In this episode we connect with ProPublica journalist A.C. Thompson, whose Frontline investigation Caught in the Crackdown followed federal immigration raids, and the public’s response to them, from Los Angeles to Chicago and Minneapolis. We discuss Operation Return to Sender in Kern County, where Border Patrol agents left the border to make sweeping arrests across California’s interior, and how it became a template for the year that followed. We look at how the Border Patrol, under Commander Greg Bovino, took the lead in highly performative, militarized operations that relied on racial and workplace profiling rather than targeted intelligence. We examine the contrast between professional crowd control from local and state police and the aggressive tactics of federal agents. We also look at the hundreds of questionable arrests of protesters and observers, more than a third of which had collapsed by the time the film aired. We explore the escalation in Minneapolis following the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, the power struggle inside the Department of Homeland Security, and the courts and an engaged public as a guardrail against the country sliding into authoritarianism.
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Guest
A.C. Thompson is a senior reporter with ProPublica and producer and correspondent for the PBS documentary series FRONTLINE. His work has helped lead to the exoneration of two innocent San Francisco men sentenced to life in prison, the prosecution of seven New Orleans police officers, and a Congressional investigation of the U.S. Border Patrol. His life was fictionalized on the HBO show “Treme.”
"I'm interested in hearing the stories that people are telling as they witness immigration sweeps or whatever else. But I also think that a lot of this stuff becomes decontextualized, it becomes stripped of the moments that happened before an arrest and the moments after that, a lot of misinformation and partial information gets circulated through social media."
Credits
Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on People and Communities in Motion traces why we move and what happens to the places we leave, cross, and settle. Episodes cover immigration and migration, the building and dismantling of neighborhoods, the use of public space, and the point where a shared idea becomes collective action.
In this series, we engage with activists, artists, authors, educators, and journalists to consider how people and communities respond to the cultural, environmental, political, and social forces that put them in motion, and how, through that movement, they transform the world around them.
Guest: A.C. Thompson
Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by Past Forward in partnership with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University.
Date recorded: October 22, 2026
Past Forward is providing this podcast as a public service. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Please read our Program and Product Disclaimer for more information.
Transcription
[00:00:00] A.C. Thompson: We were interested in what happened when the federal immigration agents arrested people. What happened when they arrested U.S. legal residents and citizens involved in watching their activities, protesting their activities, documenting their activities? What did the federal agents do? And what we found is they made bad arrests repeatedly, over and over and over again. And it was sort of stunning the amount of arrests that they made that did not lead to a successful criminal conviction. You know, we looked at 300 of these arrests in different jurisdictions. And at the time we went to air, you know, at least a third of those cases had collapsed. That number's now higher. That's just not the kind of thing you typically see with federal law enforcement.
[00:00:54] Host: Chapman University's Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences and Past Forward present Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on People and Communities in Motion. In this series, we explore the forces that move people and communities and how that movement reshapes the places, cultures, and institutions around them. From immigration and displacement to public spaces, community building, and collective We examine what happens when people move across borders, through cities, and towards social change. We engage with journalists, authors, artists, activists, and educators to consider how people and communities respond to the social, political, cultural, and environmental forces that put them in motion, and how, through that movement, they transform the world around them.
In this episode, we connect with journalist A.C. Thompson, whose investigation for Frontline's Caught in the Crackdown followed immigration raids and the public's response from Los Angeles to Chicago and Minneapolis.
A.C., your investigation with Caught in the Crackdown for Frontline and ProPublica, had you following the mobilization of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol agents across the country from L.A. to Chicago and Minneapolis, and documenting the public response to these agents in their communities. So let's start by looking at the beginning of these efforts in Kern County in January 2025, and tell us a little bit about Return to Sender.
