Liam Ramos, Kid Prisons, and ICE Flights (Half the Answer #76, with Gillian Brockell)

Delta Airlines brought Liam Ramos back from the child prison in Texas, but they don't seem to want to talk about how they took him there in the first place. Trent and Caitlin debrief with Gillian Brockell about the current status of ICE flights, the fate of the boy in the bunny hat, and the way journalists credit each other (and also sometimes don't) when they rely on each other's reporting.

Half the Answer can be heard on Spotify, on Apple, on YouTube, on Amazon, and elsewhere via its RSS feed.

Resources:

https://gillianbrockell.com

https://bsky.app/profile/gillianbrockell.com

Uzbek deportation story https://newsletter.mariannedhenin.com/asylum-seeker-deported-after-suicide-attempt-in-ice-jail-advocates-say/

Video proves Delta flew Liam to Dilley https://gillianbrockell.com/video-proves-delta-flew-liam-ramos-and-his-dad-to-ice-detention-center/

Independent version:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/delta-air-lines-liam-ramos-ice-texas-b2940372.html

AP version https://apnews.com/article/liam-ramos-video-ice-delta-commercial-flight-7b0ed36899da68177a6fdd665fb8a205

Liam Conejo Ramos judge rejects asylum claim https://www.npr.org/2026/03/20/nx-s1-5753981/liam-conejo-ramos-family-fights-immigration-judges-ruling-to-deport-them-to-ecuador

Kristi Noem F**K Jet details https://gillianbrockell.com/noems-luxury-d-jet-for-deportations-is-the-tip-of-the-ice-berg/

The War Zone coverage https://www.twz.com/news-features/new-dhs-gulfstream-jet-now-flying-secretary-noem

Careless People https://bookshop.org/p/books/careless-people-a-cautionary-tale-of-power-greed-and-lost-idealism-sarah-wynn-williams/804251bb5d4b06b3?ean=9781250391230&next=t

New Hampshire blizzard flight grounded https://gillianbrockell.com/breaking-shackled-migrants-trapped-on-deportation-plane-stuck-in-blizzard/

More on NH flight https://gillianbrockell.com/ice-deportation-flight-leaves-nh-after-31-hours-exposes-chronic-problems/

Seth Miller digging into the NH flight https://bsky.app/profile/wandrme.paxex.aero/post/3mfkamntcws24?ref=gillianbrockell.com

Ms. Rachel is getting it done https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/03/ms-rachel-ice-dilley-detention-center-accurso/

Send tips or request flight info for legal clients to Signal @gbrockell.44

Transcript

**Trent R. Nelson [00:00:31]**
Well, happy days are here again. Well, that's hopeful, isn't it? This is Half the Answer. Well, you know that understanding a question is half the answer. And this is, of course, Trent R. Nelson, but he is just one of your co-hosts. We also have the marvelous Caitlin M. Green. M actually stands for marvelous. Not a lot of people know it. And well, ridiculous. Well, I am a writer and editor, philosophizer, historicizer, so many other things I got in size just too. Well, Caitlin, she is a mom, she is a linguist, she is a writer and editor. I think she's really, really smart, but she doesn't like when I say stuff like that too much. Well, Caitlin, it's been such a pleasure to do our program each and every week, and I suspect this week will be no different. Who have you brought for us and what are we chatting about today?

**Gillian Brockell [00:00:55]**
What does the R stand for in Trent R. Nelson? I was gonna say...

**Caitlin M. Green [00:01:00]**
Well, Trent, we've got Gillian Brockell, who is a former Washington Post staff writer, former flight attendant, former guest of the show. Welcome back for your third time. She is, of course, known for tracking ICE flights with amazing detail and documentation and talking about third country removals and all of those private jets owned by billionaires that are getting used to just shuffle people around. She makes me cry every time. Let's try not to do that this time. I don't know. Maybe we'll succeed. It's gonna get bad again. Oh no, it's true. Yeah, I'm fucked. I didn't put on eyeliner today just to try to preserve my face a little bit, so we'll see how we go.

Yeah, but hey, my spirits are a little high because we just had the No Kings Part Three march, and because it is a march in March in Portland, I got to see the beautiful blossoms on the trees on the waterfront parkway. It's so, so nice to walk under there. My girls were dressed up like princesses. We did a "Princesses, Not Kings" float with our wagon, and the petals were coming down over them, and they were like twirling and frolicking. And it was very beautiful. So we had a very enriching and nourishing weekend. Yeah, exactly. Just princesses everywhere. I told them that I met a real princess once, and they were like, they're still seething with jealousy. They're like, "What do you mean you met a princess?" I met a princess of Sweden while I was singing with the University of Washington Chorale, because we did an event at the Scandinavian Cultural Center.

**Gillian Brockell [00:02:07]**
Oh, I don't know, man, we're going to be talking about kids and detention centers, so get your Kleenex ready.

**Trent R. Nelson [00:02:13]**
Yeah.

**Trent R. Nelson [00:02:22]**
Me neither.

**Gillian Brockell [00:02:30]**
Thank you.

**Gillian Brockell [00:03:00]**
In the world we want. Yeah.

**Gillian Brockell [00:03:13]**
Who's the real princess you met? Oh.

**Gillian Brockell [00:03:27]**
Oh, my stepdad had a cousin who worked for the king of Sweden's horses. He maintained the horses. So I don't think my stepdad ever met the king, but I think he met the king's horses, just very much a metaphor for my class of people.

**Trent R. Nelson [00:03:32]**
Okay, so I come in third on this list. I met Tony Hsieh's llamas once. Yeah, I made pizza for him. It's a -- we'll get into it in another episode.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:03:38]**
That's amazing. Yeah. That's better, honestly. Yeah, so I have a much worse version of that, which is that I once took care of Mark Zuckerberg's dog, which -- I would rather hang out with the dog than Mark Zuckerberg. So I feel like I got the good end of that deal.

**Gillian Brockell [00:03:57]**
Yeah, any day, yeah. Yeah.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:04:13]**
That's amazing.

**Gillian Brockell [00:04:25]**
Yeah.

**Gillian Brockell [00:04:33]**
Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, please do.

So first, before we talk about Liam, I just want to make it clear that children are being put on the deportation planes with the shackled people. It is my understanding from talking to Omni flight attendants that on these planes, if the children have two parents, one of the parents has to be shackled, and it's usually the father during the whole flight. So we're going to talk about what's going on with Liam, which is slightly less horrible, and I just want to make sure to make clear that I'm not giving the Trump administration any sort of credit of being humanitarians, because they are still putting children on planes and shackling their parents.

So there's this amazing activist named Nick Benson, and he -- I don't think he really started out as an activist. He became one. He lives in Minnesota. He's an aviation geek and avgeek. He has an app for spotting cool airplanes. And he's deep, deep in the avgeek community. So about six months ago, I believe, he found out about these ICE flights that we've talked about -- the charter aircraft coming to Minneapolis and picking up people who'd been captured and flying them down to detention centers. And he started tracking them. He's also way better at spreadsheets than I am, so he's got his own spreadsheets.

So then, when Operation Metro Surge started, he ended up watching these flights every day. He'd go to a parking garage at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and watch how many shackled people were being loaded on. And started keeping track of everything. He also started -- and this is just on his own time -- he also started going to the open commission meetings, like the state commission that owns the airport, just going and testifying and being like, "This messed up stuff is happening at the airport. Why aren't we doing anything about it?" And he was doing that months ago, before being connected with any other activists doing this in any other cities or knowing about my reporting.

