Hey everyone, I'm David Chalian, CNN's Washington Bureau Chief and Political Director, and welcome to the CNN Political Briefing.

We will not participate in abuses of power. We will violate court orders. We will not ignore the Constitution. We will not defy the Supreme Court. We will not take away people's rights to peacefully protest.

'Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and other Democratic governors slammed President Trump's response to anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles at a hearing Thursday on Capitol Hill.

It's wrong to deploy the National Guard and active duty Marines into an American city over the objection of local law enforcement just to inflame a situation and create a crisis.

Tensions over the Trump administration's immigration enforcement have reached a boiling point. Protests have started to spread to cities like New York, Chicago, Seattle, Austin, and Washington, D.C. The Trump administration has called in 4,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles, despite the objections of local and state officials, and the president has activated 700 Marines. The administration's border czar, Tom Homan, appeared on CNN with Kaitlan Collins earlier this week to explain the administration's rationale.

Detainees we arrested were at risk; officers have been injured; property has been destroyed. So yeah, if Democratic leadership wasn't taking action, President Trump stepped up and took the action.

Priscilla Alvarez covers immigration for us here at CNN. She's been closely following Trump's immigration enforcement tactics, and I knew she'd be the best person to help us understand this week's showdown, what led to it and what could come next. Priscilla, thanks so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me.

So I wanted to start with what we are all seeing across our screens this week in Los Angeles. And I guess I want to ask you, one, it seems to the casual observer perhaps that the administration, from an enforcement point of view, did something different this week than they've been doing. And, as we know, every action has a reaction. We're also seeing a different reaction this week to immigration enforcement and deportation that we've seen. And I'm wondering if you could sort of decipher for us, did this come out of nowhere? And what is different about it?

So there has been a buildup here that actually began several weeks ago. As someone who has to be watching this constantly, there was going to be a moment like what happened in Los Angeles for almost one key reason and one key event that happened a few weeks ago. Top aide, Stephen Miller, he is the architect of the administration's hardline immigration policies. He went to Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters. When he was there, he essentially told them they needed to do more. What they were doing up until this point, the numbers that they were reaching on a daily basis, was simply not enough.

So what numbers were they reaching on a daily basis at that point?

They were around 1,000 a day, give or take. Well, Miller, as well as other White House aides, wanted—

And we should say, Miller, a trusted, very powerful aide of the president. I mean, he's, you know, he is the president's domestic policy guru.

'And if you want to know what's happening in immigration, Miller is the one. So he goes to ICE, and he says, you're not doing enough. I want 3,000 arrests a day. Now, just for context here, that is a huge number. I mean, ICE has 6,000 agents. They just simply can't reach those figures without having to work with multiple federal agencies. But he delivers that, and the message is so clear to everyone hearing it: We have to just arrest anyone and everyone wherever we can. So fast forward, and what you see is going to immigration courts, going to check-ins, immigration check-ins to arrest people, arresting people on the street, arresting people at a Home Depot. People start to observe that ICE is everywhere, that they are arresting people, including many of those who don't have criminal records. And that starts to ignite a debate and a concern as to what exactly is ICE doing if not going after the very specific public safety and national security threats. And so when this hits L.A., a blue city, one that the governor of the state and the president are clearly at odds. These protests begin and it is—

So when you say it hits L.A., how did it hit L. A. differently? What did the enforcement look like that sparked this moment of protest?

'So it's actually really interesting because it seems like it was a tinderbox. There were multiple things happening at once. There was worksite enforcement, which is pretty routine actually. ICE has been doing that for years, but that was happening at the same time that this other really unusual thing happened, which is immigrants who were going to their check-ins in a federal building were suddenly detained in the basement of that building. I spoke to a mother who was with her two children, she's pregnant, and her husband. And all of these immigrants were in this federal building detained after they had just gone in for a check-in, which started to prompt massive concerns among immigrant advocates and attorneys who said, wait a minute, they just went there for their check- in, and now they're in the basement of a building, and they're an ICE custody. And so that method was so unusual, and we hadn't seen that before. Plus, the routine enforcement was happening. But there's no nuance in this debate anymore. So when you look at it all together, you're seeing ICE doing the unconventional of holding people in a basement while also doing the conventional of going to work site enforcement. And that sort of erupted, and these protests took place and then it became this series of events that results in the president on Saturday night deploying the National Guard to California to, in the administration's argument, quell the protests and protect the agents. But that's sort of later as the pretext for now National Guard is going to be with ICE in Los Angeles as they conduct operations.

Wait, does that mean that the National Guard, again, deployed against the governor's wishes, which is not the norm. Are they now like ICE agents, empowered ICE agents and making arrests, or are they there protecting federal property?

