On “Trumpland with Alex Wagner,” MSNBC’s Alex Wagner travels the country talking with the people on the frontlines of Trump’s policies and promises.
It’s been one week since Trump was sworn into office, and he is already making good on his campaign promise to crack down on immigration, whatever the cost. On this episode, Alex heads to New Jersey’s largest city, Newark, where one of the most public and controversial ICE raids has just occurred. The raid is raising questions that no American can—or should—ignore. Listen along as Alex speaks to Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, community organizers arming immigrants with strategies to avoid deportation and those on the front lines whose lives have been turned upside down.
Catch new episodes of Trumpland with Alex Wagner every Thursday evening during the first 100 days of the second Trump administration. You can find the show in the Alex Wagner Tonight feed. Remember to follow the show so you don’t miss a single episode. And sign up for MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts to listen without ads.
Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Alex Wagner (Host, Trumpland with Alex Wagner): What was it like here on the weekend?
Rafael Chavez (Organizer for New Labor): It was empty.
Alex Wagner: Empty?
Rafael Chavez: Empty, it’s not like regular Saturday or Sunday in (inaudible) people in the restaurant, people in the stores, family’s always around here, but as you see right now, it’s —
Alex Wagner: Yeah, there’s no one around.
Rafael Chavez: There’s no one around.
Alex Wagner: It’s a Monday afternoon in Newark, New Jersey’s most populous city and home to just over 300,000 people. I’m driving around with Rafael Chavez, an organizer for New Labor, a group fighting for immigrant rights and worker protections. The reason this usually bustling street is so empty during the Monday lunch hour, according to Chavez, is because last Thursday, just a few blocks away, there was a raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, better known as ICE.
Unidentified Female: It was really just a matter of where and when immigration and customs enforcement would strike. And that raid at a seafood distribution company in Newark’s Ironbound section yesterday around noon was nonetheless a shock and stunning for the owner, the people who work there.
Alex Wagner: The raid happened at a local fish market. ICE officers entered the back of the Ocean Seafood Depot and detained several workers, including a United States citizen, who also happened to be a military veteran. He was detained despite showing ICE officers his military ID.
Rafael Chavez: The organization would try to get there as fast as we can.
Alex Wagner: A witness at the scene called Chavez’s organization right away, and he rushed over.
Rafael Chavez: We were trying to look around the business, where is the ICE car, you know, with the signals.
Alex Wagner: Right.
Rafael Chavez: We’re looking for something, like, immigration is there, but we don’t see nothing suspicious.
Alex Wagner: The raid, says Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, was done without a single warrant. In other words, without justification.
Ras Baraka (Mayor of Newark): They violated people’s Fourth Amendment rights. They violated due process. They violated a lot of the things that we stand on on this country, why people came here in the first place.
Alex Wagner: It’s not yet clear what exactly the Newark raid on Thursday represents. After all, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.
Last month, while President Biden was still in office, ICE officers made 33 arrests in the city. And last year, in New Jersey, ICE officers took some 1,300 undocumented immigrants into custody. But it seems evident that something, something very significant, has changed since Donald Trump became president. In the last week, NBC News reports that the average daily number of ICE arrests, nationally, was 753. In September of last year, under President Biden, that number was 282. During that same week, ICE agents made 1,179 arrests in a single day. A post on ICE’s website calls these arrests enhanced targeted operations that are taking place in cities across the country, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Atlanta. According to the Washington Post, Trump has been disappointed with the scale of his mass deportation campaign thus far. As a result, senior administration officials have directed ICE officers to aggressively ramp up arrests from a few hundred to up to 1,500 arrests per day.
And later on in the week, President Trump announced he would sign an executive order instructing Homeland Security and the Department of Defense to prepare a 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay.
Donald Trump, President of the United States of America: Most people don’t even know about it. We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust their countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back, so we’re going to send them out to Guantanamo.
Alex Wagner: When he was running for president, Trump was clear that his immigration crackdown would include sanctuary cities. That would be a municipality that limits or denies cooperation with the government in enforcing immigration law so that the municipality can protect its citizens. Newark is one of those cities, and this neighborhood specifically has been a home for immigrants for centuries.
