The Utter Mess That is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security

The mess that is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. They are breaking the law in their immigration sweeps, as well as in their internal policies. We have recently replaced one unqualified Trump loyalist with a different unqualified Trump loyalist. Following is the transcript from an article on that subject, drawing from interviews with current and former DHS officials and agents.

 The View From Inside Trump’s D.H.S.

Dozens of agents and officials share their stories about working in the Department of Homeland Security during the harsh crackdown on illegal immigration.

By Rachel Poser, Emily Bazelon and Matthew PurdyPhotographs by Stephen Voss

 Before the 2024 election, about three-quarters of Americans believed that the U.S. immigration system was broken. Large majorities in both political parties said the Biden administration badly mishandled the surge of undocumented migrants into the country after the onset of the pandemic. Though President Joe Biden took steps to sharply reduce the numbers in his last months in office, frustration over immigration helped catapult Donald Trump back into the White House.

On Day 1 of his presidency, the Trump administration began the harshest crackdown on immigrants inside the country since the 1950s. Stephen Miller, Trump’s homeland security adviser and the architect of his immigration policy, set a target of 3,000 arrests a day and one million deportations a year.

The administration has argued in court that nearly everyone who illegally crosses the border is subject to mandatory detention and has fired more than 100 immigration judges it viewed as lenient. Most controversially, Trump ordered surges of thousands of immigration enforcement agents in U.S. cities, leading to declining approval ratings, mass protests and the fatal shootings of two American citizens by federal agents.

The main engine of Trump’s enforcement campaign is the Department of Homeland Security. To understand how the agency has transformed, we interviewed more than 80 former and current D.H.S. employees, as well as officials in the Justice Department, which oversees immigration courts. Many of them supported increased enforcement but criticized the administration’s execution, aspects of which they characterized as chaotic, dangerous and ineffective.

Career employees described experiencing a frustrating sense of whiplash as immigration policy has swung back and forth between Republican and Democratic administrations. The root of the problem, as they see it, is the failure of Congress over many decades to pass new laws that address today’s realities. In February, the Department of Homeland Security shut down after Congress failed to reach a deal on Democrats’ proposed changes to enforcement tactics.

D.H.S. policies bar employees from speaking to the news media without authorization. Some of our sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution from the administration. We corroborated their descriptions of specific incidents with colleagues, contemporaneous notes and court documents. Miller, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, former Secretary Kristi Noem and other agency leaders declined our requests for interviews. We also sent the department detailed questions.

In response to a request for comment, Lauren Bis, acting assistant secretary of public affairs at D.H.S., wrote in an email that federal immigration officers are arresting “the worst of the worst including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members and terrorists,” while facing “a coordinated campaign of violence against them.”

A White House spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, also responded to a request for comment. “President Trump’s highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals who endanger American communities,” she wrote in an email. “As the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly said, approximately 70 percent of deportations to date have been illegal aliens with criminal records.”

The government’s own records complicate that picture. Only about 5 percent of people booked into ICE custody in the last year have been convicted of a violent crime. The number of arrests of people with violent convictions has increased by 37 percent under Trump, while the number of arrests of those with no conviction of any kind has risen by 770 percent, according to ICE data. Many agents and officials we spoke to say the relentless pursuit of deportations is unsustainable and has compromised the department.

November 5, 2024

Trump won re-election after a campaign in which he called the migrant surge the “greatest invasion in history.” From 2021 to 2023, more than seven million people tried to cross the border illegally, and about 3.3 million were released into the country. Early in his term, Biden backed a Democratic bill with a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented people, but Republicans refused to bring it to a vote. In 2024, Trump helped kill a bipartisan bill on border security to keep the political pressure on Democrats ahead of the election.

Bitta Mostofi, former senior official at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (U.S.C.I.S.): The Biden administration was so worried about talking about immigration that every day it wasn’t in the news was a good day. But you can’t implement a vision in silence. The anti-immigrant narrative was effectively weaponized against us, with lots of resources behind it, and we did not tell a different story.

Blas Nuñez-Neto, former chief operating officer of Customs and Border Protection (C.B.P.): The vast majority of people who cross the border illegally don’t try to evade the Border Patrol. They go right up to agents and turn themselves in to make an asylum claim. There was a lot of frustration with the way that our asylum system had just become a front door. Agents were aware that the vast majority of people they’re processing are not actually fleeing persecution — they’re economic migrants.

Mark Koumans, former deputy executive assistant commissioner for operations support at C.B.P.: In 2022 and 2023, C.B.P. encountered 5,000 to 10,000 undocumented migrants a day. Out of necessity, our bread and butter was providing temporary housing, food, medical and other care and relieving the overcrowding. Everyone coming has to be fed. The kids need diapers. The diabetics need medication. And the pregnant women need prenatal care.

When we hit 10,000 encounters per day in December 2023 — the highest ever, by far — the wheels were starting to come off. It’s a wonder more people didn’t die in custody, but it’s also a testament to the efforts of the Border Patrol.

Ryan Schwank, former ICE attorney: The Biden administration teed up the tragedies we’re seeing now, including by pushing immigration courts to leave asylum cases in limbo. Once the Trump administration began, the goal was to find a way to remove these individuals — not at all costs, but pretty close to it.

January 20, 2025

On his first day in office, Trump issued a set of executive orders that shut down avenues for legal entry established by the Biden administration. Trump also expanded the categories of people subject to “expedited removal,” a fast-track process that allows for deportation without a hearing before an immigration judge.

Mark Koumans, former deputy executive assistant commissioner for operations support at C.B.P.: Asylum was basically turned off. Everyone was sent back to Mexico or from whence they came. Trump’s appointees thought it all through, and that showed in the president’s executive orders. Very rapidly, the migrants and cartels understood it’s a different game now.

Rafael Reyes, former Border Patrol agent in charge in Deming, N.M.: For Border Patrol, it came as a relief. They went from catching thousands to hundreds to close to zero. The spaces in downtown El Paso where migrants congregated — the churches, parks, bus stations — they started to clear out. That was the honeymoon period. Then it turned into something different. No one expected the volume of deportations.

January 25

The Senate confirmed Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota, as secretary of homeland security. Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, joined D.H.S. with a special status that allowed him to serve as Noem’s unpaid chief adviser while continuing his consulting business.

Jason Marks, former supervisory refugee officer at U.S.C.I.S.: At Secretary Noem’s first D.H.S. town hall, she came out onstage to the theme song “Hot Mama,” spoke for maybe a few minutes and took no questions and left. I wasn’t in the room, but it was something everyone was talking about in real time. It felt like a “South Park” moment.

Danny Chin, former associate counsel at U.S.C.I.S.: We were disappointed that someone was chosen with so little relevant experience. Her claim to fame was killing a puppy, so there were a lot of morbid jokes about how she could apply that philosophy to immigrants.

Former D.H.S. executive 1: When Noem came in, she wanted a quote-unquote “background” done on new hires to know that you’re actually an administration supporter.

Former employee in the D.H.S. policy office: Lewandowski would take some phone calls on Noem’s behalf. It seemed like he was making decisions. There were rumors that he would troll the halls and see empty desks and check the name plates and submit them for a purge of employees. So people started leaving Post-it notes on their desks, like: In a meeting. In the restroom.

