ICE and the National Guard are acting with impunity.
The transformation of ICE into a type of national police force, backed, in some cases, by soldiers from the National Guard, has been covered as immigration story—but these forces are reshaping democracy for all of us. This shift was evident even before the shootings in Minneapolis and Portland this week. In this episode, George Retes, a U.S. citizen and an Army veteran, recounts how he was detained by ICE and held for three days without explanation. The Atlantic staff writer Anne Applebaum returns as host of Autocracy in America and talks with Margy O’Herron and Liza Goitein from the Liberty & National Security Program at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice about the potential impact of these forces on elections in November.
The following is a transcript of the episode:
Anne Applebaum: From The Atlantic, this is Autocracy in America. I’m Anne Applebaum.
Applebaum: In this new season, I am going to ask how the Trump White House is rewriting the rules of US politics, and introduce you to some of the Americans whose lives have been changed as a result. The president and his entourage are accumulating power in ways that seem familiar to me: this is exactly how elected leaders in other countries have distorted their democracies. I want to understand how these kinds of changes work here, and what they bode for the future.
