Return to Transcripts main page
The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper
Immigration Crackdown, A Year of Enforcement. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired March 29, 2026 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[20:00:00]
JIMENEZ: For not Duke, against Illinois, it will be UConn against Illinois. And then on the women's side, UConn, again, UConn is having a great year on both sides. Making the final four, staying undefeated, beating Notre Dame today, while UCLA beat Duke. Tough day for Duke on that side of things. The last two spots on the women's side will be determined tomorrow.
And thank you all for joining me tonight. I'm Omar Jimenez. Jessica Dean will be back here again next week. But my special report on "THE WHOLE STORY" with Anderson Cooper, "Immigration Crackdown: A Year of Enforcement" is next. Good night.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Anderson Cooper. Welcome to THE WHOLE STORY.
This week, Markwayne Mullin was sworn in as the new head of the Department of Homeland Security. He's taking control of an agency whose funding lapsed in February after Democrats demanded an end to the aggressive immigration enforcement tactics under his predecessor, Kristi Noem, who was fired by President Trump earlier this month.
Under her tenure, federal agents were deployed to cities across the U.S. to round up undocumented immigrants in highly visible and sometimes violent operations. This led to fear and backlash, especially after two American citizens were killed by federal agents during protests in January.
And while the new DHS secretary has indicated he'll take the agency in a different direction, immigration enforcement remains a key priority for President Trump and immigrant communities remain on edge.
In this next hour, CNN's Omar Jimenez will take you inside the crackdown with first person footage from cell phones and police body cameras that show what these raids look like. And he'll examine the impact of this mass deportation campaign on crime, the economy and the flow of migrants across the border.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: So is this the first time you've been back to this intersection?
ALIYA RAHMAN, DETAINED BY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT: Yes, I haven't been back in this area since that day. When I crossed into this block, that's when I saw people with long guns and masks and armor are getting out of their vehicles. I'm never going to drive through this intersection again without thinking about that day.
I think that's where my face hit the ground.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Aliya Rahman says she was on her way to a doctor's appointment for a traumatic brain injury when she drove into the middle of an ICE protest. Agents appeared to be telling her to leave. She hadn't been in the intersection long at this point, she wasn't sure who was giving what command.
How did it go from you sitting in your car to then being dragged away by agents?
RAHMAN: I am an autistic disabled person. I'm trying to go to the doctor.
I am an autistic person. My audio sorting is very specific in my brain. If I'm at a party and someone is talking to me like where you are, but there's a bunch of people talking in the back of the room, they prioritize the same way. I heard many conflicting instructions.
I've been beat up by police before. I'm disabled trying to go to the doctor up there. That's why I didn't move.
The chances I would die were a numerical calculation my mind was doing, and the number I came up with was kind of high.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Part of her fear came from just a few blocks away, six days earlier. Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent. Eleven days after Rahman was detained --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What the (EXPLETIVE DELETED).
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Alex Pretti was shot and killed by Border Patrol agents.
RAHMAN: The truth of the matter is I'm very privileged. I am alive.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): But she says she almost didn't get to say those words because of what happened after this.
RAHMAN: So having a combination of autism and a traumatic brain injury presents some challenges for moving through the world. One accommodation that I asked for and was denied was to get a conversation navigator. The ICE officers heard me ask for that. I know they did because they told me that if I was a normal human, this wouldn't have happened.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): She says she was driven to a local federal building being used as a holding center for detained immigrants.
Rahman is an American citizen and software engineer. She has a history of activism, and was arrested at President Trump's State of the Union address for allegedly disrupting the event, an allegation she denies. She wasn't charged. And she says she wasn't protesting this day.
RAHMAN: The thing I am remembering the most is the word bodies. When I was put in the SUV, the laughing driver radioed and said, we got a body.
[20:05:03]
For a split second, I wondered if I had died and then realized this was a term they were using.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Rahman ended up in a cell. She says she had shooting pains in her neck, slurred speech, and blurry vision. She maintains she repeatedly requested medical care and didn't get it. The Department of Homeland Security says any claim she was denied medical care is false.
RAHMAN: Eventually I did go unconscious.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): She ended up in a hospital.
RAHMAN: And I do not remember how I got out of that cell.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): The Department of Homeland Security said she was arrested by ICE agents for obstruction, but she was released and never charged with anything.
So even though the puzzle here doesn't actually make a picture, this is soothing?
RAHMAN: Very.
JIMENEZ: Yes.
