Love People Enough · Solo episode · Recording guide

If You're Furious at ICE, This One's for You

A solo episode, about 30 minutes. First the good ICE does, the part nobody can deny. Then the three places it went wrong under this administration: the training, the quota, and the White House defending agents before the facts were in. Facts checked as of Nov 1, 2026.

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The whole episode in one breath

If you're angry at ICE, a lot of that anger is earned, and I'll show you exactly where. But first, the part you can't wave away: for more than 20 years ICE has been the agency that finds child predators, breaks up gangs and rescues trafficking victims, and most of the people doing that work are decent people who now hide their faces because strangers threaten their kids. Then, under this administration, three things went wrong. They cut the training by about 40% to hire fast. They set a 3,000-arrests-a-day number that pulled agents off the child and drug cases. And when agents killed two American citizens in Minneapolis, the President and his team defended the agents within hours, before anyone had looked at the video. The good work and the bad work aren't two different agencies. The bad is crowding out the good.

BackgroundThe questions
  1. What ICE does that you would miss
  2. The people behind the masks
  3. Wrong turn 1: they cut the training and the vetting to hire fast
  4. Wrong turn 2: the 3,000-a-day quota
  5. Wrong turn 3: defending the agent before the facts
  6. So what do we do with all of it?

0The hook~1 min

Open with"In June, a man in Fredericksburg, just down the road from me, got 30 years for what he did to a little girl. The agency that caught him was ICE. That same year, the people running ICE cut its training by 40%, ordered 3,000 arrests a day, and pulled the agents who work cases like his onto that quota. If you're furious at ICE, I'm not going to tell you you're wrong. I'm going to show you where you're right, and the part you might be missing."
TimingThat's about 40 seconds. Then straight into section A.

AWhat ICE is, and how long it's been around~2 min

Open withQuick, because it matters for everything after: ICE is younger than most people think, and it's really two agencies wearing one name.
Sources (2 links)
Part 1: The good they can't deny

1What ICE does that you would miss~5.5 min

Open withI want to start with what nobody, on any side, wants to lose. Not a DHS press release. Court records and ICE's own numbers.
ICE's side
  • Operation Predator, since July 2003. ICE's program that hunts people who abuse children. ICE's own running totals don't agree with each other, so here's the safe number: well over 10,000 arrests for crimes against children.
  • Kids identified or rescued from abuse: 1,170 in 2022, 1,806 in 2023, 1,783 in 2024. That's about five children a day.
  • Operation Renewed Hope, summer 2023. HSI went back through years-old abuse videos nobody had solved and identified 311 children, with leads sent to 25 countries.
  • Angel Watch. When a convicted child sex offender books international travel, ICE warns the country he's flying to. More than 10,000 warnings since 2016.
  • Gangs. Operation Community Shield, started in 2005: more than 47,000 gang arrests by 2017, including more than 4,300 criminal arrests of MS-13 members.
  • In one year (2024): 32,608 criminal arrests by HSI, 818 trafficking victims helped, more than 42,800 pounds of fentanyl and other opioids seized.
Three stories, so it's not just numbers
  • Fredericksburg, Virginia. Samuel Flores de Dios, here illegally from Mexico, abused a girl under 13 in his home in early 2025 and filmed it on phones set up around his bedroom. HSI built the case with the Spotsylvania Sheriff. June 24, 2026: 30 years in federal prison.
  • Houston, MS-13. Eight members murdered people as young as 14, with machetes and bats, on orders phoned in from El Salvador. HSI and the FBI built the case. April 2026: 35 to 50 years each.
  • The cost. HSI Special Agent Jaime Zapata, 32, was ambushed and killed by the Zetas cartel in Mexico in February 2011. His partner Victor Avila was shot and survived. Seven Zetas were convicted.
A line worth reading outStephen Reuther runs HSI's child victim identification team, which is only 10 people. On finding a child: "There's nothing like it. It is the absolute most rewarding thing that I think that we can experience."
Heads upKeep it honest. Don't use DHS's "worst of the worst" list as proof. Cato found it covers about 4% of ICE arrests and most people on it have no violent record. The court cases above are the real thing.
Ask the listener
  • If you want ICE gone, who finds the next Fredericksburg guy? Abolishing ICE has to answer that.
  • Hold onto this: almost all of this good work is HSI. Keep that in mind for Part 2.
Sources (10 links)