Early February

As the administration began ramping up operations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which traditionally conducts targeted arrests inside the country, was joined by agents from Customs and Border Protection, who were used to operating with fewer restrictions. D.H.S. began detaining people near schools, hospitals, courthouses and places of worship after Trump rescinded a policy against enforcement at “sensitive locations” that had been in place for decades.

Mark Koumans, former deputy executive assistant commissioner for operations support at C.B.P.: Offices all over the country were asked to provide dozens of agents to go help ICE. Then we saw D.E.A. and F.B.I. and A.T.F. — everyone — in the streets. The joke in the hallways became, We all work for ICE now.

ICE agent: Most ICE agents were happy to be doing actual law enforcement, but there were others who were very nervous. They were like, Bro, I don’t know what I’m doing out on the street. I would get a lot of calls from people asking questions like, Hey, when I knock at the door, what do I tell them?

Teresa Pedregon, former deputy chief patrol agent at the northern border: Going into Walmart parking lots, setting up a checkpoint — I’ve never seen anything like this in my career. It’s a complete shift in the way Border Patrol has historically conducted enforcement operations.

Homeland Security Investigations (H.S.I.) agent 1: They changed the mission of Homeland Security Investigations, which falls under the ICE umbrella. Under President Biden, H.S.I. was entirely focused on transnational crime, ranging from human trafficking and smuggling to narcotics trafficking, money laundering and child exploitation. Essentially, we were told to pause all those criminal investigations, unless they have a nexus to an illegal alien. Instead, we’d be doing civil immigration enforcement.

ICE lawyer: H.S.I. used to investigate companies that were violating labor laws. Now, instead of going after the business owners, they would be going after the employees. They had to hit five workplaces every single day. It started with anything that sounded even vaguely Hispanic and then became completely indiscriminate.

(Bis, the D.H.S. spokeswoman, claimed that H.S.I. has no quotas and said The Times was “peddling a FALSE narrative.”)

H.S.I. agent 2: We pulled over a guy on our list we’d been surveilling. There’s a kid in the back of the car, about 8 years old. He’s crying. It’s clear that he’s distressed. He’s not really comprehending what’s going on. The dad tells me he’s autistic.

I’m like, We’re not arresting this guy. So I told the guy in Spanish: Get an attorney, whatever you got to do. You’re here unlawfully. You’re subject to deportation. The guy started crying. I said: Look, I get it. I’m a dad. Just go. I know for a fact that there are agents that would not have done that. They would have been like: Somebody else can take care of the kid. We can bring Child Services.

ICE agent: Bystanders were recording agents and doxxing them. One of us would get photographed and put on Instagram, and you’d send the link around like, They got so-and-so. Then the mask thing started. I’d try to explain what was going on to the people we were arresting in a less threatening way, like, We’re just going to bring you in because you have a final order of removal, and when we get there, we’re going to review everything. But it was harder to calm the person down if I had somebody with me that’s in a mask. I like not being a hypocrite, and I would be nervous to open my door to a dude in a mask.

H.S.I. agent 1: There was an incredible amount of pressure for numbers. Publicly, the administration was saying we’re going after hard-core criminals. But in reality, day to day, we were doing everything but that. If we arrested a hundred individuals, maybe 10, 15 had serious criminal violations.

At times, there was borderline profiling. One time, my guys were assisting agents sitting on an address because they had a specific target package for an individual who was a Hispanic male. A different Hispanic male comes out of the house, jumps into a car, drives away, and the agents initiate a car stop. Just because he’s also Hispanic. I told my agents, Do not engage in this type of behavior. We had a lot of agents retire or leave because of the moral dilemma.

(“Any allegations ICE law enforcement engages in racial profiling are FALSE,” wrote Bis, the D.H.S. spokeswoman.)

February 9

In an interview on CNN, Noem said she had granted Elon Musk’s DOGE team access to D.H.S. data to detect waste, fraud and abuse. Claiming that fraud was rife in government services, Trump officials instructed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to more stringently vet visas, work permits and green cards; they also directed ICE to request data from other federal agencies.

Former ICE technology official: Leadership told us to start asking for data from Social Security and Medicare — places that historically have been firewalled from immigration. Like, Hey, open the doors to Medicare so we can figure out the last three hospitals this person went to. They’re trying to pull as much information as they can to track these folks down, but that data was walled off for a reason. For example, if you think your Medicare data might be shared, you might not go to the doctor when you have a highly communicable disease, and that harms the whole community. I think data privacy is going to be one of the bigger casualties of not keeping the adults in the room.

​​Sarah Pierce, former policy analyst at U.S.C.I.S.: In meetings, the career staff above me started saying our programs were riddled with fraud. I was shocked. They were trying to save their jobs by showing the administration they wanted to come down hard on asylum seekers. But it didn’t pay off. My division no longer exists.

Susan Raufer, former supervisory refugee officer and former head of the Newark asylum office: We were assigned to go through old files and do more security checks and vetting after they paused all the refugee applications.

I remember a case from Central America of a woman who had been sexually trafficked by her spouse and had fled from him. The way the law is written, you can show fear of persecution if the persecutor is your government or an entity your government is unable to protect you from. She’d gone to the authorities in her country, and they sent her home. So she went into hiding. She went through all the hoops and was granted refugee status, but because of the pause, she’s still there, waiting.

March 10

Honduras signed an agreement with the United States to receive asylum seekers from countries in Central America. Guatemala, Ecuador and a few African nations later did the same. Over the course of the year, according to Human Rights First, the United States sent nearly 14,000 people to these and other third-party countries, where some reported being detained, tortured and separated from family members, including children.

Danny Chin, former associate counsel at U.S.C.I.S.: These are countries with no real asylum process and rampant human rights violations. But the Board of Immigration Appeals approved removals to these countries, and then immigration judges said they had to grant the government’s motions. A lot of people will be detained indefinitely in these countries where they have no ties. The administration uses these removals to instill fear. They want people to self-deport.

Kerry Doyle, former chief of ICE’s legal branch and former immigration judge: Before the current administration, there were a handful of examples of third-country removals, but never anything like this volume. The government is also not sharing the agreements with the third countries in court. For immigration judges to go along with that is highly suspect, in terms of due process and our international obligations.

March 21

Noem largely dismantled the D.H.S. ombudsman’s offices and the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which investigates civil rights complaints involving the department. “These offices have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles,” Tricia McLaughlin, then a department spokeswoman, said at the time.

Sarah Pierce, former policy analyst at U.S.C.I.S.: This administration isn’t prioritizing oversight. There’s a strong relationship between that and the record number of nearly 50 deaths in detention on Trump’s watch.

I think what has scared me the most is how incentivized the administration seems to be to make the conditions poor. They want detention to be a place you can’t stand to be. That’s why we’re hearing about overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions and no temperature regulation.

Immigration detention is not supposed to be prison. It’s civil, not criminal. But these places are like prison, or worse. And there are thousands of children there.

Rebekah Tosado, former section director in the D.H.S. Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties: Our job was to conduct oversight over how D.H.S. carries out its mission. They called us “internal adversaries.” We had 147 employees. Now detention has exploded, and there are two full-time employees, a handful of contractors and a political appointee with no civil rights experience.

