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ICE spying in Minnesota, deportee bounty hunters, and a journalist’s 300+ days in detention · This Week On ICE

0:00
[music]
0:08
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to This Week On ICE for August 19, 2026.
0:10
SPEAKER_02: I'm Kelly Kimball.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: And I'm Matt Kendrick.
0:14
SPEAKER_02: We have talked a lot on the show about ICE's cooperation with local law enforcement,
0:18
SPEAKER_02: and it's about to grow deeper.
0:20
SPEAKER_02: ICE is now planning to offer local police departments insurance to cover liabilities
0:24
SPEAKER_02: and legal fees that officers may incur while making immigration-related arrests.
0:29
SPEAKER_02: Critics say this practice could further erode accountability by encouraging police
0:34
SPEAKER_02: with financial impunity for their actions helping ICE.
0:38
SPEAKER_02: Matt will talk about what the pitch is and how ICE is spending
0:40
SPEAKER_02: the enormous budget Congress has set for the agency.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: Then, a court filing on Thursday showed that ICE attempted
0:47
SPEAKER_00: to infiltrate activist groups resisting their crackdown in Operation Metro Surge
0:51
SPEAKER_00: in Minnesota, which resulted in the deaths of Alex Preddy and Renee Good.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: Not only did the agency penetrate signal group chats and activist trainings
0:59
SPEAKER_00: in person,
1:00
SPEAKER_00: but one agent made an indirect offer to, quote,
1:03
SPEAKER_00: build items that might assist other groups with more direct action protests,
1:07
SPEAKER_00: end quote.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: Kelly will go over what the documents reveal about the extent of ICE's surveillance
1:12
SPEAKER_00: of groups attempting to resist their enforcement activities.
1:15
SPEAKER_02: After the break,
1:16
SPEAKER_02: we'll sit down with Adam Rose,
1:17
SPEAKER_02: whose recent reporting in The Intercept covers
1:19
SPEAKER_02: an extraordinary ordeal ICE has forced
1:22
SPEAKER_02: upon undocumented journalist Carlitos Ricardo Parías.
1:25
SPEAKER_02: After ICE agents shot him in a botched detainment attempt,
1:28
SPEAKER_02: Parías has spent 300 days in Adelanto Detention Center without proper care
1:33
SPEAKER_02: for his bullet wound.
1:35
SPEAKER_02: He holds a grim record as a journalist who has spent the most time
1:38
SPEAKER_02: in government detention in conditions that defy description.
1:42
SPEAKER_02: Stick with us for more on this harrowing experience.
1:47
SPEAKER_02: Before we get into our main stories of the day, Matt,
1:50
SPEAKER_02: I really want to be sure we address one of the biggest stories coming out
1:53
SPEAKER_02: of Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey.
1:56
SPEAKER_02: So just this week,
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SPEAKER_02: there has been reportedly a third death in the ICE detention facility,
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SPEAKER_02: and it also marks the second death recorded in less than a month.
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SPEAKER_02: Jose Chajon Rajon is a Guatemalan immigrant who was arrested by ICE agents on July 18th.
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SPEAKER_02: The day after he was placed in Delaney Hall ICE detention facility,
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SPEAKER_02: he was experiencing seizure-like symptoms, according to a nurse in Delaney Hall.
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SPEAKER_02: A couple of days after that, he was discharged from Delaney Hall and sent into a hospital.
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SPEAKER_02: At some point, he dies.
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SPEAKER_02: It is still unclear as of today if he died inside Delaney Hall,
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SPEAKER_02: if he died en route to the hospital.
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SPEAKER_02: Or if he died in the hospital.
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SPEAKER_02: And this is very important because ICE never logged his death.
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SPEAKER_02: All of this happened a month ago, by the way.
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SPEAKER_02: The only reason that we know that Jose died was because U.S.
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SPEAKER_02: Rep Rob Menendez, who was a New Jersey Democrat, he brought it up last week.
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SPEAKER_02: And he only brought it up following kind of whispers of
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SPEAKER_02: a secret separate detainee death in the facility that was closely after the death
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SPEAKER_02: of Edwin Lopez Cornejo, which happened earlier this
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SPEAKER_01: month.
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SPEAKER_02: And so there's a lot of mystery about what happened to him,
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SPEAKER_02: when it happened, and also ICE's culpability in that death.
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SPEAKER_02: This all is particularly coincidental given the fact that over
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SPEAKER_02: a month ago ICE changed its policies so that it no longer is required
3:28
SPEAKER_02: to record deaths of Yeah.
3:33
SPEAKER_02: So the
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SPEAKER_00: two things that makes me think of one is the fact
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SPEAKER_00: that prison contractors are running these detention facilities for the most part.
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SPEAKER_00: The way that these companies make money is providing the least amount of service
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SPEAKER_00: and medical care to their detainees.
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SPEAKER_00: So that often results in overcrowded facilities.
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SPEAKER_00: It often results in poor medical care, as we've seen over and over again.
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SPEAKER_00: And now, given that rule change that you just mentioned about how ICE has Yeah.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: And what I immediately thought of,
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SPEAKER_00: given my background as an East Asia-oriented reporter,
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SPEAKER_00: was Otto Warmbier,
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SPEAKER_00: who was a young man who was detained in North Korea while he was visiting there on
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SPEAKER_00: a tour when that was still possible.
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SPEAKER_00: And then it appears...
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SPEAKER_00: During his detention, he suffered some sort of injury that caused him to go brain dead.
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SPEAKER_00: And almost immediately,
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SPEAKER_00: he was repatriated to the United States and died,
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SPEAKER_00: I believe, within hours of arriving in the United States.
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SPEAKER_00: And so that was perceived as sort of a way of North Korea avoiding culpability
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SPEAKER_00: in some way for his death or having some justification,
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SPEAKER_00: being able to say, well, he didn't die in North Korea.
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SPEAKER_00: And it's the same kind of tactic that we're seeing here with ICE, where Mm-hmm.
5:36
SPEAKER_02: And it's the perfect loophole for them, at least for now.
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SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately,
5:39
SPEAKER_02: that loophole is extremely obvious and one that many protesters and organizers
5:44
SPEAKER_02: and lawyers, activists and political representatives are catching on to.
5:48
SPEAKER_02: And so it's incredibly heartbreaking that this is the third death in Delaney Hall
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SPEAKER_02: since it reopened in May 2025.
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SPEAKER_02: And depending on when Jose died,
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SPEAKER_02: if it was After he was detained from Delaney Hall,
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SPEAKER_02: like DHS alleges,
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SPEAKER_02: then he is one of at least eight Former detainees who had died shortly after being
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SPEAKER_02: in ICE custody.
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SPEAKER_02: And those numbers are according to a death tracker that our friends
6:16
SPEAKER_02: at LA Taco has been constantly updating.
