How Trump's bungling turned his top issue into his greatest liability

[0:03] All the things that Donald Trump has done or tried to do in his 15 months or so back [0:09] in office. [0:10] If you had to identify the thing he has been most wrong about, I mean, the biggest, at [0:16] least, political miscalculation of his second term, the thing he thought was going to be [0:21] an obvious winner, and, boy, was it not a winner at all. [0:25] I mean, honestly, there are a million things to choose from, maybe starting with the war [0:31] in Iran, right? [0:33] But thinking about things here at home, I think you could make a solid argument that [0:38] the thing he has been most wrong about, the thing he has most miscalculated, is thinking [0:45] that the American people would really, really love a brutal, bloody, sadistic, even murderous, [0:54] gratuitously cruel campaign of physical attacks on immigrants. [1:00] He thought we would love that. [1:02] I mean, you can kind of understand why Trump might have thought Americans would love such [1:05] a thing. [1:06] He was elected president twice with some sort of crackdown on immigrants as a central campaign [1:12] promise, right? [1:13] And particularly when he was campaigning for a second term, he decorated that campaign [1:17] promise with lurid, almost pornographically violent fantasies about how immigrants were [1:25] basically subhuman monsters, and they were responsible for all the bad things. [1:33] And so you could see why maybe he thought this was his ticket. [1:36] And politically, in terms of getting him elected, maybe it was. [1:39] But when he got back in power and he actually moved to put this kind of a policy in place, [1:45] it turns out the American people did not like this movie. [1:48] Not at all. [1:50] I mean, Trump's federal agents in masks, grabbing people off the streets, smashing car windows, [1:56] dragging terrified parents out of their vehicles while their kids sat in car seats in the back [2:01] seat watching, snatching kids off the street and from the bus stop on their way to school. [2:07] I mean, not only do the American people, turns out, not like any of this, they have fought back. [2:14] And the country has seen several of the largest days of protest in its history just in the past year. [2:21] And while those protests have been about a lot of things Trump has done, if he had to pick [2:25] the most prominent motivating issue for those protests, it probably is the whole masked secret [2:32] police kidnapping people issue. [2:33] It turns out that this just rubs Americans the wrong way. [2:40] And so citizens all over the country have organized against Trump's immigration raids. [2:45] People who have never before been part of any kind of activism have found themselves joining [2:50] neighborhood rapid response groups and have found themselves, much to their own surprise, [2:56] willing to put their bodies between immigrants and Trump's federal agents. [3:03] And of course, Americans have been killed trying to protect their immigrant neighbors. [3:07] Countries, excuse me, companies that do business with ICE have been hounded about that, both [3:14] from within their companies and in terms of external pressure. [3:18] Also, in one of what I think is one of the most underreported success stories of the public [3:25] resistance to the Trump administration thus far, everywhere Trump has tried to build one [3:30] of his warehouse immigration prisons, there have been sustained protests, pushback from local [3:36] leaders of both parties, lawsuits that have halted plans for these prison camps. [3:40] The pushback has been so effective and so complete. [3:45] It's now really an open question as to whether any of these warehouse prisons will ever actually [3:51] open. [3:52] It's a $38 billion program by which Trump started to build himself a string of some of the largest [3:59] prisons on Earth to hold people without trial. [4:03] But so far, they haven't been able to get a single one of them open. [4:08] And the performative, peacocking, sort of proudly violent field commander for Customs and Border [4:14] Patrol, Gregory Bovino, has been demoted and retired. [4:18] And the head of ICE, Todd Lyons, has left, and the head of Homeland Security itself, Secretary [4:25] Kristina Elm, has been fired. [4:27] And so has the guy who was weirdly always around her while she was Homeland Security Secretary, [4:33] whom no one could seem to fire, but who kind of seemed to be running things and, no, I swear, [4:38] they're not a couple. [4:39] It was reporter Julia Ainslie at NBC News who had that bombshell reporting recently about [4:46] several government contractors complaining to the White House that they had been asked [4:51] to pay that guy. [4:53] They had been asked to pay Corey Lewandowski as part of the process of getting a contract [4:58] with Trump's Homeland Security Department, while Corey Lewandowski himself was reportedly [5:02] exerting inordinate influence over which Homeland Security contracts were actually given out, [5:08] while he wasn't even technically an employee of the department. [5:11] Mr. Lewandowski denies all wrongdoing in connection with these allegations. [5:16] But just a couple of weeks before that reporting dropped, that is when Kristina Elm was fired, [5:22] amid accounts that White House officials were troubled by allegations that Lewandowski was [5:26] trying to cash in. [5:30] Despite all of that, though, despite all of those people being ousted, despite anonymous [5:34] administration officials now telling the press that the new guy, the new Homeland Security [5:38] Secretary is going to do a kinder, gentler immigration crackdown, it has to be noted that, in reality, [5:48] the Trump administration seems to still be holding to, if not upscaling, its plans to grab and [5:55] arrest and deport more and more people. [5:58] And we're not talking about, as they like to pretend, specifically targeted, terrible, [6:04] violent criminals. [6:06] The whole worst of the worst thing has not been true at all throughout Trump's time back [6:10] in office. [6:12] But one of the things Julia Ainslie reports in her new book is that, in particular, they're [6:17] now targeting children. [6:21] So does that make you feel safer, right, swarming a school bus stop in Mississippi with 10 unmarked [6:27] cars to arrest two-star high school basketball players? [6:32] High school kids. [6:34] This is supposedly the worst of the worst? [6:39] Why is the Trump administration doing things this way? [6:41] I mean, even setting aside the morality of this, right, and how any of us will ever have [6:46] to answer for this behavior by our country in our time when