D.H.S. attorney: I saw a handwritten letter from dozens of people at a detention facility. They all signed their names. They made allegations about the food, medical care and sanitation, and they said their use of the law library was heavily restricted, which would be a violation of the department’s standards. The field office said there were no issues — and that’s it. It doesn’t matter if the field office is lying. And they know that.

March 25

Noem began terminating programs that allowed more than a million people to live and work in the United States temporarily. They came from a dozen countries, including Cuba, Haiti, Syria and Venezuela, that previous administrations designated as dangerous.

Former policy analyst at U.S.C.I.S.: Unfortunately, I was part of the team that dismantled temporary protected status. Countries I’d written up as unsafe a few months earlier were supposed to be safe now. It was a complete farce. Even if it was still unsafe to return, they said it was not in the national interest to continue the programs. Haiti in particular felt very wrong. They terminated the program without any wind-down period. It was just, Get out of the country.

(Bis, the D.H.S. spokeswoman, noted that Haitians were granted temporary protection after an earthquake 16 years ago. “It was never intended to be a de facto amnesty program,” she wrote. “Temporary means temporary.”)

Jason Marks, former supervisory refugee officer at U.S.C.I.S.: When those protections are suddenly terminated, you’re effectively shifting large groups of people from legal status to no legal status. And there’s a principle of international law here: non-refoulement — you don’t send someone back if that means putting them in harm’s way.

April 7

The administration canceled social and legal services for families affected by Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy during his first term, when children were separated from their parents at the southern border. A 2023 court settlement mandated services for about 5,000 children and their parents and set up a special process for them to apply for asylum. Nonetheless, the Trump administration has detained at least 25 family members and deported six. “The facts and truth remain the same,” Tricia McLaughlin, then a D.H.S. spokeswoman, said of the deportations. “These individuals were here illegally.”

Kate Angustia, former U.S.C.I.S. lawyer: In the first Trump administration, these kids were in detention without care and support, with the government arguing in court about whether toothpaste was a valid health need. It took forever for their parents to find them.

Michelle Brané, former ombudsman for the Office of Immigration Detention: I led the Family Reunification Task Force under Biden. Hundreds of children hadn’t seen their parents for years. Depending on their age, the kids separated under “zero tolerance” had a lot of different responses — all of them traumatized. They regressed in toilet training, in speech, in behavior. Every health care professional we consulted agreed that forced separation from a parent is extreme trauma.

Former D.H.S. policy official: We had a meeting early in the year about these families with D.H.S. lawyers who had been working on this case for years. There was one guy there from the director’s office who wanted to prove how gung-ho he was, and he kept saying there has to be a way to deny all these people, as he put it. We’re saying, No, that is a violation of the settlement agreement. But he kept hammering.

The judge who was overseeing the settlement later ordered the government to restore services and bring back the families who were deported. But so far they haven’t been returned.

April 11

A Justice Department memo said immigration judges could dismiss asylum cases without a full evidentiary hearing if asylum seekers filed incomplete or legally defective applications. An earlier department memo rescinded guidance in 2023 that provided people with limited proficiency in English “reasonable access” to language services outside of court to file legal documents (as well as in-court translation).

Mimi Tsankov, former immigration judge: When people file their own cases, or their lawyers miss something, their asylum applications often don’t tell their whole stories. The message of the April memo was to speed through the cases quickly without giving people a second chance to fix their mistakes.

ICE lawyer: I think it’s a great idea for judges to have that authority. Lawyers used to apply for asylum for their clients and leave the form completely blank as to what the reasoning is. So the client would get years in the United States before they had to show up at a hearing and give a rationale. There are cases where the lawyers literally write “gangs” as the rationale. One word.

Amanda Ceja, former interpreter in the Denver immigration court: We were directed to give out forms in English and also told that we couldn’t offer any additional explanation. People didn’t know what the rules were. Our lines at the window went all the way down the hall, and the phone calls were incessant. All we could say was, You need to talk to an attorney. I saw a lot of people get scammed by people who fraudulently represented themselves as attorneys. I felt I could no longer carry out my role to ensure meaningful communication. That’s why I chose to leave.

May 21

Miller and Noem called the heads of D.H.S. field offices to Washington for a meeting about increasing the number of arrests and deportations. Miller said on Fox News that he wanted a minimum of 3,000 arrests a day, for a million deportations in 2025.

Former ICE senior executive: We knew we were going to get a tongue lashing. We’d already been hearing, You’re not doing enough. The expectation was that someone was going to read us the riot act.

Todd Lyons, the ICE director, introduced the secretary. She says to us, If I get fired in six months, I’m going to make sure you get fired in six months. And I’m like: Hold on a second. I’ve been doing this for over 30 years, and you just got six months under your belt. You should get fired because you don’t know how to run the mission.

Then Stephen Miller goes up next, and he chastises our director. He dresses him down in front of us. And I’m like, This is so unprofessional. A field office director says: We’re working through the list, but we’re having some challenges with the list. We’re going to get it done. We’re trying our hardest.

And Miller looks at Todd and says: What are you telling your people? I told you — there is no list. Everyone is fair game.

Once that happened, I knew it was time for me to go. When he said, There is no list; you’ve just got to go and get them — well, define “them.” How do I know who “they” are? I’m brown, so what, you’re just going to approach every brown person and ask them what their citizenship is?

(A White House spokesperson said Miller was highlighting the need to implement the president’s agenda, not chastising Lyons.)

Former ICE field office director: Stephen Miller was like: Reasonable suspicion is all you need. You have that authority.

He’s very savvy, very smart. I have a lot of respect for him. He had his pulse on everything from the interior enforcement to the border.

He gets very frustrated. This is what I want done, and why isn’t it done already? When agents lost track of a Columbia student who protested in support of Palestinians that Miller wanted arrested, he blew a gasket. He said: You’re telling me that an antisemitic hater of the Western world was able to outmaneuver, outsmart, outflank, outthink federal agents? I’m supposed to go back to the president of the United States and tell him that you don’t know where an 18-year-old person is on campus?

(A White House official said the president has pledged to revoke visas for “anyone who hates America, undermines our country and poses a risk to our national security.”)

May 25

Noem traveled to Israel to attend a memorial service for two staff members of the Israeli Embassy who were killed in Washington, D.C.

D.H.S. official: Noem’s team was suspicious of the careers, so they hadn’t been involved in strategic planning for her trip. Right before she left, on a Saturday, the director who was responsible for the region got a voice mail saying: Hey, the advance team has just booked another meeting with an Israeli minister. The meeting is tomorrow. You need to write a memo. But this guy was in a U-Haul driving his kid’s stuff home from college. So the person above him, who doesn’t specialize in the region, offered to step in. He was at dinner with his wife, got this call and said: I’ll go home. I’ll do it.

Noem’s team hadn’t mentioned the minister’s name. So he looked up the ministry and plugged in what he saw. A number of Trump appointees cleared it. The secretary reads the memo, goes into the meeting — and it’s a different minister because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had recently shuffled his cabinet and the website hadn’t been updated.

Two people were removed from their positions. One, the director who was driving the U-Haul, because he should have been available, and then his boss, who had stepped up. This was one of the people key to implementing Trump’s policy initiatives during his first term. They just pushed him out without even thinking strategically: Wait a minute. What experience and background are we losing if we get rid of this guy?