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SPEAKER_00: I would encourage folks to go listen to that interview we did with the people
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SPEAKER_00: at LA Taco who maintained this tracker because they go into how difficult it is
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SPEAKER_00: to separate out certain instances of death.
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SPEAKER_00: Like, did ICE cause this death?
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SPEAKER_00: Do they have approximate cause to this death?
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SPEAKER_00: Even if they're not always reporting those numbers consistently.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: Right.
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SPEAKER_02: So Matt,
6:38
SPEAKER_02: leading into our next story here,
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SPEAKER_02: you are going to talk about something super exciting, insurance.
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SPEAKER_02: Why is ICE now offering insurance to local police departments?
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so this is a plan that emerged last Thursday in some reporting just
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SPEAKER_00: after we had published our show last week,
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SPEAKER_00: wherein ICE would offer to cover up to $500,000 worth of liability and court costs
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SPEAKER_00: for local police officers whose departments cooperate with ICE.
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SPEAKER_00: While they're making immigration arrests,
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SPEAKER_00: let's say in the process of making an immigration arrest,
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SPEAKER_00: a local police officer,
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SPEAKER_00: let's say they make an immigration arrest on behalf of ICE and handle that person
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SPEAKER_00: and then turn them over to ICE.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: Right.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: Right.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: Right.
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SPEAKER_00: Right.
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SPEAKER_00: Officers qualify for immunity often in the United States on a criminal basis,
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SPEAKER_00: but they can still sometimes be sued on a civil basis depending on
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SPEAKER_00: the jurisdiction involved.
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SPEAKER_00: And basically this insurance would mean that the officer doesn't really have
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SPEAKER_00: to worry about how that court case,
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SPEAKER_00: that civil court case plays out because if they're found liable for a large amount
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SPEAKER_00: of money,
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SPEAKER_00: then this insurance would cover up to $500,000 of that cost plus legal fees,
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SPEAKER_00: et cetera.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: Right.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: So what kind of concerns does this raise
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SPEAKER_00: about how local police will approach immigration arrests now?
8:31
SPEAKER_00: It's a tool to remove accountability.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: Local police in the past may have not committed certain arrests or not taken
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SPEAKER_00: the risk to help ICE carry out its enforcement activities if they felt
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SPEAKER_00: that their They could be held personally or as a department held liable for
8:51
SPEAKER_00: the consequences of that arrest.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: And instead,
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SPEAKER_00: where local officers in the past might have worried about allegations
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SPEAKER_00: of excessive use of force,
9:01
SPEAKER_00: of wrongful arrest,
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SPEAKER_00: illegal search and seizure,
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SPEAKER_00: many of the other potential risks that a police officer takes when,
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SPEAKER_00: for example,
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SPEAKER_00: stopping a vehicle,
9:09
SPEAKER_00: searching that vehicle,
9:10
SPEAKER_00: or making an arrest based on probable cause or reasonable suspicion that
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SPEAKER_00: that may not be
9:17
SPEAKER_00: Now,
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SPEAKER_00: those officers would feel more at liberty to go after the people that ICE wants them
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SPEAKER_00: to go after and assist in this.
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SPEAKER_00: And the larger goal here that ICE is trying to achieve is...
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SPEAKER_00: These record high arrest numbers we've seen since Mark Wayne Mullen took over
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SPEAKER_00: the department,
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SPEAKER_00: ICE pursuing higher and higher numbers of weekly arrests,
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SPEAKER_00: even if those arrests are not particularly high quality.
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SPEAKER_00: And so it's kind of a way to use the American Civil liability system
9:48
SPEAKER_00: to expand ICE's manpower base and expand that arrest goal
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SPEAKER_00: that they've been attempting to pursue by essentially making it so
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SPEAKER_00: that local police officers are less fearful of carrying out
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SPEAKER_00: the potentially civilly liable acts that ICE wants them to carry out.
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SPEAKER_02: So they want protesters to be afraid of protesting,
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SPEAKER_02: but police officers to be less afraid of arresting protesters.
10:13
SPEAKER_02: Got it.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
10:14
SPEAKER_02: So this is going to take a lot of money to cover this.
10:17
SPEAKER_02: Right.
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SPEAKER_02: And we know that ICE has a multibillion dollar budget to do this.
10:22
SPEAKER_02: So what do we know about how ICE is going to spend this enormous budget?
10:27
SPEAKER_00: So we've already seen like in a lot of ways ICE promising to roll out technology.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: We've talked in the past that they've spent that on surveillance technology,
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SPEAKER_00: facial recognition,
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SPEAKER_00: license plate recognition,
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SPEAKER_00: buying people's private information that's available online.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: So let's turn it over to you, Kelly.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: You know,
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SPEAKER_00: in many ways,
10:53
SPEAKER_00: Operation Metro Surge was the reason that you and I started this podcast,
10:57
SPEAKER_00: and we are just now getting a lot of new information about How
11:01
SPEAKER_00: the operation went down,
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SPEAKER_00: how the crackdown went down,
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SPEAKER_00: thanks to court cases that are just getting underway now months after
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SPEAKER_00: the operation officially ended.
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SPEAKER_00: So what can you tell us about what we now know about ICE's attempts
11:13
SPEAKER_00: to infiltrate groups in Minnesota that were in some way resisting the crackdown?
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SPEAKER_02: Yes, absolutely.
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SPEAKER_02: So these are recent documents that were revealed after a court filing by
11:24
SPEAKER_02: a defense attorney last week.
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SPEAKER_02: And these documents showed that federal agents were launching
11:30
SPEAKER_02: a sweeping spying undercover surveillance campaign
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SPEAKER_02: on many different progressive movements and protesters that were against
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SPEAKER_02: the ICE surge in Minneapolis and the Twin Cities, basically.
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SPEAKER_02: So all of this,
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SPEAKER_02: this particular spying campaign happened shortly after the killing of Alex Preddy
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SPEAKER_02: in late January.
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SPEAKER_02: His Homeland Security investigations opened what they called Operation Puppet Master.
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SPEAKER_02: And they looked at different progressive groups like the AFL-CIO,
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SPEAKER_02: other workers unions,
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SPEAKER_02: the Sunrise Movement,
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SPEAKER_02: different volunteer organizations that do call themselves outwardly nonviolent,
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SPEAKER_02: who were organizing rapid response teams and basically getting volunteers
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SPEAKER_02: and neighborhood citizens together to document ICE raids and to resist the ICE raids
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SPEAKER_02: in their communities.
12:17
SPEAKER_02: The particularly egregious story that has come out of this is from the Sunrise Movement.
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SPEAKER_02: So the Sunrise Movement was subpoenaed by ICE for their financial records.