Migrants from Ireland and Germany flocked to this part of Newark in the mid-1800s. Then came the Italians, followed by the Portuguese, and the Spanish.
So, this neighborhood is called —
Rafeal Chavez: Ironbound.
Alex Wagner: Ironbound. And it’s like, would you say it’s majority…
Rafeal Chavez: Right now, it’s majority Latinos. Yeah, mostly from Ecuador.
Alex Wagner: Mostly Ecuadorian migrants.
Rafeal Chavez: A lot of national popular restaurants are here.
Alex Wagner: So, like, Ecuadorian food and things like that?
Rafeal Chavez: Used to be a Portuguese area and Italian area, so most of the restaurants are still on some Brazilian, some Italian restaurants. And now it’s turning more Spanish.
Alex Wagner: According to U.S. Census data from 2022, over 34 percent of Newark’s residents were born outside of the United States, which is much higher than the national average of roughly 14 percent. Rafael Chavez is one of them. In 2009, he made the decision to leave Mexico for the United States, crossing the border without papers. In the years since, Chavez was able to legalize his status, and today, he’s an American citizen. Chavez was quick to point out that every president he has lived under, including President Barack Obama, when Chavez first arrived, has deported a large number of migrants. But Chavez also recognizes that Trump 2.0 represents something inherently different.
Numbers aside, there has been a change in both tenor and tactics since January 20th. Twenty-four hours after his inauguration, President Trump lifted longtime restrictions on sensitive locations, including schools, churches, and hospitals. That means ICE arrests can be made while people are dropping their children off at kindergarten, or in the middle of a Sunday service, or at a hospital after medical treatment. That change, unleashing federal agents in areas previously deemed off-limits, according to our established social compact, that change is representative of the new administration’s zeal for deportation.
All over social media, you can find stylized videos and photos of immigration officials in tactical gear with big block letters spelling “Police,” “ICE,” and “Homeland Security.” Kristi Noem, the newly-minted Homeland Security Secretary, joined ICE raids in New York City this week wearing that very outfit.
Kristi Noem, United States Secretary of Homeland Security: We’re in New York City this morning. We are getting the dirtbags off these streets.
Alex Wagner: Celebrity talk show host Dr. Phil announced he, too, would join Trump’s new border czar for raids in Chicago. The doc posted a video of an arrest on X alongside a promotion for his Merit TV app.
Phil McGraw, Television Personality and Author: This is an example of sanctuary cities, right? We got an illegal alien convicted of sex crimes involving children. This is what we’re dealing with. You’ve been charged with sex crimes with children?
Unidentified Male: Not really.
Phil McGraw: Not really?
Alex Wagner: Chavez says he understands all of this to be a show of force from the new president, and a coordinated effort to sow fear.
Rafeal Chavez: I think this week, what he wants. People get scared, people get afraid, and this is what he wants. People, the community gets scared to not come out. All leave, you know, leave the country. This already happened, so people leave the country.
Alex Wagner: I would assume you as an organization, you don’t want to advocate for people to feel scared, but it sort of sounds like staying home is a good idea right now?
Rafeal Chavez: Yeah. It’s get prepared, you know?
Alex Wagner: Get prepared.
Rafeal Chavez: In case happen, you know, we don’t want to say, like, oh, it’s going to happen to you. But get prepared. If you have your all the legal documentation, passport, birth certificate, so get those documents ready, and talk about these things to your kids, because it’s very important, you know? Tell your kids nicely who you’re going to call, who’s going to take you from the school, who’s going to take your kids at some point in case someone —
Alex Wagner: In case you’re taken. In case you’re taken.
Rafeal Chavez: In case you’re taken.
Alex Wagner: That’s a hard conversation to have.
Rafeal Chavez: Well, unfortunately, you have to have that conversation.
Alex Wagner: It’s what you have to do.
Rafeal Chavez: You have to do it.
Alex Wagner: This is “Trumpland with Alex Wagner.” On this week’s show, we head to New Jersey, a state with the second highest migrant population in the U.S., to hear from the people who feel most at risk under President Trump’s new immigration policies.
