd thing. I think it's a very human impulse that happens universally where people think they're entitled to stuff because they were there first or something. It's like what did you do to be born the way you were, the place you were the time you were? It's no part of what you did. Nothing to do with you. Literally cannot be anything you did, like, definitionally. Nothing you did led to you being born the time, place, and race and whatever that you are. I'll never get over it. Like, it's just so much of people's hatred and feelings towards others is based on the least thing that they could ever claim to be responsible for. If you want to be elitist about something, at least let it be something you accomplished, you know? Like, it's just silly. I don't get it. Don't get It. There's a good section from the other lawyer guy that I wanted to get in here a little bit, so let's play starting here.

0:53:59 Clip: In their operations. To deploy people in combat gear, automatic rifles, to go out to a citizen's home. I mean, leave the warrant part of it alone. With or without a warrant, I'm shocked that that is what you had to arrive home to. I share your reaction to it as as a kind of wildly over the top. I mean, why you need to dress like you're invading Iraq in order to go apprehend somebody who is not a fugitive? I mean, I think that's the point that gets lost a little bit is, yes, there There may be some probable cause that somebody is removable, but a warrant is usually something for somebody who is a fugitive.

As I understand Mr. Gibson's situation, he received a removal order in 2009, and he'd been checking in regularly as he was supposed to, including right up shortly before this. That's a discretionary decision by somebody higher up in the chain that sent these officers out in that way, right? It was not a judicial officer. It was somebody, their supervisor in the field office. Yeah, and it's part of the Kristi Noem terror campaign against Americans.

And I would also just note that to the extent that ICE at least purports to want to have a strong partnership with state and locals and would like to improve their reputation in the communities that they say they're trying to protect and serve, this strikes me as an extremely, shall we say, odd way to build trust and credibility with either the people of the community or the state and the locals. There are probably much stronger words that could be at a minimum odd and counterproductive.

0:55:55 Thomas: I wanted you to get that in there about, like, the the nature. It's kind of what I was saying earlier, the nature of this decision, like, so unnecessary. They, people act like these people are, like, dangerous murder terrorist fugitives, you know? It's just

0:55:59 Lydia: Yeah, I mean, they're obviously doing this for the gram, basically. Like, that's my interpretation of this. This is all for the cameras. It's for the graham. Like, it literally is.

0:56:14 Thomas: Ridiculous. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah. Cortez Masto had some good stuff here I think is worth listening to.

0:56:25 Clip: Thank you. Thank you all for being here. And I want to follow up because I was going to ask this as well, because people forget. They see the moment that it happens and they forget what happens afterwards to the family and the children. And for your daughter and cousin and everyone else who experienced it, how are they feeling now?

0:56:48 Clip: She calls me today. She called me 12 times just to make sure I was okay. Make sure I Was safe. It's just, she just fear everything now. She's seen them down the street from her school and we had to go pick her up because she's full panic. Yeah. And as, can you talk a little bit about even the chilling effect that this has had, not just maybe on you and your family, but neighbors or people that find out about what happened? Have you heard from neighbors and others who are also in fear now because of what happened? Yeah, a lot of my neighbors, like, don't go anywhere now. They've, it's like we're in jail in our own homes, too fearful to leave, to go to the store, just fear. Great. Mr. Schwank, to your knowledge

0:56:54 Lydia: Oh,

0:57:37 Thomas: Yeah, I was just thinking, like, imagine the kid sees ICE because they're everywhere, sees them, sent into a panic, has to come home from school and just awful stuff.

0:57:41 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's trauma now, like legitimate trauma that's going to be part of that kid's life for the rest of their life as they grow up.

0:57:53 Thomas: But it's the price of nothing. The nothing we're getting for it. It's a price of further terror, you know? It's just the cost of doing more terror business. Look, if you want to have terror, you got to inflict terror. I don't know, it so hard to understand about this equation. It's ridiculous. Okay, now there's a little bit about the memo memo that I have here I want to get in.