RAHMAN: I actually like that there's no picture because it's less distracting. There's actually a very clear pattern in it.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): And she was part of a larger pattern in the immigration enforcement crackdowns that first began last summer in Los Angeles and then spread to Chicago, Portland, Oregon, Memphis, Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Charlotte, North Carolina.
What happened after Rahman's incident is one of those patterns. Federal officials immediately discredited her before any sort of substantive investigation, labeling her a, quote, "agitator," similar to how quickly they called Renee Good's shooting justified. And how they initially characterized Alex Pretti, who was legally carrying a holstered concealed weapon as a would-be killer.
KRISTI NOEM, U.S. SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY: This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.
CHRIS PARENTE, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: To me, it's that playbook of repeat, repeat, repeat. It doesn't matter whether it's true or false. If you keep repeating it, our base will believe it. And that's all that we care about. JIMENEZ (voice-over): Throughout 2025 the administration repeatedly
claimed it's primarily targeting violent individuals.
TOM HOMAN, WHITE HOUSE BORDER CZAR: These men and women put their lives on the line to remove the worst of the worst.
NOEM: To make sure that these criminals, bad actors, murderers, rapists, pedophiles, traffickers, and drug traffickers are brought in and brought to justice.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): But internal Department of Homeland Security documents obtained by CBS News showed that while a majority taken into custody have some form of criminal charge or conviction, only 14 percent of the nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested during Trump's first year have records that would place them among the so-called worst of the worst violent criminals.
Minneapolis was the largest of the Trump administration's immigration crackdowns.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hold the line.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): At the height of the operation, there were around 3,000 federal immigration officers in the area. That's about five times more than the number of local police officers. But Minneapolis isn't where these patterns started.
They began in L.A. with so-called roving patrols.
CARY LOPEZ ALVARADO, DETAINED BY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT: I'm not going to let you break the window.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): L.A. resident Cary Lopez Alvarado got caught in one with her boyfriend.
LOPEZ ALVARADO: I turned, I looked at him and he looked at me, and we both knew it wasn't going to end well. That's when I started tearing up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Move your hand away.
LOPEZ ALVARADO: No.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Move your hand away. Listen.
LOPEZ ALVARADO: Sir.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ma'am -- put cuffs on her. Ma'am, stop. Stop resisting.
LOPEZ ALVARADO: At that moment, I felt everything had stopped. And it was just me and him.
JIMENEZ: Did you realize that that was going to be the last time you saw him in person?
LOPEZ ALVARADO: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No one wants you here. Get the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) out of L.A.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Before Los Angeles, typical immigration roundups were done by targeting and pre-planning the arrests.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shame on you.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): These roving patrol style operations seemed more random, stopping people waiting for work at Home Depot parking lots, for example. In Lopez Alvarado's case, she was pulled off the vehicle and detained. Her boyfriend was detained, too, but separately. A DHS spokesperson says Lopez Alvarado was taken into custody because she was obstructing.
LOPEZ ALVARADO: It was from almost 3:30 to 11:00, almost 12:00 in the morning. The whole time, like hugging my stomach, checking if my baby was kicking.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): She was nine months pregnant.
You get out of detention and you went straight to the hospital?
LOPEZ ALVARADO: Because after everything had happened, I started feeling sharp pains, and I got worried and they told me that they were going to keep me under surveillance just to make sure my baby was OK.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): And then four days later.
Who's this?
[20:10:01]
LOPEZ ALVARADO: It's Kaylani. She just turned eight months.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Her daughter Kaylani was born in June. But the baby's father, the breadwinner in their little family, isn't with them. He was detained for two weeks before being deported, she says. Also that he tried to then re-enter the country and was detained in Texas.
Did he have any criminal history that you were aware of?
LOPEZ ALVARADO: He had no criminal history. He came when he was a minor. I had my baby and it was kind of hard to work during that time. I was always working. Financially, I would have to go sometimes sell like tamales from 3:00 in the morning until like 8:00 in the morning just to get paid at least a little bit to make ends meet.
JIMENEZ: So he hasn't met her yet?
LOPEZ ALVARADO: No, only through a video call. He hasn't been able to hold her. He really missed a lot of her first.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Arrest as many people that touch you as you want to. Those are the general orders all the way to the top.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): The L.A. crackdown was full of firsts.
JORGE LOWEREE, AMERICAN IMMIGRATION COUNCIL: It was the first time that we began to see things like a significant use of military hardware, military style vehicles in the streets.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): And the first time to use those so-called roving sweeps.