So we met just in the course of that, and in January, when -- I believe it was January 20 -- when Liam Ramos was first captured and allegedly used as bait to try and catch his mother, who was pregnant. And then he was captured with his father coming home from school, and the next day, I said, "Oh, they're at the Dilley detention center just outside San Antonio, Texas." And Nick went, "Wait. I didn't see a little kid getting on the plane yesterday. In fact, I haven't seen any little kids."

And so it started trickling out that kids are being sent to Dilley. Kids are being captured during the occupation in Minneapolis as well. And he didn't see any of them on the charter planes. So he wanted to figure out why. And so he basically figured out, using all the fun aviation geek tools that we have, that the only plane that went between Minneapolis and San Antonio, which is the nearest airport, in that time was a Delta flight. And so he started publicly saying, asking Delta, "Hey, did you fly them down there? Hello?" No response.

And then when they were released, 10 or 11 days later, we all saw the pictures that Joaquin Castro posted of Liam in the detention center when he was clearly sick.

**Gillian Brockell [00:09:08]**
And he was released. The judge said this was unconstitutional. There was no reason to detain him or his father. They're from Ecuador, and they had a valid asylum claim. They were legally allowed to be here. There was absolutely no reason to capture them. They were released. And then we saw these viral videos of Liam and his father being flown home and getting a tour of the flight deck from the pilot. And that was a Delta flight.

And there's all these people in the comments going, "Thank you, Delta, for having a heart and being human and being so nice to Liam." And at this point, I was talking regularly with Nick, so both Nick and I were kind of like, "Yeah, maybe the pilot feels bad, since his airline also took Liam down there, probably."

And then Nick, God bless him, he filed a FOIA with the airport commission for all of the video, because Nick was able to figure out what gate that Delta flight went out of. He filed for all of the video footage for that gate and the gates around it, the ramp. And a couple weeks ago, he got all of the video and looked at it, and what did he see but Liam Ramos and his father with three escort, federal agent-looking people in plain clothes, just walking through the airport and boarding unshackled. But the escorts are sort of around him the whole time, and they walk to the gate, they sit in a corner. The agents or escorts do all of the checking in and getting the tickets. One of them is standing in front -- well, when they're walking up to the gate, one of the escorts is holding Liam's hand, which, if I were Liam's father, I would just be livid.

And yeah, so they get in line, and basically, then the two other agents are standing behind Liam's dad, and then they just board in the regular line. They don't even pre-board, like law enforcement officers did sometimes when I was a flight attendant. They just stand in the regular line and get on the plane.

And so that was proof -- yeah, Delta flew them down. And so I think for a couple of weeks, Nick was trying to work with some major media outlets to get the story out there, and I was aware of it and I fully supported it. I was ready to write a follow-up story, but I understood that they would want to get as much attention as they could, and my little newsletter might not do it.

And it's my understanding that the major media outlets were kind of like, "Huh, what is this?" They didn't get it. And so Nick came to me, and I wrote the story and published it a couple weeks ago now, and it's by far the biggest story that I've done on this beat. And Delta -- I asked Delta for comment, and they have this sort of generalized mamby-pamby sort of answer of just like, "Yeah, lots of airlines book federal workers through travel agencies and aren't really aware of who's on board at the time of booking." Not answering any questions about, like, what about the gate agents? The gate agents knew, right?

**Caitlin M. Green [00:11:31]**
That's absurd.

**Gillian Brockell [00:13:42]**
And to be clear, I'm not trying to blame the gate agents for not doing anything. They're not unionized. They have no power. It's not fair to put a billion-dollar company's actions on them and expect them to be the people to stop it right then and there, although I will say that as a flight attendant, you get training every year on how to spot human trafficking, and that training comes from DHS, like the Blue Campaign. And the things that DHS says to look for are a lot of the things that these federal agents were doing to board Liam and his dad.

But you can see in the surveillance video that nobody else around, none of the other passengers, are aware of what's going on. And I don't know that I would have been either, even with aviation experience. I just don't think I would have noticed. And they're sort of relying on the social pressure -- the desire to protect your child from being traumatized is why they're letting parents do this -- of like, you can't make a scene, otherwise your child is going to see something horrible.

And yeah, so I asked them, "Well, how many other kids? Did all the kids that were captured in Minneapolis -- did they all take Delta to Dilley?" No comment on that. And in the same email where they gave me this sort of general answer and then didn't answer my actual questions, they're like, "Oh, and we also just want to highlight that Liam came back on our flight too, and ABC News covered it." It's like, that didn't make you look good, you guys. The fact that you're not -- first of all, I already said that in the story -- how weird. They were fine with all of this attention but wouldn't acknowledge another flight. And then they did it again in their emailed response to me, which was just incredible.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:15:56]**
Right, the attention for the other flight? Yeah.

**Gillian Brockell [00:16:13]**
Right, right, yeah, right, right, right. Right.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:16:08]**
I love it. It's like, "White people also ended slavery, so I don't know why you're so --" Or like, "Men did give women the vote, so you should really be thanking us." "We flew him back from the family prison that we took him to. So you're welcome, everybody. He got to sit in the cockpit. Wasn't that so nice? Remember that picture? So cute?" Right? Yeah.

**Gillian Brockell [00:16:25]**
Yeah, you're welcome, everybody. Yeah, we gave him wings. We gave him little plastic wings. It's fine. It's fine. Yeah, right, yeah.

**Trent R. Nelson [00:16:34]**
Yeah, he's already been traumatized. I mean, we talk about the implication, right? To use an Always Sunny-ism, right? The implication of like, if you act out, then your kid is gonna see something horrible. Well, once they get down to Dilley, right? Now, it's -- I can only imagine. I mean, the years of psychology, psychiatric help will hopefully help, but that is real trauma that I think that many of us can only imagine seeing.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:16:47]**
All kinds of stuff could happen.

**Gillian Brockell [00:17:07]**
Yeah, and that is happening specifically to Liam too. I reached out to their attorneys for the story. They didn't respond. And I totally understand, like, they just want to continue living their lives. They don't want the attention that they were thrust into. But the attorneys have said previously that Liam is traumatized from what he experienced at the detention center. The conditions there are horrifying. People are not being given enough food, and the food that they're being given is infested with worms. I mean, it's just absolutely vile. And he was separated from his mother.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:17:44]**
It's unsafe to eat. Yeah.

**Trent R. Nelson [00:17:50]**
So we're gonna have to do a really thorough job of remembering every single corporation and company that is doing this, because in a capitalist society, yeah, it has to be.

**Gillian Brockell [00:18:02]**
Yeah. That's basically my mission. It's like, if you participated -- the companies, to me, are the most revolting, because they have power. They're not in the federal government. They can control their companies. They don't have to participate. They are choosing to do so.

**Trent R. Nelson [00:18:30]**
No, Gillian, they are but little boats on the sea of the market that brings us back and forth, and the fiduciary responsibility to send children to prison camps -- well, we wouldn't want to disappoint our shareholders.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:18:40]**
That's right. It's actually the invisible hand that's doing everything. It's not people. People are not doing anything. It's a hand. It's a big hand that comes out of the sky, and it is the markets, and it's doing it all. And we should just yell at that hand. Yeah. Or, like, the Monty Python foot that just -- so it's really not right to be mean to these small bean CEOs.

**Gillian Brockell [00:18:48]**
Oh.

**Gillian Brockell [00:19:09]**
Yeah, poor Ed Bastian, yeah.

**Trent R. Nelson [00:19:04]**
We have to hold them all accountable. We have to hold them all accountable. We have to stop participating. We have to stop purchasing whatever they're selling, whatever service they're providing. They have to suffer from us, because, as you just noted, Gillian, they actually should be representing our culture and society by pushing back on these things with their power. But by not doing so, it forces our hand to say, well, they're not. No Delta flights, no Target, right? Whatever the case may be. We're not doing it, because the children and the people are more important than little fidget spinners.