we were citizens here, I mean, [6:51] just setting aside that existential dilemma for a moment, even just looking at the politics [6:57] of it, how did this president take his most potent, most popular political issue and, in [7:07] the space of less than a year, turn it into a huge liability? [7:11] And then just keep doubling down on that even after the polling and the public opinion turned. [7:18] There are few people better equipped to answer those questions than Julia Ainslie. [7:23] She is the senior homeland security correspondent for NBC News. [7:26] She's covered immigration in the Homeland Security Department for more than a decade, first at Reuters, [7:30] and then for years for NBC. [7:32] Julia Ainslie is one of the best-sourced reporters in Washington when it comes to covering this massive, [7:38] troubled, sprawling agency. [7:41] And Julia Ainslie, I am pleased to say, has just written a new book. [7:44] It's a short book. [7:45] It's less than 200 pages. [7:46] It is totally full of hard news and original reporting about what has happened at Homeland [7:51] Security, what has happened in Trump's signature massive attack on immigrants since he has been [7:58] back in office. [7:59] The book is called Undue Process, the Inside Story of Trump's Mass Deportation Program. [8:05] I'm telling you right now, this is a book that is going to win a bunch of awards. [8:08] It is really well-written. [8:09] It is short and super easy to read. [8:12] I recommend it. [8:13] Like I said, it is chock-full of new reporting. [8:16] Again, Undue Process, the Inside Story of Trump's Mass Deportation Program by Julia Ainslie. [8:22] I read it in two sittings. [8:23] It just rips along. [8:24] But what Julia Ainslie shows, among other things, in this new book is that, when Trump [8:33] got back into office for the second term, their first months in office on the immigration [8:38] issue were not some sort of well-laid-out plan that they had worked out in advance and then [8:45] walked through. [8:47] Rather, what they did on immigration in the first few months when Trump was back in office, [8:52] and, indeed, over his first sort of year back in office, seems to have been kind of an iterative [8:57] process of making stuff up as they went along. [9:00] More specifically, Ainslie describes a cascade of failures as they tried to actually do this [9:06] mass deportation thing that Trump had promised Republicans would be the consequence if he got [9:10] back into the White House. [9:12] He said we would have mass deportations, but the picture Julia Ainslie paints is of an administration [9:17] that is committed to huge numbers of people being arrested, huge numbers of people being [9:21] deported, but they don't actually have a realistic idea of how to do that, certainly not a realistic [9:27] idea of how they can do it legally. [9:31] And so the evolution of their policy, what we have all seen unfold over the past year, [9:36] was effectively just a series of ad-libs, sort of seat of their pants, quick fixes, [9:41] with some of the disastrous results that we have since seen. [9:47] Why are they arresting so many people with no criminal record at all, [9:50] even though they said they were going to go after the supposed worst of the worst, right? [9:55] Well, it's because Trump administration officials, first and foremost, shadow President Stephen [10:00] Miller, discovered quickly that, frankly, there aren't enough criminals among America's immigrants [10:05] to get them the numbers they were after. But, more pressingly, despite the fact that there just [10:11] aren't the numbers of criminals to go after, what they quickly found was that tracking down and [10:16] arresting and deporting criminals is a hard thing to do. It is harder to find criminals, [10:22] it turns out, than it is to find law-abiding people. Much easier just to sweep up any and [10:29] every immigrant they could find, and the easiest ones to find turned out to be the people who've [10:34] been following all the rules and checking in with the government regularly. And that means, [10:40] especially immigrant children. Barely a month after Trump was sworn in, Julia Ainslie writes this, [10:47] quote, ICE field officer directors were told to start targeting for arrest and deportation [10:52] families, as well as children, who had previously crossed the border unaccompanied. [10:57] Previously seen as the lowest priority for deportation, children were now targeted [11:02] because the addresses of their adult sponsors were easy to find in databases when they were discharged [11:09] from U.S. custody at the border. But, quote, even with all of these sweeping changes put in place [11:15] throughout the month of February 2025, the deportation numbers delivered unsettling news at the White [11:20] House. ICE deported 11,000 immigrants in the month of February, the first full month Trump was in office, [11:26] compared to 12,000 deported in February 2024 under Joe Biden. So they never publicly acknowledged the [11:35] number of deportations nor the number of criminals deported. Julia Ainslie reports, quote, [11:41] what I found through internal data was that of 11,000 deported in February, nearly half of those [11:47] had no pending criminal charges or convictions. As Trump border czar Tom Holman told me, [11:54] finding the worst of the worst was much harder and more expensive than finding non-criminal, [11:59] undocumented immigrants going about their daily lives, working in public and taking their kids to [12:05] school. Julia describes, quote, a realization by Trump and Stephen Miller that the methods deployed so [12:11] far to boost deportations were not achieving the desired results. Miller raised the arrest [12:16] quota from 1,200 a day to 2,000 per day. Once again, he wasn't getting the numbers he demanded. [12:23] Miller had begun to acknowledge internally that the U.S. government was never going to arrest 1 million [12:28] immigrants living inside the U.S. and deport them within a year. People had to decide to deport [12:34] themselves. And listen to this from Julia Ainslie's new book, quote, [12:40] to convince them to do that, they needed to be scared of what would happen to them if they left [12:44] it up to the government to deport them. Stephen Miller pressed this idea on his multiple daily [12:49] phone calls with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Deportation would need to get much, much uglier. [12:58] That is just some of the new reporting in Julia Ainslie's new book, Undue Process. Julia Ainslie joins us [13:06] here next. Stay with us. Here's another revelation from Julia Ainslie's new book, Undue Process, [13:17] the inside story of Trump's