0:57:56 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah,

0:58:17 Clip: Was this memo ever distributed? Thank you, Senator. To my knowledge, this memo was never distributed to staff in general. In fact, when I came to the Academy in September, I had never seen it, despite being a counsel for the agency. I never saw it again after it was shown to me the first time, and maybe one other time when it was shown to me, other than someone physically handing me the document, I never sought again. And right before I left, I checked the repository where the agency keeps a copy of every official memo and policy guidance that is in effect, and there is is no copy of it there.

And Senator, I will point out to you, if you look at this document, if we look at it, every memo issued by ICE has a control number. It has something on it that indicates that it is an official policy document and where it falls in the agency's archives. And that's not on this document anywhere.

Also, anytime we issue a memo, there is something in the document to control its release, something that says law enforcement only or for official use only, classified, secret, something, and there is nothing on this memo that says that. Nowhere on this memo is there anything that would let you know that

0:59:26 Thomas: Stormtrooper thugs only.

0:59:27 Lydia: Absolutely.

0:59:29 Clip: This is an official policy of the agency, and to my knowledge, it's never been disseminated as one. It's been handed out piecemeal to people to use when the agency thinks they need to, which directly undercuts the veracity of acting director Lyons' testimony under oath before congressional committee. How

0:59:39 Thomas: Huh.

0:59:48 Thomas: There's some interesting stuff here about the memo. I think I kind of want to keep going.

0:59:52 Clip: How did you first see this memo? So, I've been with ICE for about four and a half years, but I was an instructor at Glencoe from September. The memo was shown to me by my supervisor at Glencome.

It was given to me in person with instructions that I could read it, but not take any notes on it, that I could read in their presence, and that was it, and that I was going to teach from it, but I couldn't keep a copy of it to reference, And I couldn't document that I taught it to anyone, just that I could read it.

You were to train on it, but your supervisor didn't want you to have a copy of it for fear that it might be revealed. And in fact, it was revealed only when whistleblowers came to me, brave and strong as they were, came to put their professional careers and personal lives on the line and said they would When you were told to train it on it, I believe that there was some conversation about instructing agents who were your students to follow this memo's policies, not the other written guidance that they might be provided. Is that correct? Thank you, Senator. Yes, that is correct.

So what the cadets were told to do was that they had the authority to make an arrest under this memo in someone's home, that they should knock on the door, and if the person did not open, as Miss Gibson Brown's family did, that they could use force to enter that home, reasonable force, to execute the I-205 administrative removal order. That's what we were teaching cadets at the Academy. That's, but we were told the teach them, and I, I will tell you, when I taught my classes, I would tell the cadets that this policy existed, and I would them that they needed to check with their local office before they did anything, because there was no legal basis for this. But I did tell them this was the agency policy. Were you apprehensive that a failure to follow this illegal policy might result in demotion or discharge?

1:02:04 Clip: When it was shown to me that if I did not follow it, I would probably lose my job. Two other attorneys for the agency had just been removed from teaching positions at the One forcibly resigned, and the way it was told to me was that it was because they disagreed with management over this policy. So this illegal policy was not just a suggestion, it was an order, and people were disciplined as a result of failing to implement this illegal policy. That is my understanding, Senator. As I said, it's my understanding that an attorney before me, in fact, the reason I was at Glencoe is because I was the alternate for the person who was forcibly resigned over their refusal to teach the memo.

1:02:46 Thomas: Wow. So much good stuff. He goes back over, Blumenthal talks about the demo a little bit more. And this is the law going back hundreds of years based on the fourth amendment. And I think we've covered that. So, but it's, it's hard to pick a place to stop. Cause like this is such a smoking gun, like in any other time in any another era. I mean, this heads would roll for I have a note here that at 136, there's some absolute bombs by Rashida Tlaib.

1:03:20 Ad: [Ad break 4 — ad music]

1:03:26 Lydia: I'm in the mood for some. Yeah.