Unidentified Female: (SPEAKING IN SPANISH).
Interpreter: There is a lot of misinformation, and she doesn’t know what to believe at this point. And after the raid last week, everyone is very, very on the edge.
Alex Wagner: And the community leaders pledging their protection.
Unidentified Male: This is unlawful, and it’s not supposed to happen. How can you tell the difference between who’s documented and who’s not, who’s a criminal and who’s not, just by looking at them?
Alex Wagner: We’re going to start with a few phrases. [SPEAKING SPANISH] Okay? I’m going to ask that you repeat after me. I am.
Group: I am
Unidentified Female: Somebody
Group: Somebody.
Unidentified Female: And I deserve.
Group: And I deserve.
Unidentified Female: Full equality.
Group: Full equality.
Unidentified Female: Here and now.
Group: Here and now.
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
Alex Wagner: On Monday afternoon in the city of Elizabeth, just outside Newark, an immigrant rights organization called Make the Road New Jersey is hosting a seminar called Know Your Rights, four days after the highly publicized raid at the fish market. Nedia Morsy and Eliana Fernandez are leading the workshop.
Eliana Fernandez (Organizing Director, Make the Road New Jersey): (SPEAKING SPANISH)
Alex Wagner: Fernandez is speaking in Spanish and Morsy mostly in English. We’re in the basement of an old school, one that Alexander Hamilton apparently once attended, the most famous migrant/founding father in American history. There are about 70 people here seated in a semicircle facing the front of the room.
Eliana Fernandez: (SPEAKING SPANISH).
Nedia Morsy (Deputy Director, Make the Road New Jersey): What we want to go over now is we want to go over some photos because oftentimes people are unsure about how to identify what is ICE versus the police.
Alex Wagner: Workshops like these are popping up across the country. The goal is to help immigrants understand exactly what their constitutional rights are, regardless of their immigration status or whatever documentation they happen to have. The Trump administration seems aware of this trend.
Earlier this week, Border Czar Tom Homan called out these type of trainings, saying, quote, “They call it know your rights. I call it how to escape arrest.” Elizabeth is just one train stop away from Newark, if you’re taking New Jersey transit. The city has a little over a third the population of Newark, but has a much larger Latino community. According to the census, Elizabeth’s population is nearly 2/3 Latino, while Newark is around 37%.
Nedia Morsy: Why are we here tonight? (SPEAKING IN SPANISH) What’s happening in our communities?
Alex Wagner: There is a lot of practical information offered at these workshops, but inside the room, it’s clear that the space is serving a purpose bigger than that. The organizers ask people to share why they are here.
Unidentified Male: (SPEAKING IN SPANISH)
Interpreter: I came here tonight so I could have a first-hand experience of what my rights are and what I can do.
I’m a teacher here in the city of Elizabeth, and I came here tonight because many students have been asking me, “What do I do? What are we supposed to do?” And I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell them.
Unidentified Female: (SPEAKING IN SPANISH)
Nedia Morsy: I feel like if immigration comes, whether you have status or you don’t have status, they’ll come and they’ll take us all.
Alex Wagner: The organizers then ask what questions people have.
Unidentified Female: (SPEAKING IN SPANISH)
Nedia Morsy: What documents should you carry with you and what should you not carry with you? What if I have all my documents, everything’s in order, and I get stopped by immigration? It doesn’t matter. They decide that they’re still going to arrest me and they’re still going to detain me. Like, what happens then?
Alex Wagner: These fears are very real for this community, whether people are here legally or not. One of the main ways the workshops aim to mitigate these fears is through what Morsy calls “practice.” In this case, she means role-playing, where immigrants are exposed to the kinds of tactics they might encounter from ICE agents and then practice their responses.
Eliana Fernandez: (SPEAKING IN SPANISH)
Alex Wagner: They start by asking for two volunteers, someone to play a person of interest visited at home and someone to play the ICE agent standing at the door.
Nedia Morsy: So I’m going to paint the scene. She doesn’t have a keyhole, but she does have a window. The door does have a lock. And there is nobody in the home that has a deportation order.