mass deportation program. This is new reporting from her, [13:23] and it's the kind of reporting that, just to be honest, a little peek behind the curtain here, [13:27] kind of makes me feel like I'm going to spontaneously combust. [13:31] This just, like, absolutely gets me. But here, I will explain. We'll see if it gets you, too. [13:37] You may recall from the very first days of Trump being back in office in this term, [13:42] one of the things he did is he launched a big intimidation campaign against big law firms, [13:46] right? You may recall the resultant decision by many of the most cowardly and craven firms [13:53] to cave to that intimidation, to do deals with Trump, to accede to his demands. [13:59] Now, I say that was cowardly and craven in part because of what we know happened next. [14:04] Other firms that didn't do that, other firms that challenged Trump's assault on them, [14:09] his demands of them, won when they took him to court. And those firms kept their reputations [14:15] and their dignity intact. Those firms, not for nothing, also did their part to help the American [14:21] legal system stand up against intimidation and, frankly, corruption imposed from the Oval Office. [14:27] But a bunch of firms caved. And one of the consequences of that whole episode, [14:36] one of the sort of big-picture and most important consequences of that, despite the shame of the [14:40] firms that caved, right, despite the triumph of the firms that did not cave, one of the things that [14:45] Julia Ainslie reports in her new book is how that effort by Trump, how Trump's intimidation [14:53] campaign, did have the effect he wanted on the people in the country who have the most to lose. [15:02] Julia Ainslie in her new book describes one scrappy, very capable immigration lawyer who [15:07] went looking for help. He was representing Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who Trump deported to El [15:12] Salvador, admittedly by mistake and in violation of a court order. That immigration lawyer tells [15:19] Julia Ainslie in her new book, quote, the first thing I did was try to get a big law firm on board. [15:24] I called all my old ride-or-dies. And they were all like, yeah, no, I can't. It's not a good time. [15:32] One of the very largest law firms in Washington, D.C., said to me, [15:36] we could probably ghostwrite some briefs for you, if that's helpful, [15:39] indicating that they were reluctant to sign their names to the case. [15:43] He said, quote, another one who I've done many, many cases with, [15:47] a particular partner there who I always work with, was like, [15:50] I would have to quit my job for me to do this case with you. [15:54] Let me know if you want me to do that. The lawyer told that partner to keep his job. [16:01] The reason this gets me is that this is a portrait of some of the best-off, [16:07] best-resourced people and institutions in the whole country, [16:11] who happen to be uniquely positioned to be able to provide material and immediate help [16:17] to people who really need it. And they are refusing to do so for the least possible risk to themselves, [16:24] but the most possible harm to the people they won't help, people in real need who really could [16:29] have benefited from just a few minutes of those firms' time, who might have gotten it in a different [16:35] political climate, who, in fact, did get it in a different political climate. But now, instead, [16:39] those people are being left out to dry. There are tons more jaw-dropping and infuriating moments [16:47] like that in this new book from Julia Ainslie, who is the senior homeland security correspondent [16:52] for NBC News. The book is called Undue Process, The Inside Story of Trump's Mass Deportation Program. [16:58] Julia, it's really nice to see you. Thank you for being here. And congratulations on this book. [17:03] JULIA AINSlie, Thank you, Rachel. So good to be here with you and to talk about this book. [17:08] It was a labor of love. I know it's short. But that's because, as a journalist, I really like [17:13] to pack everything in, economize my words. As my husband said, while you didn't leave a lot of room [17:18] for fluff in here, it jumps out at you. But that's because covering this for the past year [17:25] was unlike anything I had ever covered before. And I've covered immigration since 2014, as you've said. [17:30] But what happened, even in the first 100 days of this administration, as they threw policy after [17:35] policy at the wall and expanded executive power in a way that hadn't been done before on this [17:40] particular issue, was dizzying. And I thought that it was worth writing this down, because even if [17:46] we're in a calmer moment on immigration now, it's a machine that has been built that can quickly be [17:52] turned back on. Yes. And first of all, I commend you for writing the book quickly, for getting this [17:59] reporting turned around. I'm sure you're aware lots of people get frustrated with, you know, [18:04] hard news reporters who kind of save all the good stuff for a book and don't put it out until the [18:09] people who did all that stuff are well out of office. I mean, this is really urgent, really [18:13] contemporaneous reporting. And the fact that it's short, I actually think we'll invite a lot more [18:18] people to read it. You're not committing to an 800-page tome. I really did rip through the book in two [18:23] sittings. It's really, it's really urgent and tight. But one of the things that struck me was the [18:29] way you write about your sourcing with some heart in a way that I think doesn't, you don't necessarily [18:34] have space to do in your regular day-to-day news reporting. I mean, you write about how [18:39] Homeland Security Department employees have faced some unprecedented restrictions and pressures [18:46] against their ability to talk to reporters like you, including like being forced to take lie [18:50] detector tests and stuff. How did that affect your ability to report over the course of this year [18:56] and for this book? Well, I'm so glad that stood out to you, Rachel, because I really want this book [19:01] to also be a place to lift up some voices who can't come out and speak openly about what they've [19:07] experienced. And so I took my sourcing very seriously in terms of protecting the people in the book. [19:13] And so, you know, if readers get frustrated with anonymous sources, it's because that's the environment [19:17] that we're living in now. But I spoke to some people who shared some really important stories, [19:21] really about a quiet resistance that was building within DHS from day one. Even people who were [19:27] vocally