Who Are These Federal Agents?

The Washington Roundtable is joined by the journalist and historian Garrett Graff to trace how post-9/11 immigration policy, which led to a surge in Border Patrol hiring, set the stage for today’s crisis in Minneapolis. The panel examines how ICE and C.B.P., created to protect Americans from outside threats, have been unleashed in America’s cities as what Graff calls "a fascist secret police." “The Border Patrol has never been intended to be a force that is routinely interacting with American citizens,” Graff says. “Full stop, period, let alone routinely patrolling American cities.”

This week’s reading:

• “Operation Trump Rehab,” by Susan B. Glasser
• “The Green Monster,” by Garrett Graff for Politico, 2014
• “Why Minnesota Can’t Do More to Stop ICE,” by Garrett Graff for Wired 
• “The Schoolchildren of Minneapolis,” by Emily Witt
• “What ICE Should Have Learned from the Fugitive Slave Act,” by Jelani Cobb
• “Do Federal Officials Really Have ‘Absolute Immunity’?,” by Isaac Chotiner
• “Witnessing Another Public Killing in Minneapolis,” by Vinson Cunningham
• “The Cruel Conditions of ICE’s Mojave Desert Detention Center,” by Oren Peleg
• “Maybe the United States Can Be One of Mark Carney’s ‘Middle Powers,’ ” by Bill McKibben
• “Trump’s Greenland Fiasco,” by Joshua Yaffa
• “What MAGA Can Teach Democrats About Organizing—and Infighting,” by Charles Duhigg

The Political Scene draws on the reporting and analysis found in The New Yorker for lively conversations about the big questions in American politics. Join the magazine’s writers and editors as they put into context the latest news—about elections, the economy, the White House, the Supreme Court, and much more. New episodes are available three times a week. 

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