NewsPolitics

The Raid

John Carlos Frey

Hosted by six-time Emmy Award winner John Carlos Frey, THE RAID PODCAST is a deep dive into the frontlines of the ICE and Border Patrol immigration raids being implemented by the Trump administration. With an expert team of journalists and community members, the ever changing landscape and stories of the “mass deportation” are documented and broadcast. Learn firsthand what the raids feel like, whether they are lawful and what is happening to the people swept up by the unprecedented and ever increasing show of force.

Play

Open in

46 episodes
a few times a week
Avg 30 min
English

Episodes 46

Newest Oldest Longest

All20 Unplayed20 In progress0 Played0

Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.

#157
Today · 22 min
A Count You Can Trust
Fear is keeping people from the polls. On this episode of The Raid, investigative journalist John Carlos Frey talks with former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa about A Count You Can Trust, a new nonpartisan coalition he co-chairs to explain how votes are counted and correct false claims with facts. Villaraigosa has been on the ballot 21 times and says he has never seen tension like this. With talk of ICE agents at voting centers, an immigration enforcement surge in Los Angeles, and claim
#155
Yesterday · 48 min
Who Holds ICE Accountable?
John Carlos Frey talks with Nick Miroff, staff writer at The Atlantic, 2026 Pulitzer Prize finalist, and George Polk Award winner, about what’s really happening inside ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. He explains why the White House keeps doubling down on mass deportation, including how a pause on ICE traffic stops was reversed within 24 hours. He also walks through his reporting showing that violent crime is falling fastest in the same sanctuary cities the administration is targeti
#154
Tuesday · 40 min
Is Mass Deportation Racially Motivated?
John Carlos Frey sits down with Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice, to talk about what mass deportation is doing to immigrant families, U.S. citizens, and the country itself. Cárdenas came to the U.S. from Bolivia at 14. Today she’s having the same conversation with her own U.S.-born kids that Latino families across the country are having: what to do if ICE pulls you over. Her cousin now carries a copy of her U.S.-citizen daughter’s passport, just in case. Relatives with le
#153
October 9 · 47 min
The Fight Against the Deportation Machine
In 2018, Jess Morales Rocketto helped put people in the streets of hundreds of cities to stop family separation. Now she says the deportation machine has gotten smarter, and that pushing back still works. John Carlos Frey sits down with the organizer behind Families Belong Together and the co-founder of Maremoto, which builds Latino power through politics, media and culture. Morales Rocketto began her career in anti-genocide activism. She explains why she believes the United States is at stage
#152
October 6 · 27 min
Locked Out of Adelanto by ICE - Congresswoman Judy Chu Goes Back
Weeks before the November 3 midterms, Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) joins John Carlos Frey to talk about ICE raids in her district, the detention center that refused to let her in, and whether immigration agents could show up at polling places. Chu represents Pasadena, Altadena, and the West San Gabriel Valley, a district hit first by the Eaton Fire and then, five months later, by immigration raids. She describes constituents who carry their passports everywhere, people arrested at the very appointments
#151
October 2 · 21 min
Did ICE Use a Car as a Weapon?
ICE agents stopped a work van outside Albany, Georgia. Three men ran. One of them, 28-year-old Edgar Cabrera-Gómez, ended up pinned beneath an ICE agent's Dodge Charger in the grass median of the Liberty Expressway. The Georgia State Patrol says the agent was driving in the median. ICE says Edgar "lost his footing and slid under" the car. His family says he was run down while running away, and that the first story they were told was that he jumped out of the van and hurt himself. John Carlos F
#150
September 29 · 42 min
Millions Are Losing Legal Status
What happens when people who have lived in the U.S. legally for decades are suddenly made undocumented? Host John Carlos Frey sits down with Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, the policy organization working on immigration and criminal justice reform. Todd explains what he calls the "de-legalizing" of immigrants: the unprecedented revocation of DACA, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and other protections that could leave an estimated 3.5 million previously lawful residents without status by 202
#149
September 25 · 18 min
The 8,000 Pages ICE Won't Release
In February 2026, ICE's acting director told the U.S. Senate under oath there was "no reason" for immigration agents to be at polling places. Within months, armed agents made an arrest outside a San Antonio polling site, showed up at a voting location in Simi Valley, and confronted a poll worker in Syracuse, New York, in the middle of her shift. With a federal judge ordering documents about these incidents be released before Election Day, more than 8,000 pages are still scheduled to stay hidden
#148
September 24 · 42 min
"They're Going to Seize Ballots"
Is ICE coming to the polls? Independent investigative journalist Justin Glawe joins host John Carlos Frey to connect two stories that are rapidly converging: America's deportation machine and the organized effort to undermine the 2026 midterm elections. Glawe, whose reporting has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, Esquire and more, has tracked election deniers who hold elected and appointed positions on county election boards in key swing distri
#147
September 22 · 9 min
Denver Sues ICE