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SPEAKER_02: And at least one undercover agent was found to be engaging actively
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SPEAKER_02: with Sunrise Movement participants.
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SPEAKER_02: And he was trying to entice Sunrise Movement people.
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SPEAKER_02: Activists to do more direct action protests to commit acts of violence.
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SPEAKER_02: One agent told an individual that he was OK going to jail and
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SPEAKER_02: that it didn't bother him and that he was ready to create like physical,
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SPEAKER_02: basically like physical weapons to fight ICE agents.
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SPEAKER_02: And he was trying to entice other people in that movement to join him.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: Let's get the exact quote.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: So he said he said this guy,
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SPEAKER_00: this undercover agent went to the leader of the Sunrise Group and said, quote,
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SPEAKER_00: that he can build items that might assist other groups
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SPEAKER_00: with more direct action protests, end quote.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: And so for folks.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Folks who are maybe not familiar with what direct action means,
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SPEAKER_00: it's like this anarchist theory that emerged in the early 20th century in the US
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SPEAKER_00: and Europe,
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SPEAKER_00: whereby anarchist groups would carry out like bombings
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SPEAKER_00: or directly attack institutions and people that they disagreed with.
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SPEAKER_00: That's what direct action means in this context.
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SPEAKER_00: There's an implicitly violent nature to that.
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SPEAKER_00: The court documents just say that the leader of
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SPEAKER_00: the Sunrise Movement simply acknowledged what the ICE agent had said
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SPEAKER_00: without accepting or denying it.
13:42
SPEAKER_02: And to be perfectly clear,
13:43
SPEAKER_02: the organizations that these undercover agents were targeting,
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SPEAKER_02: none of them have been convicted of any crime ever.
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SPEAKER_02: And these were organizations that were organizing rapid response community events
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SPEAKER_02: in churches and libraries and schools,
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SPEAKER_02: none of which actually encourage violence of any kind.
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SPEAKER_02: So what were undercover agents trying to find out?
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SPEAKER_02: A DHS report from February said the agency was looking into people who were, quote,
14:16
SPEAKER_02: But this follows kind of a longer tale of Trump's directive where last year he had
14:21
SPEAKER_02: an executive order that designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.
14:27
SPEAKER_02: So if I'm looking at the facts,
14:28
SPEAKER_02: if I'm looking at the documents,
14:30
SPEAKER_02: what ICE wanted to desperately uncover was material
14:34
SPEAKER_02: that supported its Antifa narrative, which is a false narrative.
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SPEAKER_02: Antifa is not a specific narrative.
14:48
SPEAKER_02: They really wanted to prove that anti-ICE protesters were violent government agitators.
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SPEAKER_02: But what they actually ended up revealing was that the Twin Cities,
14:58
SPEAKER_02: Minneapolis and St. Paul,
15:00
SPEAKER_02: and the citizens and neighbors of these cities were part of an organization
15:04
SPEAKER_02: that was trying to hold truth to account.
15:06
SPEAKER_02: They were trying to document and use their First Amendment rights
15:09
SPEAKER_02: to Once they killed a white gun-owning man,
15:35
SPEAKER_02: That was the beginning of their losing battle in Operation Metro Surge, and they knew it.
15:40
SPEAKER_02: And so they wanted so badly to prove that there was
15:43
SPEAKER_02: a secret network supporting violent action against the government.
15:46
SPEAKER_02: And all they did was show that ICE is deeply unpopular and that there is a sea
15:52
SPEAKER_02: of people wanting to support their immigrant neighbors
15:54
SPEAKER_02: and also non-immigrant neighbors in holding truth to account
15:57
SPEAKER_02: and exercising their First Amendment.
15:59
SPEAKER_02: The question that I am asking myself is,
16:02
SPEAKER_02: you know,
16:03
SPEAKER_02: What happens to First Amendment protections when
16:06
SPEAKER_02: an ordinary political organizing campaign or political organizing project
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SPEAKER_02: against government policy becomes the subject of federal criminal investigation?
16:14
SPEAKER_02: When you equate those two,
16:16
SPEAKER_02: when you put them in the same space, there is no space for First Amendment freedoms.
16:20
SPEAKER_02: There is no space for freedom of assembly.
16:22
SPEAKER_02: There's no space for free speech, for freedom of the press.
16:25
SPEAKER_02: And so it baffles me that the organizations that they were targeting
16:29
SPEAKER_02: as potential criminals,
16:30
SPEAKER_02: potential violent criminals,
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SPEAKER_02: Our labor unions like the AFL-CIO,
16:35
SPEAKER_02: Service Employees International,
16:37
SPEAKER_02: local Minneapolis unions like the Federation of Educators and
16:41
SPEAKER_02: the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees,
16:44
SPEAKER_02: they were also targeting the Democratic Socialists of America
16:47
SPEAKER_02: and this organization called Showing Up for Racial Justice.
16:50
SPEAKER_02: I mean, when you link any criticism against the government as something
16:54
SPEAKER_02: that can inevitably be violent,
16:56
SPEAKER_02: that's a slippery slope toward a police state and an autocracy.
17:00
SPEAKER_02: Right.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: I completely agree.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you, Kelly.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: Really appreciate you looking into this.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: We will continue to monitor the court cases coming out of Minnesota.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: We're about to take a quick break.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: After the break,
17:11
SPEAKER_00: we're going to sit down with Adam Rose of the Freedom of the Press Foundation
17:15
SPEAKER_00: to discuss Carlitos Ricardo Parias,
17:17
SPEAKER_00: who is a journalist who has now served over 300 days in an ICE detention center
17:22
SPEAKER_00: in California with an untreated bullet wound,
17:25
SPEAKER_00: drinking worms out of his water, which we have photographic evidence of.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: So stay with us.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: It's going to be a riveting interview.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: Hi guys, Matt here.
17:40
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17:44
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18:45
SPEAKER_02: Welcome back to This Week On ICE.
18:47
SPEAKER_02: I'm here with Adam Rose,
18:48
SPEAKER_02: who is a deputy director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation and
18:52
SPEAKER_02: a board member of the Los Angeles Press Club.
18:55
SPEAKER_02: He recently wrote a piece in The Intercept about the case
18:58
SPEAKER_02: of undocumented journalist Carlitos Ricardo Parias,
19:01
SPEAKER_02: who has been in Adelanto ICE detention facility in California for over 300 days.
19:06
SPEAKER_02: It's the longest no time a journalist has ever spent in U.S. custody.
19:11
SPEAKER_02: In Adam's own words, quote, Parías' case is extraordinary.
19:15
SPEAKER_02: Perhaps no journalist has endured such a sustained sequence of violence,
19:19
SPEAKER_02: prosecution, and imprisonment at the hands of the U.S. government, end quote.