**Gillian Brockell [00:19:46]**
Right, and the excuses are not valid either. And one of the things I pointed out in my story is that airlines do have the power to not do this. So in 2018 or 2019, during the first Trump administration, when they were separating children from their families, there was a flight attendant who posted something to social media saying, "I'm disgusted. There were 16 unaccompanied children in the custody of the Trump administration on my red-eye flight last night," I believe it was from Arizona to Florida, "and these kids were traumatized and sad, and I can't believe my airline is doing this."

This post went viral, and a couple of the airlines got together within quite quickly, within a couple of days, and said, "We didn't know this was happening, but we're not letting the government do it anymore. It's not going to happen again." And it was within a couple of days of that that the Trump administration announced that it was going to stop doing the family separation -- 100% because of the social and economic pressure.

And literally hours or the next day after the Trump administration announced it, that's when Delta signed the letter. They said, "Yeah, we're not going to do it on our airline either" -- after it had already stopped.

And Nick said in my story, and I agree, he's like, "I don't think it's a coincidence that there hasn't been any whistleblowing about this from the biggest airline that isn't unionized." The pilots at Delta are unionized, but that's about it. And so even if there are flight attendants that did notice what was happening, or gate agents that did realize what was happening, they have no way to ring any alarms without losing their jobs.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:22:07]**
It is wild how poor the labor conditions are for flight attendants. It is really out of control. And those are the people that are supposed to help save your life in an emergency. Where, like, their pay -- what is it? Their pay doesn't start until the doors close.

**Gillian Brockell [00:22:24]**
Yeah, you're not paid during boarding. You're only paid from the time that the door is closed until it opens again.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:22:30]**
That is labor. They're doing work. They're doing unpaid work there. That's out of control. Doing lots of work, and actually some of the more annoying work, because it's like managing all the people who are like -- herding cats on the plane. Like, "I'm sorry, ma'am, your bag simply doesn't fit there." "Oh, hey, that's not your seat." All of this crazy stuff where you're like, "I understand that you don't want to sit next to that person, but unfortunately, that's the seat you've been assigned." "Ma'am, please. Ma'am, excuse me." And that's all unpaid. That's just volunteer work, as far as they're concerned. They're just earning their way to the door close and the paycheck begins. Oh my gosh.

**Trent R. Nelson [00:22:35]**
I see them. I see them doing it. I'm watching them. They're saying hi.

**Gillian Brockell [00:22:45]**
Yeah. I mean, it's often the hardest part of the job is the boarding process, yeah.

**Trent R. Nelson [00:22:56]**
Sir, sir, sir, sir. There is a diagram that illustrates how you should put your bag into this orifice, please, please.

**Gillian Brockell [00:23:11]**
Yeah, just warms my heart to play Tetris with people's roller boards. Yeah.

Anyway, so that was the Liam Ramos story. And I think it's actually really important, because something that the activists like Tom Cartwright, who have been tracking ICE flights for many years -- something that they've always said is, "We know that there are people being deported or shuffled to detention centers on domestic flights as ticketed passengers, but we have absolutely no insight into that, into what that looks like, how frequently it's happening." Because most of what we do is based on tracking specific aircraft. There's just no insight into that.

And so this really is the first time that we can see what that looks like -- to have these escorts in plain clothes, sort of subtly surrounding the detained people and playing it off like they're any old passengers. And the passengers -- right? Well, I should say two of the three escorts were women, yeah, so, sure -- of all different races and, yeah, a rainbow family.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:24:38]**
We're just a family of four -- men, one five-year-old -- on our way on our vacation. Okay, so it could be just a bunch of aunties and uncles. Yeah, it's really -- so please.

It's really interesting, the degree to which Delta was desperate to not give any more insight, right? When asked about it, where they were like, "Well, sometimes people use travel agents and so then we don't really know." And they're not even saying that that's what happened with Liam. They're just like, "That's just a thing that exists. Nope. Have you thought of this other thing that sometimes happens?" "Yeah, okay, so, but today, you put a little boy on a flight to a kid prison where they give them food that makes them sick and traumatize them. And can you tell me about that?" And they're like, "A fun thing about travel is --" No, guys.

**Trent R. Nelson [00:24:55]**
Yeah, well, we're a multicultural society.

**Gillian Brockell [00:25:17]**
Right? They didn't say, "We didn't know, and now we do," or "We didn't know at the time, and then we checked later." No, they're saying, "All airlines do stuff with travel agencies." That's it.

**Gillian Brockell [00:25:45]**
Yeah. So now that you do know -- well, and the other thing too is that they're using this City Pairs program. That's what federal workers use a lot to book their flights. That's the "travel agency," right? And it's like, so, are minors usually booked as federal workers or as doing federal travel? Is that a normal thing that wouldn't ring any alarms, that a five-year-old was booked as doing federal travel? That didn't jump out at anybody? Does that happen a lot? No answers.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:26:25]**
Yeah, no, because there's no answer to that that's not damning, right? Ultimately, they're gonna continue to pretend you didn't ask that.

**Trent R. Nelson [00:26:34]**
As you noted, Gillian, this is one of our first opportunities to see what this looks like. And as you also noted, it looks like human trafficking, and that's because it is human trafficking. And of course, the words "kid prison" make the host of this program, the hosts of this program, remarkably angry. Anybody who's working in a child prison -- they should be moved to an island, at the very least, where they get to live alone forever, because a child prison -- these children -- I can't even rant. That's how angry I am.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:27:15]**
Right, and by all accounts, the people working in the child prison are loving the chance to be evil to children. These reports that come out where you're like, that sounds like it's from a particularly frightening storybook. That is a Roald Dahl. We were talking about Roald Dahl before -- that is a Trunchbull with the chokey-ass behavior, that, like, we used to soothe ourselves by saying, "Real people don't behave this way. Real people wouldn't look at a child and go, 'I can't wait to damage that person's body and mind.'" And yet, here we are.

**Gillian Brockell [00:27:54]**
Yeah, and I would just say there's a large segment of our society that have been raised to think of children as property. So if you think of a child as the parent's property, instead of the parents being stewards of these little humans, then it's a pretty small leap to putting the property in a facility, right? If you think that a parent should have 100% ultimate power over their child, then you can just sort of transfer that 100% absolute power -- custody -- to the state.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:28:43]**
Yeah, it's actually so easy to go from "a child is a parent's property" to "that parent is an illegal alien and gross and shouldn't actually be allowed to control that property. So we, the state, will take it over." And so, yeah, and actually we have the right to do whatever we want to that thing, because it now belongs to us because its previous owner was incompetent.

**Trent R. Nelson [00:29:02]**
Well, even beyond this, we see historically in fascist societies that the children, very much as Plato suggests, the children get taken by the state to some degree, right? The children become indoctrinated because the parents aren't really to be trusted yet. And so yeah, there's no fantastic leap from "parents control children" to "we control everyone" to "we control children."

**Caitlin M. Green [00:29:35]**
And that's another good point, because these are the children of the undesirables, right? These are the children of the Untermensch that we can just do whatever we want to because also they're gross and they don't matter anyway. But don't think for a second, as white born citizens of the United States, that that same mentality won't extend to something like indoctrination schools for your children, and summer camps where they learn how to be good agents of the state. That is actually part of the same logic.