Can armed agents be at your polling place? The city of Denver just did something no city has done before: it sued the Trump administration to keep armed ICE agents away from the polls. On Thursday, September 10, 2026, the City and County of Denver, along with LULAC, Common Cause, and Unidos US, filed suit in federal court in Washington, D.C. against the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and their leadership. The plaintiffs allege an unwritten "polling place policy" that could put armed agen
#146
September 18 · 12 min
ICE at the Polls?
Election Day is weeks away, and the officials who control armed federal law enforcement still won't say a simple word: no. Host John Carlos Frey breaks down the pattern building since February 2026 — FBI Director Kash Patel's refusal, under direct questioning from the Senate Judiciary Committee, to commit that FBI agents will stay away from polling places; DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin's “specific threat” exception for ICE deployment at voting sites; a bipartisan warning letter from a dozen sen
#145
September 17 · 47 min
Fixing America's Broken Immigration System
Host John Carlos Frey sits down with immigration attorney and author Robert Coughlon Jr. to discuss his new book, Fixing Immigration in America: A Commonsense Plan for Immigration Reform. Drawing on more than 30 years of experience in family-based immigration and deportation defense — and a personal history that includes his father's career as a Border Patrol agent, INS adjudicator, immigration attorney, and eventually immigration judge — Coughlon lays out a middle ground approach to one of the
#144
September 15 · 14 min
A 3,000-Child Detention Camp
In the summer of 2026, the Department of Health and Human Services quietly published a federal procurement notice most Americans never saw. The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is asking contractors to design, build, and run an "emergency intake facility" — a campus capable of holding up to 3,000 unaccompanied migrant children at a single site. In this episode of The Raid, host John Carlos Frey investigates the government's case for a mega-facility — surge capacity, efficiency, and faster c
#143
September 11 · 8 min
All Immigration Judges Should Quit
George Pappas spent twenty years as an immigration attorney before becoming an immigration judge in 2023. Two years later, he was fired by email — three sentences, no explanation, the same day as a dozen colleagues around the country. Pappas has advocated for all immigration judges to quit since they are working within a corrupt and broken system. In this episode, we break down Pappas's account, the data behind the wave of judicial firings and resignations, why immigration courts sit inside the
#142
September 10 · 51 min
Memo Torres Won't Give Up
They want you exhausted. That's the strategy. Journalist Memo Torres returns to The Raid to talk about ICE burnout — and why staying engaged might be the most radical thing you can do right now. After more than a year of escalating ICE raids, record detentions, and rising deaths in custody, host John Carlos Frey asks the hard question — how do we stay engaged when the trauma never stops? Torres opens up about the toll of covering immigration enforcement every day, the friends and rapid-response
#141
September 8 · 32 min
Countdown to November — A Warning
Before you press play, host John Carlos Frey wants you to know what this episode is. More than a year ago, a source he's worked with for close to 15 years — someone who has never once given him bad information — told him a specific set of things was coming. All five have now happened. But there's a sixth thing the source described — a plan to engineer chaos or violence at the polls this November and pin it on the political left, potentially opening the door to the Insurrection Act, ICE deployme
#140
September 4 · 40 min
She Fled Guatemala to Save Her Children
Veteran journalist Charles Fleming returns to The Raid to tell the story of Maritza, an asylum seeker from Guatemala who survived decades of abuse before finding refuge in the United States. Host John Carlos Frey and Fleming trace Maritza's six-year journey through the U.S. asylum system: her legal border crossing to request protection, the landmark policy that first recognized domestic-violence survivors from Central America as a protected class, and the grueling process of proving her trauma
#139
September 3 · 46 min
Married to a U.S. Citizen - Detained by ICE Anyway
Tatiana came to the United States from Russia on a legal visa and is married to a U.S. citizen. Five and a half months ago, she was arrested by ICE outside the Santa Monica studio where she worked as a tattoo artist — no warrant, no charges, no explanation. Her husband, Amir Modaraei, joins The Raid to tell the full story: how a 911 call during a rough patch in their relationship put Tatiana on ICE's radar, how an agent allegedly surveilled and harassed the couple for nine months before her arre
#138
September 1 · 11 min
Six Months Later: Facts Behind Renee Goode's Death
On January 7th, a 37-year-old mother of three named Renee Goode was shot and killed by an ICE agent on a residential street in south Minneapolis — two blocks from an elementary school. The federal government says she tried to run the agent over with her car and called it an act of domestic terrorism. Her family, eyewitnesses, and an independent autopsy tell a very different story. Six to seven months later, the state of Minnesota still hasn't been given full access to the evidence that could se
#137
August 28 · 11 min
Sovereignty Ignored: A Federal Raid on Tribal Land
Armed CBP agents and contractors entered Tohono O'odham land before dawn, blocked tribal police from enforcing their own law, and brought in a SWAT team to protect the work. Before sunrise on August 25, roughly twenty masked, armed CBP agents crossed onto the Tohono O'odham Nation alongside border wall contractors — Tribal police were blocked from making arrests. A CBP tactical unit, a surveillance balloon, and coordination with Mexican police followed. John Carlos Frey breaks down what the T

Showing 1–20 of 46 episodes