What happens when the tactics of border enforcement are employed on the streets of American cities?

Over the past year, a team from FRONTLINE and ProPublica has been investigating the treatment of protesters and bystanders during the Trump administration’s immigration sweeps. Reporters and filmmakers documented the often violent and sometimes deadly results when masked, heavily armed agents from ICE and Border Patrol clashed with residents in Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis.

In this episode of The FRONTLINE Dispatch, Editor-in-Chief Raney Aronson-Rath sits down with the team behind our film Caught in the Crackdown — correspondent A.C. Thompson, director Gabrielle Schonder, and cinematographer Tim Grucza — to discuss the challenges of reporting under chaotic conditions. They explore the emergence of a “hybrid” law enforcement model that targeted both undocumented individuals and U.S. citizens. This aggressive strategy was personified by then-U.S. Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino, who issued the blunt directive: “Arrest as many people that touch you as you want to. Those are the general orders all the way to the top.”

The film traces the escalation of federal tactics from the initial military deployment in Los Angeles to the intensive, block-by-block immigration convoys in Chicago, to the deadly showdowns with protestors in Minneapolis. Through field recordings and firsthand accounts, the discussion reveals the friction between official rhetoric and the reality on the ground.

Caught in the Crackdown is available to stream now on FRONTLINE’s website, FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel, ProPublica’s website, the PBS App and PBS Documentaries on Prime.