19:24
SPEAKER_02: Today,
19:24
SPEAKER_02: he's going to talk to us about Carlitos and what his detention means about both
19:29
SPEAKER_02: the conditions of Adelanto ICE detention facility and the conditions
19:32
SPEAKER_02: of First Amendment freedoms in America today.
19:35
SPEAKER_02: Adam, welcome to the show.
19:37
SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you so much for having me on and for casting a light on Richard's story.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: He's been an important part of the community in Los Angeles for a while.
19:44
SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
19:45
SPEAKER_01: I always want to stress in his case that while,
19:47
SPEAKER_01: you know,
19:47
SPEAKER_01: many others are going through similar horrific treatment,
19:51
SPEAKER_01: thousands of people in our communities have disappeared
19:53
SPEAKER_01: into facilities like Atalanto and are going through terrible condition.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: His story is truly emblematic in many ways.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: And it adds these critical aspects to our democracy about a free press.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: And why was he a target of ICE?
20:07
SPEAKER_01: He could have blended into the thousands or millions of other people out there.
20:10
SPEAKER_01: Instead,
20:11
SPEAKER_01: he really had a target on his back and literally ended up shot with a real bullet,
20:16
SPEAKER_01: repeatedly hospitalized by their agents.
20:18
SPEAKER_01: And so it's an important story to talk about,
20:20
SPEAKER_01: not only because of the abject horrors of it,
20:23
SPEAKER_01: but also what it means for our society as a whole.
20:27
SPEAKER_02: Can you give us a quick overview of who Carlito Ricardo Parias is and what happened to him?
20:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so for years, he's been a TikToker here in Los Angeles.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: And when I say that, I mean also that he's a journalist on TikTok.
20:40
SPEAKER_01: So he's had hundreds of thousands of followers.
20:43
SPEAKER_01: And long before ICE,
20:44
SPEAKER_01: long before the immigration enforcement ramp up,
20:46
SPEAKER_01: he was covering what we would call the cops beat in media.
20:49
SPEAKER_01: So he would go out and say, hey, there's a car chase.
20:52
SPEAKER_01: There's a robbery.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: Officers are responding to a call.
20:55
SPEAKER_01: And he would live stream and tell his community in Spanish about things
20:59
SPEAKER_01: which maybe they were not being informed of by the larger media outlets, right?
21:02
SPEAKER_01: We have news deserts in this country all over,
21:04
SPEAKER_01: and it's really unfortunate when local news shuts down.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: But even in a market as large as Los Angeles,
21:09
SPEAKER_01: there are pockets in communities which can be overlooked.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: It can be because of language barriers,
21:13
SPEAKER_01: it can be because of any number of reasons that a neighborhood might be overlooked.
21:18
SPEAKER_01: And so he was providing a service to that community and keeping them informed.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: When immigration enforcement ramped up, he ramped up his work covering it.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: And so he would go out and cover the latest actions and things happening on his local streets.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: And that's why he developed a loyal following.
21:32
SPEAKER_01: In fact,
21:32
SPEAKER_01: was honored by the Los Angeles City Council for doing the work that he was doing
21:36
SPEAKER_01: to keep everyone informed.
21:37
SPEAKER_01: So as he's doing that really important work,
21:40
SPEAKER_01: one day last year, he went out and was ready to start filming.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I don't know the exact details.
21:44
SPEAKER_01: This part is not on camera,
21:46
SPEAKER_01: but witnesses have confirmed that he was struck by a federal vehicle of some sort.
21:51
SPEAKER_01: And what we do know from the videos that emerged is that he was very seriously injured.
21:54
SPEAKER_01: You can see him on some of these viral videos clutching at his knee.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: He was denied medical care on the scene.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: They did not take care of him.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: Instead,
22:02
SPEAKER_01: they put him in handcuffs and left him on the side of the road
22:05
SPEAKER_01: as they continued their enforcement actions.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: So eventually a bystander picks him up,
22:09
SPEAKER_01: carries him into a private car, drives him to the hospital.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: And an agent did stop them very briefly.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: Clearly, Richard was not a major target.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: And if anyone's looking for him, by the way, it's Richard Noticias LA is his channel.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: But he's not posting because he's been in custody for now for over 300 days.
22:24
SPEAKER_01: So that was just the start of all of this.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: And at some point,
22:28
SPEAKER_01: because of the attention that got,
22:30
SPEAKER_01: maybe the federal government put a very specific target on him.
22:33
SPEAKER_02: And so toward the end of the piece,
22:35
SPEAKER_02: I love that you wrote this,
22:36
SPEAKER_02: journalists don't surrender their rights because they lack immigration status.
22:39
SPEAKER_02: I think that's an important point you made in the piece.
22:42
SPEAKER_02: So Richard is an undocumented journalist.
22:44
SPEAKER_02: You know, what rights are still owed to him that he has not been granted?
22:49
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, what does this overall principle mean legally and practically?
22:54
SPEAKER_01: All of his rights are owed to him.
22:55
SPEAKER_01: That's the important thing here with the First Amendment.
22:58
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, this has happened to other undocumented journalists, as you flag.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it happened to Mario Guevara, who spent 100 days in custody before being deported.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: Estefany Rodriguez, I think, spent 45 days in custody.
23:09
SPEAKER_01: I think it's something in that ballpark.
23:11
SPEAKER_01: And she at least was eventually released.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: All of these are very concerning because this all seems to stem in all three cases
23:17
SPEAKER_01: as a response to their efforts to inform the community.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: That's all they were doing.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: The First Amendment was written into the Constitution because we had a country
23:26
SPEAKER_01: where We were concerned about protecting free speech from Thomas Paine,
23:31
SPEAKER_01: who wrote pamphlets periodically,
23:33
SPEAKER_01: from Benjamin Franklin,
23:34
SPEAKER_01: who ran the Pennsylvania Gazette, which published a couple times a week.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: You think about what those publishers were then,
23:39
SPEAKER_01: they weren't the CNNs or New York Times as of today.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: They are the kind of people who would be on Instagram,
23:44
SPEAKER_01: on TikTok, on Substack, and reaching people through all sorts of different means.
23:48
SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't that they had to have a pro-government message.
23:51
SPEAKER_01: Quite the contrary,
23:52
SPEAKER_01: those publications,
23:53
SPEAKER_01: which the First Amendment was specifically written to protect,
23:56
SPEAKER_01: were advocating for radical, violent overthrow of the government.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: Now, I'm not saying that any of these journalists are doing that.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: I'm saying,
24:03
SPEAKER_01: my gosh,
24:03
SPEAKER_01: they are so tame in comparison to what the First Amendment was written to protect.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: So the idea of the First Amendment protects having a point of view.
24:11
SPEAKER_01: It protects recording and filming in public.
