The Monroe Gazette Podcast

Below is the full transcript of The Monroe Gazette’s interview with Bernie Rivers. As you start to get your ballots, if you live in Orange County, you’ll find Mr. Rivers running for sheriff against the incumbent, Paul Arteta.

Last year, the Orange County Democrats snatched defeat from the jaws of victory nationwide.

So, I don’t have much confidence that they’ll do any better this Fall for their candidates despite a SECOND nationwide “Blue Tsunami.”

I hate that term. This “Blue” and “Red” tribalism s**t is toxic. George Washington warned of factionalism ripping this country apart, and he was right. The modern political parties need to be done away with, and we can do that by making Rank Choice Voting the default option for all elections across New York.

My hypothesis is that State Senator Skoufis essentially runs the Orange County Democratic Committee, and he wants them to cosplay every election as the Washington Generals.

Why? So he can continue to lie to the national media about how he’s one of few democrats who can run in Republican districts.

This is why I wanted to make sure our readers knew who Bernie Rivers is, and why he’s a better choice than our current, ICE loving Sheriff, Paul Arteta.

Local readers will know Sheriff Paul as the guy participating in an election time stunt last Fall to help former Monroe Town Supervisor, Tony Cardone, “address” the lack of available police in the Town.

Readers throughout New York State might remember Sheriff Arteta for his track record of neglect at Orange County Jail, which led to a hunger strike.

Either way, given that America is currently no longer functional at the operational level, we need to carefully evaluate who’s enforcing the law in elected office around you.

So, if you don’t know who’s running for Sheriff where you live, I strongly encourage you to take a few moments now to look it up before you get to our interview today.

The Monroe Gazette is ad-free and paywall-free, covering local news in Monroe as well as county, state, and national issues that impact those residents. Truthful. Not neutral.

We need to recruit 981 paid annual subscribers between now and June 24, 2027. to keep the lights on.

If you want to help keep the lights on, press the red button below to upgrade.

AI Transparency Disclosure: The following interview has been lightly edited, and was generated using Riverside’s software. The manuscript was then edited for compliance with AP Style using a combination of Duck.AI and Claude 4.5 Haiku.

Full Transcript

Pictured Above: Candidate for Orange County Sheriff, Bernie Rivers, does not support concentration camps in Orange County. Sheriff Paul Arteta does. Mr. Rivers can be seen above at Museum Village giving a presentation to Monroe Democrats last week.

BJ Mendelson: Bernie, thank you so much for joining us. For people who don’t know who you are, would you like to take a moment to introduce yourself and tell us what you’re running for?

Bernie Rivers, candidate for Orange County Sheriff: I’m Bernie Rivers and I’m running for Orange County Sheriff.

I’ve been in law enforcement over forty years, starting with the New York State Department of Environmental Corrections for ten years and going over to the New York State Environmental Conservation Police, where I served a number of roles: uniform officer, investigator, supervising officer, commanding officer, and retiring as the director of law enforcement. FBI National Academy graduate and a bachelor’s degree in public service.

BJ: And we’re talking on a day after ICE had shot someone in New York City. So I’m going to dive right into those questions if it’s okay with you.

Bernie: Sounds like a plan.

BJ: We’ve been covering ICE in Orange County for quite a bit. So before November, ICE needs to remove detainees from Orange County Jail (OCJ).

OCJ and ICE have worked together for years under Sheriff Paul Arteta, where we’ve housed detainees for ICE. How would you as our sheriff interact with ICE differently, if at all, from Sheriff Paul Arteta?

Bernie: Well, as you know, the governor signed the bill that was passed by the state legislatures that have prohibited law enforcement agencies and county jails from signing agreements with ICE. So with that, a lot of that has been resolved for citizens and the rights of the people that they may be targeting. But we will not be involved with a direct arrest or apprehension if the sole charge is an ICE detainer and not a legitimate law enforcement charge.

BJ: I really like the use of legitimate law enforcement. That’s something that we’ve been saying as well—which is, you know, if ICE is here doing something that is legally appropriate, then as much as I don’t like it, I’m not going to oppose it. But if they’re doing something that is violating people’s constitutional rights, that’s definitely where we have a problem. It sounds like you’re on the same line, is that right?