1:03:26 Thomas: And I always want to hear some absolute bonds from Rashida to leave. Let's see.

1:03:29 Clip: Ms. Gibson Brown, after your husband was violently taken from your home, he was taken to the Whipple, is that Whipple Federal Building, is that correct? Did ICE agents take any photos of him while he was there? He said they took trophy photos. They were selfies on their personal cell phones with thumbs up? Yes. Is that correct. Yes. The day after your husband was illegally taken from home, a federal judge ordered that he not be be removed from Minnesota. Is that correct? Correct. Is that what happened? He went to Texas, they took... He didn't know they took him? Yeah, kidnapped him and took him to Texas. Yes. Did ICE quickly realize their error on their own?

No, no. Your attorney had to confront Homeland Security, is that correct? Absolutely. On January 15th, the federal judge, that federal judge found that ICE had violated your husband's rights by illegally breaking into your home and detaining him, and the judge ordered his release from the detention. Is that correct? Yes. But after your husband was released, he was re-detained for a few hours at the Ripple, uh, federal building. Is that right? Yes. Who's responsible for ordering that your husband be redetained? They said it came from the White House. No, per federal agent, we know for a fact the order came from Stephen Miller. Did you know that? Yes. I also think it's

1:03:34 Thomas: This is man. This is crazy.

1:03:45 Thomas: Unbelievable.

1:03:49 Lydia: Wow. Oh my God.

1:04:52 Thomas: And this is just the inhumanity of all this. And how reminiscent is that of fucking slavery, like grabbing people from a northern state and kidnapping them down to, you know, the south, so that the law can't catch up with them. I mean, it's just disgusting. Thing. It's far too reminiscent of stuff that I thought we all thought was bad. And it also just is bad on and of its own.

1:05:15 Thomas: But it's just hard to even comprehend how gross a lot of this stuff is. There shouldn't be a taking pictures with a human being like a trophy. I'm sorry. There just shouldn't.

1:04:59 Lydia: Yeah yeah yeah yeah right. Oh I know. That's that's disgusting.

1:05:25 Thomas: It's just disgusting. What do we do about our fucking society that has so many of these kinds of people? Now, as devastating as all that questioning was, there's another batch of questioning that I think is really good here, and uh, it'll probably be the, maybe this, the last or second to last thing I play here, it

1:05:43 Clip: Really important because a lot of people have been talking about this. Do you think all this would have not happened to you if they were unmasked? Do you think if they unmask, this would not have happened to you? Would they still show up like this, but just no masks on? I think it would have happened either way. Yeah. Do you think it's about training or a culture? Probably a culture. I mean, Mr. Schwenk, you'd, it's a culture. You could give all these memos, because I'm telling you right now, I've seen it. We had sensitive of locations policy and they still violated those. I remember in my own community in southwest Detroit over and over again.

So I, it's, it's mind-boggling that so many of my colleagues continue to say that it's about recruitment and everything, when I'm showing them over and again, look at how they're recruiting using, like, white supremacy music, right? The posters. I don't know if you know, Miss Gibson Brown, I showed him a poster where it says, "Come join us, make home home again." What does that mean? Ms. Gibson-Brown, you know this. What does that mean? Exactly. It ejects a sense of like some sort of white supremacy, you know, gang that's coming in and trying to, you know, they even have a poster of Uncle Tom or something and it has an arrow saying invasion. Who's invading? What are you talking about? I only say this because everything that we went over, I don't think it was about training.

I I think it's about Stephen Miller and everyone else that created a culture within this department, within ICE, Border Patrol, and everyone. These folks didn't just join Border Patrol or ICE. The people that killed Alex and Nicole, Renee Nicole, I don't understand how people continue to say this in committee, that somehow if we just take the masks off, we'll be saved. Give them a few more trainings.