LOWEREE: To stop people based on their perceived race, the language that they speak, where they work, and not based on any kind of real, meaningful, reasonable suspicion of their immigration status.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): And often legal American citizens got caught up in them, like Cary Lopez Alvarado and Javier Ramirez, a Mexican- American who was arrested by one of those types of patrols east of L.A. in Montebello, California.
JAVIER RAMIREZ: I'm (EXPLETIVE DELETED) American.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, he's a U.S. citizen, bro.
RAMIREZ: I got my passport. I got my passport.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Immigration officials charged him with assaulting, resisting, or impeding a federal officer by hiding between cars and biting an agent's thigh. Ramirez says that's not true.
RAMIREZ: As soon as I see him, I put my hands up. I'm like, I just want to live.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Ramirez says he was held in federal custody for five days before being released. Charges were dropped a month later.
An investigative report by ProPublica back in November found at least 170 Americans have been detained in immigration raids during the first nine months of 2025. More have been detained since. But this was just the beginning.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me see your hands. Turn around.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Call the police.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are the police.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:15:00]
JIMENEZ (voice-over): This is body camera video of immigration enforcement agents speeding through a South Side Chicago neighborhood. One agent says he's going to perform a PIT maneuver, a move to immobilize a vehicle. But --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Be advised, driver's not certified. Tell them. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm going to PIT -- (EXPLETIVE DELETED) it, bro.
(EXPLETIVE DELETED) it.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): The agents are the white SUV pursuing the red vehicle in front of them. Agents said they were pursuing two suspected undocumented immigrants, who they claimed hit one of their agents' vehicles. They chased at least one of the suspects on foot to a nearby store.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Get the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) out of here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What are you Nazi (EXPLETIVE DELETED) doing here in my (EXPLETIVE DELETED) neighborhood.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, stay back.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: With a gun in a store?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They assaulted an agent, ma'am.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: With a gun out?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Let me see your hands. Turn around. Turn around.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): They arrest the person they were chasing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Call the police.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are the police.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You are not the police.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's go. Get up.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): September 2025. The Trump administration launched Operation Midway Blitz, announced as targeting undocumented immigrants with criminal records.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's a citizen. He's a citizen.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): The first major flashpoint was just outside the city limits. ICE agents attempted to stop a vehicle and it ended in two gunshots.
The driver, Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, a 38-year-old undocumented Mexican immigrant, was killed. He only had driving and traffic offenses and didn't have a violent criminal record. The Department of Homeland Security claims the agent was hit by the car, dragged a significant distance, sustained multiple injuries, and was stabilized in the hospital before being released.
Fearing for his life, DHS said the officer used, quote, "appropriate force." Surveillance video didn't capture the shooting and the ICE agents weren't wearing body cameras.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You guys good? You guys good?
JIMENEZ (voice-over): But video from a local police officer's body camera shows the federal agent with a torn pants leg describing his injuries this way.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Left knee injury and some lacerations. Nothing major.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nothing major.
JIMENEZ: It happened really the week Operation Midway Blitz was officially announced, but it also marked the beginning of a new chapter here in the Chicago area filled with masked Border Patrol agents and a lot of protests and resistance from the local communities here.
(Voice-over): A lot of the consistent protests built here at this ICE detention facility just outside Chicago in Broadview, Illinois. At times getting contentious.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Don't touch me.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know, you're going to move out.
(CROSSTALK)
JIMENEZ (voice-over): By mid-October, as the frequency of seemingly random traffic stops from immigration enforcement grew, so did the anger in the community.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hey, hey, hey, hey.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): This was in the aftermath of that PIT maneuver scene. Local police responded over reports of a car accident.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And they're starting to -- they're starting to throw rocks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, they're starting --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm going to have to deploy gas. I'm going to deploy -- we got to worry about our safety.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, here, give us a minute to talk to them. And let's try to get you guys out of here.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): You see some of the objects being thrown.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (EXPLETIVE DELETED).
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Local police officers often caught in the middle without gas masks. Federal agents deploying tear gas to get out of protests became the norm.
GREG BOVINO, BORDER PATROL COMMANDER-AT-LARGE: If you need to deploy gas, deploy (EXPLETIVE DELETED) gas. JIMENEZ (voice-over): That was the voice of Border Patrol Commander
Gregory Bovino, who was now a familiar face in the city. A federal judge would later say that Bovino admitted he lied under oath about this very moment, falsely claiming he had been hit by a rock before deploying tear gas.
The city of Chicago and state of Illinois sued the federal government over the nature of the immigration enforcement presence in the city. It eventually prompted a 233-page ruling, where a district court judge called out many Operation Midway Blitz officers for use of excessive force and found that widespread misrepresentations call into question everything they say they've been doing in the Chicagoland area. She even called out agents in at least one case for using ChatGPT to create incident reports.