24:13
SPEAKER_01: It protects the transmission of that.
24:15
SPEAKER_01: And when the government uses its power to repress that, we have a very serious problem.
24:21
SPEAKER_01: What's maybe ironic for the government is that by imprisoning Richard,
24:26
SPEAKER_01: they have wound up giving him a new beat.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: And while he has been behind bars in Adelanto,
24:31
SPEAKER_01: one of these horrible detention facilities,
24:33
SPEAKER_01: he has been reporting and he has been capturing these weird worm-like creatures,
24:38
SPEAKER_01: which are apparently fly larvae and cockroaches in his cells.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: And the worm-like creatures are in the drinking water.
24:44
SPEAKER_01: When he has a visitor or he puts it over the video communication system so
24:47
SPEAKER_01: that people can record it.
24:49
SPEAKER_01: And he is continuing to commit acts of journalism behind bars and informing
24:53
SPEAKER_01: the public about what he and fellow detainees are going through.
24:57
SPEAKER_01: These are all rights that people should have,
24:58
SPEAKER_01: whether or not they're in custody,
25:00
SPEAKER_01: whether or not they're walking around the street documented,
25:02
SPEAKER_01: undocumented, citizen, not a citizen.
25:04
SPEAKER_01: None of that matters.
25:05
SPEAKER_01: If we protect rights only for citizens,
25:08
SPEAKER_01: it becomes this really just dystopian place that none of us would want to live in.
25:13
SPEAKER_02: You described his case as extraordinary,
25:15
SPEAKER_02: and he has been under U.S. detention longer than any other journalist.
25:19
SPEAKER_02: Why has he been in detention for so long, over 300 days?
25:23
SPEAKER_02: And in that time, what has the course his case taken?
25:29
SPEAKER_01: So Richard first was actually detained,
25:32
SPEAKER_01: not just that brief moment on the side of the road in handcuffs.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: And by the way,
25:35
SPEAKER_01: when he went to the hospital that first incident,
25:37
SPEAKER_01: they didn't even take off his handcuffs.
25:39
SPEAKER_01: He was literally driven off by a private citizen in a private car in the handcuffs
25:44
SPEAKER_01: that they didn't bother to remove.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just the ongoing neglect towards Richard has been disgusting.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: But.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: Then they targeted him.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: And so this was clearly an enforcement operation where they intentionally,
25:55
SPEAKER_01: when Richard was driving in his car,
25:57
SPEAKER_01: pinned him in on all sides so that he couldn't escape.
26:00
SPEAKER_01: The body cam video has become available.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: Other bystander video has become available.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: And what you see very clearly is that agents not just pin him in
26:08
SPEAKER_01: with their much larger vehicles,
26:09
SPEAKER_01: but with no warning and with no hesitation,
26:12
SPEAKER_01: immediately run up and start smashing his windows.
26:15
SPEAKER_01: Now, look, Richard is originally from Mexico.
26:17
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if he's experienced cartel violence,
26:19
SPEAKER_01: but it sure as heck looked like a fictionalized representation of a cartel attack
26:23
SPEAKER_01: of some sort.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: Do we in this country logically know that, yes, there's immigration enforcement happening?
26:29
SPEAKER_01: Yes, of course.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: But this is scary.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: These are masked armed men with no warning,
26:36
SPEAKER_01: just running up on you and smashing your car windows in a heartbeat.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: So when that happened, Richard...
26:41
SPEAKER_01: Whether it was panic or whether it was by accident or whatever,
26:44
SPEAKER_01: he did hit the accelerator of his car and his wheels made some smoke.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: But the car didn't move, right?
26:49
SPEAKER_01: And the officers would later claim, oh, there's this huge dangerous situation.
26:52
SPEAKER_01: This is a little piney sedan pinned in by giant trucks and SUVs.
26:57
SPEAKER_01: He just physically couldn't move.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: And so after that stops,
27:01
SPEAKER_01: this only goes on for a few seconds,
27:02
SPEAKER_01: but it became a big part of the law enforcement narrative.
27:05
SPEAKER_01: After just a few seconds, Richard stops, calms down.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: One of these officers from ICE,
27:11
SPEAKER_01: you see it on his own body cam, juggles his gun between his hands.
27:15
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just the most incompetent thing someone can do repeatedly between his hands
27:19
SPEAKER_01: as he's trying to open the door, the door through the window that he smashed.
27:23
SPEAKER_01: So he's juggling the tool that's used to smash.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: He's juggling his gun.
27:26
SPEAKER_01: And eventually...
27:27
SPEAKER_01: Being the clown that this guy was, he shoots Richard.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: Gun goes off, shoots him in the elbow.
27:33
SPEAKER_01: And a U.S.
27:34
SPEAKER_01: Marshal got shot too.
27:35
SPEAKER_01: I mean, friendly fire, right?
27:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just absolute, just incompetence, dangerous situation created by these agents.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: So Richards obviously very seriously hurts.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: He winds up being hospitalized.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: And so after that first happened,
27:50
SPEAKER_01: officers or agents ran into a nearby strip mall,
27:53
SPEAKER_01: went and looked for the security footage,
27:55
SPEAKER_01: and they deleted it from the security system at the mall.
27:58
SPEAKER_01: They downloaded their own copy,
28:00
SPEAKER_01: but they deleted the evidence that Multiple of the largest news outlets in
28:04
SPEAKER_01: the country came knocking and looking for,
28:05
SPEAKER_01: and I came knocking for and looking for myself.
28:07
SPEAKER_01: The security guard said, yeah, this paper was here, that paper was there.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: Here, I'll show you on the system.
28:11
SPEAKER_01: It was deleted.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: And so you see the timeline and that exact time and date,
28:15
SPEAKER_01: and it just says no data, whereas everything else has video footage.
28:18
SPEAKER_01: So it was very clear that something was amiss here.
28:22
SPEAKER_01: Within a day or so,
28:23
SPEAKER_01: the federal prosecutors put out a statement saying
28:25
SPEAKER_01: that he had assaulted federal officers,
28:28
SPEAKER_01: and they showed one still frame from that video,
28:30
SPEAKER_01: which completely did not provide that context of what the agents had done to him and
28:35
SPEAKER_01: the context of the situation.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: They also said that he had,
28:38
SPEAKER_01: you know,
28:38
SPEAKER_01: repeatedly evaded arrest or something like that when I told the story
28:42
SPEAKER_01: about what actually happened when they injured him at the
28:47
SPEAKER_01: Trump up these charges and they file criminal charges against him in federal court
28:51
SPEAKER_01: for assaulting an agent, which I guess because the wheels spun on his vehicle.
28:55
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was just totally absurd.
28:57
SPEAKER_01: So I actually sat in the courtroom and every detail of this gets more and more horrifying.