Former employee in the D.H.S. policy office: One of the other Middle East experts had already left. It had been such a hostile work environment. They had let all this expertise leave, and then they’re pissed that they don’t have it. After this happened, it caused paranoia. There were people who, if they were asked to provide information, would print it out and cut out the names of all the people who worked on it and walk it over to the front office. Because they were like, If they get upset about something that’s in here, we don’t want them to be able to immediately know who to fire.

May 27

Following a memo from Todd Lyons, the acting head of ICE, agents increasingly arrested undocumented people who showed up for a hearing in immigration court. The memo said that undocumented family members and friends accompanying the “target alien” could also be arrested. ICE also began regularly arresting asylum applicants when they went to a field office for an interview.

Mimi Tsankov, former immigration judge: For fear of repercussions, people started avoiding exercising their rights by coming to court. But if they fail to appear, they can receive an order for removal.

George D. Pappas, former immigration judge: When ICE officers started entering the courthouse, I was told by my assistant chief judge, Stay out of the way and grant the government’s motion to dismiss the case.

No, I’m not going to do that. Now this person would not have legal status. They would lose their work authorization. They’re susceptible to arrest at any point. We had a duty to give them their day in court.

Jeremiah Johnson, former immigration judge: In one case, I denied the motion to dismiss. It was a 20-year-old Sikh man from India who was seeking asylum based on persecution for his political activism. They arrested him in the hallway outside my courtroom.

Michael Knowles, former asylum officer: Asylum offices have always been physically separate from ICE and other enforcement. The idea was to communicate that it’s OK to show up, even if you entered illegally or overstayed your visa, because our job is to ascertain your claim. That’s in the law: Everyone gets a shot.

But ICE was pulling people out of interviews or apprehending them on their way out. Some of them didn’t have criminal records, and there was no warrant out for their arrest. Asylum officers told me that if they finished the interview before ICE arrived, they were told to keep the applicant longer. They were being made part of a setup.

I retired even though I wasn’t ready.

(“Any application for asylum does not preclude immigration enforcement,” Bis, the D.H.S. spokeswoman, wrote. “Nothing prohibits arresting a lawbreaker where you find them.”)

June 6

Protests erupted in Los Angeles in response to a series of immigration sweeps. Border Patrol agents, who rarely operated in cities in the interior of the United States, were redirected to be part of the crackdown. Noem soon deployed Gregory Bovino to lead the surge. Trump posted on Truth Social that other Democratic-led cities would be next: “I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities.”

Teresa Pedregon, former deputy chief patrol agent at the northern border: Greg Bovino reported directly to the D.H.S. secretary. He was essentially not even under the chain of command. He doesn’t believe in intelligence-driven operations. That was clear when he was in New Orleans, where I worked with him. He was putting people in gas stations and telling his agents, See how many illegals you can round up. I felt he was auditioning to get Trump’s attention.

(Pedregon sued D.H.S. in 2020 over its personnel practices, alleging, among other claims, that Bovino gave preferential treatment to white male agents in New Orleans. The case was settled out of court two years later.)

Darius Reeves, former ICE field office director in Baltimore: Anytime you engage the Border Patrol in interior enforcement, the wheels are going to fall off. It’s not to disparage them. It’s totally different tactics and totally different training.

Rafael Reyes, former Border Patrol agent in charge in Deming, N.M.: I always told my agents, This is a career, not a crusade. My ancestors, my family, we feared the Border Patrol. That’s the stigma that came with that job. We’ve been struggling for a very long time to move away from the stigma of the mass raids of the 1950s. After 9/11, we started professionalizing. We evolved from this 9,000-man agency to the largest law enforcement agency in the federal government. Border Patrol is now more than 50 percent Hispanic. Interior enforcement isn’t our responsibility, and we don’t like the blowback that comes from it.

Former D.H.S. executive 1: When Los Angeles happened, they made all these arrests. They’re like, We can’t process them fast enough, so put them on the plane. We had a total of 13 planes that we were using. You can fit roughly 128 people on one of these planes. They didn’t care if a plane flew with three people. The secretary wanted to see 13 planes in the air every day, no matter what. That cost a lot of money.

(Bis, the D.H.S. spokeswoman, disputed these numbers and wrote that “the operation of a flight with lower numbers can still be more cost effective than the cost of detaining aliens additional days to fill a flight.”)

ICE agent: When people started making comments like, ICE is disappearing people, They’re Nazis, They need to get out — politicians would even say that — that empowered people to act more aggressive toward us. Now you’re taking eight, 12, 15 people to arrest one guy. And you’re doing it for safety. But at the same time, when you show up with that amount of people, everything is automatically heightened — because somebody else looks at it like, Why do you need 15 people for one guy?

June 6

The Trump administration announced that it had ended a longstanding protection from deportation for people 21 and younger who were abused or neglected in their home countries. Without providing evidence, D.H.S. said the program was “infected with fraud and abuses,” accusing the Biden administration of admitting “hundreds of suspected and confirmed adult gang members.” By the end of the year, hundreds of these young people had been detained and deported.

Sarah Krieger, former policy analyst at U.S.C.I.S.: I led the portfolio for all of these vulnerable young people. One day, I looked at the D.H.S. website, and it says we’re no longer granting them deferred action — the form of relief that they had. I was like, What? It turned out there was a policy manual update I didn’t know about.

These young people each went in front of a state court judge, who determined that they were abused or neglected and that it’s not in their best interests to return to their home country. They’ve also all gone through security checks.

July 4

Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included a spending increase of $170 billion for immigration enforcement through 2029. ICE began planning to add more than 100,000 beds, buying at least 20 warehouses and converting them into large-scale detention centers. Local opposition derailed these plans in several states.

D.H.S. attorney: One of the most disappointing experiences I’ve had here is watching career staff who believe this warehouse plan is a disaster — one that will cause suffering and increased death — work their hardest to make the plan happen. I’ve really struggled with how to deal with that.

It’s true that for optimizing efficiency, the warehouses make sense. But Fort Bliss in Texas, the closest analogue for the warehouses, is a goddamned nightmare. I went there after it opened. It was planned and built by a company that has zero experience in detention of any kind. It’s a giant tent with partitions, so it’s incredibly loud. You could lose your mind in that cacophony.

Claire Trickler-McNulty, former senior ICE official: In March, a 19-year-old committed suicide at the Glades facility in Florida. That was a facility that we had closed under Biden because it had such persistent problems. They reopened it. They reopened many of the facilities that were closed because of longstanding concerns about conditions.

July 8

The administration adopted a broad reading of a landmark 1996 immigration law. In court, ICE would now request detention, without a bond hearing, for almost everyone who entered the country illegally, regardless of whether they had a criminal record. Most District Court judges rejected the administration’s new position, but two appeals courts have ruled in favor of it. The issue is likely to reach the Supreme Court.

Adam Boyd, former ICE attorney: If you have a criminal record, we need to detain you. But when ICE didn’t have the bed space, you could release lower-risk people, let’s say a mom and her kid. We don’t have this idea of discretionary release anymore. You could have been here for 15 years, but you came across the border and didn’t have an admission at the port of entry. You didn’t get a visitor stamp or anything, and you snuck across. Here you are 15 years later, and we are saying we can detain you until the end of your hearings.