[00:02:38] Thompson: Yes, Return to Sender was a border patrol operation that was launched in Kern County, the Bakersfield area, agricultural area in California, north of Los Angeles. And the idea with it was that it was sort of sending border patrol agents far from where they normally do their work along the border and out of their normal sort of operations, which are really looking for people coming back and forth across the U.S. border and stopping smuggling of various forms, but to do, effectively, ID checks in the interior of the state. And that was something that just was fairly unprecedented in modern times for the border patrol. That sort of thing is typically handled by Immigration Customs Enforcement, ICE. And so reporters like Sergio Olmos from CalMatters had seen this happening and were really interested in this phenomenon and documented it at the time.
We interviewed Sergio and looked into the reporting that he had done, and it showed that overwhelmingly, these people who were arrested in that operation were totally unknown to the border patrol. The border patrol just sort of went to different locations, looked at people they suspected to be undocumented, and then arrested them. And that was different than the public information that the border patrol was putting out, which made it sound like this was a targeted effort going after the worst of the worst and people that they knew had extensive criminal records, that kind of thing. That simply wasn't true. Return to Sender seemed to turn out to be a sort of a template for what would unfold over the next year in terms of the border patrol going to the center of the country, to the interior of the country, and doing these big sweeping operations.
"The border patrol just sort of went to different locations, looked at people they suspected to be undocumented, and then arrested them. And that was different than the public information that the border patrol was putting out, which made it sound like this was a targeted effort going after the worst of the worst and people that they knew had extensive criminal records, that kind of thing."
[00:04:38] Host: And I want to clarify, because a lot of the public, the general public, we see ICE as this agency that needs to be reined in, that it is the branch that needs pruning. But your documentary looks more at the militarization of CBP, or Customs and Border Patrol, and its role in the escalation.
[00:05:02] Thompson: Yeah, really, for us, the genesis of this reporting started going to Los Angeles in June of that year. And so it was months after Return to Sender had happened. And when we got to Los Angeles, we said, oh, this looks like a bigger version of that Return to Sender operation. And we said, oh, what's really interesting here is you have the military, you have border patrol leading the charge and taking this really central role in all of this. And then you also have federal law enforcement. So we saw that as a sort of different, unique thing that was happening. And we saw it as this multi-headed combination, law enforcement and immigration enforcement sort of operation, and that that felt novel to us.
[00:05:58] Host: Yeah, when you see these images of these federal agents, especially with that CBP, there's kind of a performative aspect to them, almost like military theater in just the way they present themselves. You've got the Kevlar vests, you're wearing helmets and masks, munitions hanging from their body. It's excessive. It feels excessive. And that excess tends to exacerbate the response from the community when they're at a Home Depot and rounding up day laborers.
[00:06:38] Thompson: Yeah, the whole thing with this series of raids led by the Border Patrol and led by then Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino, who had normally been stationed down on the southern border in the middle of the California desert, was that it was this highly orchestrated, highly performative, highly antagonizing performance. And it was different than what you would typically get over many decades from immigration enforcement agencies, where they tended to try to be stealthy. They tended to try to be low profile. They tended to try to be effective and to go off of intelligence and data. With the wave of immigration sweeps that took place across the country during 2025, it was very much, we are taking the streets. We are taking anyone we see. We are stopping anyone who appears to be non-white, who we suspect to be someone without documents. So anyone we see who's brown and is walking down the streets is a target for us. And I witnessed that over and over again. And I think to some extent, Commander Bovino wanted the negative response from the public. I think he wanted the conflict. He wanted drama by staging these sort of operations in this way.
[00:08:10] Host: Yeah, in the documentary, and I think it was from the interview with the CalMatters reporter, one of the things that Greg Bovino says is, I think, a difficult realization for a lot of Americans. In the beginning of the second term, the administration said, as you mentioned, we're going to round up the worst of the worst, the drug smugglers, the traffickers, the criminals. And as Americans, a lot of citizens were like, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, let's get rid of the bad guys and let's make our community safe. But in your documentary, we have Greg Bovino saying, if you're here illegally, you are a criminal and we will come after you. And that is the bar. It is not about the crimes that you commit, the crime of you being here is the crime. And that kind of opened the door for everything that they did, as you mentioned.