**Gillian Brockell [00:30:07]**
100%. I mean, I think it's actually even a little different, or worse, than -- if you talk about Native American boarding schools, where they had this sort of mentality of -- pardon this horrible expression, but "kill the Indian, save the child," right? That was the whole concept. And that horrifying ethnic cleansing program -- that is still thinking that the child has some kind of value. Now it's a completely disgusting view of what that value should be. But these children aren't even thought of as playing a role in our society. They're just to be expelled, along with their parents.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:30:55]**
Yeah, which means it doesn't matter what you do to them, because they're trash already.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:31:30]**
Right. It doesn't matter how pleasant their flight is to the kid prison. Yeah.

**Trent R. Nelson [00:31:36]**
Being removed from your parents is every child's -- most children's nightmare is being taken, your parents taken away. I mean, it's like having your whole world removed from you. The trauma from just that alone is almost a chasm too wide to fix.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:31:58]**
Yeah, I have -- every parent, I think, has this experience. I've talked to my kid after they've had a nightmare about that. That's something that kids are scared of. Of course it is.

**Gillian Brockell [00:32:08]**
Yeah, and you have to say, "Mommy would never leave you, Mommy would never hurt you," right, when you're comforting them. And there are so many parents in our country right now that can't say that. That's not under their control. And that's immigrants, but that is also the carceral state in general. That is taking Black fathers and putting them in prison for incredibly long amounts of time. I mean, this is something that has been going on in our country throughout our entire history, and here I've gone and made Caitlin cry again. This is the part where I need to cry.

But this is the latest iteration of a very long-standing threat of abuse that has been going on in our country since the very beginning. Sorry, I'm sorry. Do you want to get outraged, and we can talk about the Independent plagiarizing me?

**Caitlin M. Green [00:32:57]**
That's right. Congratulations, Gillian, good job. It's okay.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:33:09]**
Yeah, I want to make mean jokes. Let me make some mean-spirited jokes.

**Trent R. Nelson [00:33:14]**
We've gotten through the horrors. Now let's yell at publications not doing good work. What did they do to you, Gillian?

**Gillian Brockell [00:33:19]**
No, okay, so I published a story. It is a big story, and was doing well, which, it's so disgusting that it also feels weird to say that, but at the same time, I'm glad that everyone's reading it, because it is outrageous. Thank you.

And yeah, so the next day, the Independent, which is a newspaper in the UK, but like the Guardian, they have a US office or bureau, they published a story that was basically a rewrite of mine and did not credit my story at all as having first reported it, which is pretty much standard -- when you're just rewriting someone's story, you need to say where it came from.

And what was really incredible is that they were so bad at sort of hiding the very obvious plagiarism. On a link to Nick's group he works with, MN 50/51, the Minnesota chapter of 50/51 -- they pay his parking fees when he goes to track flights, and they actually paid for the fee for the FOIA request -- so when the story linked to MN 50/51, they had just copy-pasted my link to MN 50/51, so it still had the referral bit at the end of the URL saying it came from GillianBrockell.com.

And yeah, I mean, I also can't forgive plagiarism, but it was even just so sloppy. And I want to make clear that I think what this reporter did was wrong. She's young, and she went to Columbia, and she should know better. I also think that she is early in her career, and a lot of the only jobs that are available are this sort of -- I believe the word is "churnalism" -- of just churning out stuff as fast as you can, that's rewrites of other places.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:35:10]**
I can forgive plagiarism, but I draw the line at lazy plagiarism, right? Right?

**Caitlin M. Green [00:35:48]**
"Churnalism" -- that's so good. In linguistics, we call that a blend, everybody. There's your linguistic lesson for the day. That's a type of semantic formation called a blend.

**Gillian Brockell [00:35:48]**
Yeah, I did not come up with that. That's a very -- yeah.

And I just want to say that I had to do aggregated stories early in my career. And lots of people have to do it, and it sucks. And that's life. But there's a way to do it. The way to do it is to say, you get your lede in there, and then you say, "First reported by XYZ," and then any information that you're using from a different source, you say where that came from. So if you're quoting people, you say, "They told WBEZ," "They said to blah blah blah," "According to blah blah blah." Anything that isn't your original reporting, you need to say where that came from.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:36:46]**
Yeah, as news consumers, we're used to seeing that kind of phrasing, that you're reporting on reporting that already happened so that you can create your version of the story. Yeah. Just --

**Gillian Brockell [00:36:58]**
Right. And so this story did not do that. It was just a rewrite, sort of rephrasing every sentence, no crediting where that information came from. And even to the point where there was a line in it where it said Delta had not previously commented on whether they flew Liam down. And that wasn't true. In the Independent's story -- it was true when I wrote it, but Delta had commented to me. The comment was lame, but they had commented to me.

So I had previously exchanged a couple messages with the great Marisa Kabas -- just like, "What's your sort of rubric for dealing with this? Do you immediately go public? Do you try and send the reporter a message first? Do you go straight to the managing editor? What do you do?" And she basically just said that there was no rubric, but she just tried to figure it out on a case-by-case basis, and she usually tried to contact them first.

And so, having already had her counsel in my mind, I emailed the reporter, just saying, "You need to fix this." And I was filled with rage. Sat there for an hour and a half.

And let me say, there were a couple of times when I was at the Washington Post, when I was either writing an aggregated story, or when I wrote about history, when a source or when a journalist or a historian would say, "Hey, this is actually -- I know you got this from somewhere else, but this is actually my original historical scholarship. This is, I know they quoted it, but it actually came from me." And I immediately responded, and am filled with shame, and fix it immediately and apologize up and down.

And this also happened to me the other way around a couple times when I was at the Post, of someone doing a rewrite of my story without crediting the Post. And it was a huge deal. It's like, Marty Baron is calling your boss now. And it gets fixed immediately, right? It's a huge deal.

And so I didn't hear back for like an hour and a half. So I just started flaming the Independent on Bluesky. And Bluesky is a place that really loves to get angry on behalf of someone else. And so Bluesky got pretty angry on my behalf.

**Trent R. Nelson [00:40:22]**
I would not want somebody who was angry at me talking to my editor. I'd be like, "I'll take care of it. Yes, ma'am."

**Caitlin M. Green [00:40:21]**
Yeah, first of all, where --

**Gillian Brockell [00:40:22]**
And I still didn't hear back. And the next day, I finally got a message back from this reporter that was kind of like, "If you have an issue with my reporting" -- which, "your reporting," "your reporting" -- "you can contact my managing editor at managingeditor@independent.com or whatever."

And in the original message that I sent to her the day earlier, I said, "You need to take this to your editor right now and get this fixed." And so asking me to do it -- like, you go ahead and do it. I'm not gonna do it.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:40:51]**
Could you do part of my job for me? Because you already did the job of writing the article for me. So, can you talk to the editor? Can --

**Caitlin M. Green [00:41:07]**
Yeah, I'd rather be the one who brings it to them.

**Gillian Brockell [00:41:07]**
It was just bizarre. And yeah, like, I said, when this has happened to me -- I've never done this, but when a similar situation has happened to me in the past, I'm going to my editor immediately, having a panic attack going, "I fucked up. I gotta fix this thing." And it's like one sentence in a story that I didn't cite properly.

And so I forwarded that email to this managing editor and a couple other people whose emails I could find. And just reiterated, this needs to be fixed immediately.

**Gillian Brockell [00:41:57]**
And hours later -- it was the next day, even -- this managing editor responded with some long-ass thing saying, "Okay, we added credit to it." And, "As you can understand, a lot of times when there are these huge stories that are public knowledge at that point, it can be really hard to know who was the original reporter." And I do think that's true for really big things that become memes in themselves. If you think about "the cruelty is the point" -- every time someone says "the cruelty is the point" now, they're not going "says Adam Serwer," right? Even though Adam Serwer was the first person to say that eight years ago or something. But that is a public concept now. And I understand that.

