ICE Is Only Getting Started, the Worst Is Yet to Come: A Conversation with David J. Bier

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Jan 9, 2026

David J. Bier, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, sheds light on the alarming trends in U.S. immigration enforcement under Trump's second term. The conversation reveals how indiscriminate raids are now the norm, affecting both documented and undocumented individuals. Bier discusses the massive funding increases allowing for these actions and the cruel strategies used as messaging. He highlights the dangers of mass arrests without due process and calls attention to the tragic consequences, emphasizing that the worst is yet to come as policies become increasingly severe.

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ANECDOTE

American Citizen Killed During ICE Raid

The episode notes Renee Good, a U.S. citizen, was killed by an ICE agent during a raid after dropping off her toddler.
The hosts argue her death exemplifies foreseeable collateral damage from mass deportation tactics.

INSIGHT

Huge Funding Means Enforcement Will Grow

The Trump 2.0 enforcement surge is poised to escalate because Congress funded $170 billion for immigration enforcement.
David Bier warns that most of that money is unspent and will multiply arrests and deportations when deployed.

INSIGHT

Policy Shift From Targeting To Mass Arrests

Stephen Miller pushed ICE to conduct broad interior arrests and street profiling focused on arrest totals over priority targeting.
David Bier explains this shift turned enforcement into indiscriminate roundups rather than targeted operations.

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Immigration enforcement is the dominant focus of Donald Trump’s second term. He promised to get tough, and he has. Many who voted for him because this issue was important to them believed he would mainly crack down on criminal aliens.

On today’s episode, host Shikha Dalmia and guest David Bier of the Cato Institute dismantle that illusion. They discuss how in his second term, Trump has launched an all-out assault on all immigrants: Illegal and legal. Undocumented and documented. Criminals and law-abiding ones.

Moreover, Trump is going about immigration enforcement in an unimaginably cruel and indiscriminate way. He is engaging in mass arrests without due process, sweeping in citizens as well as immigrants.

They point out how things are only going to get worse going forward as an agency that has no respect for life and a vast contempt for the rule law has been granted expanded funding by Congress.

This episode was recorded just before Christmas. As if to prove their point, this week an ICE agent killed Renee Good, a peaceful, natural born American citizen, in Minneapolis. Good was a 37-year-old mother of three and, according to her family, a devout Christian with not an unkind bone in her body. She was driving home after dropping her toddle, when she encountered an ICE raid in progress. She was shot at point blank range as she tried to get away.

Mass deportation cannot happen without mass collateral damage. Good’s death was not a freak accident. It was the foreseeable outcome of a system that treats visibility as provocation and accountability as an obstacle.

This episode of Zooming In is about immigration policy, yes. But it’s also about the deeper logic of unchecked state power. As immigrants are targeted and lose their rights, Americans will not be spared. Freedom is not divisible.

A transcript of today’s podcast appears below. It has been edited for flow and clarity.

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