[00:09:09] Thompson: Right. Right. And, you know, I witnessed these agents at work, day after day, hour after hour in Los Angeles, in Chicago, in Minnesota. And what you really saw was a exercise in unmitigated racial profiling and workplace profiling. So what I mean by that is, you know, we would be in the suburbs of Chicago following Commander Bovino and a convoy of eight SUVs packed with elite Border Patrol agents. And they would just stop at every place they saw somebody working on a yard, at every landscaper they would stop, every construction worker, every construction site they would stop at. They would just drive their SUVs around the suburbs until they saw people that were doing jobs that they thought undocumented people did. And they would get out of those SUVs. And sometimes the people they would interrogate would have proper documentation. Sometimes they would allegedly not have proper documentation. But it was clearly an exercise in let's target people that do these jobs and let's target people who aren't white.
And in the suburbs of Chicago, a lot of the people that they were stopping were Polish immigrants. So they were white guys, but they were white guys from Europe who might have had dubious legal status, might not have. But that's one group they were looking at. And then the other group they were looking at heavily was Latinos. There was an incident in the center of Chicago as the convoy is driving along and they just see a guy with brown skin walking down the street and just at a stoplight and just jump out and go chase him and try to grab him. And he went into a Dunkin' Donuts and locked himself inside the Dunkin' Donuts and they grew frustrated and couldn't get him. But that was the kind of stuff that was happening. It was not this exercise in great, brilliant, targeted, intelligence-driven investigations. It just wasn't that at all.
[00:11:20] Host: It was phishing, basically.
[00:11:22] Thompson: Yeah. It was casting a net for people in these particular occupations and these particular ethnic and racial categories. And I think that made a lot of Americans feel very uncomfortable seeing that at work.
"On the other hand, the military that was brought in because of this alleged crisis and the federal agents, distinctly not good at crowd control. That's really not a skill set that the federal immigration agents develop, practice, and need to call upon."
[00:11:38] Host: Yeah. And it kind of changed the tone that a lot of Americans had towards immigration reform. When you were in L.A. and also in Chicago and Minneapolis, what was the response from local law enforcement? I mean, here in L.A., our LAPD is well-versed in crowd control, but what was their role in either support or defense of these citizens?
[00:12:09] Thompson: Yeah, that's a great question. It was really different everywhere you went. In Los Angeles, obviously there was a strong community response that spilled out into the streets. There were instances of violence and serious property destruction. There was a certain amount of mayhem that unfolded. And so in Los Angeles, you really had really intense, really effective crowd control from the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. I would say at times that crowd control was probably excessive. At times it was, I would say, very professional. It was always effective, though. The thing that was interesting is there was a narrative being put out by the Trump administration, which is it was Los Angeles is burning, the city's being destroyed, the local officials aren't doing anything, they're all pathetic, we're saving this place. But the truth of the matter was the Los Angeles police and Los Angeles sheriffs can do crowd control all day, every day. That is what they do. They're very good at it. Like I said, sometimes they're a little too tough. Sometimes they're very professional, it varies. But no one's going to argue that they can't do crowd control. That's what they do.
On the other hand, the military that was brought in because of this alleged crisis and the federal agents, distinctly not good at crowd control. That's really not a skill set that the federal immigration agents develop, practice, and need to call upon. And with the military, they really largely confined their work to defending federal buildings and sort of forming a phalanx around those buildings, often with live weapons and a paucity of less lethal crowd control weapons. So you didn't get the sense that either the military or the federal immigration agents were really the right actors for Los Angeles for what was happening there in terms of keeping order.