Bernie: That is correct.

BJ: I want to ask you about your position on the proposed ICE facility at 800 Corporate Boulevard in the town of Newburgh. As I record this, there’s not much really to report on that right now. The town of Newburgh has retained an attorney. ICE is, if they’re going to be following the rules, supposed to have a public comment period, which has not happened yet. So this is still a little ways out. But if it opens, how will you as the sheriff protect protesters who may want to show up and exercise their constitutional rights to protest outside the facility in Newburgh?

Bernie: People have every right to peacefully gather and peacefully protest. So if the Sheriff’s Office is involved with those protests, we will be there to make sure the protesters are protected. As long as they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’ll make sure that both sides are fairly treated by our staff. As far as the facility itself, the federal government has every right to build facilities if that’s what they want to do. I personally oppose the use of any warehouse being converted into a facility, especially if they’re not using the standards set forth for correctional facilities. And based on what we’ve seen with these facilities they’ve built across the country, they do not meet the standards that most criminal facilities use when they’re building a facility.

BJ: And just for people that are listening, we’re still waiting on a FOIA request to the General Services Administration concerning what exactly is going on over there. So please, if you’re listening, stay tuned for that in a future post.

I’m sure something you’ve heard quite a bit about related to ICE and their tactics and tools is a company known as Flock Safety and another company called Axiom. When I, for example, put in a FOIL request with the sheriff’s department for body camera footage of village executive Joel Stern in South Blooming Grove trying to get out of a ticket, the body camera footage came from a company called Axiom, which people have as many complaints about as they do Flock Safety. I’m curious about your position on software like that or those companies specifically, and whether or not you would use them as sheriff.

Bernie: It’s my understanding the only cameras that the Sheriff’s Office controls are the ones at their facilities. Most people don’t understand the technology behind Flock, Axiom and the other systems they’re using here in the county. They’re maintained by the individual municipalities, even though a lot of the jurisdictions can access that information. My position is it’s technology that, when used correctly, is very beneficial, but when it’s not used correctly, it needs to be addressed. People need to be held accountable who choose to use the system other than its intended use and for their personal gain.

BJ: Let me change gears a bit to something you touched on, which was the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act. Can you tell us a little bit more about your position on the bill and where you disagree with Sheriff Arteta? Because he is part of a group of other sheriffs in New York State who are suing. And so I just was hoping you might be able to contrast your position on the law versus his.

Bernie: As a career law enforcement official who, like I said in my intro, have served in many different positions to include command positions and executive-level positions, my feelings on the bill are basically irrelevant. The elected legislatures drafted a bill that the governor signed. So that’s the law of the land. Where I disagree with Sheriff Arteta is the fact that, one, he didn’t take the time to speak to the legislatures to let them know his feelings on the bill before he signed on to the lawsuit.

My other issue is the fact that the lawsuit that he signed on to is with a group that is on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of hate groups. So that’s where I part ways. Like I said, my position on the bill one way or the other is irrelevant because the sheriff is not an elected legislature to write laws. The sheriff is elected to enforce the laws. And as much as they want to say they’re hiding behind the Constitution of the United States, they still also have a responsibility to the Constitution of New York State and to enforce the laws of New York State.

BJ: Speaking of enforcing laws, this is something that we’ve run into with Sheriff Arteta at the Monroe Gazette. So I’m just going to give you a quick example. I mentioned the Joel Stern video that was leaked to us. And so when we put in a FOIL request, they didn’t really have much of a choice but to hand it over because we already had at least eight minutes of the total twelve-minute video.

But there’s been other requests. For example, in the town of Newburgh there’s a video of a gentleman who works for the New York City ACLU and there’s a sheriff’s deputy getting out of a vehicle with another gentleman. And the man from the ACLU says to the deputy, “Hey, what were you guys doing?” And the man in the car says, “Ice raid.” So we put in a FOIL request for all documents and details of what the sheriff’s department might have been up to that day. And they refused to cooperate. That’s not the first time that we’ve had that with Sheriff Arteta. FOIL is something that people don’t really think about, but I’m curious to hear about how you as a sheriff would handle requests—just in general, how you would handle requests for public information, body camera footage and other things like that as it comes across your desk.