Over the course of Midway Blitz, many communities started forming their own watches.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get back or I'm shooting.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're going to what? You're going to (EXPLETIVE DELETED) shoot me? Hey.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): And blowing whistles at the sight of agents. Sometimes following agents in their vehicles honking their horns, which is how October 4th began.
[20:20:02]
MARIMAR MARTINEZ, SHOT 5 TIMES BY BORDER PATROL: So I started beeping my horn. As a Mexican-American, first generation USA citizen, I felt it was my responsibility to let my neighborhood know that ICE agents were near.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): They turned out to be Border Patrol. 30-year-old Montessori school teacher Marimar Martinez followed them for 20 minutes. Then the Department of Homeland Security claimed she rammed their agents vehicle with hers, prompting a Border Patrol agent to fire defensive shots.
MARTINEZ: So I was shot in my arm right here. And then they went through my triceps, and then it grazed the side of my chest.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): The day after she was shot, the Department of justice charged Martinez with forcibly assaulting and resisting or impeding an officer, as the Department of Homeland Security claimed Border Patrol agents were ambushed by domestic terrorists that rammed federal agents with their vehicles.
DHS has also claimed in a press release law enforcement officers were boxed in by 10 cars, and only when Martinez tried to run them over, that's when the officers fired.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Camera's on.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Body camera footage would contradict the narrative from federal officials. This is the video released four months after the shooting. A team of three Border Patrol agents is driving through a South Side Chicago neighborhood. Two have guns drawn and at least one with a finger on the trigger as Martinez honks her horn next to their vehicle.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do something, (EXPLETIVE DELETED).
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Another vehicle is behind the agents, also honking the horn.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. It's time to get aggressive and get the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) out because they're trying to box us in.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to make contact, and we're boxed in.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are boxed in.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Just before the moment of impact, it's Agent Charles Exum who sharply turns his steering wheel in the direction of Martinez.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. Out of the car.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Be advised, we've been struck. We've been struck.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get out.
JIMENEZ: Did you watch the body camera video?
MARTINEZ: I did watch it.
JIMENEZ: Yes?
MARTINEZ; I got emotional, right, when I heard the shots. I started to dream about it, too. And then when I wake up, I go look in the mirror, it's like, damn, like I'm all covered in bullet holes all over my body. And I'm still learning to like manage what really happened to me.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): In court testimony weeks after the shooting, the agent who shot her, Charles Exum, testified the collision was more of a hit, not rammed. Then prosecutors made the extraordinary move to drop their own case. But even after the criminal case was dismissed, the Department of Homeland Security continued to refer to Martinez as a domestic terrorist, prompting her in part to push the court to release the body camera video and other related messages like these.
An e-mail from Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino just hours after the incident offering to delay the retirement of Agent Exum who shot Martinez. "In light of your excellent service in Chicago, you have much left to do." A text from another agent read, "Good job, brother. You are a legend among agents. You better effing know that. Beers on me when I see you at training."
Exum wrote to colleagues, "I fired five rounds, and she had seven holes. Put that in your book, boys." In court, Exum tried to explain the text messages. "I take pride in my shooting skills," he said.
CHRIS PARENTE, ATTORNEY FOR MARIMAR MARTINEZ: We didn't ask for the release of these items until after Minneapolis because that was not her fight at that point.
JIMENEZ: So you seeing the video of Alex Pretti motivated you to get out the material for your own case?
MARTINEZ: Pretty much, yes.
JIMENEZ: Why?
MARTINEZ: I want people to see how they're being rewarded for their actions.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): On February 3rd, 2026, Marimar Martinez spoke at a congressional forum.
MARTINEZ: I am Renee Good. I am Alex Pretti. I am Silverio Villegas Gonzalez. They should all be here today.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): And later, she attended the State of the Union address as a guest of Congressman Jesus Chuy Garcia.
Why was it important for you to be here?
MARTINEZ: I'm advocating for my community, my immigrant community, the people that are living in silence, you know, that are in fear. You know? So I'm doing it for them. This is (speaking in foreign language).
JIMENEZ (voice-over): And this immigrant is still afraid, but she refuses to be silenced.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through text translation): The despair that one feels when telling this story. It's like living in hell.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:29:30]
JIMENEZ (voice-over): By the end of January, roughly two months into the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti were at the center of protests. And some organized to patrol, similar to the way demonstrators did in Chicago.