So they are a security perimeter for federal property and for federal personnel, which means, and the images show that ICE also released, that they sort of guard what is the operation. They are around it. They're not arresting anyone, and that's a very important clarification here, but they are on site. And I, as soon as I saw those images, started texting sources and said, have you ever seen anything like this before? Nobody could recall ever seeing that. National Guard has been on the U.S. southern border. Mind you, they have served a supporting status on the border. Similarly, no arrests. But to see them in the interior of the United States, in cities, guarding federal agents as they are detaining individuals was an extraordinary development and one that the administration has been building up to.

We didn't see this in Trump's first administration either, correct?

Correct.

So is this change in posture and policy simply to increase the numbers, as you said, of deportations?

It is. I mean, that is the bottom line. The bottom line is you need to get more arrests. You need to get more deportations. And when I talked to the White House border czar Tom Homan this week about this, he told me they need to expand. They need to expand to include more federal agencies to potentially include the U.S. Military because they are trying to hit a goal here, though they won't exactly say what that number is, besides these daily arrests, they really do you want to execute on this mass deportation agenda, and that just requires so many resources to do it.

It's interesting listening to you, and especially when you described the National Guard down at the border. So many times that I've had you on this podcast and talked to you in the past, our conversations have been about the border. Has Donald Trump sealed the border? Are there no more illegal border crossings? And so now all of the energy in the immigration space, if you will, is about deporting people out. And if I'm hearing you correctly, if you're just trying to increase numbers, you are no longer making a differentiation between the hardened criminals, worst of the worst here, and those that may have been here for decades, and the only thing that — I'm not suggesting they're here legally — but they have no criminal record other than they're here in an undocumented fashion. They may be paying taxes and contributing members to society, have family members that live in a home with them that are legal residents here. It seems like it's just one category of person now.

'So I have a couple thoughts on this. Yes, we often talk about the U.S.-Mexico border. You're correct. It is effectively completely sealed. There will always be people crossing the border illegally. So I don't want to say the number is zero, but certainly it is nowhere near we have seen it over the last several years. But there's also an irony in that, because the reason, for example, that we talk about the Obama administration's deportation numbers is that a lot of them were recent border crossers. That fueled their large deportation numbers. Just by the nature of the fact that the Trump administration doesn't have recent border crossers that they can easily deport, it makes their job so much more difficult to find and arrest and deport those in the interior of the United States. And if you look at it through their perspective, yes, they talk about the public safety and national security concerns, but they also just view everyone who is in the United Sates illegally, who crossed the border illegally as criminals because they did something wrong. So even if it is someone who has been here for many years, the bottom line to them is that they did cross illegally, therefore they are deportable, and they do sometimes have final orders of removal. So by the law, they can actually be removed from the United States. So that is why they look at it as one bucket of people that they need to expel from the country.

We have a lot more to discuss, specifically the politics of all of this, how Americans are perceiving this moment. We'll have a lot more with Priscilla Alvarez in just a moment. Obviously, the White House, and you know this, Donald Trump believes the issue of immigration, of putting forth a hardline policy of campaigning on mass deportation, this is what brought him to the dance. This is the issue that has allowed him to dominate the American political landscape for the last 10 years, and he thinks it is certainly what helped deliver him back to the Oval Office in 2024. That being said, I have now noticed in two occasions recently, where the politics seem a little scrambled. So I'll give you one. You know well the Abrego Garcia case, the man who was, according to the administration itself, wrongly deported to El Salvador. He was not supposed to be deported back to his home country, has now been returned to the United States and is facing federal criminal charges. When we saw the polling come out after he was so front and center in the news, what we saw is, how Donald Trump goes about pursuing his hardline immigration matters to the American people. They saw that this was not handled properly, he didn't get the due process, and they weren't completely as on board as the White House would let us think that this is a slam dunk winner for them. And I think we're seeing something similar now, which is yes, there's a lot of support, even growing support in the country, for mass deportation as a concept. But if you're gonna send in the Marines and the National Guard, or you are going to no longer differentiate between hardened criminals and those that aren't, the public seems to get that a little bit, and there isn't widespread support for that.