29:01
SPEAKER_01: He was released on Morphe.
29:03
SPEAKER_01: Hours later,
29:04
SPEAKER_01: he's in a courtroom after being in detention,
29:06
SPEAKER_01: and the judge finds out the marshals are not giving him ibuprofen
29:10
SPEAKER_01: as he's been prescribed.
29:11
SPEAKER_01: The guy needed more shade.
29:13
SPEAKER_01: He's supposed to be at least on high-dose ibuprofen,
29:15
SPEAKER_01: and he was getting some sporadically,
29:17
SPEAKER_01: but he wasn't getting ibuprofen for a gunshot wound.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: The judge asked a marshal to make sure he was expedited for treatment,
29:24
SPEAKER_01: and the marshal was like, yeah, I can't do that.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: I mean, everything was just bizarre.
29:28
SPEAKER_01: I was sitting next to Ulysses,
29:30
SPEAKER_01: his son, and the lawyer for Richard asked if his son could give him a hug.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: He hadn't seen him for days since this incident had happened and
29:36
SPEAKER_01: since his dad had been hospitalized.
29:38
SPEAKER_01: And again, the marshal vetoed that as a security issue.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: There was no humanity in any of the process.
29:45
SPEAKER_01: Those criminal charges hung over Richard for a while.
29:47
SPEAKER_01: He had a deal to get out on bail and didn't take that deal
29:52
SPEAKER_01: because it would have meant transferring him to Atalanto from the facility
29:55
SPEAKER_01: where he was,
29:56
SPEAKER_01: which is a regular criminal detention facility,
29:58
SPEAKER_01: hoping maybe he'd get better care there.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: At least he was closer to downtown LA to be able to see his lawyers and family.
30:04
SPEAKER_01: Even though he didn't take the deal,
30:05
SPEAKER_01: they still shipped him out to Atalanto, out into the desert.
30:09
SPEAKER_01: And there his neglect continued on a medical front,
30:12
SPEAKER_01: and there his lawyers could not access him,
30:13
SPEAKER_01: and there his family had trouble visiting him.
30:16
SPEAKER_01: So at the end of all of that,
30:18
SPEAKER_01: the judge said, look, we're throwing off all of the charges with prejudice.
30:21
SPEAKER_01: They can never even be refiled because this is a violation
30:24
SPEAKER_01: of his constitutional rights, and it's completely impermissible.
30:27
SPEAKER_01: Video continued then to leak out from other sources,
30:30
SPEAKER_01: which continued to disprove the government's narrative.
30:33
SPEAKER_01: So his...
30:34
SPEAKER_01: He won his criminal charges on these constitutional grounds,
30:37
SPEAKER_01: but the reality is the facts also backed up that he did not do what he was accused
30:41
SPEAKER_01: of doing.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: That is this wild situation that sets up where he is now,
30:47
SPEAKER_01: because immediately,
30:48
SPEAKER_01: as soon as his criminal charges are dropped,
30:50
SPEAKER_01: he's still facing deportation proceedings.
30:53
SPEAKER_01: He now becomes like anyone else going through these cases when he's sitting in Atalanto.
30:58
SPEAKER_01: But there may be other things which I can't really speak to
31:00
SPEAKER_01: that his immigration attorneys are working on.
31:02
SPEAKER_01: In particular, there are certain visas available to those who have been the victim of violence.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: And certainly, Richard has been the victim of violence at the hands of the U.S. government.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: So maybe the one thing they could do right by him is to give him that visa.
31:15
SPEAKER_01: But if they wanted to, they probably would have by now.
31:18
SPEAKER_01: And instead,
31:19
SPEAKER_01: they continue to subject him to these just horrific conditions that he
31:22
SPEAKER_01: and fellow detainees are experiencing.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: So many of the facts of this interaction that you recorded
31:28
SPEAKER_00: with Richard just repeat themselves in other cases where people have been injured
31:33
SPEAKER_00: or killed in ICE custody or during an interaction with ICE.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: We have the unmarked vehicle.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: We have the allegations that the person being detained was using their vehicle as a weapon.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: We have the selective release of video footage and manipulation of evidence regarding the case.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: We have the repeated transfers to get ahead, you know, not working with the legal system.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: We have the lack of medical care.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: We have the terrible facilities that you mentioned.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: The pictures of the worms in your piece were just disgusting and really struck a chord with me.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: Summing all this together and knowing that these are shared traits
32:06
SPEAKER_00: with other major incidents to do with ICE,
32:10
SPEAKER_00: you gave us a perspective on what Richard's case tells us about the system
32:14
SPEAKER_00: that ICE uses while attempting to carry out its mission.
32:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, Richard is clearly emblematic based on all of the reports that we've heard.
32:21
SPEAKER_01: And as you point out,
32:21
SPEAKER_01: there are all these parallels with other cases,
32:24
SPEAKER_01: often where video winds up disproving the government's own account.
32:27
SPEAKER_01: And one of the ones early for many of us were these accounts.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: They sort of woke a lot of us up to the amount of lying happening from
32:33
SPEAKER_01: the federal government were the accounts related to vehicles.
32:35
SPEAKER_01: And over and over,
32:36
SPEAKER_01: the federal government will claim, oh, someone tried to assault this with a vehicle.
32:40
SPEAKER_01: And then the video would come out and prove that's absolutely false.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: So judges found the government not credible.
32:45
SPEAKER_01: Juries found the government not credible.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: And the public has found the government not credible.
32:50
SPEAKER_01: The problem is they're still the ones with the gun.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: They're still the ones in charge here.
32:53
SPEAKER_01: And there is no accountability for their lying and their deceit.
32:57
SPEAKER_01: Frankly,
32:57
SPEAKER_01: lawyers who are advancing these cases should face discipline and sanctions,
33:01
SPEAKER_01: whether it's from the courts or from their bars.
33:03
SPEAKER_01: It is staggering to me that there is no discipline for these agents and,
33:06
SPEAKER_01: frankly,
33:07
SPEAKER_01: for the leadership,
33:08
SPEAKER_01: whether that's At ICE or Border Patrol or DHS, people need to be held accountable.
33:14
SPEAKER_01: But that's not what you asked about.
33:15
SPEAKER_01: What you asked about was sort of the recurrence of all of these things.
33:19
SPEAKER_01: I don't wish this on anyone,
33:20
SPEAKER_01: but if it's going to happen to someone,
33:21
SPEAKER_01: while my job is to fight that it's not happening to journalists,
33:25
SPEAKER_01: Almost better in a way that it is because they have the instincts to document
33:28
SPEAKER_01: and record.
33:28
SPEAKER_01: They have the instincts to spread their story and to tell it well.
33:32
SPEAKER_01: And what's wonderful about Richard as a person is that he has those abilities
33:37
SPEAKER_01: and those instincts.