Bernie: My position, having dealt with FOIL requests before I retired through my last agency, is as long as there’s no active investigations going on, the FOIL requests should be released and should be honored. It’s been my experience over the last four years the Sheriff’s Office is very selective on what they’ll release in FOIL and what constitutes an active investigation on their end. Day-to-day ICE activity is not an active investigation, and there should be no reason—if there was no use of force or any other over-the-top activity—that day-to-day body camera footage should not be released on a FOIL request.

BJ: I know you’ve run for sheriff before, but what was it that made you say, “All right, we’re going to take another swing at this and see if we can unseat them?”

Bernie: Well, I think it’s important for people to understand I’m not running because I’m looking to unseat Paul Arteta. I’m running because we have a democratic system. No one should run unopposed. Although I believe my credentials far exceed Arteta’s credentials, and I do believe I am more qualified to run for the office, the people of the county have a right to have a choice. It’s not a good old boy system where one group says this is who’s going to run for sheriff and they’re going to run unopposed, which happened the last time. Carl E. DuBois, who I thought was a very good sheriff and who I’ve known my whole law enforcement career, ran unopposed for, I believe, sixteen of the twenty years that he was sheriff. Paul Arteta ran last time, I ran last time. The voters chose to ignore certain things in Sheriff Arteta’s past and they elected him. I’m hoping to get elected this time based on my credentials and my ability to run an agency of that size.

BJ: I think it’s a great answer because, you know, something the Monroe Gazette has covered is that we have in Southern Orange County two assembly races featuring friends of Sheriff Paul Arteta who are incumbents running unopposed, and we also have a state senate race where the Republican candidate and conservative candidates don’t appear to exist, besides some campaign signs. So I really appreciate that answer because I feel the same way—that it’s a democracy. People should not run unopposed in this country. So that takes me to my last question: What questions should I have asked you that I didn’t?

Bernie: I think you asked very good questions. You know, we covered my experience. We covered why I think I should be sheriff. I personally would like to see the media dive more into the background of myself and Arteta and do a side-by-side comparison in the name of full transparency, because I will release all of my past employment history records for anybody to look at because I have nothing to hide. What I would like to tell all the voters on both sides of the aisle and the unaffiliated voters: Your vote counts. It doesn’t matter if somebody’s running unopposed. It doesn’t matter whether you like who’s running or doesn’t like running. You can’t just sit home and not vote. You need to make it to the polls on Nov. 3 or take advantage of early voting. Like I said, every vote counts and we need to get our young people more involved with the voting process.

Send Us News Anonymously

* Download Signal & message BJ at BJMendelson.32

* Without including a return address, send mail to PO BOX 5 996 Route 17 Stop 2, Arden, New York 10910.

I’ll see you Tuesday at 7 am. Want to get in touch? Send us an email at [email protected]

P.S. Did you hear this week’s episode of Privacy Tips? Are you ready for a world where AI Deepfakes are so good, you won’t know who you’re actually talking to? Probably not!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

The full transcript for this week’s podcast is below. It’s a follow-up to last week’s episode involving West Point professor, Tim Bakken, and his recent first amendment victory against Pete Hegseth and the Trump Administration.

In doing research for that story, I came across an odd appearance by Anduril Industries’s Palmer Lucky at West Point.

This was super weird because Lucky is essentially an arms dealer with zero military background and even less leadership and management experience. What was he doing at West Point? And what’s with that $28,550 linked to Anduril that was donated to Democratic Congressman Pat Ryan’s re-election campaign?

To explain, I asked friend of the show, Pivot to AI’s David Gerard, to explain.

The Monroe Gazette is ad-free and paywall-free, covering local news in Monroe as well as county, state, and national issues that impact those residents. Truthful. Not neutral.

We need to recruit 982 paid annual subscribers between now and June 24, 2027 to keep the lights on. It’ll cost you $5 a month or $60 for the year. Or about what a Pumpkin Spice Latte costs at your local, rabidly anti-union Starbucks.

If you’re new here, or are already a free subscriber, press the red button below to upgrade.