Assistant U.S. attorney: Now that Congress has given ICE all this funding for mandatory detention, that allows the Trump administration to interpret this draconian law in a way that hasn’t been done for 30 years.

But that means treating people who have been here for 20 years, and have no criminal record, the same as people who have been here for 20 days.

ICE lawyer: Mandatory detention is the dream of every hard-line anti-immigration activist. This is as big a deal as ending birthright citizenship. If the Trump administration does that, then they have changed immigration law forever. If the Supreme Court signs off on this, it’s effectively saying we don’t do asylum here anymore.

July 29

D.H.S. announced a “Defend the Homeland” campaign to increase the number of ICE agents to 20,000 from 10,000, using funds from the One Big Beautiful Bill. The agency offered a $50,000 signing bonus and dropped the minimum age for recruits to 18. The basic training program at the academy was reduced by several weeks.

Ryan Schwank, former ICE attorney: I started as an instructor at the academy in September 2025. On Day 1, we started on Page 70 of the materials, did about 30 pages, then skipped another hundred. It went on like that. The longtime instructors said they used to run practice drills and grade them. They used to do shooting exercises. Now we’re not doing it or we’re not grading it. There are multiple-choice tests, but they’re open-book. They removed most of the practical exams. Before, you had to show you could conduct an arrest at a business, a home and a vehicle stop. If you failed the class, you failed out of the academy. Now there is no grade given, so no one fails a practical exam.

I know there’s a concern that the ICE recruits are white nationalists, and I saw some that fit that concern. But by and large, people were there because they saw an opportunity for a high-paid job in federal law enforcement. A lot of them were first- and second-generation immigrants. There was no indication that the cadets didn’t want to learn. But the way we were rushing them through, they walked out not remotely prepared to do the job.

ICE agent: Every police department has a field training program, where you learn most of your stuff from another decent cop. When I joined ICE a few years ago, I got no field training. It’s overwhelming, because you get out of the academy and it’s: OK, here you go. You start.

Now, you could tell the new guys from their mannerisms or even how they talk when they’re getting ready to go out. They’d have their tac vests with every pouch known to man — 10,000 things on their belt. They haven’t done enough to know you don’t want all that on you while you’re running after somebody or fighting with somebody.

Senior ICE officer: ICE is quickly hiring people with little to no experience and training them on PowerPoint and then giving them a badge and gun. I’m going to be honest with you, there are some really old people and some really out-of-shape people.

(“This is completely false,” wrote Bis, the D.H.S. spokeswoman. “Students must meet all requirements, otherwise they will not be made law enforcement officers.”)

November 20-21

Noem posted an ad on X urging people to apply to be a “Deportation Judge.” The next day, five immigration judges were fired in San Francisco, which had a relatively high rate of granting asylum cases. The dismissals brought the total for the year to more than 100. With a backlog of around 3.7 million cases, the Trump administration recruited military lawyers to replace the fired judges. The grant rates for asylum have plummeted to the lowest point for which data is available, an analysis by The Times found.

Jeremiah Johnson, former immigration judge: On Nov. 21, I heard my afternoon case. It was a family of four Indigenous Guatemalans, a mother and father and two children. They were refugees who had suffered physical abuse. The father’s leg had been broken, and his brother had been killed. They were targeted for their race and ethnicity. They had a fear of persecution, based on past persecution, which the government didn’t rebut.

I granted them asylum. D.H.S. waived the appeal. My last words on the bench to that family were: You’ve been granted asylum in the United States. That decision is final. Welcome to the United States. One of the kids — I think he was in fifth grade — jumped up and clapped his hands together.

Later, I went to my office and signed onto my computer and found out I’d been fired. I was escorted out without time to print the letter they sent me.

Early January 2026

ICE and C.B.P. sent 3,000 agents to Minneapolis under the direction of Bovino. Immigration officers arrested at least 2,300 people in Minnesota that month.

ICE agent: People were nervous about getting sent to Minneapolis. I got the notice and had to show up less than a week later. I didn’t want people to know I was with ICE. I even intentionally took one of my wife’s girly suitcases to make it look like I was traveling with a woman. Everyone’s Midwestern nice, so they’re like: Hey, welcome to Minnesota. What brings you to town? I told people I was there to take care of my nephews.

There were protests outside the Whipple Building, which was our operating center. Driving in, I’d try to look straight ahead while I was being cursed out. They would be like: Kill yourself. You’re Nazi trash. I mean, anything you would think of. They’d also protest outside certain hotels and make noise. We’d get messages saying: If you’re at this hotel, just stay in your room. Don’t leave. Guys would book the hotel with their personal credit card instead of their government card because it was safer. One guy put a Harris-Walz sticker on his bags. Another guy put an anti-Trump sticker.

D.H.S. border official: The majority of people were protesting, but a significant number of people crossed the line, which would absolutely negatively impact our ability to get the job done. For example, if you have a child sex offender that you are looking for, and you know where they live, and you’re trying to maintain a discreet presence until you see that person exit a business or exit their house so you can arrest them, but you’re surrounded by a bunch of people honking horns, they’ve effectively blocked that arrest.

Senior ICE officer: We were going around in rental cars arresting people. That was really wild to me. It would trip me out that anyone would pull over to a Nissan Altima with a blue light on it. It doesn’t look legit.

We have no authority to question a United States citizen. And they would do that. I saw officers block someone in, put them in a car, drive away and, once we get to a more secure location, look at the person and say, Oh, shoot, that’s not our target.

January 7-26

During the Minneapolis surge, ICE and Border Patrol agents fatally shot two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Without providing evidence, Noem and other D.H.S. officials said Good and Pretti were to blame by committing acts of domestic terrorism. As criticism of the administration’s tactics in Minneapolis mounted, Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, replaced Bovino in Minneapolis.

Senior ICE officer: The Good shooting was cleared by Secretary Noem like within an hour. There should be a real investigation. For lesser-trained officers, that made them think, OK, we can push the limits. You could really see that in the field in the lack of professionalism. ICE was giving us big cans of pepper spray we were never issued before. I know that if I spray someone, that’s a use-of-force incident that needs to be investigated. But all these new people were emptying out their canisters, driving by and spraying the crowd — no questions asked.

ICE agent: The one thing you’ll always hear cops say is, One bad cop does something, and somehow it becomes a referendum on all cops. It’s the only profession where that happens. You don’t hear that a doctor got drunk and did surgery and killed somebody and have people saying every doctor in America is an [expletive]. We’re being painted with a broad brush.

H.S.I. agent 1: We don’t like working with the Border Patrol agents because they cut corners. They’re reckless and unnecessarily aggressive. And you saw the direct result of that in Minneapolis. The agents who shot Mr. Pretti were C.B.P.

I think the administration realized that what happened in Minnesota was not great. The optics were terrible. So there has been a positive effect in terms of the administration taking a step back from these types of large civil immigration enforcement surges.

Ken Syring, former C.B.P. deputy chief of staff: Some employees are angry at D.H.S. for making prejudicial statements about Good before there was even an investigation. There are others who are really concerned that a loss of legitimacy equals a loss of functionality, and that C.B.P. won’t be able to operate as a law enforcement agency that’s in any way successful after all of this. A lot of them seem to be operational concerns. I haven’t heard many moral concerns.

