The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart The ICE Age of Surveillance and Enforcement
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Jan 28, 2026 
Radley Balko, investigative journalist focused on policing and civil liberties, and Joseph Cox, tech reporter tracking government-surveillance ties, unpack how immigration enforcement is using surveillance tech. They discuss militarized federal forces, ICE’s use of tracking and facial recognition, corporate-state partnerships like Palantir, and how communities push back against opaque, powerful tools.
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Technology Weaponizes State Power
- Jon Stewart frames the episode around how technology is being weaponized to amplify state power against protesters and immigrants.
- He calls it a nexus of technological advances feeding into enforcement and surveillance.
ICE's Surveillance Shopping Spree
- Joseph Cox reports DHS and ICE are buying broad surveillance tech, from phone location data to phone-hacking tools.
- He warns if you can imagine a tool, ICE likely bought it already.
Targets Not People
- ICE staff describe neighborhoods as "target rich," treating people as data points not humans.
- Joseph Cox says their language reveals a dehumanizing targeting mindset.