[AI Disclosure: This transcript was generated by Riverside, which is the podcast recording tool we use. I then, using Duck.Ai, ran it through Claudes 4.5 Haiku to correct any spelling, grammar, and compliance issues with the Associated Press Style Guide. This is the exact kind of work Large Language Models can do well. What they can’t do well is basically everything else. And even then, I still checked over the transcript.]

BJ Mendelson: David, I had you on our other show, Stupid Sexy Privacy, but there’s a lot happening over in Orange County, New York. And so I was hoping for a chance to have you back, and here you are. But for people who did not hear that first interview, would you like to take a moment just to introduce yourself?

David Gerard: My name’s David Gerard. I’m a journalist. I do Pivot to AI, which is a blog, a YouTube channel, and a podcast about the AI bubble and why all of these people need to go to jail but probably won’t.

BJ Mendelson: Mm-hmm.

David Gerard: And how we’re heading for a Great Depression to depress harder. Just—it’s a very cheerful blog, as you can tell.

BJ Mendelson: That’s pretty much the vibe of The Monroe Gazette. It is: all these people should be in jail, but they’re not going to be. We’re just going to write about it anyway, because someone has to. You had a great video last night just to give people an idea of what Pivot to AI puts out, because I watch it regularly. Like, whenever there’s a new video, I will watch it.

David Gerard: Comes out daily.

BJ Mendelson: Yeah, so tell us about the video last night where there was almost a little whoopsie between the United States and China caused by AI.

David Gerard: That was very good. Where the existential risk of AI is not that the AI will take over and turn us all into paperclips—because that’s science fiction fantasy promoted by a literal cult. The hazard is that stupid people will think the magic truth machine is a magic truth machine and do stupid things because, well, “computer says kill.” And it’s worse because the current Department of Defense—or to use its proper name, the Department of Defense—is full of very, very stupid people who believe the chatbot is the magic truth machine. Pete Hegseth is a person of limited capacities, but he absolutely believes AI is the best thing ever. And yeah, I can’t say I’m convinced myself.

BJ Mendelson: I can’t either. And you know, Hegseth has a lot of influence in our community over what happens at West Point. You know, there was just the lawsuit that we covered with Professor Tim Bacon, where Hegseth and Trump essentially wanted to censor the civilian professors at West Point so that they can only talk about whatever the Department of Defense approved. So my ears always perk up whenever you cover that stuff, because there’s a trickle-down effect. But before we get to that, just before we came on here, I wanted to get your take on commercials that just came out. Like, as we’re recording this, they’ve just come out from Kathy Hochul—all of a sudden she’s reversed course on these data centers. And I was just hoping to get your impression on this new commercial.

David Gerard: Yeah, I had a look at the commercial just before we popped on. It’s just a 30-second campaign ad. The entire thing is: I’m against data centers. My opponent loves data centers. That’s the whole thing.

BJ Mendelson: Right.

David Gerard: Right? Now that’s very good political marketing in the lead-up to the November elections, because the populace hates data centers with all their hearts. There’s a bunch of Democratic strategists who absolutely cannot handle the concept of being handed a slam-dunk win. And so they’re saying we shouldn’t talk about this stuff. We might get some of their money. And that’s a very dumb, losing strategy. And if you’re a candidate listening to this and you want to think, well, maybe I should moderate on the data center question—no, don’t. Go for it. Your electorate will love you.

With Hochul, it’s interesting because I read her statement where she talks about risks of AI, and a lot of it’s the doomsday cult framing. Now, to be clear, people like Jacob Cox and the kid who got marketed into the news a couple of weeks ago is an idiot. These people are weird, stupid cultists. And I’m not saying that lightly. At their extremes they become murderous lunatics. Not all of them are crazy people, just many of them. But it’s sort of an engine for making weird and disturbing people. And their basic idea is they believe superintelligence will destroy all of humanity. And we can’t prove that the chatbot is not the first stage of that. So this might sound really absolutely inane, but these people honestly believe that. They also love using the chatbot, by the way. So they’ve actually had a great hit with a lot of politicians. They got Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon up on the same stage, and boy, is that an unfair forced error from Bernie. I’m sorry, Bernie—this is not a guy you should be on a stage with, you know.

BJ Mendelson: Yeah.