Senior ICE officer: I think the big difference happened when Homan replaced Bovino in Minneapolis. There were never official quotas, just pressure to produce and a questioning of our tactics if we didn’t arrest. The stress eased up tremendously under Homan.

January 21

The New York Times reported on a 2025 memo from Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, that said agents could enter homes to arrest people without a warrant from a judge. The next day, James Percival, the general counsel for D.H.S., argued in The Wall Street Journal that “illegal aliens aren’t entitled to the same Fourth Amendment protections as U.S. citizens.”

The Supreme Court has never explicitly ruled that the Fourth Amendment applies only to citizens. Six former D.H.S. general counsels and acting general counsels from Republican and Democratic administrations wrote in a guest essay for New York Times Opinion: “We urge the Department of Homeland Security to adhere to the Constitution and end the practice of conducting forcible entry into homes without judicial warrants.”

Ryan Schwank, former ICE lawyer: My supervisors at the academy showed me this memo telling officers they can go into a home using an administrative warrant from D.H.S. instead of a judicial warrant. They say: You can’t keep a copy of the memo. You’re going to teach this to cadets, but we won’t put in writing anywhere that we’re training them on this.

That’s an illegal way to teach. When you train law enforcement officers, everything is in writing. If they ever want to discipline an officer for not following orders, they have to prove they gave the instructions.

I talked to my wife. I said I’d stepped into a bear trap. I needed to report it, but I had to figure out how. Should I go to the Office of the Inspector General or the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties or the ombudsman? I knew people in those offices who’d lost their jobs. I didn’t think those offices were effective anymore. I found Whistleblower Aid, and we made the disclosures.

Former D.H.S. executive 2: That memo is going to reach the Supreme Court and get struck down. They took 40 or 50 years of policy and just disregarded it. Quite frankly, the people who signed that have legal exposure. They better get good lawyers. They need to have discussions about getting a pardon before they leave.

There’s a few unfortunate folks out there who have gone in with administrative warrants, but I’ve heard that it’s hardly ever done because people at ICE understand that it’s incredibly dangerous. People who do it are going to be personally, civilly and criminally liable.

Late January into February

As the number of migrants in detention surged past 73,000 (from fewer than 40,000 when Biden left office), Federal District Courts were flooded with petitions for habeas corpus, a means of challenging imprisonment. District Court judges have ruled against the government in 415 of 450 cases, according to a Politico tracker. In hundreds of instances, ICE failed to comply with court orders, including by holding people for extended periods after their dates of release. (Bis, the D.H.S. spokeswoman, characterized the orders as “judicial overreach” and said ICE complies “when it receives sufficient notice to do so.” )

Adam Boyd, former ICE attorney: It’s interesting to see ICE and D.O.J. complaining they’re overwhelmed, but this was their own making. If you are going to have tens of thousands of people being detained, you’re going to have a lot more habeases being filed, because you are going against decades of what the policy used to be.

Assistant U.S. attorney: This is a slow-moving train wreck. When D.H.S. sends agents in for these surges and makes all the arrests, they never check with us about whether we can handle the scale of court cases that will follow. And we don’t have the capacity. This isn’t just in a few places. It’s Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, New Orleans and also the rural districts, like in Texas and northern Michigan, with large detention facilities where they ship a lot of people from blue states that don’t allow the jails to house ICE detainees.

ICE lawyer: The average length of detention I’ve seen is around 400 days — so, over a year. I have never seen anything like this. We’ve got an order from a federal judge saying, Hey, show why this guy’s detained. We’re like, We don’t actually know.

Former assistant U.S. attorney in Colorado: I think a lot of the attorneys defending these cases think they are morally repugnant. I had eight of these cases before I left. One was a DACA recipient who came here years ago and worked in construction. I thought we would let him out because he had a valid DACA application, but no. It just felt terrible. What are we doing and why?

March 3

During a Senate hearing, Noem was asked about a $220 million ad campaign, featuring her on horseback, that urged migrants to self-deport. ProPublica reported earlier that D.H.S. awarded a no-bid contract for the campaign to a company that subcontracted with a firm run by the husband of Tricia McLaughlin when she was the director of the D.H.S. Office of Public Affairs. (Bis, the D.H.S. spokeswoman, said that the Office of Public Affairs was “simply the vehicle for this contract” and that McLaughlin, who has since left the department, recused herself from interacting with subcontractors.)

In response to senators’ questions about the ads, Noem said Trump approved them. Trump fired Noem on March 5.

D.H.S. official: They had, without telling anybody, decided to run these ads in Mexico. They ran a commercial in prime time during a soccer game — the equivalent of “Monday Night Football.” Which just led to outrage in Mexico.

After the ad ran, I heard that the State Department called over to our political leadership and just lit into them. Like: What the hell are you guys doing? Because of the contiguous border, it’s exceptionally important that we maintain good relations with Mexico. We want to deport people there. They were just beyond irritated that whoever made the decision hadn’t cleared it with State.

Kerry Doyle, former chief of ICE’s legal branch and former immigration judge: Noem broke the cardinal rule: Never throw the president under the bus, and never upstage him. I also think the women in this MAGA universe are expendable in a way the men don’t seem to be.

I think they understand it’s bad for their polling and for the midterm elections to be as aggressive as they were. So they’ve stopped saying “mass deportations.” But it’s not a policy change.

March 5

Trump nominated Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, to succeed Noem as secretary of homeland security. At his confirmation hearing, Mullin signaled a willingness to reconsider some of the agency’s most aggressive tactics. He has also privately supported an investigation by the D.H.S. inspector general into how Noem and Lewandowski handled contracts, The Times reported.

The pace of daily arrests has dropped since January, but Stephen Miller has remained committed to his larger goals. “Everyone involved in the asylum system knows and understands the claims are all fake,” he wrote on X in April.

ICE lawyer: Some of the ICE agents who lean MAGA cannot wait for this administration to be done. I know the guys are tired. For the first time this month, I am hearing guys questioning what they’re being asked to do. They’ve had a year now of people spitting on their feet and constantly calling them pigs and fascists, even when they’re just standing there at the airport. It’s having a real impact on people.

Former D.H.S. executive 1: The people that are working don’t disagree with strong enforcement, consequences and deterrence. But you don’t have to go about it looking so unhinged. It’s causing huge problems and creating distrust in law enforcement, in ICE especially. I don’t know if we can come back from this.

D.H.S. attorney: The ultimate goal of this administration is nothing less than deporting every immigrant it possibly can by the end of the term while shutting down incoming legal immigration other than rich people they want and white South Africans. The whole D.H.S. project needs to be viewed in those terms: as forcing a mass exodus and shutdown of the entire U.S. immigration system.

Kerry Doyle, former chief of ICE’s legal branch and former immigration judge: I’m heartened that Mullin sounded conciliatory at his confirmation hearing, but it’s hard to know what that will mean. The people driving these policies are still very much in the administration. There will have to be massive upheaval to set things right again.

 

Trump! What He's Good For? Absolutely Nothin'!