But that's not what happened here. That was one of the first aggregations or rewrites of my story.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:42:55]**
It's extremely, extremely easy to tell if you're just rewriting one person's story -- who wrote that story?

**Gillian Brockell [00:42:55]**
Right. And also, she didn't acknowledge the fact at all that she clearly read my story where I said I was reporting it for the first time, because we see this referral link. She clearly got that from my story. She didn't get it from an AP rewrite of my story or whatever.

And then he also said, "Just so you know, she's really been harassed a lot and been getting abusive and horrible emails sent to her in the last day. And we would have appreciated if you had handled this privately."

**Caitlin M. Green [00:43:50]**
We all wanted to handle it privately.

**Gillian Brockell [00:43:50]**
And I was like, "Yeah, I would have appreciated to handle it privately, either, right?" There was no response.

And I'm not in control of what other people do. I didn't ask anybody to harass her. If they did that, that sucks. And I also don't think -- I said, this is a situation where she did the wrong thing, but I think this is a situation that she was put in because of the pressure to be publishing multiple stories a day that go viral, that a lot of these legacy media outlets are relying on for a significant amount of their advertising money.

So she did the wrong thing. She did the wrong thing because she was put in a shitty situation by her employer.

And yeah, there's that story. I will say that I got a ton of subscriptions from people. And so, thank you, thank you. I'm not happy that I got plagiarized, but I'm really happy with the response on Bluesky, where I was sort of saying, "I made $220 last month, and here's a salaried journalist stealing from me. This sucks." And it's like, I know that what I'm reporting is of value because other people are stealing it, and yet I am not being compensated.

And yeah, so that really did transfer over into quite a few paid subscriptions. And I'm so grateful for that, just so, so grateful.

And I just want to say to any other legacy outlets that feel like stealing from me -- I'm not going to be private about it. I basically just got financial encouragement to continue to flame you publicly, and I am going to.

**Trent R. Nelson [00:46:07]**
Yeah. Well, first of all, that is great, and we love that you are being more heavily supported, because the work you are doing, as I noted before, is really brilliant. That's why you're a three-timer on the program, all right?

But even beyond that, I actually think it's good that we start flaming all of these places in public, because they need to operate properly. And if they're not going to self-regulate and operate in ways which are good for society, good for our civilization, as you noted -- that damn marketing, right? We've got to get the commercial money, the ad pages.

But if they can't do that, then we're going to -- just as I noted regarding capital and companies -- we're going to have to push them. We're going to have to start saying, "Oh well, yes, this young woman made a mistake." But also, the environment that she's in -- which you have been, obviously, in a large space, and I've been in local spaces -- it is pressure. It is pressure to get the story out before somebody else does, even if, as I used to joke with the publisher of a paper that I'm friends with, "What's there to publish? We don't know anything yet. Nothing. Something just happened. And you'd like for us to say something just happened, but we don't know what really happened." "We need to know." There's an obligation, there's accountability, right? These things that you feel because you're right --

**Caitlin M. Green [00:47:39]**
It's a saying by a lot of my least favorite people that sunlight is the best disinfectant, right? And usually they're using it to say why they should get to continue to publish eugenics or misogyny as if it's academic research. But in this case, what we mean is that we should expose bad behavior so that people can make better choices. Yeah.

**Gillian Brockell [00:47:57]**
Right, and like, this is the whole thing too. We're journalists. We fundamentally believe that giving the reader more information is good. But I'm supposed to not believe that about this thing? It just doesn't make any sense.

And I am sure that this young reporter would rather be doing original journalism as well. One of the things that I have been saying over and over in the 10 months that I've been reporting on ICE flights is that there are more stories here than I can possibly tell. I'm doing it full time, but I shouldn't be the only one doing it full time, and I think that I am.

And there are -- I have gotten to a point, or there have been points throughout this reporting, where I have leaked stories or sent stories to local reporters and to national reporters at big places that I know can do justice to a story, because I simply don't have time to report it myself, and the information should be out there.

And I just hope that attitude will be more universal. And it certainly is in a lot of places. I mean, there was another independent journalist a couple weeks ago named Mary Ann Dineen, and she reached out to me. She was saying, "Hey, I'm reporting this story on this Uzbek man who's in custody, and his lawyers are saying that he just disappeared from the ICE directory," which usually when you disappear from the ICE directory, it means you've been deported.

And so I just checked flights, and I was like, "I'm so sorry, but an Omni flight just landed in Uzbekistan, so he was probably on that flight." And her original report -- she's been working on the story with the activists who know this man and the attorneys and everything for months. And she still had -- and I posted her story when she published it. It's absolutely heartbreaking. And there's one line in there of, "And Gillian Brockell, who covers ICE flights, confirmed that there was a flight that landed in Uzbekistan. We don't know where he is, but he probably got deported."

And it's like, I didn't ask her to pay me for that or whatever. She's independent too. But we can be doing these collegial sort of things. I understand that we still live in capitalism, but we don't have to be doing this "I'm going to scoop you, you're going to scoop me." We don't have to be doing that. This information is so important that we need to be working together, right?

**Caitlin M. Green [00:50:42]**
"This is information I got, and this is who found it for me." Yeah.

**Trent R. Nelson [00:51:20]**
Yeah. Others don't need to be small for us to be big, right? We can collaborate. We can work together. And to be frank and honest, our society has, in so many ways, become infiltrated by this hypercompetitiveness in places where there is really hardly any room for that type of work.

I mean, I think of the rankings of musicians, the rankings of artists. I mean, what the hell? What are you even talking about? Ranking an artist, ranking music, ranking art in itself. I mean, this is all completely subjective, right?

And so we should be utilizing one another, but this is a legacy of "we need to get the story out first so that we can get the marketing money, so that we can get the ad pay." And I think right now, what we're seeing is a generation that is attempting to break from that and just say, "No, our purpose is to give information, to give context, to keep people accountable. That's it." And that's what I'm trying to do. And let everyone get on. And in these dark times, that is really, really heartening to see.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:52:20]**
Thank you. Yes, that sounds great. That sounds really good.

**Gillian Brockell [00:52:39]**
Yeah. And hopefully, eventually, all of us independent journalists creating a sort of new environment, a new attitude, a new way to treat each other more collegially, will turn into worker-owned and worker-governed larger outlets where we don't all have to be asking for subscriptions to our little chips that we're putting into the world. We can put them all together. Cross fingers.

And then I do just want to say one more thing -- like, two weeks later, the AP did a story on the Liam Ramos video, and a bunch of people messaged me like, "Look, look, they didn't credit you." And I want to say, I do think what the AP did was really weird, but I don't think it's the same as what happened with the Independent, which wrote this story the next day and then claimed "public knowledge" when it wasn't at all.

By the point when the AP did the story, Rachel Maddow had done 12 minutes on it a couple days earlier and credited me multiple times, which I really appreciated. And at that point, the "public knowledge" thing, I think, is a more valid argument.

The other thing too is that they did credit Nick Benson as getting the video: "This video was originally obtained by activist Nick Benson." And I do think that is the correct credit. If I had done the FOIA and I had first gotten the video, then I think they would have had to credit me. I first reported the video that Nick got. And so I do think that's a distinction.

However, and I think this is really weird -- the AP doesn't seem to have talked to Nick for the story, or even reached out to him or quoted him. But they did talk to Delta, and they did talk to DHS. They asked them for comment on the video. And they said in the story, "Activist Nick Benson was the first to obtain the video. The AP obtained the video through a similar public records request."