loyal to President Trump. There's a line in there, I got a strange text message just [19:33] one night, I was bathing my kids before bed, and I get a text message with someone giving me the oath [19:39] of office. And they said, protect against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And they replied again, [19:44] and I thought they meant immigrants based on this person and what they say very publicly. [19:50] But they actually meant President Trump because they were so worried about the encroachment on the [19:55] Fourth Amendment, which protects people against unreasonable search and seizures, and the First [20:01] Amendment, as more people were having their social media searched for speaking out to get Trump, [20:06] even if they were legally in the United States, that there really became this quiet resistance [20:11] within DHS. And I spoke to another woman who had a long career in the military and at DHS, [20:17] who told me she believes she was fired because of an incident where she did not call immigrant [20:22] scumbags in a press release. She was actually walked out of DHS with all of her things in a box with [20:28] armed guards. And she says that it's because she asked in a meeting when she was about to call [20:34] immigrants scumbags, what if we're wrong? What about if the people we've arrested aren't in fact the [20:39] gang members we say they are? Remember, there was a lot of emphasis on people who could be members of [20:44] Train de Aragua about a year ago. What if we're wrong? What if we don't have all of that? And those [20:48] were the kind of people who were silenced and were pushed out of DHS. And so what that left was a cadre [20:56] of people who said yes. And what all of this amounted to is what we saw starting in Los Angeles this [21:02] summer and ending in Minneapolis this winter. All of that because they didn't have the people left saying, [21:08] what if we're wrong? Well, let me stick with let me stick with you on this point for a little bit [21:13] because this is actually, I think, a really important takeaway from your reporting. I mean, [21:19] there's there's what happened in the administration, what has been motivating them, what drove [21:24] the policy and the way the policy evolved. You're portraying that in a way that I don't think anybody [21:29] else has been able to portray that before. And I'm really interested in that. But this piece that [21:32] you're talking about right now is also really important. And that incident you're talking [21:39] about, you're bathing your kids, getting them ready to go to bed, and you get this dramatic [21:44] encrypted text from a person who you describe as a relatively senior person in the administration who [21:50] publicly is a real Trump loyalist. They essentially send you this text describing [21:56] the president as a domestic enemy of the Constitution. Do you know whether there was [22:04] a specific catalyst for that or a specific scandal or issue or policy that drove that person? Also, [22:13] do you know if that person ever did anything other than sending you this alarming text [22:19] to try to assuage their own conscience on this? [22:21] Well, I can tell you that this person is still in the administration and very much still with DHS. [22:27] But that aside, the context around this was this May meeting. There are really three flashpoints [22:34] of anger that drove most of the policies that we saw come out of this administration. And this was [22:40] after the third flashpoint. It's in mid-May. It's after Trump's first 100 days in office. And they are [22:45] nowhere near the numbers they need, if they're going to get a million in a year, if they're going to even [22:51] beat Obama's deportation record of 435,000 in a year. And I get into why Obama did have that record for [22:57] some policies from that era. And Miller is angry. And so he calls all of ICE leadership together in [23:05] Washington, reams them out, says they need to start arresting 3,000 people a day or people are going to [23:11] start to be fired. And he's going to start with the field office leaders of those performing in the [23:16] bottom 10 percent. Kristi Noem is in that meeting. She introduces Corey Lewandowski, her right-hand man, [23:21] and says, this is Corey. He'll rip your face off. This is the kind of rhetoric that was in DHS [23:28] at that time. It was a time they wanted to instill fear on the workforce and then have that workforce, [23:33] of course, instill fear in the country, because they were worried that if we can't arrest our way out [23:37] of this, maybe we can, as you pointed out, put people into such a state of fear that they might [23:43] self-deport and then we'll count those as deportation numbers as well. And so this was someone who was [23:49] walking out of a meeting like that, who was really worried that this issue of immigration that was [23:56] seen as such a political asset was actually going to be much costlier in the end. And someone who even [24:02] went on the record at this exact same time was Tom Homan, who told me he worried, this was in June, [24:08] right when L.A., right when we saw the enforcement, the raids in the garment district get started, [24:13] he said, I worry with the direction we're going now, and he meant just arresting people with no [24:18] criminal records, I worry we could lose the faith of the American people. That's Tom Homan. I never [24:23] thought I would hear Tom Homan say something like that to me on the record. And now we've seen him step [24:29] into this role where he wants to focus on the worst of the worst as they're going forward. But at the [24:34] time, really under Kristi Noem and under the leadership with Corey Lewandowski with her too, [24:39] there was such a moment of wanting to instill fear and to try to strip away rights of immigrants [24:46] who were here both legally and illegally that I think there were some people who thought, I don't know [24:51] what to do, but talk to the media about this. Hmm. And there's, you know, there's that incident that you [24:59] talk about. There's the press officer who you just mentioned who gets forced out of the job because [25:06] she's refusing to call immigrants scumbags without, I mean, I don't know what evidence proves someone [25:12] is literally a scumbag. That's a little weird, but without having some reason to make that sort of [25:18] a disparaging comment. There's also a lawyer who you describe, who's involved in training ICE [25:23] recruits, who tells you that if a federal agent is going to break somebody's car window, they need [25:29] to have a warrant before they do that. That person is then removed from their job for having