Give them some memos, but if the culture would from within, from other presidential administrations, I've seen it, they just violate their own, even their own policies, and there's no sense of accountability. It is created in a culture of violence and fear, and boy oh boy, are people making money from it. That's, you know, I don't know if there's anything else that you wanted to share

1:07:56 Lydia: Yeah.

1:07:56 Clip: Miss Gibson Brown, but I, I think it's important for people to understand just how cruel they were to you and your family. And even after they found out they were violated, they violated his rights. Still, the White House tried to again, vilify him and dehumanize him and keep him, uh, again, even with the orders from judges. They kept the door broken. The door was broken and nobody paid for it. I had, we had to pay for it.

And my house was open for probably almost two weeks. My door was broke and I had to put weights in front of my door to keep it locked. It's so shameful. Yeah. But you know what? GEO Group and Civic, screw all them. They're making money. They don't care about your door. They just care about taking people, holding them there, and billing the federal government, the American taxpayer, tons and tons of millions of dollars. And guess what? They're still not satisfied. They want us to do more. But when we went to Texas, they, he requested to call me. I hadn't talked to him for like 24 hours, and they told him he's in ICE custody, he couldn't make any calls. Yeah, I have people that I can't find for days. They don't even put them in the system. When we say disappear, that's what we mean. And I mean, I couldn't find somebody, a resident of mine, for 12 days. They're not following their own processes. I don't even think that's what it's about. I think it's because it was created post 9-11 to do just what

1:09:28 Thomas: Even continues with more, but it's just so, it, she really drives the point home and I couldn't agree more. I both recognize that it is, I think it's worth talking about the training, it sort of like steps along the way, maybe to get different people there, like one where or another, things need to change if that comes from this, which I think is the right view. That's awesome. If that leads people to that view, if Shank's testimony at least leads people further to our side via that route, that's fine with me too. But ultimately, I fully agree with Rashid Tlaib here.

1:09:29 Lydia: Yeah. Mm hmm. Sure. Yeah, mm hmm. Okay.

1:10:00 Thomas: They sort of gave each witness a chance to do the last word. And well, I think I'm going to play a little bit of it. So Tiana, with her last words, says there was somebody who had scabies and there are 40 people in the room and they wouldn't take the guy who who was infected out of it. So that's awesome. And so Schwenk, first he talks about how they're lying when they say the training is still getting the same amount of time. They're trying to do some lie where it's like, oh no, they're getting the same training because they compressed the schedule. But he's really wants to emphasize like, it's just not even close. There's not, they're not getting the same amounts of training.

1:10:15 Lydia: Yeah

1:10:32 Thomas: So they're just lying about that. And again, even if you don't think training is the issue, it's important that they are just lying. And that used to mean something. Then he comments about Rashid Tlaib's comments here.

1:10:32 Lydia: Mm hmm

1:10:42 Clip: It's doing now. And the second thing I want to bring up is I want address the representative Tlaib's comments earlier about a culture. She's not wrong. She is not wrong that that kind of culture exists in the agency. But if the problem was that simple, that we just had a bunch of people who don't like foreigners and want to remove them from our country and it was all white supremacists, it would actually be a very easy problem to solve. You would just fire them. But that's not the root problem. The root problem, Senator, and I say this because there are hundreds if not thousands of ICE officers who are immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants. The root is that we have trained a federal law enforcement agency to go out and perform a job they are not equipped or trained to do. We have sent out officers who are essentially designed and trained to be civil enforcement, to do criminal enforcement, to be crowd control, to be a tool to be used by the administration to bring fear into neighborhoods around the

1:11:44 Thomas: I have this hope that maybe this guy, like in this moment is almost realizing that he's wrong or maybe sometime later we'll realize that he's right because the next part he says exactly counters what he just

1:11:48 Lydia: Mm hmm yeah. Mm.