33:37
SPEAKER_01: And so he has continued to document and share this, right?
33:41
SPEAKER_01: We would not have, like, I didn't take those photos of the worm.
33:44
SPEAKER_01: Those are thanks to people like Richard.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: Those are thanks to journalists like Ryan Mina at the Los Angeles Daily News.
33:49
SPEAKER_01: L.A. Taco has been covering this very well here in Los Angeles.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: And so those journalists are helping to tell that story.
33:55
SPEAKER_01: And we have seen this repeatedly,
33:57
SPEAKER_01: I think,
33:57
SPEAKER_01: where other journalists as well have been reporting from behind bars and all sorts
34:00
SPEAKER_01: of different situations throughout history.
34:02
SPEAKER_01: And that helps the public realize the extent of what people are put through.
34:07
SPEAKER_01: Again,
34:07
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to say that Richard is at all unique in terms of his treatment as
34:11
SPEAKER_01: a human being and as an immigrant,
34:13
SPEAKER_01: but I think that it is extraordinary what we have seen Richard go through in terms
34:17
SPEAKER_01: of his treatment as a journalist in particular,
34:19
SPEAKER_01: and to consider that this all started because he was filming in public.
34:23
SPEAKER_01: And that seems to be what set off the government to target him.
34:26
SPEAKER_01: Now, would they have eventually targeted him in some other action?
34:30
SPEAKER_01: I can't say.
34:30
SPEAKER_01: We could only speculate.
34:32
SPEAKER_01: But his number came up pretty quickly after he had documented what happened
34:36
SPEAKER_01: and it became a bit of a news story here in Los Angeles.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: So it certainly, from the outside, appears like it could be targeted.
34:42
SPEAKER_01: And that means that these hundreds of days he has spent behind bars leapfrogs
34:47
SPEAKER_01: the other examples in this country.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: I think the most famous example for most people is Judith Miller from the New York Times.
34:52
SPEAKER_01: She went to jail for 85 days to protect her sources.
34:55
SPEAKER_01: Other journalists have crossed the 200-day mark, getting close to around 250.
34:59
SPEAKER_01: But Richard just crossed 300 days.
35:01
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he has shattered that mark.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: I love the historical element that you just brought up
35:07
SPEAKER_00: because it parallels something that kind of occurred to me.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: Last week, I was in New Orleans.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: I went to the World War II Museum.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: I saw their very moving exhibit on Japanese internment.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: And immediately it struck me how even though those conditions
35:20
SPEAKER_00: that Japanese Americans were forced to live in were abhorrent,
35:24
SPEAKER_00: one of the worst things the U.S.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: government has ever done,
35:27
SPEAKER_00: the parallel with the conditions in ICE detention centers I hate
35:32
SPEAKER_00: to make historical comparisons because I don't know what it was like,
35:35
SPEAKER_00: and I'm sure it was horrible to live in an internment camp,
35:37
SPEAKER_00: but the conditions in ICE detention centers seem worse.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: They seem much worse.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: And I was wondering if you could help me understand not just what it means that
35:47
SPEAKER_00: a journalist has been detained for so long,
35:49
SPEAKER_00: but been detained in conditions that I can't even imagine attempting to survive in.
35:55
SPEAKER_01: Well, first, with a historical note, you know, think about Japanese internment camps.
35:59
SPEAKER_01: There were amazing photos taken of those,
36:01
SPEAKER_01: I think,
36:01
SPEAKER_01: Manzanar and Tantaran by Ansel Adams, one of the greatest photographers in history.
36:05
SPEAKER_01: But the government wouldn't let him turn his lens everywhere, right?
36:08
SPEAKER_01: It was only these very narrow windows that he could cover.
36:12
SPEAKER_01: So you'd see, you know, a building, but you wouldn't see the guard towers with the gunmen.
36:17
SPEAKER_01: You wouldn't see the barbed wire.
36:19
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that was Ansel Adams' choice.
36:21
SPEAKER_01: I think that was all he was allowed to do.
36:23
SPEAKER_01: So the control of images and narrative is very important to governments
36:26
SPEAKER_01: that are going to repress people.
36:28
SPEAKER_01: So much so, I'll go back even a step further.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
36:30
SPEAKER_01: one of the things I've done in part of my work over the years is look very closely
36:34
SPEAKER_01: into Holocaust survivor stories.
36:36
SPEAKER_01: A lot of testimonial videos that have been saved from people who survived
36:40
SPEAKER_01: and they were interviewed years later.
36:42
SPEAKER_01: And I always look for things about, well,
36:44
SPEAKER_01: what happened when the Nazis either came to power or the first thing that happened
36:47
SPEAKER_01: when they started to invade certain towns?
36:50
SPEAKER_01: All of these stories,
36:51
SPEAKER_01: universally where I have seen them talk about their personal possessions as victims,
36:56
SPEAKER_01: every single person who I've seen 100% will say,
37:00
SPEAKER_01: oh, I remember when they came and they took our radios.
37:03
SPEAKER_01: And as Jews, we were not allowed to have radios.
37:05
SPEAKER_01: We would be shot on the scene,
37:07
SPEAKER_01: on the spot, with no questions asked if we were found caught with a radio.
37:12
SPEAKER_01: Oh, and by the way,
37:12
SPEAKER_01: they took our diamonds and our furs and our finer goods and expensive things.
37:16
SPEAKER_01: But universally, it was, they took our form of communication.
37:20
SPEAKER_01: That was the first thing where they went, oh my God, this is horrible.
37:23
SPEAKER_01: Didn't even care about things that were far,
37:25
SPEAKER_01: far more expensive and valuable and things that would be family generational wealth.
37:29
SPEAKER_01: They cared about the news.
37:30
SPEAKER_01: They cared about being informed.
37:31
SPEAKER_01: So that's how important controlling a narrative can be to any sort
37:36
SPEAKER_01: of administration, no matter how bad or even good.
37:38
SPEAKER_01: I mean, narratives are important to power.
37:41
SPEAKER_01: And so when you think about how people are in this country protected,
37:45
SPEAKER_01: it's because we have that First Amendment,
37:47
SPEAKER_01: which was not intended to make the government's job easier.
37:49
SPEAKER_01: It was intended to be adversarial.
37:51
SPEAKER_01: It was intended to hold power to account.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: And that's why we call it the fourth estate.
37:55
SPEAKER_01: It is essentially a fourth branch of government in a way,
37:57
SPEAKER_01: but completely independent with no barrier to entry,
38:00
SPEAKER_01: no licensing requirement, right?
38:01
SPEAKER_01: It's one of two professions that you don't need a license and by constitutional law,
38:04
SPEAKER_01: you can't regulate it or give a license.