Alex Wagner: In this scenario, the volunteer playing law enforcement is trying to get the other volunteer to open her door. He asks repeatedly, in different ways. The exercise trains attendees not to give out information and to ask ICE agents for a warrant and not to let law enforcement in without one.
(SPEAKING IN SPANISH)
Alex Wagner: It’s role-playing, but for the people in the room, this is not theoretical. An ICE agent showing up at the front door is exactly the scenario they most fear and one that also happens to be unfolding in cities across the country. And yet, despite the weight of that fear, the overwhelming anxiety of the present moment, as the role-playing continues, people begin to laugh.
(SPEAKING IN SPANISH)
Alex Wagner: In the next scenario, the volunteer makes a mistake, revealing where he’s from, and the audience lets him know. Morsy calls a timeout to break it down.
Nedia Morsy: Very often people ask you, “Where are you from?” And it just sort of comes out of you, right? It’s instinctual. So it’s so important that we practice because these are questions that people ask you every day.
Alex Wagner: As the workshop continues, we’re able to move to a room nearby to speak with a few of the attendees. A woman named Gloria, who did not want us to use her last name, tells us that even though she’s uncertain about what lies ahead, the event has made her feel less alone. She’s found community.
Do you have a plan if something happens?
Unidentified Female: (SPEAKING IN SPANISH)
Nedia Morsy: Right now, I don’t have a plan, but I didn’t know it was going to be this fast. I knew something was going to happen, but I wasn’t expecting things to move really fast. So I’m working and listening from organizations like this one, and now I know a little bit more about my rights and what I can do if something happens, but I’m still working and putting that plan together.
Alex Wagner: What do you tell your daughter?
Unidentified Female: (SPEAKING IN SPANISH)
Nedia Morsy: I tell her not to be afraid. I tell her we’re in this together.
Alex Wagner: And she’s still going to school? Do you think it’s possible that you would ever pull her out of school?
Unidentified Female: (SPEAKING IN SPANISH)
Nedia Morsy: If things get worse, I’m not sending her to school.
Alex Wagner: And are you still going out to the grocery store? Are you still, I mean, are you staying home?
Unidentified Female: No, I stay home. I only go to work and home. Work and home. I’m afraid.
Alex Wagner: How does this make you think of America? It feels like life changed very dramatically for you, and I wonder what you think of this country now.
Unidentified Female: (SPEAKING IN SPANISH).
Alex Wagner: It’s OK. I’m sorry you have to go through this.
Unidentified Female: (SPEAKING IN SPANISH)
Nedia Morsy: I’m questioning myself, I’m questioning if this was a good decision to leave everything behind to give my kids a better future.
Alex Wagner: You can hear Gloria getting emotional as she tells me she’s unsure if coming to America was worth it, leaving everything behind, even if it was for a better future for her children. But Gloria tells me she’s going to keep fighting. She came to America to make things better.
Another mother, Maria, tells me about the conversations she’s having with her kids about safety, despite her own fears.
Do you think about ICE coming to knock on your front door?
Unidentified Female: Si.
Alex Wagner: And do you think in that moment you’ll know what to do?
Unidentified Female: (SPEAKING IN SPANISH)
Alex Wagner: Maria tells me she’s sure of what to do and what not to do, thanks to organizations like Make the Road, where she works as a community leader. Maria wants to tell people not to be afraid, even if she’s scared her son might one day open the door without looking to see who’s standing on the other side of it. Ultimately, she doesn’t want families to instill fear in their children. Instead, she says, this moment should be about unity and a feeling that everyone is committed.
You have a son. How old is he?
Unidentified Female: I have one is 11, one is 7, and my older is 24.
Alex Wagner: For the two younger sons, have you talked to them about what’s happening?
Unidentified Female: Yes, they know. They listen. They listen outside in the school with other kids. And I explain to all my kids what’s going on. Don’t be afraid. Everything is going to be okay. We are okay. You are okay.
Alex Wagner: Well, I guess the question is, you tell them they’re safe, but you also say, don’t open the door. So do they feel safe?
Unidentified Female: I don’t feel safe.
Alex Wagner: Has your feeling about this country changed?
