AI Summary
5 min read🎙️ The Voices & The Context
- The Format: Narrative radio documentary blending real 911 calls, on-the-ground reporting, and interviews into a gripping portrait of chaos from federal immigration raids.
- The Key Players: Host Ira Glass guides the storytelling with his signature deadpan delivery; reporters like Anayansi Diaz Cortez (Home Depot cat-and-mouse), Conjaffee Walt (911 calls), and Micke Meek (Daily Memo archivist) provide vivid field accounts. No celebrity guests—it's everyday voices: panicked callers, dispatchers, day laborers, and activists.
- The Vibe: Intense and unsettling, blending real-time fear, moral dilemmas, and bureaucratic absurdity into a tense "new America" thriller.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:39) **911 Calls About ICE and Border Patrol Encounters**
- 2 (06:04) **Real-Time ICE Chases and Arrests on 911 Calls**
- 3 (10:47) **Trump Administration's Immigration Enforcement Expansion**
- 4 (12:58) **Charlotte Street-Level ICE Activity Sequence**
- 5 (21:01) **US Citizens Pulled Over and Detained**
- 6 (23:22) **ICE and Border Patrol Calling 911**
- 7 (27:16) **Escalation of Tactics and Policy Changes**
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
911 calls unlike any we’ve heard before, and other stories about immigration agents sweeping through America.
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- Prologue: A collection of 911 calls where you can hear immigration enforcement moving through different cities and leaving chaos in their wake. (9 minutes)
- Act One: More 911 calls, including people on the line with dispatchers as ICE is chasing them, trying to puzzle out their next moves. (22 minutes)
- Act Two: Home Depots keep getting raided over and over again in Los Angeles. And day laborers are still showing up in store parking lots to find work every day. So what’s that like? Months and months of that cat and mouse? Anayansi Diaz-Cortes went to find out. (11 minutes)
- Act Three: Memo Torres tries to build an archive of every person taken by federal agents in Southern California. (11 minutes)
Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org
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