'Yeah, I've said this before, but the administration's immigration agenda is ultimately going to be decided on numbers and methods. Numbers because immigration has always boiled down to that. We talk about border numbers a lot for a reason, and this was one of the most challenging issues for the Biden administration because the numbers were so poor for them when it came to how many people were crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. But methods matter here, and this was also true in the first Trump administration. The zero tolerance policy that led to families being separated in 2018 was a massive moment in the Trump administration and also influenced the midterms of that year. So what we're seeing right now is, to talk about the Abrego Garcia case, due process. And this is actually something that Joe Rogan on his podcast also sort of flicked at when there were all of these Venezuelan migrants sent to El Salvador is as you sort of peeled back each of these cases, in some cases, yes, some people had criminal records, but in others, they didn't. They were just kind of in the wrong place at the wrong time, or in this case, the wrong detention center at the right time. People are starting to pay attention to, and even the conversations I'm having, how the administration is going about reaching their high numbers. Everyone's on board with them deporting hundreds of thousands of people that I've talked to. But make sure that those hundreds of thousands of are really people we don't want in the United States. And if you look like you are careless about the way that you are doing it, people start to notice. Because Abrego Garcia is a complicated individual as we have learned. But people also slice through that to look at the way that the administration went about deporting him. I've talked also to Venezuelans in Florida, many of whom supported Donald Trump. And in my conversations with them, they have said, I was all on board with him going after criminals, but now I'm noticing that's not the case, he's actually going after my neighbor, and I'm not necessarily on board with that. I wanted you to go after the gang members. And this is as they broaden out their operations across the country, this is what people are going to be paying attention to because it is going to happen in their communities. You see stories of the local restaurant owner who is suddenly being detained, but everyone liked that restaurant owner. They just don't like that undocumented immigrant over there with a criminal record. We are also seeing this with farm workers, with meat packing who have abided by the rules, but then are suddenly finding themselves at the center of a worksite enforcement raid. The politics of this are gonna get more complicated as there is a scramble to get higher numbers because it's gonna fan out everywhere. You can't miss it.

And I will say President Trump, at least according to his Truth Social today, as you and I are talking on Thursday, seems that somebody has just made the exact argument that you're making, that this is not so clear cut because today, all of a sudden, on a Truth Social post, he was separating out and saying he's hearing from farmers and hearing from hospitality industry leaders that people getting picked up and arrested are people that they rely on for the work and that what the farmers really want are the criminals and the gang members to be deported from this country, not those that are actually doing the work that, by the way, citizens don't seem all that interested in doing. In your talks to the administration, should we read much into that Trump Truth Social post, because it seems so discordant from the hardline posture and the aggressive enforcement that we are watching take place on our screens?

'Oh, I think yes, because there are Republicans in Congress, for example, that care a lot about this. I mean, E-Verify is probably like the least sexy issue to talk about. But it is incredibly important to a lot of conservatives in rural states who — and a lot of farmers who use this, right — to verify people's statuses. And if you're going to go after those same farmers who were doing everything they were supposed to do, that's going to create issues. And look, ultimately, it's what people see and how they experience it. And if you think about this the other way around, during the Biden administration, I covered my share of border crises. It wasn't really, though, until Governor Abbott started sending migrants to the Democratic-led cities that you saw uproar from Democratic governors, Democratic leaders and their constituents about the border crisis, because they were suddenly experiencing it in their backyard. And I think much of the same is happening here, but in the reverse, which is that the Trump administration wants to meet certain quotas. So they're going to fan out everywhere. And the personnel that are doing it are under tremendous pressure. So they are similarly only thinking about the numbers. And when you're only thinking through that lens, there are going to be mistakes. And those are the mistakes they're going to judged on.

'And as you said, when you say the reverse, this will inevitably have ICE officials arresting people in very red districts or in Republican areas, in Trump-supporting areas. You described your conversations with some Venezuelans in Florida, but that is the reverse. When all of a sudden, in these rural or ex-urban communities where, again, so many leaders and the citizens there may have been overwhelmingly supportive of President Trump and still are, including his immigration policy, but all of a sudden they're gonna experience this action differently.

That's the key is how they experience it. And you know, the other part of this is the messaging. And I will say the Department of Homeland Security repeatedly sends out press releases talking about who they've arrested, who falls under this sort of public safety national security threat. So they are thinking about this clearly because when they're pushing out these releases on a very regular basis, they are highlighting the bad guys. But while that is true, there are people with criminal records who are being arrested in these raids. There are people who are not, and those stories are starting to come out more, and that is what they're gonna have to contend with as they're also highlighting those with criminal records.

So the ICE enforcement actions that took place in Los Angeles and around Los Angeles that sparked this moment of protest that we saw, is that a playbook that we are going to see repeat itself across the country? Or do you think the administration learned something this weekend wants to make an adjustment? Or no, they saw something that they want to actually recreate everywhere?

The latter. I think this is — I mean one source told our colleague Natasha Bertrand this is the playbook. They want — this could very well happen in other cities. When I talked to the White House border czar, we sort of talked through this a little bit. He, you know, they look at this, the National Guard in particular, as serving a security perimeter for agents who are under threat. And some have been assaulted in cities nationwide. So if you think if you start to like get into their mindset, you can see how they will rationalize and justify having what happened in L.A. with National Guard joining ICE operations happen all around the country. And then there will be a whole other host of questions of whether this is how we should be using the military. I think we're only starting to scratch that surface.

Priscilla Alvarez, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it.

Anytime.

That's it for this week's edition of the CNN Political Briefing. Remember, you can reach out to us with your questions about Trump's new administration. Our contact information is in the show notes. CNN Political Briefing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Emily Williams. Our senior producer is Dan Bloom. Dan Dzula is our Technical Director ,and Steve Lickteig is the Executive Producer of CNN Audio. Support from Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow.. We'll be back with a new episode next Friday. Thanks so much for listening.