2The people behind the masks~4 min

Open withHere's something I think gets lost. Most of the people in ICE signed up to protect this country. And right now a lot of them cover their faces, because strangers are going after their wives and kids.
ICE's side
  • Threats aimed at families, all charged in federal court: a Georgia man commented under a photo of an ICE officer's wife, "There's a pretty good target right there." A Brooklyn man is charged with threatening to murder an ICE officer and his whole family. A New York man was indicted for threatening to shoot an HSI agent, "but first his children."
  • A Santa Monica man pleaded guilty to posting an ICE lawyer's home address and urging people to "swat" her, which means calling in a fake emergency so armed police storm the house.
  • A website called "ICE List" posted the names of about 4,500 people it says work for DHS.
  • An officer who has served under four presidents: "I raised my hand to defend the Constitution, and I'll die for it." Another: "We're just enforcing the law. We're not making up the law."
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▶ 02AICE's side
New York Post, June 2025: the acting ICE director on why agents wear masks
Length 1:04. Original source
Todd Lyons in Boston: officers' faces and their kids' social media posted online with death threats. Stops right after "labeled terrorists."
File: 02A-m1-nypost-ice-director-why-masks.mp4
The honest other side
  • Masks are new. They started around April 2025. Obama's acting ICE director: "I never saw anyone wearing a mask." No other U.S. police force masks as a routine.
  • Fake agents. The FBI warned that criminals are posing as ICE. A man in Raleigh is charged with raping a woman at a motel after threatening to have her deported. CNN counted at least 24 impersonation cases in 2025. When real agents hide their faces, a fake one looks the same.
  • DHS's numbers are thin. It says death threats are up 8,000%, and has never released the count behind that. Federal prosecutors have filed doxxing charges only five times since the election, and the best-known case mostly fell apart at trial.
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▶ 02BBoth sides in one clip
PBS, June 3, 2026: Mullin offers a trade on masks
Length 1:15. Original source
A Republican congressman describes a man telling an agent "I will effing kill your family," then Mullin: if you want the masks off, raise the penalties for doxxing. Cut out of the clip for time: two Democrats, Reps. Goldman and Correa, saying they would sign on if it also covers judges and members of Congress.
File: 02B-n6-pbs-mullin-doxxing-and-masks.mp4
The fix both sides could sign
  • The trade: real federal penalties for doxxing or threatening an officer's family, and in exchange, faces visible with a name or badge number on the uniform. Mullin proposed the first half on camera, and Democrats on the committee said they would sign on.
Sources (10 links)
Part 2: Where it went wrong