BEN LUMEN, VOLUNTEER: I should get on the call.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Neighborhood Signal chats started during the George Floyd era were repurposed to monitor ICE vehicles and activities.
B. LUMEN: This is Ben. Can I get a play check real quick?
JIMENEZ (voice-over): These brothers are teenagers. Ben and Sam Lumen were born in Minneapolis but live in Chicago, and were helping to observe and document ICE actions there when they heard Renee Good had been shot and killed by ICE.
[20:30:08]
SAM LUMEN, VOLUNTEER: We packed our bags and left the next day.
B. LUMEN: I think when people read the news, they see, oh, they were in L.A. and then Chicago, and now they're in Minneapolis. And they think it's kind of like the same level of operation in every single case. Minneapolis is so much worse.
S. LUMEN: There they go. There's ICE. There's lots more agents on the streets and much more aggression, too.
B. LUMEN: And then once they're identified, you usually follow them but at a distance. We're just going to document with our First Amendment right. In some cases, when they get out of their vehicle, if they're making an arrest, we start blowing our whistles. Let the neighbors know that they're there.
JIMENEZ: ICE has been here for a while. I mean --
BRIAN O'HARA, CHIEF, MINNEAPOLIS POLICE DEPARTMENT: Yes. As long as they have existed as a federal agency.
JIMENEZ: Yes. What has been so different about this particular operation and ICE's operations in the city?
O'HARA: It's the manner in which this enforcement is happening, but it's also some degree of enforcement that's happening that's not targeted and that is not preplanned beforehand.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): By early February prior rules of immigration enforcement no longer seem to apply. And that had many of the foreign born residents in the city on edge no matter their immigration status.
This mother and her 20-year-old son are originally from Venezuela. They have legal refugee status, which means they've been vetted by the federal government multiple times. They agreed to speak with us if we didn't show their faces or use their names.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through text translation): They took my son by deception.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): The mom says immigration officials showed up at her house several hours after her son got a speeding ticket, but they weren't afraid because of their legal status.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through text translation): The officer told him that there was no problem. They just wanted to take his fingerprints.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): An audio recording of the incident provided to us appears to confirm that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So we're just going to verify his fingerprints.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through text translation): They literally surrounded me. In less than 30 seconds and there were more than 10 cars.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): The son said he was taken to a holding facility.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through text translation): I went into another room. When I entered that room, the first thing I noticed was how filthy it was. All of the garbage was scattered all over the floor because they didn't have trash cans. When I approach to drink water, the toilet is there. The toilet was not clean. It was filled with excrement and stacked-up paper.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): The Department of Homeland Security denied that.
(Through text translation): Were you able to sleep when he wasn't here?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through text translation): No. Still no.
JIMENEZ (through text translation): You still cannot sleep?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through text translation): No.
JIMENEZ (through text translation): Why?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through text translation): I have nightmares.
JIMENEZ (through text translation): What do you think about?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through text translation): About not seeing him again. I wasn't going to cry, I'm sorry. The despair that one feels when telling this story, it's like living in hell.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): In the middle of the interview, a neighbor heard the crying and was concerned about one of our team member's black SUVs parked outside.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through text translation): Is there any problem?
UNIDENTIFIED CNN PHOTOGRAPHER (through text translation): No, no. We're only doing a report.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Our photographer reassures him we're just doing an interview.
UNIDENTIFIED CNN PHOTOGRAPHER (through text translation): We are doing a report. We are with the news.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through text translation): We are still scared. Calm down, neighbor. Nothing is going to happen.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): She's among the many in the area who have been scared to leave their homes.
Danny Hernandez owns a set of Latino grocery stores in the area. We met up with him at a newly empty La Plaza Mexico in South Minneapolis. He comes here often. DANNY HERNANDEZ: There is three big communities in Minnesota that are
foreign, Hmong, Somalis, and Latinos, and the three are suffering dearly right now. As you can see, their businesses that are completely closed.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): A local Latino business organization estimated that nearly half of the Hispanic owned businesses around Minneapolis had to at least temporarily close because customers or workers or both were afraid to show up. Businesses like those of Gladys Ramos Benitez. She says she's a permanent resident from Peru.
GLADYS RAMOS BENITEZ, PERMANENT RESIDENT OF MINNEAPOLIS (through text translation): It's all closed. It's all empty.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): She came up to us in tears as we toured the market in early February.
RAMOS BENITEZ (through text translation): My nerves cannot handle it anymore. My anxiety is killing me. I can't sleep.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): At almost 70 years old, she hasn't made enough money to pay the mortgage on her house for two months, she told us.