David Gerard: This is not a guy you should share a stage with, you know.

BJ Mendelson: I gotta say, that’s probably been my biggest disappointment with him—he seems to have fallen hook, line, and sinker for a lot of this AI doomsday stuff.

David Gerard: Yeah, it’s unfortunate. Hochul’s press release that she put out—when was that? It was a few days ago, I think.

BJ Mendelson: Yeah, it was just as we were chatting to set up this interview last week when it came out.

David Gerard: Yeah, here it is. September 21. So this was like Monday. She was requiring starting in November, New York will direct large AI developers to register with the state. So this is about safety incidents with AI—meaning we programmed our automated hacking tool to hack people, and then we enabled it to hack people, and the people we hacked are idiots. So we’re reporting that. That’s what that is.

BJ Mendelson: Yes.

David Gerard: So I found that actually really interesting because it’s like: obviously everyone hates AI. I’m gonna get on the anti-AI side because I want to get reelected. Which is the job. So I was really interested by that. One thing that really caught my eye about that press release was the regulator is part of the Department of Financial Services. Now, remember that New York is the state through which every U.S. dollar goes. It’s the New York Fed. It does all the banking arrangements for international banking. Every U.S. dollar that’s electronic goes through New York, more or less. So it’s like New York is the city the money lives in. It’s the city with the U.S.—it is the home city of the U.S. dollar, functionally.

BJ Mendelson: Right. Can you explain that a little for people?

David Gerard: The DFS is big and scary. They often put in financial regulation before the U.S. federal government does. So a lot of the SEC setup and laws were modeled on New York Blue Sky laws from the 1920s—they put them in place in the 1930s. Now Trump’s gutted them, but of course. But the DFS—it’s interesting she’s gotten the big regulator with teeth on this one: the Office of Digital Innovation, Governance, Integrity, and Trust. Digit! Isn’t that clever? So yeah, and I don’t know—they might do something. Who knows? It happens.

BJ Mendelson: You know what’s interesting, though? Originally the data center ban that came out of the New York State legislature this session was for three years. She weakened it down to one. And up until the 21st, when that press release came out, she looked like Gavin Newsom in terms of being completely in the bag with these tech companies. Do you think that she just changed directions because that’s where the wind was blowing?

David Gerard: Hochul is not the sort of person who has beliefs. She is not a politician who has beliefs. I presume she is doing it from electoral calculus. And in this thing, the electoral calculus says two plus two equals ban the data centers. So yeah, it’s pretty amazing. Even Greg Abbott in Texas—arch-Republican who never saw business in Texas he didn’t like and was very much in the pockets of the data center developers—had to walk it back with various restrictions on the data center industry. And it was interesting because everything he did is stuff that he could backtrack on in five seconds. It’s all governor decrees. His Democratic opponent says that’s weak. We need actual legislation, because that way you can’t just switch it off the day after you get reelected. And it’s quite something that a Democratic candidate in Texas actually has a chance and is hammering on the AI thing as hard as possible. Because the Texas grid doesn’t work because ERCOT is more or less rubbish. So they’re really feeling the pain. So yeah, if they can get someone like Greg Abbott to make anti-data center noises, imagine what Hochul in New York is having to do. So yeah, the AI companies are throwing as much money as they can at U.S. politics, which is what happened because it works so well for the crypto companies. But now you can just say: my opponent is funded by the AI companies, like Hochul just did, and it’s a strong, powerful message that will resonate. So, with gritted teeth, I say: well done to Governor Hochul.

BJ Mendelson: I think that is also pretty much the position of The Monroe Gazette. Whenever she does something well, we always give credit where credit is due—through gritted teeth. Let me ask you because this is something that I mean, you and I know that we’re not getting Ultron. Ultron is not coming from this version of what we keep calling artificial intelligence. And you know, they want you to think it’s AGI and it can do all these amazing things. But for people that are listening to this—we do have readers who skew a bit older. We have a lot of retirees who maybe get the news from CNN and Fox, right? And that’s not to slight them, but they’re not necessarily getting the truth about what this stuff can and can’t do. So just for the record, could you help me tell those people that Ultron is not coming?