1:11:55 Clip: And the officers that they are recruiting now are less trained and come from less capable backgrounds than the officers who were already there. When we look at the Rene Good or the Alex Preddy shooting, those are not inexperienced officers. Those are officers who've been there for a while, who have knowledge of how to operate and do what they need to do. The officers who entered into Ms. Gibson Brown's home from the pictures you showed, probably experienced officers. Everything we've seen today, everything we've see through today, has been done by officers who should know better, who should know at the end of the day that it's their personal responsibility to uphold the Constitution, that they took an oath to it. And I'm going to tell you right now, Senator, that at the Academy we took out the class that tells the officers they have an oath to the Constitution. We took the class the tells them they have a duty to uphold the Constitution. We took out the class, that tells them that they have personal responsibility that it's the

1:12:09 Thomas: Said, huh, doesn't that counter what you, yeah

1:12:10 Lydia: Yeah wait.

1:12:20 Thomas: Yeah.

1:12:22 Lydia: So

1:12:51 Thomas: I think this is interesting.

1:12:57 Clip: End of the day no matter what orders they get from their supervisors, it's on. These cadets and these new officers don't have any firmament, any basis on which to stand. They don't know what they don't now.

1:13:13 Thomas: So that's the end of it. Yeah. I, um, I think I was trying to figure out how he could even be making this argument, and I actually think maybe the missing assumption that's he can make this argument is, I think he's saying, I think in, in his mind, he's saying, look, those officers who committed those shootings were trained. And to you and I would be like, yeah, exactly. The training's not the issue. Like they had adequate training. But I think in his mine, I think he's like, I don't know. I don' I think you're saying they were seasoned officers. That means they used to be doing stuff, right? Like I think his mind ICE used to be good or doing stuff right.

1:13:15 Lydia: Yeah, mm. Hmm. Mm.

1:13:49 Thomas: And now it's not, I was trying to make sense of it. I just think it's interesting to kind of like figure out people's perspectives and like where he's coming from. And I think that must be it. Cause otherwise it doesn't make any sense. Like the argument he's making is,

1:13:58 Lydia: Hmm. But, but doesn't that still imply that it's culture? If, like, these officers who have received the training and stuff are ones that are making incredible missteps in these ways now, like, that tells you these are officers that were, were quote unquote doing things the right way before, and now they're not. Okay, what has changed? Yes, training has changed, but that wouldn't necessarily impact them unless there's, like, you know, the sort of an annual

1:14:08 Thomas: Oh, absolutely.

1:14:22 Thomas: Yeah, it's true. It's not like they're doing ongoing training. Yeah. No, I know. It'S just the closest I can come up with. Otherwise he's actively undermining his argument in the moment and just doesn't realize it that, I mean, I kind of think that it's more what I'm saying. I think he thinks it used to be good and done well. And then now it's not maybe. And the difference is this like reduced training, but I think you make a great point too. It's like, well, they're, they're probably not receiving that much ongoing training, and, and of course the, the truth is, I don't agree with the way he's saying it at all. I'm just trying to figure out why he's seeing it. Truth is, of course it is culture. I, I think it's really interesting, and I just think shows, like, kind of the obliviousness to the problem when he's like, no, no, the root cause is the

1:14:23 Lydia: Like, yeah Yeah, weird. Yeah.

1:14:45 Lydia: Yeah, yeah.

1:15:03 Thomas: Training. It's like, what? Why would that be? Like, how would that be the root? Because, well,

1:15:05 Lydia: Well, You know why he's saying that? Is because he's a trainer, and so I, I think that there's, there's some bias there, you know, in, in a number of different ways.

1:15:09 Thomas: And, and he's a white guy, and he said, yeah Yeah, I think he's, he's got some bias, he's got some privilege, and he does not work through the whole problem in my opinion. And yes, could be just the parochial, like, you know, he's in charge of this part and it used to be done better or something. But yeah, it's like, it is so funny to call the root problem, the training as though that just appeared from outer space and they started following those guidelines. It is like, why would the training change? Why would that change? The root problem could be that not only on a higher level, like where they are steering them, but also just the organization itself. And there was a part I did not have time to play where Rashida Tlaib, I think it was, yeah, I think she was saying like, hey, here's an example. They deported someone. I think it was a, you know, there was like a kid who was on leukemia treatment. She's like, that was in 2010.

