882: Give a Little Whistle
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Immigration officials have been doing a lot of things lately that seem very hard to explain, ignoring court orders, shooting civilians, and want to ask why these things are happening. As we've all seen, we don't exactly get a frank and honest account from officials, but we get our talking points, many of which don't turn out to be true. But recently, refreshingly, two different lawyers who worked for ICE stepped forward separately and lifted the curtain to reveal all kinds of details about what is really happening right now inside our immigration system. And I know there have been a couple of quotes from each of these people in the news, but I have to say, when you dive into the details of everything that they witnessed, it's satisfying in this way that I really didn't even know I craved because they're not talking about like this or that specific incident, but about the entire system being broken and they lay it out. Today, on our show, what we're going to do is we're going to bring you their stories and I think you'll see what I mean. From WBZ Chicago, it's American life, I'm out of class, and we're just going to jump right in right now with act one, act one, I got the memo. Okay, so this thing just happened two weeks ago that this lawyer from ICE walked into a room full of Congress people and gave testimony that basically just blew up his entire life, like everything he'd worked towards for years. What was so extreme? They decided to stop training ICE agents and stop wiring for ICE agents and instead became a whistleblower, our producer, Nadi Raymond, talked to him. This whistleblower, Ryan Schwank, will tell you proudly that he's a public servant, doesn't make policy and doesn't want to, thanks very much. Not that he always agrees, but he's fine executing whatever the people in charge want to do, as long as it's legal. He started working for the government under President Biden. He'd been representing immigrants, but now he was representing ICE in the Department of Homeland Security, prosecuting immigration cases. The way he saw it, he was fulfilling the same purpose in both roles, ensuring procedural fairness, due process, making sure the system worked the same for everyone and worked smoothly. It bugged him if things got mucky or slow, like when the Biden administration was dragging its feet on immigration cases. But then, last May, under the Trump administration, all ICE lawyers got instructions that Ryan found alarming. They were told to ask for their cases to be dismissed when they went to court, which allowed ICE agents to arrest immigrants right there and then, often as soon as they walked out the door. Ryan was like, "How could people have due process if there's no time to make their case, and then they're getting immediately arrested?" He wasn't sure what to do, but he's such a rule follower that he didn't tell anyone about these new instructions. Not even his wife. That's kind of the problem of being a lawyer, right? I can talk to her about generalities, I can't talk to her about specific policies. Oh, so you were just like, "I'm generally feeling this?" Kind of, yeah, I try to be very careful with what I would say to knock away agency practices, but I kind of explained to her, "This is the kind of thing happening." Then, of course, it was out in the news two days later. What did she advise you to do something where she like hears what I think we should?
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