38:07
SPEAKER_01: That and the clergy or any kind of religion practitioner, right?
38:11
SPEAKER_01: Those are the two that we protect in this country.
38:13
SPEAKER_01: So when you take someone like Richard or Stephanie Rodriguez or Mario Guevara
38:18
SPEAKER_01: and you stick them behind bars, it scares them, right?
38:21
SPEAKER_01: It is directly not only preventing their reporting and work in the moment,
38:24
SPEAKER_01: but it tells them, hey,
38:26
SPEAKER_01: if you don't behave how we want you to behave,
38:28
SPEAKER_01: if you don't either support our narrative or make sure you don't put out
38:32
SPEAKER_01: a conflicting narrative, we are going to punish you.
38:36
SPEAKER_01: Not only that, the extent of the medical neglect in Richard's case is all the more horrifying.
38:41
SPEAKER_01: A congresswoman visited him and commented that his arm's turning purple
38:45
SPEAKER_01: and looks like it needs amputation.
38:47
SPEAKER_01: The reports coming out are that this gunshot wound in
38:49
SPEAKER_01: the last several months has been treated with nothing but Bengay and vitamin D.
38:53
SPEAKER_01: I can't personally verify that, but those are very serious allegations.
38:58
SPEAKER_01: And they're exactly the sort of thing that you might want to do if you were
39:01
SPEAKER_01: a totalitarian regime,
39:02
SPEAKER_01: you know,
39:03
SPEAKER_01: whether it's the old Soviet regime, whether it's anywhere that runs gulags.
39:07
SPEAKER_01: That's exactly what you would do to not just stop one journalist, but to send a message to all.
39:12
SPEAKER_01: All journalists.
39:13
SPEAKER_01: And we call that chilling constitutional rights.
39:16
SPEAKER_01: It's not just that it stops someone in the moment.
39:18
SPEAKER_01: It's that it chills their desire to exercise their rights in the future and prevents
39:23
SPEAKER_01: the ability of the public ultimately to be informed of matters
39:26
SPEAKER_01: of enormous public importance.
39:28
SPEAKER_01: So this is...
39:30
SPEAKER_01: Scary on a lot of levels.
39:31
SPEAKER_01: It is un-American, fundamentally.
39:33
SPEAKER_01: Like, why does America exist?
39:35
SPEAKER_01: What are we fighting for in all of this as a democracy?
39:38
SPEAKER_01: It's this.
39:39
SPEAKER_01: And if someone opposes,
39:40
SPEAKER_01: you know,
39:41
SPEAKER_01: journalistic freedom,
39:42
SPEAKER_01: I would like to say, look,
39:43
SPEAKER_01: it's unpatriotic,
39:44
SPEAKER_01: it's un-American, and if you don't like it, maybe you're the one who should leave.
39:47
SPEAKER_00: Just to add to your anecdotal collection, my grandfather's a Holocaust survivor.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: He was eight years old during Anschluss when Anschluss happened in Austria.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: And what he remembers coming home from school
39:58
SPEAKER_00: that day is their house was all smashed up, their radio was gone.
40:02
SPEAKER_00: And what he missed most was his piggy bank that he had collected a couple of marks in.
40:06
SPEAKER_00: Just as soon as you brought up the radios,
40:08
SPEAKER_00: I was like, yeah, it seems like every single survivor story has that element in it.
40:12
SPEAKER_01: It resonates with so many of us who've had family who've gone through these sorts
40:15
SPEAKER_01: of horrible conditions and experiences.
40:18
SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
40:18
SPEAKER_01: in a lot of ways,
40:19
SPEAKER_01: you know,
40:20
SPEAKER_01: we've said in this country,
40:21
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's even a book called It Can't Happen Here, right?
40:23
SPEAKER_01: And it was sort of to mock the idea that it can't happen here.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm not saying that this is,
40:27
SPEAKER_01: you know,
40:27
SPEAKER_01: we're at a Holocaust right now, but we've got some very clear elements, right?
40:31
SPEAKER_01: History may not repeat, but it certainly rhymes.
40:34
SPEAKER_01: And it's rhyming when you go after journalists.
40:37
SPEAKER_01: One of the most famous poems that came out of the Holocaust was First They Came,
40:41
SPEAKER_01: And I often use a slightly paraphrased version of two lines from that poem.
40:47
SPEAKER_01: And I say, first they came for the journalists.
40:50
SPEAKER_01: We don't know what happened after that.
40:52
SPEAKER_01: That's the reality, right?
40:54
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not the one who came up with either the poem or that twist on the poem, right?
41:00
SPEAKER_01: But it's poignant.
41:03
SPEAKER_01: It speaks to what matters in any functioning society.
41:07
SPEAKER_01: The point of a free press is an informed public.
41:11
SPEAKER_01: The point of an informed public is a functioning democracy.
41:14
SPEAKER_01: You just don't have a functioning democracy
41:16
SPEAKER_01: without people understanding what's happening, what they should vote on.
41:19
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: Adam Rose, thank you so much for joining us.
41:21
SPEAKER_00: Really appreciate it.
41:23
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me on and talking about this.
41:25
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
41:25
SPEAKER_00: Where should folks go to try and find more of your work?
41:28
SPEAKER_01: Definitely check out freedom.press.
41:30
SPEAKER_01: Our website has a lot of information.
41:32
SPEAKER_01: We have action centers where people can get involved,
41:33
SPEAKER_01: send letters to their members of Congress or things like that.
41:36
SPEAKER_01: Certainly follow us on social media.
41:38
SPEAKER_01: Freedom of the Press Foundation is on pretty much every platform you can imagine.
41:41
SPEAKER_01: We're always putting out really informative information.
41:48
SPEAKER_01: We've also filed a number of lawsuits to try and protect your rights.
41:50
SPEAKER_01: And when I say you, I mean everyone out there.
41:53
SPEAKER_01: So you can learn more about those on our sites as well as socials.
41:56
SPEAKER_01: And then personally,
41:56
SPEAKER_01: my handle is ADJORO on pretty much all sites,
42:01
SPEAKER_01: except for Blue Sky, where I was somehow able to snag Adam Rose.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of Adam Roses out there.
42:06
SPEAKER_01: So I'm not the WWE wrestler or the comedian in a cardigan.
42:10
SPEAKER_00: Hey, as someone with a common name, I feel you there, man.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I'm the golf executive and sometimes I'm the English literature professor.
42:18
SPEAKER_01: We've got a lot of doppel neighbors.
42:20
SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly.
42:21
SPEAKER_00: Adam Rose, thank you so much.
42:23
SPEAKER_00: That's it for us this week.
42:24
SPEAKER_00: Thank you all for listening.
42:25
SPEAKER_00: And as always, be safe, look out for your neighbors, and we'll see you next time.