When you got over to Chicago, it was different. We just never saw the Chicago Police Department there. What we eventually saw was in the suburb of Broadview, where there was an immigration detention center or immigration processing center, more correctly, where there were a lot of protests happening and where people were being brought day after day after day. They were being arrested by the Border Patrol and ICE. There were a lot of protests happening at that facility in a little town called Broadview. And at first, there was not a lot of local law enforcement presence. But over time, the local sheriffs, deputies, and the state police set up crowd control lines there, and they did what they do. This is something that they can do day after day, week after week, and they're fairly skilled at it. I remember seeing those local and state police clearing out a crowd in front of the building one night. It wasn't totally pleasant, but nobody really seemed to get hurt. It happened pretty quickly, and it was done. I would say with a high level of professionalism, and it was in distinct contrast to what I saw over and over again from the federal agents, who just, like I said, that's not their skillset. That's not what they are trained to do day after day. And they often seem to be eager for a fight, eager for conflict, eager for bloodshed.
"But here you had this sort of small army of immigration agents who were effectively trying to do crowd control and policing. And as they were making arrests, a lot of times they were stretching the facts of the incidents. They were saying things in court documents and reports that were not matched by the evidence available. They were making claims that were not supported by the video evidence. At times they seemed to not be interested in bringing their body-warm cameras into court and showing what was on them."
[00:15:58] Host: And that's the majority of the footage that you captured and you and your team captured of the arrests from those protests came from those federal agents, not the local and state police.
[00:16:13] Thompson: Right. We were interested in what happened when the federal immigration agents arrested people. What happened when they arrested U.S. legal residents and citizens involved in watching their activities, protesting their activities, documenting their activities? What did the federal agents do? And what we found is they made bad arrests repeatedly, over and over and over again. And it was sort of stunning the amount of arrests that they made that did not lead to a successful criminal conviction. We looked at 300 of these arrests in different jurisdictions, and at the time we went to air, at least a third of those cases had collapsed. That number is now higher. That's just not the kind of thing you typically see with federal law enforcement. Federal law enforcement is generally very good at making cases that can be successfully prosecuted in court. But here you had this sort of small army of immigration agents who were effectively trying to do crowd control and policing. And as they were making arrests, a lot of times they were stretching the facts of the incidents. They were saying things in court documents and reports that were not matched by the evidence available. They were making claims that were not supported by the video evidence. At times they seemed to not be interested in bringing their body-warm cameras into court and showing what was on them. And so it really looked like a wave of really questionable, bad policing, dubious policing that would not pass muster in a big city. You know, a big city like Los Angeles or Chicago, if cops did the things that these federal immigration agents were doing, they would lose their jobs. That's what would happen.
"The fact that I got hit a bunch of different times and I'm wearing a press credential, it's obvious I'm with the media, was telling us that the agents who had been admonished in California courts and they had been admonished in Illinois courts not to target the press was still targeting the press, and that they were using these weapons in dangerous and indiscriminate ways."
[00:18:16] Host: I mean, and everything escalates to January of this year in Minneapolis with the killing of Rene Good and Alex Pretti, and you were there in the days following. And that is when you and your team are sprayed with mace, hit with pepper balls, surrounded by tear gas. With everything that you witnessed, was any of this a warranted response to the protesters shouting insults and blowing whistles?
[00:18:52] Thompson: When our team got targeted by federal agents on January 12, 2025, we had been watching these conflicts unfold for a long time. We'd seen a lot of this. One of our videographers had been shot repeatedly with pepper balls at various locations by federal agents while doing his job. So we weren't surprised when we all ended up getting hit with pepper spray, pepper balls, and the rest. That wasn't surprising to us. What we did think is this does not comport with federal guidelines for how you do this. The fact that I got hit a bunch of different times and I'm wearing a press credential, it's obvious I'm with the media, was telling us that the agents who had been admonished in California courts and they had been admonished in Illinois courts not to target the press was still targeting the press, and that they were using these weapons in dangerous and indiscriminate ways. But I think really the thing that was most with that incident concerning to us is one of our videographers is just filming the scene, and as the Border Patrol agents roll out, they just indiscriminately spray down everyone who's standing there, including our videographer who's filming, with pepper spray. And this is just the kind of stuff that it's not, again, it's stuff that would not be acceptable in a big city police department. It's not acceptable according to the rules for use of force and customs and border protection, but yet it was happening.