And I think "similar" is doing a lot of work there, because the video is deleted after 30 days. So what actually probably happened is that they FOIAed the response to Nick Benson's FOIA, which we have heard about happening other places recently, with other journalists on this program.

And anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about -- yeah, Mark Seagreaves, local DC reporter, FOIAed the response to Marisa's FOIA that she had been working really hard on with, I believe, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, to get this video footage for many months. And had achieved her goal, and people were congratulating her. And while she was going through the footage, this guy FOIAed her FOIA and tried to publish a story before she did, but she beat him by one minute.

And so I think the AP did something similar. They FOIAed the FOIA. And it's really weird to me that, even from a mainstream "we believe in objectivity and neutrality" perspective, they went through all this effort -- it's not easy to file FOIA -- they went through all this effort to file a FOIA instead of just being like, "Hey, activist, can we have your raw footage?" He would have given it to them. Yeah.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:56:47]**
Honestly -- well, and I get doing the secondary FOIA thing as confirmation, right? But isn't it kind of a better story? At least we think so, and we hope our listeners agree, that it's way more interesting to talk to the person who initially obtained the footage, and talk to them about their experience, and talk to them about what they thought was the most salient stuff in there. That's our method, right? We want to talk to you and talk to Marisa. What is this other thing of pretending they don't exist? Yeah.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:57:41]**
Like, what made you curious about this?

**Gillian Brockell [00:57:18]**
Yeah. I mean, I just think -- so, yeah, ultimately, I don't think that it's that big of a deal that they didn't credit me, but it's a really weird story. I mean, it's super surface level. You're not getting any of the context, the historical context that you're getting from my story, of like, "Well, they actually did ban the government from doing this in another situation a few years ago." They don't provide any of that context. It's a very surface-level story of, "Here's this video showing this thing. This guy first got it, but we got it separately. And this is what Delta said, and this is what DHS said." And it's like, why not ask the activist? Even if you're gonna both-sides it, why not ask the activist? It's just really weird. Yeah.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:58:01]**
Yeah, yeah, right. Just give us something. But as a framing device, people's brains want to hear about the person who got curious, did some digging, and found information. That's what all of those journalism movies are about, right? They're not about just sort of in a vacuum several different events. No, no. What we want to hear is, "This intrepid journalist had a question and couldn't get it answered, and so they went to FOIA." That's way more exciting as a listener.

**Gillian Brockell [00:58:38]**
Or this intrepid activist. Or this intrepid assistant to a law firm. Think about Erin Brockovich, right?

**Caitlin M. Green [00:59:00]**
Yeah. And I love this whole -- you've created this lovely pattern, right, in my mind, of people like yourself and like Nick who were doing this thing out of sort of an interest in a niche, kind of nerdy thing, this aviation stuff, and then they kind of hit on a mystery, and then they're also like, "But you know what, I'm also a person, and so I do care about this on a human level." And just putting the pieces together, which I would never have done, because I'm not an avgeek. And I'm so glad that you exist and that Nick exists, with this interest and ability.

**Gillian Brockell [00:59:19]**
Yeah, just like geeky plane people, yeah. We're just geeks, dude.

**Gillian Brockell [00:59:40]**
Yeah. And it's interesting -- there are a lot of avgeeks that are starting to make this connection, that there's an opportunity for them to really do a lot of good here.

Let me just shout out another guy. His name is Seth Miller, and he is an avgeek. He has his own aviation news website. He's an aviation journalist, and he also is a state representative in New Hampshire.

So in February, when there was that big blizzard -- was it February? Yeah, February -- when there was that big blizzard, JJ and DC, another activist that I talk to a lot, and I noticed that there was an Omni flight going out that usually does a fuel stop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, before heading to either Romania or Bulgaria for another fuel stop, and then it does Central Asian or Southeast Asian deportation stops.

And so this plane was flying toward Portsmouth as a blizzard was coming. Like, this is a bad idea. Why are you not canceling this? So they did it anyway. And the next morning, the plane was still there, and the airport was closed, and we were like, "Are there immigrants on board? Are they just sitting there? It's been a while, right?"

So JJ and I are sort of wondering out loud about this, trying to ring some alarms on social media. And Seth Miller saw this, and he's like, "I'm a state rep and a journalist." So he starts calling all the different people at the airport that he knows. He starts calling the caterers. Because the blizzard was so bad, he couldn't even drive there at that point. And it's just like, "Hey, do you know if there are people on that plane?"

And it became a huge local story, and he was able to confirm yes, there are immigrants that have been sitting on this plane for 14 hours now. And eventually, when they were able to finally move the plane, because it was frozen to the ground, they did deplane the passengers. And they slept on cots in the airport overnight. And then once the airport reopened, they were loaded back on and deported to India.

And at that point, some activists had gotten to the airport and had taken pictures where you can see the people being deported. And so in my story, on my site, I have those pictures.

But that's another guy who -- as far as I understand, he's mostly interested in, like, how to get business class using credit cards. That's a whole other subset of avgeek, yeah, there's a whole subset. Like, there's The Points Guy -- a whole subset of avgeek that's just about getting yourself in business class. And so I think he caters more to the business traveler, but he has this special knowledge, and because he was also a local lawmaker, he's able to actually change the situation.

And yes, these people were still deported, but please understand that ICE would have had no problem at all with those people sitting on the plane for 31 hours. They've done it before. And so the fact that they were able to get off of the plane and use public facilities and sleep on cots is 100% just geeks being like, "Hey." Right? Yeah.

**Caitlin M. Green [00:02:10]**
Yeah, he's like a travel advice kind of a, yeah.

**Trent R. Nelson [01:02:42]**
It seems to me that these larger publications are -- they're foregoing the reporting that would create better, more in-depth understanding of what's going on in some type of vain attempt to protect themselves. It seems --

**Caitlin M. Green [01:03:36]**
Yeah, that's not fair. That's not right.

**Gillian Brockell [01:04:01]**
Honestly, I think the journalists there would like to be doing more in-depth stories, and they can't. There's just this pressure to just report, report, report, report, churn, churn, churn out. Even when you're getting to do original stories, the time that it takes to give full context to things takes a while, and there just isn't -- there's just so much pressure to move on and get the story out there.

**Trent R. Nelson [01:04:31]**
We talk about it all the time. Get the hot take out. Get it out right now. But as I often say to Caitlin, sometimes -- most times -- reasonable conclusions take time to draw. They take time. You have to let things happen, and then you have to take all of that into perspective, and then you have to take the greater context into perspective, and then you write something. But by that time, you've already got a hundred chuds who've written base-level stuff, and everyone's moved on. Now we're talking about something new. Let's talk about something new.

**Caitlin M. Green [01:04:38]**
Then you better get another one soon. I know.

**Caitlin M. Green [01:04:58]**
Yeah. Yep, and they gave it a clickbaity title and a crazy thumbnail, and now everyone wants to look at that instead.

**Caitlin M. Green [01:05:21]**
Jesus, Gillian, you need to prepare me before you're gonna say a phrase like that. That's -- wow. Okay, I'm ready. Okay.

**Gillian Brockell [01:05:15]**
Yeah. I mean, I think that the example of Kristi Noem's fuck jet is really apropos here as well. I'm gonna say "fuck jet" a couple more times in the next few minutes, so get ready. This is your warning.

So this plane, this kitted-out 737, this BBJ, that she -- the reason that everybody -- right, the reason that everybody, including politicians who asked her about it -- I think they called it "bedroom jet" -- the reason that they know about it is because of an NBC News story that came out the third week of February.