told you [25:35] that thing. The reason I wanted to sort of stack all these together, Julia, is because I feel like [25:41] over this past 15 months or so, like in an agency like DOJ, when we have seen so many people forced out, [25:47] when there have been so many principled conflicts, when people have been fired or resigned because they [25:53] wouldn't do something that they couldn't stomach, essentially, from what higher-ups in the Trump [25:57] administration were telling them to do, there's been, at least in some cases, kind of a lot of cases, [26:03] people sort of jumping to the other side, becoming defense attorneys for people who Trump was [26:08] persecuting or going, becoming officially a whistleblower or telling them, doing revealing [26:14] interviews about what they were asked to do and what they think is wrong, or joining organizations [26:19] that are helping other people who are being forced out on matters of conscience. [26:21] We're seeing that in places like DOJ, and I feel like when it's happening at Homeland Security, [26:27] and your reporting is the place I've seen more about this than anywhere else, [26:31] I feel like there isn't sort of a similar tide of people who wouldn't do it, who felt like it was wrong, [26:43] who felt like they had to go, or who were pushed out for not being a team player, [26:46] who then decided to become a truth-teller and let us all know what's happening. [26:50] I mean, there's some, but there isn't, it doesn't seem like there's that same culture of [26:55] trying to get right with the American people about what's happening. Is that fair, [26:58] or is that just my sort of perception from outside this, the closest of the reporting that you've had? [27:03] I think that is fair, and I think you're right to mention that professor who was training, [27:08] who was doing training in Georgia, and I asked the question, what about breaking car windows? [27:13] Because it was happening in Chicago over and over again, someone went and opened a car door, [27:17] and they would smash a window, and he said, you can't do it without reasonable suspicion, [27:21] this person is an illegal immigrant, and also you need a warrant before entering someone's [27:25] personal space, and he was reassigned that very day for that. But when you look at DOJ versus DHS, [27:30] and I've covered both of those agencies, I think there's a real difference here in what these [27:35] employees are paid, and I think we can't look past that. Someone who is an attorney is getting paid at a [27:41] different level than someone who is out on the streets making arrests with ICE. First of all, [27:46] so there are a lot of people who say, I need this job, and then there are retirements that people [27:51] feel that they want to stick with so they can get their pensions. I heard that be brought up again [27:55] and again, that they want to make it to a certain point so they can retire. You could argue about [27:59] whether or not that is a morally acceptable thing or not, but there are some financial reasons why [28:04] people felt that they needed to stick with this. But I will say just based on the people that I've [28:09] spoken to, people at DOJ who were in the Office of Immigration Litigation who felt that they had to [28:15] leave, people at DHS who did eventually stand up and say, no, we can't call immigrants scumbags, [28:21] or people like Caleb Vitello, and there's a lot about Caleb Vitello in the book, and we can get into that. [28:25] He was the first ICE director who pushed back on a master plan for deportations that he thought went [28:32] too far and was reassigned for that. There is a quiet resistance with inside DHS that I think a lot [28:39] of people are not aware of. Well, let's talk a little bit about the, in terms of the pushback, [28:45] talk a little bit, sort of explain what happened with Guantanamo. They had this plan that they wanted [28:50] to put tons of immigrants at Guantanamo. We saw early on them using military aircraft, [28:56] really trying to not just use military assets and military contracting techniques. There's [29:02] another thing that you talk about that's really important here. But really, they wanted the [29:05] trappings of the military, and they liked the idea of it seeming like there was essentially [29:10] sort of a wartime action or wartime sort of feel, at least, a wartime look to their actions against [29:18] immigrants. How did that fall apart in terms of their plans at Guantanamo? [29:22] Well, there were two reasons they wanted to use military assets, [29:26] both at Guantanamo and to detain immigrants inside the United States. [29:29] One is the fear factor that you mentioned. It's much scarier to deport someone to Guantanamo [29:34] and on a military aircraft. The other is the vast amounts of money that they get through defense [29:38] contracts. And I get into this much more broadly with a whole chapter in the book. But basically, [29:43] there wasn't enough money in ISIS coffers. But if they could tap into DOD, they could get more money. [29:48] And one of the ways this first came to fruition was with this idea that Trump wanted to put [29:52] 30,000 immigrants at Guantanamo Bay. Well, there is a place at Guantanamo Bay that does [29:58] hold migrants. It's usually people interdicted at sea if they're trying to flee Haiti, most typically. [30:03] And they could hold about 200 people, and they were in bad need of repairs. So what they did instead [30:08] was they tried to build tent facilities outside the existing prisons for suspected terrorists. [30:14] I've been to them. It's very hot there. They did not have access to running water or air [30:20] conditioning in these tents, and they built them anyway. But I mentioned Caleb Vitello. And actually, [30:25] I think had it not been for Caleb Vitello throwing sand in the gears, [30:28] the Guantanamo plan may have gotten off the ground. I don't think they could have gotten to 30,000, [30:33] but I think it could have gone much further. What he did is he got a message from a person very close to [30:39] Stephen Miller, his name is Tony Salisbury, who said Miller wants you to send 1,000 people to [30:44] Guantanamo to go ahead and get this started and make good on the president's plan. As you know, [30:48] Trump likes to act very soon after he announces something. And Vitello thought there is no way [30:53] we can do this. He tried to reason with people from the Pentagon about why this wasn't safe, [30:57] how they had the capacity to detain the immigrants they were arresting at that point within the United [31:02] States. But he could not, they could not take no for an answer. So he started to send down [31:09] basically small numbers of people, like six, seven, I think he got to 10, of people who [31:14] needed a lot of medication, who didn't speak Spanish or many other languages that would be [31:19] easily spoken down there and really tried to make it the hardest group of people they could possibly [31:24] have down there. And it was this quiet way of not saying no, but to making sure this was a policy [31:29] that was not going to go forward. And then soon the complaints started to come back from the military [31:33] personnel in Guantanamo that this was not going to work out. And this was one of the first strikes [31:39] against Caleb Vitello that did eventually lose him the job of ICE director. [31:44] Wow. Essentially forcing the proof that this policy was impractical, that it couldn't, [31:51] that it couldn't work. And having the sort of, sort of bureaucratic administrative know-how to be able to [31:59] assemble that kind of response. That's right. I mean, the point that we make, that I make over and [32:05] over again in this book is sort of, no matter how you feel about immigration, some people think that [32:11] anyone who's here illegally should be deported. Some people think anyone who crosses the border [32:15] should be able to have the right to stay here no matter their asylum case. No matter what you think, [32:21] this was very expensive. It cost 10 times the amount to fly people to Guantanamo on a military plane [32:27] than it would to deport them on one of the charter planes back to their home country. [32:31] And it was a vast expansion of executive power through this, what Trump thought was an asset for [32:38] him. So regardless of whether or not Trump personally felt that he wanted to deport one [32:44] million in a year, he knew that with this issue, because he had so much power behind it, [32:49] and Miller thought the same thing, that they could do things like allow ICE officers to profile [32:55] people in the street based on their characteristics, not based on crimes they had committed. They could [33:00] do things like enter a home without a judicial warrant, a violation of the Fourth Amendment. [33:05] They could do things like go after foreign students and start looking at their social [33:10] media and try to find an underlying crime after that so that they could revoke their student visas. [33:15] So what I tell people is no matter how you feel about immigration, [33:18] if you're worried about an expansion of executive power, you should read this book to understand [33:25] just how far this went. And that these were the seeds that were sown for the flashbang booms [33:31] that we saw throughout the summer. Julia, how has the flip side of that [33:40] manifested inside the administration? Because you're describing how they thought they could do all [33:45] these things. They thought they could cross all these lines. They thought they could rush over the [33:51] edge of the cliff in terms of what not just the Constitution allows, but what people commonly [33:56] understand the Constitution to allow to do all sorts of things that engendered incredible or that [34:03] catalyzed incredible pushback. I mean, how does the public blowback, the plummeting polling on this stuff [34:10] register within the administration? I've always wondered, for example, if it could undermine or [34:17] affect the position of Stephen Miller, who has been, as you document, the author of these radically [34:23] unpopular policies that really have politically hurt the president that have galvanized the opposition. [34:29] How do they ingest the pushback and the resistance and how unpopular this stuff is? [34:35] Well, let me take you to June 6th of 2025. When I was interviewing Lee Galernt, who I believe you [34:41] know, he's been on your show many times. He's represented immigrants back from family separation and [34:46] really through all of these lawsuits, the Alien Enemies Act that took people to the Seacott prison [34:50] in El Salvador. And at that point, this is the day ICE is going into L.A., and Border Patrol is going into L.A., [34:58] at that point, these protests that you have, that you're showing on your show, Rachel, they really hadn't [35:03] materialized yet. And he just said, I can't get the American public to care about this the way they [35:08] cared about family separation. We don't have that resistance yet. And it was such incredible timing [35:14] because as we spoke, the first protests were beginning. And it was something that Stephen Miller [35:19] and others at the White House really categorized as radical leftists. You can go back and look at [35:24] exactly what they said, what Caroline Levitt said at the time, that they were radical leftists. But something [35:29] happened is you moved from Los Angeles to Chicago to Charlotte, New Orleans, and then, of course, [35:34] the Minneapolis with the fatal shootings of two American citizens, where inside the White House, [35:40] there was a thought that maybe we've gone too far. And especially if the American people can't trust us [35:46] at our word when the statements that were coming out about those shootings didn't align with what the [35:51] American public could see in the videos. And that was the major catalyst that changed it. But I will say [35:57] this, Rachel. Yes, there was some internalization. There was some processing of those lessons. [36:03] Stephen Miller still has his daily call with everybody at DHS, encouraging them to pick up the [36:09] fight and go out and arrest people. But Mark Wayne Mullin, the new head of DHS, is saying he wants to [36:14] take a much softer approach. He wants to talk about the criminals they're arresting, not the others. [36:19] But I just spoke to someone this week, an ICE official who said they're still arresting about [36:23] 1,600, 1,700 people a day. That's incredibly high. They're using really high-tech programs to [36:30] target the immigrants they want to target. They're still holding people in detention without bond. [36:37] And as this person told me, that they think that if midterms go well for Republicans, [36:43] this will surge back up again because they think that that will give them an endorsement of these policies. [36:48] Julia, what do you think is going to happen with these warehouse prison prisons that they [36:55] have tried to stand up? It has been a remarkable thing to see in red states, blue states, rural areas, [37:01] all sorts of places that you might expect to potentially be on board with this, at least in [37:07] theory, as Trump-supporting areas. Everywhere they've tried to put one of these Trump warehouse [37:14] prison camps for immigrants, there's been pushback. And as you