RAMOS BENITEZ (through text translation): Go for the scammers. Go for the thieves, but not us. We pay taxes. We support the United States.
JIMENEZ (through text translation): What was more difficult, COVID or this?
RAMOS BENITEZ (through text translation): This, sir. This. With COVID, people would mask up and come. But with this we can't because as you are leaving they are grabbing you. Pulling, punching, killing. American against American. I'm sorry.
[20:35:03]
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Since this visit, she says she had to close one of her stores. Next to that location is a Somali vendor.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I never see like this. I don't know. I don't know.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): She's a naturalized American citizen and has been in the U.S. nearly 35 years.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My community clearly they are scared because President Donald Trump, he said, we are garbage. He can take the crown people but not all Somali community. We're scared, especially my neighbor, my house neighbor, it's Latino. They don't have the paper. They hunger, and we help a couple of days. I can't help, even I don't have food. I don't sell nothing. And it's horrible.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Many of the immigrants and citizens of Minneapolis, a progressive city like Los Angeles and Chicago, viewed the crackdown in part as a political attack.
Is any part of it meant to send a form of political message?
J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're trying to enforce the law. Look, I don't need Tim Walz or Jacob Frey or anybody else to come out and say that they agree with J.D. Vance or Donald Trump on immigration. What I do need them to do is empower their local officials to help our federal officials out in a way where this can be a little bit less chaotic.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get back, get back.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Within a few days of our visit to the mall, the immigration operation in Minneapolis got new leadership, and the government announced it would begin scaling down. Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino was out. White House border czar Tom Homan was in.
SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: I've spoken to many, many community members and community leaders, and you have called this a great success. That is not how they see it.
HOMAN: I never expected the politicians to call it a great success or give President Trump a win. But bottom line, the streets of Minneapolis, the streets of Minnesota are safer today because we are working with an unprecedented number of sheriffs in the state that will call us before they release a public safety threat to the street.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Border czar Tom Homan has said about 70 percent of the people ICE detains are criminals, but he appears to be including those with pending charges and those with convictions, which could include minor offenses like traffic violations. The Minnesota attorney general found that 77 percent of the roughly 4,000 immigrants detained around Minnesota had no criminal convictions, which is in line with what an organization affiliated with Syracuse University found that 74 percent of people held in ICE detention nationally, through January not just in Minnesota, have no criminal convictions.
Regardless of whether Minneapolis was a, quote, "success," the Trump administration plan seems to be having the desired effect on at least one aspect of enforcement.
I went to Mexico to see what impact this year's tactics are having on border crossings.
(Through text translation): But it's not like before?
DALIA SANCHEZ, DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS (through text translation): It's not like before.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:42:53]
JIMENEZ: As we head to the actual border area, we've been told to expect checkpoints, some official, some not so official. And we were told that we shouldn't be drawing any extra attention to ourselves. (Voice-over): This is an area that's seen documented cartel activity
often tied to the flow of migrants. We're heading to the Suchiate River, separating Southern Mexico and Guatemala. It's typically been a major transit point for migrants, in many cases illegally, on their way north to the U.S.-Mexico border.
This was 2023 some days. The river was often full of migrants on makeshift rafts, hoping to continue their journey. In 2026, many of those same types of rafts sit empty or handle everyday commerce. Those who run them remember what it used to be like.
(Through text translation): You were working here in 2023?
DILSON ISAI LOPEZ BARRIAS, MEXICAN CITIZEN (through text translation): Yes, 2023.
JIMENEZ (through text translation): And what did you see here that year?
LOPEZ BARRIAS (through text translation): This was when all the migrants passed by. When the migrant caravans passed by. The whole place was full of just migrants.
JIMENEZ: Wow.
DANIEL LOPEZ, MEXICAN CITIZEN (through text translation): You would see around 500 people crossing per day previously.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): They say they started to notice a difference in the months after President Trump was inaugurated, not just because people were afraid of being turned away at the U.S. border, they were also afraid of what could happen if they did cross over.
(Through text translation): What do you hear about what's going on in the United States?
LOPEZ (through text translation): The truth is, a lot of people complain they're scared of going out on the streets there, where ICE might grab them. I've seen videos on TikTok.
SANCHEZ (through text translation): This is the dynamic. Very few people.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Doctors Without Borders is an international organization that provides care for people in crisis. They had a clinic on the Mexican side of the border with Guatemala. Dalia Sanchez is their base director.
SANCHEZ (through text translation): It's not like it was before. And if you see, there are many people who come from Guatemala or people from Mexico who go through to do some kind of errands, some commercial procedures, buy goods.