But there had been reporting on that jet, and that Kristi Noem was probably using that jet for specific trips, in December, on this website called The War Zone. It's TWZ. Great guys. They're mostly military reporters, but that's a whole different other kind of avgeek, looking at military equipment. But they have the knowledge of tracking government planes.

And then I also knew from reporting that Mother Jones and The Washington Post had done, that the shell company that purchased this plane, that purchased the fuck jet for DHS, was connected to a bunch of other shell companies that had gotten some really shady contracts from DHS for self-deportations, and to another shell company that had bought a bunch of Avelo planes to start this sort of DHS personal deportation fleet, which is the thing they want to do now. That's not going to work, but whatever.

And so all of these different pieces of reporting hadn't been put together into one thing, and then NBC -- to be honest, NBC basically repeated The War Zone story and acted like it was an exclusive, when they probably should have credited them as reporting it first. But they had enough original stuff from talking to their unnamed sources, which is this superpower that these big places still have that independent journalists don't really -- that they didn't credit them.

But so when the whole country started finding out about the fuck jet, I was like, "This is old news. We've been -- the geeks have been talking about this."

And so then I wrote a story saying the fuck jet is the tip of the iceberg -- Kristi Noem actually bought 10 jets in a couple of months, and we don't know what they're all for, and five of them are luxury jets. And that story did well too.

But it's like, NBC, if they had had more time, they could have connected the dots that I connected. They could have realized that the shell company that bought the fuck jet also bought these other Gulfstream 650s and also went to the same facility to be kitted out. And they could have done that too, but it's like, "No, just get the fuck jet out there. That's enough."

**Caitlin M. Green [01:05:41]**
So I'm picturing Austin Powers now.

**Caitlin M. Green [01:09:01]**
Everybody wants to know about the fuck jet. So let's talk about that. Yeah.

**Caitlin M. Green [01:09:17]**
Right? Because you can't find any direction that way. You can't get -- there's no -- you can't do pattern recognition on just disparate points.

**Gillian Brockell [01:09:54]**
And so it's like, that's one thing that I'm really trying to do with my reporting, is to provide context and connect all the dots, and not just be like, "This bad thing happened, that bad thing happened."

So you'll get these stories that are just one-offs for the reporter, for the news organization, saying, "Oh, DHS sent eight people, nine people to Equatorial Guinea."

And they're not from there. And a reporter like me -- I can say, "I have a chart of every single one of these that they've done." This is not just these nine people. These are the ones we've confirmed, and these are the ones that, as you said, pattern recognition -- are likely.

And there's this whole thing happening too with mainstream media, where an independent journalist being responsible is using their pattern recognition to say, "This was likely a third-country removal flight." And then the mainstream media place is confirming that with their highly placed senior officials speaking anonymously, right?

And because I was responsible and said "likely," and even though I know it was right -- "likely" -- they don't have to credit me as first reporting it, because I first reported it was likely. They're the first to confirm it. The New York Times did that to me the day I started this beat. So it's just -- they confirmed with an unnamed DHS source, so they get to say, "The New York Times is reporting, for the first time, that they took a private jet to Djibouti."

**Trent R. Nelson [01:11:31]**
And it is disingenuous. And again, in the future, when we've created our great collective, or groups of collectives, that will have to be something that we also change and make a new standard, to be sure.

**Caitlin M. Green [01:11:07]**
Yeah. Like, you made a reasonable conclusion, but they called the guy that they have access to. Somebody close to the fuck jet.

**Caitlin M. Green [01:11:47]**
It's so funny how these kinds of intensified pressures and things always end up creating a lower quality product and also a degradation of the norms of how we're supposed to treat each other. Isn't that so interesting how that continues to happen every time? Yeah.

**Gillian Brockell [01:12:02]**
Yeah. Yeah. And I just -- this is more cosmic or spiritual than maybe tactical or strategic. But I just have to believe that eventually the work speaks for itself, right? If it happens enough times, people will go, "Well, I'm just going to go to Marisa because her information is better," or "I'm just going to go to Gillian because she knows this stuff earlier."

And immigration attorneys reach out to me now and go, "Hey, have you seen any planes going here? I'm worried about a client." And I just have to believe that there is -- I don't want to say "justice," because I don't want to act like I'm being oppressed. I'm not. But that there will be a reward for it, that it will become sustainable, that the commitment will matter, that the context will matter.

And I've seen that in other aspects of my life happen, and so I just have to see that here too. It's -- you just do the work, you stay honest, and if you're transparent with people, eventually that translates to, I don't know, a career. Yeah. Surviving. Respect.

**Caitlin M. Green [01:13:51]**
Well, and I know it can feel annoying whenever something like the fuck jet comes out to be like, "Hey guys, this is really old news. I reported this ages ago." It doesn't feel amazing, right, to have to write that out. But people need to know. And the more people are aware.

**Gillian Brockell [01:14:08]**
Right. And I have to say, the fuck jet NBC story moved the needle. We can absolutely attribute Kristi Noem's firing in large part to that story coming out. And so it sucks that TWZ did it first and wasn't credited. It sucks that NBC didn't actually tie together all these different parts of the grift that were related -- like, it's actually 10 planes. But that story is what made the difference. That story is why Sheldon Whitehouse was asking Kristi Noem about the "bedroom jet" in the hearings.

And so, I don't know.

**Caitlin M. Green [01:15:03]**
It's just Kristi Noem and the "bedroom jet" -- it reminded me of -- what's her name? The Facebook lady. What's her name? Sheryl Sandberg. Because she had a bedroom jet too, and she would pressure people into sharing that room with her. It was weird. Careless People. Careless People. It lives in my brain.

**Gillian Brockell [01:15:24]**
Yeah, she was fucking weird. Everyone should read Careless People. It is an incredible book, incredible book, from a woman who used to work for Facebook. She has sort of started this job for herself. She was a diplomat -- she's from New Zealand. She's a New Zealand diplomat. And then was like, "Facebook needs a diplomat."

Yeah, God, the first chapter of that book -- and her family being like, "You're fine, you're fine." And she's got punctured bowels. She's about to die. And they're like, "But we're camping." Sorry about my --

**Caitlin M. Green [01:15:50]**
She's a New Zealand diplomat, shark attack survivor -- the opening anecdote from the book is her surviving a shark attack as a child. Anyway, yeah, meanwhile, she literally has punctured bowels, and she's experiencing sepsis. "Stop making such a fuss." Well, because they went to some random bush doctor who was like, "Hey, she's probably gonna complain a lot, so just get ready for that." So they primed the parents to ignore her. Anyway. That's a side thing.

**Gillian Brockell [01:16:27]**
Right, right. But what's really important to me about Careless People is that she is able to string together the way these sort of outlandish stories that you hear about Sheryl Sandberg, these outlandish stories that you hear about Mark Zuckerberg -- and she's got plenty of them in the book -- actually translate into gross, disgusting human rights abuses to get the numbers up, right?

**Caitlin M. Green [01:17:02]**
Evil. Death and suffering. And yeah, well, and her framing is, I think, so right. And it connects with things that Jamelle Bouie says, and that Adam Serwer says, which is that this is a class of people who don't think other people are real. And when you look -- she would say, "I looked Mark Zuckerberg in the eyes, and I said, it is a 100% certainty that this number of people will die as a result of the policy change that you are considering." And she watched it -- just like water off a duck's back -- actually not make any impact at all. Dead in the eyes. And he pivots as if she never said a thing at all. Not even an answer. Not even a "Oh, that's interesting. However, I think we still need to do this." No, it's like she didn't say it. And that's the carelessness. It's like, you -- it's not real to me.