The United States has intervened in other nations' conflicts with impunity for as long as we realized that we could. Most of the time there was at least some fig leaf of a national security or national interest reason for doing so. Not always, but usually. Sometimes we we deposed the dictator de jour and extricated ourselves, or bombed whatever group that was giving us trouble and went home. Sometimes we respond to attacks against us or our allies. 

But there are times when we think we have a good reason to start a war but find ourselves bogged down long past the time our initial goals were achieved and have even seen the mission morph to the point that we have no idea what winning looks like. Afghanistan is a fresh example. We went in to Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban who had given sanctuary to Al Qaeda and allowed their country to be a haven for worldwide terrorism. We did that pretty quickly but ended up staying for twenty years, propping up corrupt leaders, fighting regional warlords whose loyalty shifted on a weekly basis. We paid the salaries of thousands of Afghan soldiers who didn't actually exist. We pulled out amid chaos and the result was that the Taliban were back in charge. 

Trump campaigned on the promise of ending "forever wars". That was one of the few things where I agreed with him. But once he got back in the White House he started acting much more belligerent toward enemies (and allies). An argument can be made that not every use of the military is a war. I thought that he was justified in bombing the Houthis in Yemen when they were attacking shipping. I was less sanguine about his attacks on supposed terrorists in Syria, Nigeria, and Somalia. None of these were "war" in my opinion. He crossed a line with his abduction of a foreign head of state, Venezuelan President Maduro. He crossed a line with the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities in June 2025. But there's no question that what's happening in Iran is a war. 

There's no question regarding whether or not Iran is a destabilizing force in the Middle East. They have funded militias in Yemen, Israel, Iraq, and Lebanon. They have brutally suppressed their own people. They are emphatically not the good guys. Degrading Iran's ability to support regional terrorism is a legitimate goal for our allies. Preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon is a valid objective as well. The problem with trying to achieve this with military might is that military might is insufficient. Military leaders and intelligence analysts have long known this. The Iranians don't fold that easily. Our aims needed to be reached with diplomacy, not bombs. Great idea! We should do that!

We did. 

In cooperation with Russia, China, France, The United Kingdom, Germany and the European Union an agreement was reached that limited Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons and reduced or eliminated economic sanctions. It wasn't perfect, but it was working. Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the agreement and imposed maximum economic sanctions, complaining that the agreement was "weak". Iran immediately resumed its nuclear research and development and ramped up it's support of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and others, especially after Israel's response to the October Seventh attacks resulted in devastation of the Gaza enclave. Trump created the problem that he was now vowing to solve. 

One of the pillars of Trumpism is "America First". It's not something you can really argue with, despite it being a motto of the early Ku Klux Klan and mid 1900's Nazi sympathizers. Our leaders should put America first. Part of that would logically include strong relationships with our allies, both military and economic. Trump has made it clear that if we aren't making a buck with our alliances, then they are worthless. From imposing insane tariffs and insulting foreign leaders, he's made it clear that he doesn't value our alliances. Israel and the Gulf states are exceptions. The antisemites among us would propose some variation on "The Jews Run The World" to explain our alliance with Israel, throwing in a dollop of Epstein, George Soros, and whichever Rothchild is hanging around, to flesh out their conspiracy theory. Attempting to win the votes of American Jews, as well as the Evangelical Christians who believe that Armageddon is nigh, in addition to large checks from Israel-affiliated political action committees, is more likely. Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates and other rich Gulf States are also big contributors, not only to the Republican Party, but directly to the Trump family. Unlike Israel, they prefer that the United States do all their fighting. I'm not convinced that Trump is mesmerized by Netanyahu, or the World Jewish Cabal, but has acted on his invented competition with Obama. 

Trump has never understood diplomacy. In his world view, a negotiation is a discussion wherein the other party accedes to his demands. The concept of win-win, or anything other than a zero sum scenario is foreign to him. Consensus and compromise is for losers in Trump's world. His so-called negotiations prior to the attack on Iran were his usual clumsy ultimatums. Iran's refusal to acquiesce was his casus belli.  But what is he trying to do? Is it regime change? Is it obliteration of their nuclear facilities? (re-obliteration?) Is it degradation of their military? Is it opening the Strait of Hormuz, which already was open before the war? Who knows? Trump apparently doesn't, since his rationale has changed more often than I change my socks. His kaleidoscopic objective shifting isn't helped by his minions, who give conflicting information, all the while bellowing Holy War rhetoric, including pseudo-Biblical quotes from Pulp Fiction. Oh yeah, and the Pope is weak on crime. 

Iran hasn't surrendered yet, unconditionally or otherwise. Their military has been severally reduced but they're still attacking (until the recent ceasefire anyway) with drones and missiles. They still have all the means for constructing a nuclear weapon that they had two months ago. Their top tier of leaders have been killed, but new ones have replaced them. The Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the war, is open sporadically, with Iran charging tolls and the United States blockading it. What have we accomplished so far? Not much. 

This could go into two broadly different directions. Trump could escalate. He could follow through on his genocidal threats, or send in ground troops. Or he could get bored and simply unconvincingly declare "mission accomplished" and bring everyone home. 50-50 on which way we go. 

Clownocrat

The simplest definition for a dictator is "one person ruling a country". Implicit in this definition is that there is no functioning legislature, judiciary, or a free press independent of the dictator. Synonyms for dictator include autocrats and authoritarian. Dictators can and often do come to power through violence, but not always. Vladimir Putin in Russia is an example of a dictator who first came to power by being elected. Nations ruled by dictators often still retain the trappings of democracy — they still have courts, a legislature still meets and there are still newspapers, television and radio stations, but none of these institutions have any real power and are in practice subservient to the dictator. 

Donald Trump is, broadly speaking, a dictator. I have used a lot of words (some of them $5 and $10 words) making the case that he meets the definition. But is he a particularly competent dictator?

It's beyond arguable that Trump's intent is to govern unilaterally. His Day One Executive Orders make clear that he believes that he can simply speak into being anything that he wants to do. His view of Congress is that it's a rubber stamp to his whims, and sees it more as a body that exists to build a legal framework around his edicts. His view of the courts, especially the Supreme Court is similar. He doesn't see them as impartial referees of the Constitution, but as an institution that he expects to give him legal cover. He sees both entities, not as coequal branches of government, but as extensions of his own will that he expects to act with loyalty to him as their first duty. The courts have had a mixed record. The Supreme Court has handed him a few defeats, as have the lower courts, but the slow moving pace of the judiciary, even when it hands Trump a setback, does so after months or a year of his policy being implemented. 

Second Term Trump started out very different than First Term Trump. Second Term Trump had a team of seasoned policy experts, the architects of Project 2025, along with loyalists in all the top positions, ready to go. He had a shadow executive branch, Elon Musk's DOGE, who moved quickly, eliminating or hamstringing whole government agencies, who hit the ground running. Congressional budget allocations were overruled. Expenditures were made that were never approved. Thousands of government employees were summarily fired. Court orders were either ignored or gotten around or interpreted in novel ways. Homeland Security morphed into a secret police force, terrorizing immigrants and citizens alike. 

The only thing preventing Trump's complete takeover of the government is Trump.  