Unidentified Female: No.
Alex Wagner: No.
Unidentified Female: No. (SPEAKING SPANISH)
Alex Wagner: Maria tells me her feelings about America haven’t changed, that she is grateful and blesses this nation for the opportunities it gives everyone, to form a family, to put down roots, and to become part of this country. She believes in the rights that the Constitution makes clear. We are not us and them, she tells me. We are all equal.
When we come back, the politician who has vowed not to stay silent when his community is under attack
(BREAK)
Alex Wagner: The new immigration directives from President Trump have set up what is certain to be the first of many fights between federal agencies and local governments. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka has made clear that his city will not be backing down in the face of ICE officials, or what he calls their unsanctioned raids.
Mayor Baraka, the son of a poet and activist, was raised in Newark. He went on to become a principal for the Newark public schools, the same system he attended growing up. He was elected mayor in 2014. He joined me from City Hall in Newark.
I guess the first question I have is the raids that were made public nationally last week, the raid on the fish market in Ironbound, the Ironbound neighborhood. How singular was that? How many more have there been? What can you tell us about the frequency of these things?
Ras Baraka: We’re not sure. We’re just getting the numbers as people call in. Because ICE and Homeland Security doesn’t tell us anything, that they don’t give us any forewarning. They just go out and do what they do.
Some of them have been false alarms, because what they’re doing are going into stores fully outfitted out with the long guns and everything, going in there just hanging out, eating, standing around. So people think that something is happening, and it may not be. So it is causing a sense of fear and terror around the city, specifically after they ran into the store in Newark and kind of detained people in there, took three people away, but held others in the store without their consent.
Alex Wagner: The Trump administration is saying, through social media and through official White House channels, that the people they’re going after are criminals, dangerous criminals. Is that who’s being swept up in these raids, as far as you know?
Ras Baraka: No, the people at the store, they were not criminals. They were not gang members, rapists, all of the wild statements that I got from people on emails. None of that was true. These are regular working people who are back there trying to make a living for themselves, for their family, contributing to our economy. They pay local and state taxes. This is a problem, especially in a community like Newark, where it’s completely diverse, and you have people from all over the world here. It’s very difficult to determine who’s undocumented and who’s not.
To do this in a sweeping way is very dangerous.
Alex Wagner: We know that the Trump administration has lifted the ban on seizing folks at hospitals, churches, and schools. Have you seen any instances or heard of any instances of that thus far?
Ras Baraka: Not in my city, by God’s grace. I mean, I think that’s just barbaric. Ultimately, it’s just inhumane to traumatize children to say schools and places of worships are not sanctuary. It’s just very, very, very bad. It’s very dangerous. And Americans, despite what their political beliefs are around immigration reform and what’s happening now, they should really be alarmed about the cavalier way that we’re handling the Constitution of the United States right now.
Alex Wagner: I feel like there’s the immediate trauma of just living in fear, right? But then there’s the trauma of these kids who are being told by their parents, as a matter of planning for a potential deportation, look, I may not come home. And if I don’t, you’ve got to go live with this person. I just wonder, as someone who is of and by and for the people who is in the community, what it has been like to sort of witness this unfold on just a human level.
Ras Baraka: It’s just incredibly stressful. I mean, it’s the inhumane culture that’s being created around here. This kind of mean-spiritedness and this complete disregard for people’s life and their humanity, it’s terrible. And you have people completely terrified. They don’t know what to do or what’s going to happen. You put children in a precarious situation where they feel like it’s going to be doomsday at any minute.
I mean, we know that our community works with these folks in it. And so we have to protect our people. When things get hard, we can’t run for the hills. It’s like a long winter. You know, it’s coming. Bring the furniture inside. Go shopping. Get the food. Stack up. And that’s really what we’re preparing for, unfortunately. Anticipating that things may get rough in the next couple of months, absolutely.
Alex Wagner: You know, you’re a Democrat. And it really feels like the administration, MAGA world, is on offense right now, right?
Ras Baraka: Sure.
Alex Wagner: Kristi Noem is making TikTok videos about taking the garbage off the streets. Dr. Phil is going on immigration raids —
Ras Baraka: Insane.