"They were being greeted with a lot of hostility that they were not used to. Border patrol agents don't receive that kind of treatment when they are working on the border. It's a totally different job when you're on the southern or northern border. It's totally different."
[00:20:48] Host: Was there, I mean, from the protestors, were there, I mean, things were escalated. It was heated. There were a lot of emotions at that time. You know, you showed snowballs being thrown. I mean, in your experience and what you witnessed, was there anything that would lead to that kind of a response?
[00:21:13] Thompson: I mean, to a certain extent, the agents in these cities were scared. They were angry. They had been getting verbal abuse hurled at them for months at that point. And I think they always felt uncomfortable and felt like they were a small occupying force in hostile territory, wherever they went. I think that's how they felt. So I think they were always on edge. They were being greeted with a lot of hostility that they were not used to. Border patrol agents don't receive that kind of treatment when they are working on the border. It's a totally different job when you're on the southern or northern border. It's totally different. All of that said, there were just much better ways to deal with almost any of these circumstances.
You know, the incident that we filmed heavily on January 12th in Minneapolis occurred because border patrol agents drove their vehicle into the rear end of a guy who was driving down the road that they suspected to be an undocumented immigrant. They basically destroyed his car, pulled him out of the vehicle, and found out he was a U.S. citizen. Then they were shocked that people came out of their homes and told them to leave the neighborhood and quit running your cars and your SUVs into other people's cars, quit racially profiling people, and by the way, quit killing people. That had happened shortly after Renee Good had been shot to death in the same basic area. And there was a lot of concern and a lot of anger. You know, more professional law enforcement might say, oh, you know, like maybe we don't catalyze this whole incident by trying to drive this guy off the road. That's not something that's going to be well-received by a community that's on edge and mourning the death of one of their friends and neighbors.
[00:23:22] Host: There's definitely an element of intimidation and making their presence known. And you know, and this comes from the top down. You mentioned hundreds of protesters were arrested throughout all of these mobilizations and a good number of them had their charges dropped and that number will keep increasing. But this intimidation or this, kind of like that military theater that we had mentioned, it reminds me of how Operation Return to Sender was a test run for immigration enforcement. These responses to protesters kind of feels like a test run for how the government will respond to protests moving forward.
[00:24:11] Thompson: I think that's a thing to be concerned about and be thoughtful about and be alert on. One thing that's interesting, though, is that the response to all this was really negative from the public. And by the time Alex Pretti was killed, there was a lot of dissatisfaction with how this was going. And what you saw at the Department of Homeland Security, which is the broader department that oversees all of these immigration agencies, is they said, oh, we need to start doing things differently. And there had been a sort of power struggle going on at the department between Commander Greg Bovino, who was then commander with the Border Patrol, and then Secretary Kristi Noem, who was then running DHS. And on the other side, the so-called borders are Tom Homan and Rodney Scott, who is actually the lead person at Customs and Border Protection, the parent agency for the Border Patrol. And these kind of two factions had different ideas about how to do this immigration policing, this immigration enforcement. And I would say the Bovino-Noem faction was pushed out after Alex Pretti was killed, and there was widespread unhappiness and outrage about that. And what you've seen since then is the Homan/Rodney Scott approach to it, which is much more quiet, much less aggressive. People are still occasionally being shot and occasionally being killed by federal immigration agents. But it's meant to be done in a way that is more palatable to the public and less likely to spur massive protests.
"We saw all of this happen when President Trump was in office the first time in the wake of the racial justice protests in 2020, that a lot of different federal agencies and military were mobilized then. So we should absolutely be alert for infringements on civil liberties and for moves to consolidate power through force."
[00:26:04] Host: But we are seeing an uptick, especially in the last two months or so. And, you know, speculation is that it's as we move towards the midterm elections in a couple of weeks, again, this intimidation factor. I mean, there are a lot of community advocates who are concerned what presence, what federal agency presence is going to be there on election day. I mean, we're seeing it a lot here in California specifically.