**Gillian Brockell [01:17:58]**
And they -- the instance that she's specifically talking about in the book is about opening up Facebook to Myanmar. And the deaths that resulted because of their actions and their refusal to take responsibility for what was happening.

And maybe this is a good place to close. Just yesterday, I tracked a plane, an ICE plane, to Myanmar. So maybe in a couple of days, the New York Times will confirm who was on that plane. But I'm quite certain that was an ICE flight. And we know from previous reporting from Burmese dissidents that Trump already deported people to Myanmar last spring, something in the range of 20 to 22 people, and that those people were immediately detained, and that some of them were tortured. And we just did that again yesterday.

And I can post it on Bluesky and put it in my spreadsheets. But the people who have created these kinds of situations are still operating with impunity, still treating us all like we're not real. And the only thing that has a chance of winning -- we may not win -- but the only thing that has a chance of winning is to recognize the humanity in one another more, and to refuse to go into these dumb little separate arguments more, to help each other more, to reach out more, to humanize more, and to keep up your spreadsheets and be taking notes of all the companies, all the humans, for the day -- hopefully someday -- when justice can come to them.

**Caitlin M. Green [01:20:22]**
Yep. And here's where I meant to do this before, but a little shout out to Ms. Rachel, who has been calling attention to the kids in Dilley and doing -- she's doing the thing that I was like, "I wish this wasn't how we have to get kids out," which is on an individual basis, by spotlighting one and then another and then another. But it is apparently what we've got to do. Joaquin Castro has to get on a plane every time. And Maxine Dexter, who's my representative, has to get on a plane every time. But it is working, because Ms. Rachel will tell their story, and then everyone will care, and then we get that kid out.

**Gillian Brockell [01:20:44]**
And it's -- yeah, and make us think every time. And it's working, because Dilley has -- yep. And the New York Times actually had a great story with Joaquin Castro a couple weeks ago, and the most recent numbers -- there are fewer than half as many people in Dilley right now than there were in January. So it's working.

**Caitlin M. Green [01:21:20]**
It is working, and she's rallied celebrities to speak about it. And I was telling Trent earlier, I'm kind of a Miss Rachel hipster, like, we used to watch her before she had the uniform, or the pink t-shirt, and then -- yeah, she didn't even have a ponytail, man. Her hair was just down. She was in front of a green screen that she clearly set up in her own house, doing "Open, Shut Them." And we watched that video approximately 600 times a day. If you were ever in the Bay Area around 2019, 2020, you heard me walking around town going "Open, shut them" to my child, because she demanded it all the time, with the extra verses. I had it memorized. It was ridiculous. But we're a Miss Rachel household. Yeah, this family respects her.

**Trent R. Nelson [01:21:41]**
The cruelty -- we focus so often on the cruelty, and that is because the cruelty is being done unto children, unto people, unto human beings, unto innocence, unto people who may be guilty to some degree and yet still do not deserve the type of barbarism that they are having to face.

But in the years to come, methinks, the economic wonks will note the cost of the cruelty. And it may be -- we love to talk about the cost of the welfare state, of helping people, of education, of health care. What is the cost of sending 22 people on a plane to Myanmar? Right? There is not only a moral cost, there is an economic cost. And it is understood -- not only in the cost of fuel, in the cost of all of this. What about the productive values of those people? What about the productive quality? And their families. Yes.

**Gillian Brockell [01:23:30]**
I mean, the number of people in ICE detention who have been threatened with being sent to one of these prisons is orders of magnitude greater than the actual number of people who have been sent. I mean, they're using it as a tool of terrorism, right? These shocking acts of cruelty that we can use to frighten a larger populace.

I hear several times a week from activists and immigration attorneys, "Hey, I have a client who -- they're being told that they're going to be sent to Uganda if they don't sign this thing." They're saying this to everybody. "You have to sign these self-deportation papers, or we're going to send you to Uganda."

**Caitlin M. Green [01:23:18]**
Right, well, and there's knock-on effects, right? That's right. And the other people who think, "This could happen to me if I go outside," so they're unable to participate fully in their communities.

**Caitlin M. Green [01:24:20]**
Yeah, and there's also this thing of strategically singling out a person who has no real legal basis for being persecuted this way. So, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is an example. Liam Conejo Ramos and his dad are an example, where, even though everybody and their grandma can see that there is no reason to be treating this one family this way, there is still a risk of them being deported to this day because of a judge's order. Exactly. And so it's kind of being held up as an example of: "If we can do this to somebody who has pretty solid legal standing to be allowed to remain in the country, we can do this to any of you motherfuckers."

**Gillian Brockell [01:24:51]**
Yeah, their legal asylum claim was rejected about a week ago, right? Yeah.

**Trent R. Nelson [01:25:00]**
Well, Gillian, the work speaks for itself, and we are grateful for all that you do, all that Marisa does.

**Gillian Brockell [01:25:25]**
I'm grateful for you for letting me just come on here and pop off about it. It's very edifying.

**Caitlin M. Green [01:25:16]**
What a fun day. Yeah.

**Trent R. Nelson [01:25:30]**
Well, we are the pop-off podcast. Yes, that's one of our deals.

**Caitlin M. Green [01:25:31]**
Yeah, honestly, a lot of my favorite episodes are ones where somebody is just like, "Hey, I have something I need to yell about," and we bring them on.

**Caitlin M. Green [01:25:50]**
Great. Amazing.

**Gillian Brockell [01:25:45]**
Well, I mean, I'll always have you covered there, hopefully. Hopefully my angry takes that absolutely enrage me, and I want to talk about someday, will go back to being, like, Kicks versus Cheerios, or whatever. But right now it's pretty serious shit.

**Caitlin M. Green [01:26:03]**
Oh my gosh, yeah. Well, we're here for that. We'll be here for the Kicks versus Cheerios episode too. May we all get to the place where that's what's top of our mind.

**Trent R. Nelson [01:26:05]**
Yeah, absolutely, definitely. Gillian, will you remind our listeners, our viewers, our patrons, our supporters, wherever they can find all of your wonderful work? You called it a little newsletter. I never want to hear that again. Where can they find your big, beefy newsletter site?

**Gillian Brockell [01:26:32]**
My big, beautiful newsletter. It's so funny, because every time I come on here, I have a different place that I'm saying, but it's the same place. So I went ahead and bought GillianBrockell.com, so it's not the Ghost URL anymore. It's GillianBrockell.com. Please subscribe. Please become a paid subscriber if you can. I also have a button there for one-time tips, which is super helpful. And if you can't afford it, I get it. I know everyone is under economic stress right now.

But even just getting the word out about the reporting is super helpful. And if you're an immigration attorney, or if you work with people in ICE detention, you are more than welcome to contact me on Signal at any time. I'm at g.brockell.44. I'm not going to report what you tell me unless you give me permission. So feel safe contacting me and saying, "Hey, my client is blah blah blah. Can you check blah blah blah?" I'm not going to say anything about it unless I specifically ask you for permission.

**Caitlin M. Green [01:27:43]**
Beautiful. That's amazing. It's so great that you're helping people out that way.

**Gillian Brockell [01:27:48]**
Well, I hope to be doing even more of it. It's just a little bit right now, and I'd like to do more. Yeah. Oh, bang.

**Trent R. Nelson [01:27:55]**
We appreciate you so much, Gillian.

**Caitlin M. Green [01:27:53]**
Awesome. Well, you know what they say about days and which are happy, and also answers and where they are and how much of them you can get, which is that today is a happy day because we got to see Gillian, and understanding a question is half the answer. This has been Half the Answer. We love you. Bye bye.