I have always said that Trump is both ignorant and incompetent. His ignorance of economics has caused him to upend world commerce with his on-again, off-again tariffs; his ignorance of geo-politics has caused him to alienate almost all of our friends and allies and gotten us into a war with no objectives. His incompetence is reflected in his choices of loyalists, chosen as much for their looks as for any competency, who will not tell him the truth for fear of upsetting him. It is a combination of micromanaging when inappropriate and bored disinterest when his full attention is warranted. 

Trump supporters, or, as I have frequently labeled them, Trump Cultists, have been fine with all of the authoritarian actions that their Dear Leader has taken over the last year plus. They justified their fealty by claiming that he would make their lives better — lower prices, lower inflation, no more foreign wars. But it looks like we haven't even gotten that. Ben Franklin once said "...those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." The Trump Cult was willing to give up the democratic features of our republic in exchange for cheap groceries and lower prices at the gas pump — and instead got neither. 

The reason Trump is ignorant and incompetent at his attempt to rule based on his own will is that there is no coherent plan behind that will. His attention span has a half life measured in nanoseconds, other than his grudges, which are eternal. With all the real issues that should be occupying his attention, he focusses on marble bathrooms and ballrooms. 

Yes, he's a dictator, but he's not very good at it. 

The Epstein Files - Flooding The Zone

The biggest problem with the so-called Epstein files, now that they've been released (at least in part) is that nothing is going to come of them. 

No indictments, no trials, no convictions beyond Maxwell and Epstein.

Ghislaine Maxwell was tried and convicted in 2021 for "conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, conspiracy to transport minors to participate in illegal sex acts, transporting a minor to participate in illegal sex acts, sex trafficking conspiracy, and sex trafficking of a minor." See this statement by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York for the details leading to her conviction. 

Epstein himself had been convicted of procuring a child for prostitution in in 2008, but only served 13 months, most of that on work release. He was arrested again in 2019 but died before being tried, likely for the same crimes for which Maxwell was convicted. 

One of them is in prison and the other one is dead. Problem solved right?

Not really. Not at all. What about all the people who Epstein and Maxwell trafficked those girls to? Shouldn't they be subjected to investigation, indictment and trial? Well, yes. But what does that look like? What it doesn't look like is releasing to the public every note, every tip, every witness statement, every allegation, every theory. In this blog post by John Sipher he lays out the reasons why a mass info-dump is a bad idea. 

"The bigger danger in an all-at-once “files” release isn’t that we’ll learn something uncomfortable about famous people. It’s that we’ll further damage the one thing a society cannot function without: credible trust in the rule-of-law process, law enforcement, prosecutors, courts, and the professionalism that makes those institutions something other than weapons.

"If our standard for justice becomes “dump everything and let the internet sort it out,” we are not strengthening accountability. We’re degrading it into a spectacle."

The "release the Epstein files" cry has it's origins in the QAnon online conspiracy movement outlined in a NY Times article that I have transcribed in one of my blog posts. The QAnon followers were convinced that there was a vast network of pedophiles operating in the shadows and that Donald Trump was the messiah who would expose them all. Donald Trump. Trump latched on to them and in his campaign for re-election in 2020 curried favor with this crucial portion of his support by promising to release the Epstein files, suggesting that doing so would expose former President Clinton and other Democrats as pedophiles and rapists. Once he got into office, however, he conveniently forgot all about his pledge, at least he hoped that his supporters would forget about it as well. Democrats, spotting some hypocrisy, started demanding that the files be released. The faction of his supporters who based their fealty upon this promise, were outraged. For a while, anyway. 

The Epstein files were called a "Democrat Hoax" by Trump, despite his repeated calling for it in the campaign. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi couldn't make up her mind about what was in them. The "Epstein client list" was on her desk, ready for review, then it didn't exist. The files didn't contain any information that warranted further investigation, then investigations were being opened into prominent Democrats. Before the giant data dump I wrote this about what possibly would be in these files. I predicted that there would be little if any new information. There's a lot of information, 3.5 million documents released so far, but what can be done with them?

This article by Alison O'Leary gives a pretty good synopsis of what is in the files that have been released and what they mean. 

"The “Epstein Files” are not a monolith but a chaotic archive of a life spent weaponizing philanthropy and social connections to obscure predation."

"...the so‑called “Epstein Files” [are] not a single “client list,” but a mix of court filings, flight logs, contact books, investigative reports, civil case materials, and estate records released by the House Oversight Committee."

The search for an “Epstein Client List” is a search for a document that likely never existed in the form the public imagines. The forensic record reveals something perhaps more disturbing than a simple list of customers: it reveals a complex web of social capital, influence peddling, and moral indifference.

"As of late 2025, the investigative landscape is defined by a tension between judicial closure and political openness. The DOJ’s July 2025 conclusion that no further prosecutions of third parties are warranted stands in stark contrast to the renewed, politically motivated investigations ordered by the executive branch in November 2025."

"Legally, the distinction between association and complicity remains the highest hurdle for any potential prosecution. Mere presence on a plane or in a contact book is not a crime, and the recently released emails, while damaging to reputations, often fall short of the evidentiary standards required for criminal indictment."

The release of the mountain of documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein's depredations is a lot of information, but it doesn't provide much in the way of conclusions. Of course we're all free to come to our own conclusions. Sadly though, I am not optimistic that the release of "The Epstein Files" has brought us any closer to putting anyone in front of a grand jury, let alone a trial, nor do I see it happening in the future. Not because terrible abuses didn't happen, not because there are revelations that make some of Epstein's guests look like candidates for the lowest circles of Hell, but because enough legal evidence to convict anyone beyond a reasonable doubt  other than Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell isn't there. 

It's no stretch to believe that the increasingly misnamed Department of Justice, including the FBI, has been corrupted in service to Trump. Of course it's possible that evidence of Trump culpability exists, but that it has been suppressed or destroyed.  But the NY Times recently reported about interviews with many current and former FBI agents, critical of the rot that has set into the agency. If there was evidence for further arrests and indictments, surely there is someone out there who knows about it. Some disaffected FBI agent who was told to ignore the evidence. Such a person hasn't surfaced yet. 

So, why isn't there, other than Maxwell's, and Epstein's arrests, enough  legal evidence to convict anyone else beyond a reasonable doubt contained in the files? Trump's DOJ hasn't always been in charge? Why have previous DOJ's not made any arrests? Primary among the reasons is that our justice system often doesn't believe women and girls who come forward. Complaints by people, men and women, who are without power and influence, against people who do have power and influence, often go nowhere. If investigations weren't started, or allegations were not pursued, or leads not followed up, then any evidence might no longer exist. The legal system doesn't function automatically, the actual human beings staffing it have to care. 

What if we had assigned a Special Prosecutor like Jack Smith (or maybe Jack Smith himself) to conduct an investigation instead of allowing this flood of information to be published, unlike in any other criminal investigation? Smith proved himself to be up to the job when he investigated Trump's election interference and document retention crimes. He was only stopped when Trump himself took effective charge of his own investigation by being elected.

In my opinion we have poisoned the well by brandishing our scythes and pitchforks and demanding the Epstein Files be released. We are left with a mess with no real answers. What could be real crimes are mixed in with tales of murder and cannibalism, making it easy for people to ignore the possibility that some, if not most of it could be real. By submitting to the collective voice of the crowd we may have eliminating any chance for justice for the victims.