[00:26:42] Thompson: I'm not saying that, there's definitely immigration arrests are way up. You know, I'm just saying they're being carried out in a slightly different manner. I think being concerned about this government's use of force towards the population, whether it's to suppress protests, whether it's in the process of making immigration arrests, whether it's in the process of trying to impact elections, people should be absolutely concerned and alert about all of those things. And we should be thinking this is a government that tends towards authoritarianism, that likes the use of force, that likes the use of weaponry on the streets. We saw all of this happen when President Trump was in office the first time in the wake of the racial justice protests in 2020, that a lot of different federal agencies and military were mobilized then. So we should absolutely be alert for infringements on civil liberties and for moves to consolidate power through force.
[00:27:57] Host: It seems like one of the only, or two of the only weapons in defense against this force is the numbers of just people being present, and the courts. As you mentioned, there are constantly pushbacks against this force from the courts. But that people presence, that community response is one of the keys for the courts to listen.
[00:28:31] Thompson: I've been somewhat shocked at how aggressive and I would say intense and potent the courts have been. The courts have said over and over again, you know, things that this current administration are doing are illegal and that they should not be done in these ways and that they have to stop. And it has a big guardrail against a further sort of march towards authoritarianism. Really, the courts have been a bulwark against becoming a more authoritarian society because that has been the thing that this administration has tried to do over and over again. If judges were not willing to make these rulings, if litigators were not willing to bring these cases into court, we would be in a very different place right now, I think. Absolutely. And as well, the public being willing to speak out about what they see as being wrong has helped give those courts some cover and some sense that their rulings would be supported by at least a portion of the populace.
[00:29:55] Host: How vital, I mean, this is a kind of a no-brainer question, but how vital is that citizen reporter, that cell phone, camera, video footage?
[00:30:07] Thompson: You know, I actually have like a complicated feeling about that.
[00:30:19] Host: Okay. I'd love to hear it.
[00:30:27] Thompson: Yeah, I actually have like, my thoughts on it are somewhat complex. I think it goes like this. I am very interested in looking at all the video that people are posting online. I'm interested in following all these incidents that people are documenting with their phones. I'm interested in hearing the stories that people are telling as they witness immigration sweeps or whatever else. But I also think that a lot of this stuff becomes decontextualized, it becomes stripped of the moments that happened before an arrest and the moments after that, a lot of misinformation and partial information gets circulated through social media. And so, you know, I remember at one time I had an editor say like, hey, you guys are making this film, but all the stuff you're filming is kind of out there on social media. You know, what's the purpose of making this film? And I said, well, the purpose is we're going to be there before something jumps off. We're going to be there after. We're going to talk to everyone involved. We're going to go pull the court records when someone gets arrested and charged. We're going to find their family members and talk to them. We're not just going to give you an incendiary piece of video that's 10 seconds long. We're going to try to build in all the pieces that help you really understand what's unfolding in America at this moment. And I think that sort of additional material that wraps around any particular incident where the state with a capital “S” is interacting with the populace is what's missing from social media.
[00:32:00] Host: I kind of want to just end with that. I think that's a great, great answer. But I'm going to leave this with you and see what you come up with. And this is a broad question. But what was the biggest takeaway from your time spent following the CBP and the response from the community?
[00:32:16] Thompson: That's a great question. Let me think about that for a second. Yeah, I think the biggest takeaway was that we saw how quickly a country could descend into authoritarianism if not careful. And that was pushed back to some extent by the public, by the courts, by people out there with their smartphones documenting, by public officials. But this country could absolutely devolve into being an authoritarian regime with very few civil liberties very quickly if we're not careful.
[00:33:00] Host: We’d like to thank AC Thompson, Frontline and ProPublica. If you'd like to continue the conversation, visit chapman.edu/Wilkinson to learn more. To access recommended books from our guests for further learning and for more socially conscious content, visit us at PastForward.org or follow us at Apple, Spotify or wherever you podcast.