3Wrong turn 1: they cut the training and the vetting to hire fast~6.5 min

Open withNow the part you're right to be angry about. To hire thousands of officers fast, the administration cut their training by about 40%.
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▶ 03AWhere it's going wrong
FOX 9, Feb 23, 2026: the academy whistleblower, then DHS's denial
Length 1:22. Original source
Ryan Schwank, an ICE lawyer who taught at the academy, quit to speak out: "They ceased all of the legal instructions regarding use of force." Then DHS: "no training hours have been cut." Note: he spoke at a forum run by Democrats, not a formal hearing.
File: 03A-n1s-fox9-schwank-short.mp4
Where it's going wrong: the training
  • How many got the short version: from August 2025 to January 1, 2026, more than 1,400 recruits went through the short academy and more than 900 graduated. That's more than three times as many graduates as the year before. The pass rate fell from about 80% to about 60%. Nobody has published the total through July 2026.
  • Many never went at all. DHS said most hires were experienced police, so they took about four weeks of online training instead. Rep. Garcia and Sen. Blumenthal say a majority of the new hires never sat in a classroom. ICE has never given the number. And an AI resume screener sent some recruits with no police background down the online track by mistake; ICE says it doesn't know how many.
Where it's going wrong: the vetting
  • The vetting, from someone who walked in. Laura Jedeed is a freelance journalist and an Army veteran who deployed to Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne. In August 2025 she went to an ICE hiring expo in Arlington, Texas, to write about it. Her interview took about six minutes: name, date of birth, military service, over 40 or not, where she wanted to work. Nobody asked about her writing, and she writes openly against ICE.
  • What happened next: on Sept 3 ICE emailed her a tentative offer. She never answered it and never sent in the background check form. A drug test request came anyway and she took it. A month later ICE's own hiring portal showed her with a final offer, a start date of Sept 30, 2025, and a background check marked "completed." She clicked Decline and published the story in Slate on Jan 13, 2026, with a screen recording of the portal.
  • DHS's side, say it on air: "This is such a lazy lie. This individual was NEVER offered a job at ICE." A tentative selection letter "is not a job offer." DHS has never explained what the portal screen showed.
  • Why it matters to you even if you don't trust her: she's an opponent of ICE, so weigh her account like you would weigh DHS's. But the screen recording is real, DHS hasn't answered it, and it fits the rest of this section: an AI screener that sent people down the wrong track, and the Maine officer coming up next, whose record Homan himself says should have stopped him. I found no inspector general review of her case.
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▶ 03BWhere it's going wrong
CBS News, Jan 2026: the journalist ICE processed after a six-minute interview
Length 1:21. Original source
Her words: the six-minute interview, then the portal showing a final offer and start date with no paperwork filed. Ends on: "Even if you support what ICE is doing, surely you want ICE officers who are masked with guns in our streets to be vetted." Read DHS's denial right after it.
File: 03B-n7-cbs-jedeed-six-minute-interview.mp4
Where it's going wrong
  • Are they still out there? Yes, mostly. DHS ordered everyone who got the short academy into a "follow-on" training program, but has never said how long it is or whether anyone has finished. In the first half of 2026, ICE fired 523 employees. In the ten years from 2015 to 2024, it fired 97 total.
  • Where that leads: July 13, 2026, Biddeford, Maine. An ICE officer hired in the surge, whose two ex-wives had both sought protection orders, shot and killed a 25-year-old Colombian man with a work permit who wasn't even the target. Trump's own border czar, Tom Homan, said if those records are real, the officer "would have had an almost impossible time passing vetting."
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▶ 03CWhere it's going wrong
WMTW, July 2026: Homan says the Maine officer's vetting is under review
Length 0:59. Original source
Optional if you're running long.
File: 03C-n4-wmtw-homan-vetting-review.mp4
Give them credit
  • They reversed it. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who replaced Noem, told Congress on June 3, 2026 that the full 72-day academy comes back July 1, 2026: "We had to rewrite the curriculum."
  • Say it plainly: DHS said nothing was cut, and then its own new boss put the training back. That's as close to an admission as you get.
Heads upDon't say "cut in half." It was about 40%. And don't say the Maine officer took the 42-day course; his family says yes, ICE says he had a decade of federal law enforcement experience. It's unclear.
The fix both sides could sign
  • Full academy for everyone who carries a gun for ICE, written into law so the next administration can't cut it.
  • Everyone who got the short version goes back for the missing hours, and DHS says publicly how many that is.
  • No job offer until the background check is finished.
Sources (11 links)

4Wrong turn 2: the 3,000-a-day quota~6 min

Open withIf you take one thing from this episode, take this one. It explains almost everything else.
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▶ 04AContext
Fox News, May 2025: Stephen Miller sets the number
Length 1:01. Original source
"A goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day," and Trump will push it "higher each and every single day."
File: 04A-n2-fox-miller-3000-a-day.mp4
What a number does
  • There are only so many criminals to find. As arrests tripled, the share of people arrested who had a criminal conviction fell from about 45% to 27% (July 2026, the lowest on record).
  • DHS's own internal numbers for the first year: about 40% of the people ICE arrested had no criminal record at all. Homicide and sexual assault together were under 2%.
  • How you hit a number: Miller reportedly told agents to skip their target lists and go to Home Depot parking lots. About a quarter of arrests were "collateral," people picked up just for being near the person ICE came for. In one Idaho raid, agents had warrants for 5 people and arrested 105.
The quota ate the good work
  • Here's where it collides with Part 1. DHS's own Inspector General, August 2026: HSI's hours on immigration arrests went from about 207,000 to nearly 2 million in a year. Fentanyl investigation hours fell 31%.
  • Hours on child exploitation cases fell about 33% in early 2025, the fewest in more than a decade. An HSI official told Congress in June 2026 that figure "sounds somewhat accurate."
  • HSI gun seizures fell about 73%. Immigration arrests by HSI went from about 5,000 to more than 94,500.
  • Say it slowly: the quota didn't just sweep up landscapers. It took the agents who catch men like the one in Fredericksburg and put them on arrest counts.
PBS: the Inspector General's report on fentanyl hoursPBS: the Inspector General's report on fentanyl hours
To be fair
  • Nearly everyone arrested is in the country illegally, and the law does allow it. The fair version of the pro-ICE point: they're enforcing laws Congress wrote.
  • Border crossings are down about 95%, the lowest since 1968.
The fix both sides could sign
  • Drop the daily number. Violent and convicted first.
  • Wall off HSI so its agents can't be pulled onto arrest quotas. HSI's own bosses asked for exactly this in 2018.
Sources (11 links)