Alex Wagner: — with the border czar, Tom Homan. And yet, Democrats look at the results of the last election. They say, we lost on immigration, which may be true. But there is no cohesive, coherent messaging coming from the left about the people that we’re talking about, about their humanity, about the children. I mean, it just feels like this —
Ras Baraka: It’s bad.
Alex Wagner: Yeah, it feels like this incredibly controversial, aggressive, potentially unlawful series of events is being met largely with silence, as far as the Democratic Party.
Ras Baraka: That’s right. That’s Right.
Alex Wagner: And I wonder how that makes you feel.
Ras Baraka: I feel like I’m in an episode of “Game of Thrones” where everybody’s bending the knees. It’s wild what seems to be happening here. It’s like everybody’s acquiescing to this messaging and this idea that Trump won because of his policy around immigration, I think is completely wrong.
Honestly, I just think the Democrats need to ask some hard questions about how they run campaigns, how they’re speaking to regular people up and down these states, and not acquiesce to this idea that Americans don’t want the things that we know are right. I think most Americans are not cynical. They’re not white supremacists. They believe in immigration. They come from families of immigrants. They know what this means. They want to uphold the Constitution. All the things that the Democrats fought for and say we believe, I think most Americans believe that. And we’ll fight for that. And evidence has shown that around the country in smaller kind of down-ballot questions and races that have been going on. We have to pay attention to that and not get overwhelmed by what Donald Trump is doing day in and day out and really kind of humiliating Democratic ideals and values and cornering us and making most of us, a lot of us, seem like we are going to bow to this because we’re just afraid that if we don’t, we’re going to lose everything.
Nedia Morsy: And you see people build connection and build community with each other. And so it’s really, really, really about taking power from a thing that is incredibly scary and standing up and being like, I’m undocumented and I know my rights.
Alex Wagner: Back at the event in Elizabeth, Nedia Morsy, the organizer who’d been translating the training into English, tells me what she hopes people take from this event beyond just the practical knowledge.
Nedia Morsy: All of us have rights and all of Trump’s administration feeds on this politics of division and tried to build this narrative of the good immigrant and the bad immigrant. But what we missed in all of that was they’re making black and brown people all bad. They’re redefining what it means to be a criminal and including all of us. And so it’s so important that we realize that the politics of division feeds on despair, it feeds on fear. And the only way that we’re going to find our liberation is together.
Alex Wagner: Morsy tells me this past week has felt like a fire hydrant of misinformation and fear and anxiety. But despite all of that, she feels resilient.
Nedia Morsy: It’s, you know, this effort of mass deportations and mass raids, you know, Trump 2.0 is a different beast than Trump 1.0, but people know their rights now more than ever. And we will build towns and cities, we will build fortresses of resistance.
Alex Wagner: In the middle of all of this fear and looming darkness, this is what they are saying. “We will build a fortress of resistance.”
Unidentified Female: (SPEAKING IN SPANISH)
Alex Wagner: As we speak with Morsy, the training starts to wrap up. The evening began with a simple call and response. The crowd timidly echoing the instructors’ calls. But by the end, people are on their feet, standing together, fists in the air, and answering the call loudly.
Group: (SPEAKING IN SPANISH)
Alex Wagner: The chant translates to, “We are not one. We are not a hundred. We are millions. Count us well.”
Thanks for listening to “Trumpland with Alex Wagner.” We’ll be back next Thursday with a new episode. To get this show and other MSNBC podcasts ad-free, be sure to subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts.
As a subscriber, you’ll also get exclusive bonus content. “Trumpland with Alex Wagner” is produced by Max Jacobs along with Julia D’Angelo and Kay Guerrero. Our associate producer is Janmaris Perez, additional production support from Hannah Holland. Our crew is Enrique Larreal on audio and Liam Lee and Greg Purpura on camera. Our audio engineers are Bob Mallory and Katie Lau, and Bryson Barnes is our technical director. Matthew Alexander is the executive producer of “Alex Wagner Tonight” and Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC Audio. And I’m your host, Alex Wagner. We’ll see you next week.