[20:45:03]
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Not the migrants with plans to head further north. So they closed the clinic here and centered at this community center in the nearby city of Tapachula. The migrants who made it this far previously used this city as a checkpoint. Now it's more of a dead end.
Essentially, they're making contact with these migrants to try to get a sense for what they need medically, also psychologically as well.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through text translation): Are you up to date with vaccinations?
SANCHEZ (through text translation): Most people are currently doing this asylum application process.
JIMENEZ (through text translation): Asylum in Mexico.
SANCHEZ (through text translation): Yes. It's something a little forced by the conditions specific to the immigration policies of the United States. So what people have done is try to find some places in the periphery to live.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): People like Cecilia Zouk. She came from Guatemala with her husband and two kids. She tried to get to the United States and even had an asylum application appointment scheduled through the Customs and Border Protection app. Days into the new Trump administration, she says her application was canceled.
CECILIA ZOUK, ASYLUM APPLICANT (through text translation): It had been like 15 days since I did the application when it was removed.
JIMENEZ (through text translation): And right now do you still want to go to the United States?
ZOUK (through text translation): We're waiting for that president to go.
JIMENEZ (through text translation): After that?
ZOUK (through text translation): After that we'll try.
JIMENEZ (through text translation): Not before.
ZOUK (through text translation): Not before. A dream of mine, when I leave my country, is to do something with my children and I don't plant o return until I succeed.
JIMENEZ (through text translation): And why? Why can't you do it in Guatemala?
ZOUK (through text translation): Well, because there is a great shortage of work.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): For now, she and her husband run this store next to a shelter that helps migrants. Previously, the Biden administration expanded the CBP One mobile app so migrants could schedule appointments at ports of entry to request asylum. But the Trump administration stopped processing thousands of asylum appointments previously made through the CBP One app.
OLGA SANCHEZ MARTINEZ, RUNS A MIGRANT SHELTER (through text translation): Everyone got on because like everyone else ha a cell phone and realize it. Oh, the crying. Well, they lost entry to the United States.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Olga Sanchez Martinez runs a Tapachula migrant shelter that is now almost empty.
Wow. OK.
(through text translation): This is a big space here.
SANCHEZ MARTINEZ (through text translation): Which was previously kept full. 100 people who used to live here crammed together.
JIMENEZ (through text translation): Now there's no one. It's empty.
SANCHEZ MARTINEZ (through text translation): Now there's no one. It's empty. Most of the people returned. One day 200 left.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): In late 2024, the U.N. surveyed migrants across five Mexican cities. 73 percent told them the U.S. was their final destination. In late 2025, that number was down to 28 percent of the hundreds they surveyed.
A lot of people are going to look at these results and say, hey, this is exactly what they voted for. They're staying here and not coming to the United States. But the question is, where are these migrants going?
(Voice-over): The conditions many fled haven't just changed. For example, the United Nations estimates the displaced population in Haiti jumped over 20 percent in 2025. And Venezuela's population in need of international protection as assessed by the U.N. is at its highest level in years. But for now, over 1,000 miles north at the U.S.-Mexico border, there are real results.
Even though border encounters fell sharply during the last year of the Biden administration, 2025 saw the fewest of them since 1970. And for the first time in decades, the United States had a negative net migration in 2025, meaning more people left the U.S. than entered it.
For now, it seems the Trump administration's policies and tactics are having the desired effect on this aspect of immigration enforcement.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I do appreciate the federal government cracking on the border.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): But this father's journey is more complicated than that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is your expectation for killing two teenagers, right?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [20:53:05]
JIMENEZ: How old was he when he passed?
PAUL OSOKIN, SON KILLED IN CAR ACCIDENT: Nineteen.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Nikolai Osokin, nicknamed Koli, was a table tennis phenom.
2017 U.S. Open, USA table tennis.
OSOKIN: Yes.
JIMENEZ: Wow.
(Voice-over): He loved guitar and complicated math problems. On November 13th, 2021, Nikolai and his girlfriend, Anya Varfolomeyevka, were driving near Seal Beach outside Los Angeles when they were killed by a drunk driver. That's all Paul Osokin knew at the time. He remembers the police knocking at his door.
OSOKIN: Then it's like when realization came to you, how are you going to tell your wife? How are you going to tell your daughter? How you're going to tell everybody? Man, that was horrible.
JIMENEZ: When did you find out that the person who was driving the vehicle that killed your son and his girlfriend was not in the country legally and had been deported previous times as well?