5Wrong turn 3: defending the agent before the facts~5 min

Open withWhen an officer kills someone, the job of the people in charge is to say, we're going to find out what happened. Here's what they said instead, within hours.
Where it's going wrong
  • Renee Good, 37, a U.S. citizen, shot by an ICE officer in her car in Minneapolis, Jan 7, 2026, about 9:30 in the morning.
  • That same afternoon, Trump posted that she "violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense." The video he posted with it didn't show anyone being run over.
  • Noem called it "an act of domestic terrorism." The next day, Vice President Vance said the officer "is protected by absolute immunity." Five days later, asked if the officer was justified, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said: "Absolutely."
  • What the video showed: the Star Tribune and the New York Times went frame by frame and found no evidence she ran him over. The car was turning away when he fired. Nobody has been charged, and the Justice Department declined a civil rights investigation.
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▶ 05AWhere it's going wrong
Forbes, Jan 8, 2026: Noem the day after
Length 0:55. Original source
"An experienced officer who followed his training," then "this was an act of domestic terrorism." The investigation had barely started.
File: 05A-w1-forbes-noem-domestic-terrorism.mp4
▶ 05BWhere it's going wrong
CBS, Jan 8, 2026: Trump plays the video for reporters
Length 1:06. Original source
A CBS reporter describes Trump showing the New York Times the video in the Oval Office and saying "she behaved horribly and then she ran him over."
File: 05B-w2-cbs-trump-she-ran-him-over.mp4
Where it's going wrong
  • Alex Pretti, 37, an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA, a U.S. citizen with a permit to carry, killed Jan 24, 2026. Important: he was shot by Border Patrol and a CBP officer, not ICE. Same department, DHS, different agency.
  • Video shows an agent took the gun off his hip before the shooting started. CBP's own report to Congress never says he drew it.
  • Within about four hours, Trump posted a photo of Pretti's gun, blamed the mayor and governor for "inciting insurrection," and wrote "LET OUR ICE PATRIOTS DO THEIR JOB!" Stephen Miller called Pretti a "would-be assassin." Noem: "the definition of domestic terrorism."
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▶ 05CWhere it's going wrong
CBS, Jan 26, 2026: "Let our ICE patriots do their job"
Length 0:32. Original source
CBS: the administration claimed "without evidence" that Pretti was a domestic terrorist.
File: 05C-w3-cbs-let-our-ice-patriots.mp4
To be fair
  • On Pretti they partly backed off within three days. Leavitt said she hadn't heard Trump call him that, Trump said "we're reviewing everything," the Border Patrol commander was pulled out of Minnesota, and the Justice Department opened a civil rights investigation. (Then on Jan 30, Trump called Pretti an "agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist.")
  • In another Minneapolis case, ICE's own director said two officers appeared to have lied under oath about a shooting, and the Justice Department indicted one of them, Christian Castro, for false statements. So it can happen.
  • I could find no time Trump has criticized an agent in any of these shootings. The closest he came: "a terrible scene" and "I felt terribly about it."
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▶ 05DBoth sides in one clip
USA Today, Jan 27, 2026: Trump on Pretti, three days later
Length 0:33. Original source
Optional. Asked about the "assassin" label: "I haven't heard that," a "very unfortunate incident," but "he shouldn't have been carrying a gun."
File: 05D-w4-usatoday-trump-pretti-unfortunate.mp4
Your point
  • Why it matters, even if you love ICE: when the President decides what happened before the video is out, every officer learns that the story matters more than the truth. It makes it harder to get rid of the bad ones, and it puts the good ones under the same cloud. The officers in section 2 deserve better than that.
The fix both sides could sign
  • Every shooting gets an outside investigation, and nobody in the White House calls it before it's done.
  • Body cameras on, and the footage released on a set schedule, not when it helps DHS.
Sources (11 links)
The close

6So what do we do with all of it?~1.5 min

Open with"If you're furious at ICE, keep the anger. Just aim it. Aim it at a training cut, a daily arrest number, and a habit of defending first and asking later. Don't aim it at the agent who spent last year finding a kid in a video nobody else could solve. Both of those are ICE. Right now the bad is crowding out the good. Fix that, and you keep the part we all need."
Five fixes. Read them out.
  • Full training, in law.
  • No daily arrest number. Violent and convicted first.
  • Wall off HSI so its agents stay on children, trafficking and fentanyl.
  • Tough penalties for threatening officers' families, and in return, faces and badge numbers visible.
  • An outside investigation for every shooting, and nobody calls it before the facts are in.
End on a question
  • If all five happened, would you still want ICE abolished? Tell me in the comments.

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