know, none of these new warehouse [37:20] facilities has opened. What do you think is going to happen with that over time? I was struck in reading [37:25] your book that it seems like the warehouse project was part and parcel of something that you described [37:32] as essentially being originating with Noam and Lewandowski, who are now gone, that everything [37:38] should be government-owned and operated, that there shouldn't be leased charter aircraft, for example. [37:43] There should be government-owned and operated ice air and they should buy all the planes, that there [37:48] shouldn't be private prison corporations that are or anybody else contracting to stand up or [37:55] operate these detention centers, that it should be all ICE-owned, homeland security-owned facilities, [38:01] and that's part of what drove them purchasing these warehouse sites. If that overall approach [38:07] is sort of associated with Noam and Lewandowski and now they've been forced out and Mullen wants [38:12] to do something somewhat different, what do you see happening with those warehouse facilities? [38:17] Well, for now, Mullen has put a hold on new purchasing or new construction. In other words, [38:23] they've already purchased them to outfit them to hold immigrants for immigration detention. [38:28] That doesn't mean they won't revisit it. There's a big question about what do you do now that the [38:33] government has spent all of this money. I've been to that facility in Williamsport, Maryland. [38:37] I spoke to some of the protesters. That shot right there is actually very hard to get because our drone [38:42] couldn't get high enough to get that entire building in there. That is how massive it is. I'm very [38:47] impressed with those shots there. But you can also see windows at the top. There's no space for [38:53] outdoor recreation. These are things that brick-and-mortar detention contractors who operate in the [38:59] detention space know that they have to provide in order to be compliant with a long-standing [39:05] federal court settlements about how you treat immigrants in detention because it is not supposed [39:09] to be punitive. And in fact, ICE still has that on their website. But yes, this idea came about. [39:14] I was actually the first to report on the idea of the warehouses last fall. I was speaking to someone [39:19] and they were just going through the list of everything they were trying and they said something [39:22] about buying up giant warehouses. And I thought, come again. And now this is the policy that [39:28] actually went forward. But what this really came from was a desire by Lewandowski, by Noam, again, [39:36] to bring everything in-house and to do some really unorthodox approaches to detention. It's the same [39:43] thinking behind Guantanamo Bay. It's the same thinking between Guantanamo Plan B, which is to build [39:50] this massive tent facility in Fort Bliss, Texas outside of El Paso, which has also been the host of a [39:56] whole slew of problems, including several deaths. It's the same reason why we have state-run facilities [40:02] that are being reimbursed by FEMA, starting with Alligator Alcatraz. These warehouses were the [40:07] latest iteration of that. And contractors who have this space said that they had 10,000 beds [40:14] that they could turn on in a second if they got the money from DHS to hold immigrants in places that [40:19] have typically housed immigrants. But Noam and Lewandowski wanted time and time again to go a different [40:25] route to come up with their own ideas and in some cases come up with things that would be seen as [40:31] the most punitive as possible, which is, of course, why you would be looking at a warehouse like that [40:36] and talking about a place like Alligator Alcatraz. I'm going to ask you a question that is not a [40:42] question I would typically ask because I tend to try to stay out of the mean girls internal fights [40:50] among administration people, just like I'm allergic to that stuff. It's not my thing. I realize there's [40:55] like there's a lot of drama to mine among the personal relationships between these people. [40:59] But because of what you just described and because of the detailed reporting on [41:05] how personal some of these worst, to my mind, worst policy decisions were and how much Noam and [41:13] Lewandowski, like you can really trace a lot of the most deliberately outrageous decisions [41:20] specifically to those types of preferences that you just described from them as people. [41:25] I have to ask Mean Girls question, how did Corey Lewandowski last that long? It seems like he [41:30] does not have a friend in the world, not at Homeland Security, certainly, not at the important [41:37] Homeland Security contractors who are narcing them out essentially for demanding kickbacks and payments [41:42] to go with their contracts, as you reported, and certainly not at the White House, where, [41:48] as you report, Stephen Miller himself said, no, no, no, Corey Lewandowski, you cannot be the chief of [41:54] staff of the Homeland Security Department. And you were you write about sort of getting consistent [41:59] reporting over time about how much the White House wanted him out. I mean, how did he how did he stay [42:05] that long? I mean, I realize he's out now, but it does seem crazy. [42:08] Well, I guess I have to differentiate between the White House and the man in charge. And for a long [42:15] time, Corey Lewandowski showed loyalty to President Trump. He was his campaign manager in 2016. [42:21] He was able to come back with a new life as a second life in politics while after he attached himself [42:29] to then governor Kristi Noem in South Dakota. And when she was nominated to come back and run DHS, [42:37] it was well known. He was at Mar-a-Lago during those transition conversations. It was well known he [42:42] was going to be running it with her. But it really did raise concerns among people at DHS, [42:47] political and career people who had spent their careers at DHS and weren't tied to any political [42:53] party as well as those who were very loyal to Trump. They were worried about his influence there. [42:58] And in fact, we get into this in the book very early on, right after Corey Lewandowski came in as [43:03] the special government employee and started sitting in meetings and making these big decisions without [43:08] actually being in a Senate confirmed position or on the payroll. There were people who got together at a [43:14] private home in Washington to talk about their concerns and what they could do to speak out if [43:20] they had problems with him and and with their relationship. And the meeting lasted six