OSOKIN: We find out that years later.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): The driver was a Mexican national who had twice been deported before crossing back into the U.S. in 2016 and 2018. In 2025, the man, sentenced to 10 years in prison, was getting out in less than four in part tied to good behavior. On that front, Osokin is upset at the state of California.
OSOKIN: If you're given a 10-year sentence, what is your expectation for killing two teenagers?
JIMENEZ (voice-over): The federal government then charged the driver with entering the U.S. illegally.
OSOKIN: I'm an immigrant myself. I came here from a Russia, Soviet Union. And I don't blame the other people want the same life, but I don't want criminals to cross the border.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): In January, the driver was sentenced to four more years in prison.
He could be deported afterwards.
[20:55:01]
Do you worry that he could end up coming back to the United States?
OSOKIN: I'm trying not to think about it. I'm trying to move on with my life. And it's extremely difficult after losing your son.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): This has been his focus as of late, a memorial for Nikolai and Anya in Northern California. He says, the foundation includes pieces of his son's old trophies. His son's story is one of many. Victim to a crime carried out by someone without legal status. Their grim reality is the Trump administration is usually quick to highlight.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The scourge of illegal immigration.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): But it's not the norm. As a whole, immigrants, both those in the U.S. legally and illegally are incarcerated at a much lesser rate than American born citizens. Even still, President Trump and his administration repeatedly say that tough immigration policy directly means less violent crime.
HOMAN: A secure border saves lives.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): It is true that Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis all saw double-digit drops in homicides in 2025, but all of these cities were already seeing decreases well before these immigration enforcement operations began.
LOWEREE: I think you would be hard pressed to find people that live in the affected communities that would tell you that they feel any safer given the administration's actions.
O'HARA: If we have a large portion of the community that's afraid to talk to us because they think we might turn somebody over or send some information to immigration authorities, it's detrimental to everyone's public safety.
JIMENEZ: But do you worry that what we've seen to this point in the year will affect some of the progress you all have been able to make in driving down violent crime here?
O'HARA: The progress that we have made the last few years is very fragile. My concern, specifically for the police department, is that we would have a repeat of the pattern that happened in 2020, just an exodus of police officers at a time that we just -- we can't afford it.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): The tensions in Minneapolis have changed since early February, when border czar Tom Homan began shifting emphasis away from those roving crackdowns.
O'HARA: He has said he's going to ensure that targeted enforcement actually happens here.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): We invited Tom Homan to sit for an interview as part of this documentary. The White House declined to make him available.
Immigration is an issue the president was popular with when he was last elected, but his polling on the issue hit new lows in early 2026, and multiple Reuters-Ipsos polls showing a majority believe ICE agents went too far. In March, members of Congress questioned Kristi Noem about the behavior of some immigration enforcement agents.
SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): Marimar Martinez is with us today as well. She almost bled to death.
NOEM: Sir, I don't know the situation or the case. I'll look into it.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): But Noem did post about the shooting the day it happened. Not long after this hearing, President Trump removed her as DHS secretary. She was facing criticism on multiple fronts leading up to the decision.
Gregory Bovino started telling people he plans to retire, sources say. And Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin was confirmed as Noem's replacement in late March. And with that, a new chapter of enforcement begins.
The Minneapolis market we saw as a ghost town in February is slowly starting to come back.
You still believe in America?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, I believe. Yes. This guy, he will be gone.
B. LUMEN: I don't know how I see America right now. It's sad because I know there's so many people out there that if they only saw it in person, they would jump into action.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): Aliyah Rahman of Minneapolis was born in the United States but spent much of her childhood in her father's Bangladesh.
RAHMAN: If you have a vision that the country is operating as the fair and just democracy it has always tried to create an image of for itself, that is not happening now.
MARTINEZ: It's not America's fault what's happening. It's the people running this country. Because at the end of the day, it is a country of immigrants built by immigrants.
LOPEZ ALVARDO: There's still so many opportunities. But right now, I feel like it isn't the America I know and love.
JIMENEZ (voice-over): But even in the pain for Carey Lopez --
Big smile.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my goodness. There she is. There she is.
JIMENEZ: Hi.
(Voice-over): She still has hope.
What kind of America do you want for her? LOPEZ ALVARADO: I want the America that I remember, the one where
everything seemed bright, where everyone -- you're not scared to be who you are.
JIMENEZ: I really appreciate you taking the time, Cary. Kaylani, you did great.
(Through text translation): What do you speak more, Spanish or English?
I should have asked -- yes, I should have asked her about that. You're right.
(Voice-over): It's a new life unaware of the chaos that began it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