1:15:17 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um

1:15:57 Thomas: It's worse now, of course. It'S not like it's always been this bad. It is worse, but it doesn't mean it was good either. So fundamentally, it's the institution and it's the culture and it's what they're doing. It''s just fundamentally a racist institution. There was one more thing I thought, I must not have written down, but I just wanted to make sure I said that at one point, I mean, Tayana says that as a result of this, I believe she says it's as a result of that her landlord's not renewing her lease.

1:15:58 Lydia: Yeah. Oh.

1:16:22 Thomas: Yeah. And it's not like she's getting evicted per se, but it's like they just didn't, I guess, want the trouble or something like the landlord just didn't want, you know, the, the. And it was just like, geez. Yeah. Yeah. And I was just Like, wow. Uh, rough, you know, it's just sucks. So, I mean there's so much more that's as much as I'm going to play here that I mean that we're at the end, but I skipped, you you know, probably 30 minutes of it at least, but it's a really effective hearing, really heartbreaking. And it deals in facts. And I wanted to play, I think it was worth playing that schwenk part at the end to show that like, this isn't a fucking liberal or progressive guy. This is a guy who thinks like, oh no, we just train the Nazis better, you know? And I think, I think he's wrong about that. Maybe he'll come to see that. Maybe not. But the point is that's a guy. Who you cannot fault as being like some lefty who's just in it for the whatever, you You know, this

1:16:27 Lydia: Wow, wow. Too much drama. Wow, yeah. Yeah, mm-hmm, yeah, right. Yeah.

1:17:13 Thomas: Guy, I take him at his earnest word. I think he's earnestly and very admirably, you know, he lost or left his job because of this. And I think that was a big personal cause. This guy isn't some celebrity. He doesn't have a podcast. Again, I Googled him. Nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not like he was able to quit because he was going to be embraced by the right wing racism, economic

1:17:20 Lydia: No.

1:17:34 Lydia: I think he has a LinkedIn, but yeah, that's it. Launching his YouTube show. Yeah.

1:17:34 Thomas: Complex. Yeah. So I commend this guy. I think is really, we need more people like this. Even if I ultimately think he is wrong, he is at least part of the solution. I think, you know, you need all kinds of people. And I think this guy is a really courageous guy for, for doing what he did. Yeah. Yeah.

1:17:47 Lydia: And, you know, and a true public servant, right? Like, like, that's those are the kind of people that we need in those positions, regardless of political affiliation, as long as they're doing it for the right reasons. And I think he is committed to doing things for the right reasons, you know.

1:18:00 Thomas: So that's that hearing. Boy, that was almost a double episode in itself, but I think we'll just let that one be a, be a meaty one, I guess. I don't want to break it up or anything, but. I do have to stop here because in terms of the tale of two hearings, next time we got to go over the Minnesota fraud hearings. And I don'T know how the fuck I'm going to condense 38 goddamn hours of bullshit, but but I'll find a way. Yeah, I'll find away. I mean, there's just so repetitive that at least I don't have to, you know, play all of it, but I want to kind of distill some key differences here. We can see, we can see how they go about their business, you know, the, the right, how, what their hearings are like, you know, do they have secret memos that are saying like, Hey, definitely break the law, please everybody. Um, we like breaking the law. We like breaking the law. It's just like singing songs of breaking the law outwardly and P you know we'll see. Is it the same? I don't know.

1:18:24 Lydia: Grandstanding. Yeah. Yeah, right.

1:18:51 Lydia: Only time will tell.

1:18:52 Thomas: All right. Well, thanks so much for listening, everyone. One support this work at patreon.com slash serious pod if you would like to fund more of my losing my mind watching the same three Republican mega questions over and over and ever again, uh, and other work, of course. So thanks so much for listening, everybody, and we'll see you next time.