hours. [43:26] Six hours. And at the end, these people walk out of this home basically with their heads down and [43:32] they kept them there for the rest of the year because they realized that rumor or not, the idea, [43:39] the perception that they were in a relationship was enough to really have real policy implications [43:45] and that people felt that they couldn't speak out against Corey Lewandowski if there was even an [43:51] inkling that he was in a relationship with the boss. And so they then decided not to. I mean, [43:57] it's just it is a part. I mean, you have you have some portraits of heroism in this book, Julia, [44:03] but some also just absolutely craven portraits of what I would describe as cowardice. I have one [44:10] one last thing that I want to ask you about, which is you mentioned on the the military contracting, [44:17] the efforts by private companies, private individuals to try to tap a sort of motherlode [44:22] of funding for this stuff. And we have seen your book sort of ends with the one big beautiful bill [44:27] and the tens of billions of dollars massively upscaling the size of this, these troubled [44:34] and dysfunctional and scandalous agencies and with all the implications for what that means for the [44:39] rest of Trump's term. But you have a very disturbing chapter early in the book about a company or a [44:46] proposed company, a special purpose vehicle called 2USV. This is Eric Prince of Blackwater fame, [44:54] a program that he proposes to the White House wherein he would essentially stand up a private [45:05] paramilitary force of 10,000 basically mostly untrained deputies, civilian deputies and 2,000 lawyers [45:18] and paralegals to arrest and deport six million people a year. This is a science fiction, [45:29] dystopian science fiction sort of proposal. What do you know about, what can you explain to [45:36] our audience about that proposal, about why Eric Prince had the confidence that this was the right [45:43] time and the right place to pitch that sort of thing and whether that proposal is in fact dead? [45:47] Well, when I reached out to Eric Prince and to the White House, [45:52] neither of them commented about this reporting, but I held the document in my hand and I felt that [45:56] it was important to include in the book because it shows how people were clamoring for these contracts [46:03] at this time. And it shows what people thought they needed to include to get a head turn to get some [46:11] attention from this White House. He spends a lot of the proposal talking about how immigrants are a [46:16] drain on the social safety net, how they're more likely to bring diseases, a lot of things that [46:22] some people could define as racist toward the people who were coming over the border. [46:27] And I scratched my head when I saw it because I thought Eric Prince of Blackwater, what do defense [46:33] contractors want to do with ICE? At that point, the budget was just $9 billion a year. It has since [46:38] grown to $75 billion a year. They are the richest federal law enforcement agency. [46:43] But I called a source of mine who spent time both in ICE and in the military. [46:47] And he said, I know exactly why Eric Prince and people he works with would want in on this. [46:52] And that's because of something called WEX MAX and LOG CAP. And those sound very boring government [46:57] acronyms. But they are these government contracts through the defense department that are ongoing. [47:03] They're just billions of dollars that are sitting out there with contractors already tied to them so that [47:08] if the United States needs to defend itself in a pinch, these contractors are already given the green [47:14] light. They're vetted. They know what they're going to do. And that happens. That's why that exists [47:18] for DOD. And so if you pull that kind of money and that kind of guarantee into a DHS policy, [47:25] you open the floodgates to an enormous amount of money. And that's why people like Eric Prince [47:30] were wanting to get in on this piece of it. And I think what we later saw become of that, [47:37] and it didn't go to Eric Prince, but it later became what is still a sprawling, tense city [47:44] in El Paso, Texas, just outside of El Paso and Fort Bliss. And Todd Lyons, the outgoing ICE director, [47:51] said that they are now referring to the FBI, a case that was previously ruled as suicide there [47:59] by an immigrant, which is now being looked into as possible homicide. And there was even a death [48:03] during the construction of the place. The contracts went out and got pulled back two or three times. [48:09] It really became an incredibly messy business to try to mix the military and DHS. [48:15] Yeah. And there was so many red flags. As soon as we found out they were doing that, [48:20] that there was this contractor getting a billion-dollar contractor, whatever it was, [48:24] to set up that tent city, a contractor that had never done anything like that before, [48:29] contractor based in a home in suburban Virginia, didn't even have any sort of... [48:34] They did toilets for Bonnaroo. Yes, exactly, exactly. And then instantly, [48:40] they start having infectious disease outbreaks and deaths. And as you say, what's now being [48:45] referred to as a murder? And I will just augment what you just said about the weirdness [48:49] of that Eric Prince proposal to what you just described. I'm just quoting to you from your own [48:54] book, page 60. It suggested that the proposal for doing this suggested Biden's goal was to [49:01] collapse the welfare state under the burden of immigration so that the country would have to move [49:07] toward communism. Because, quote, if the financial strain forces a significant curtailment of public [49:14] services, it could coalesce a voting bloc which favors socialism or communism. So the way that you got [49:20] this sort of radical proposal to turn heads, as you say, in the Trump administration was to say [49:25] that it was part of Joe Biden's secret communist plot to turn America into a totalitarian communist [49:32] state. And otherwise, you know, I mean, who could take issue with that? Julia Ainslie, [49:38] this is a remarkable book. As we said, this is a—it is a short book. It is a very fast read. And it [49:44] is absolutely crammed with hardcore, hard news reporting about stuff that is very present and very [49:52] right now. Congratulations on this. You're going to win a bunch of awards for this, Julia, [49:56] and I hope it sells a gazillion copies. Thank you so much, Rachel. It's great to be on with you. [50:00] I really appreciate it. Undue Process, the inside story of Trump's mass deportation program.