AI Is Not Going To Kill You

David Gerard: So Ultron is not coming. The AI is not going to destroy us—not by building a superintelligence that takes over the world. That’s not a thing that happens. We don’t know how to do that. We don’t know how to define that. No one is on a path to that. The chatbot is literally a word completion machine. That’s what it does. It comes out with in-context sentences because we fed it literally the entire internet and then whatever else we can pile on. So it’s got a lot to complete from. So it’ll give you a nice, absolutely statistical average of all the writing in the world. And some of that will be stuff you haven’t seen before. So people try the chatbot and they go: “Wow, it was so useful. I love it. I’m convinced.” And they’re one-shotted by it. Other people use it and they go: “This is garbage.” And they’re not so convinced. It’s a super-duper autocomplete. It is not going to eat you and kill your dog. That is not how it works. What will happen is that the bozos running it, paying it, and trying to make all the money in the world from it do not care about you and will happily destroy your life, your town, your environment, and your industries in the process of making another buck.

But you know these guys: whenever someone says the magical robot will do all your work for you, that is the same pitch as “there’s a way to get rich for free.” In both cases, they are going to pick your pocket 100 percent of the time. And that’s what we see. The chatbot has limited use cases. People can find limited use for it. I’m deeply unconvinced by any of them. But yeah, it’s sort of a machine that uses up ghastly amounts of power and water at huge expense, which is subsidized by venture capitalists to do a mediocre job of some things. So yeah, if it destroys the world, it’ll be destroying the environment first.

BJ Mendelson: Yeah, and they don’t care. I think that’s the important point—that the tech bro oligarchs do not care about any side effects or any consequences. And I think that is so important for people to get because, you know, I get into this thing with my dad. He’s almost 80. And when we talk about AI for his generation—they don’t have some of the more contextual information that people our age and younger might have. And so the question I constantly get from my dad is: “Don’t they realize that what they’re doing is taking all your water right from your town?” And I keep saying to him: they don’t care. They only care about the bottom line financially.

David Gerard: Yep. I mean, my mum is in her 90s, and she got it immediately: “They’re just trying to take all our jobs.” Yes, that’s literally what this is for. That’s literally why they created this. That’s literally what they promote it to do. They’re trying to take everyone’s job. That’s how they sell this stuff: “You can fire all your employees. The robot will do your work for free.” It’s another instance of the robot pitch, you know. And again, it’s just picking their pockets because actually it turns out chatbots are really bad at every actual job. The only use for AI is for doing work that should not be done. You know, like transcribing meetings that nobody will ever read or summarizing meetings that nobody will ever read the summary of. If it’s ever important, you must not use the chatbot. It will get stuff so wrong and cause disasters and try to start a war with China and so on, purely by accident and stupidity.

BJ Mendelson: See, this is why I wanted to have you on, because I don’t think there’s anyone that puts it as clearly and as succinctly as that.

David Gerard: Well, Ed Zitron does, but he also swears a lot more.

BJ Mendelson: Ed does. I know Ed. We have a history. So like, I’m a little more reluctant to go to Ed. And honestly, I like your stuff better because it takes me—it takes me five minutes to watch. I watch everything on 2x speed on YouTube.

David Gerard: I must say I’m a huge fan of Ed Zitron. He does super valuable and important work. He reads all the financial documents.

BJ Mendelson: Yes.

David Gerard: I used to do that stuff with crypto, so I deeply appreciate precisely what he’s doing, you know. I’m glad he’s doing it so I don’t have to.

BJ Mendelson: Absolutely. Yeah, and let me just be clear to people listening. Like, you should read Ed Zitron’s work. My own stuff with him is my own business between me and him. But it should not affect whether you read his stuff. You should absolutely be reading his stuff. But I like your stuff a bit better because it’s more digestible, you know? It’s five minutes.

David Gerard: It helps that I do a five-minute blog, a podcast, or a few hundred words a blog. Turning that out every day is a lot of work. Did you know that a video takes about an hour per minute?

BJ Mendelson: Yes.

David Gerard: Just to edit it. That’s the old rule I learned from radio: for every hour on the air, it’s two hours worth of prep work that people don’t see. And yeah, producing a YouTube video every day—I can imagine just writing, editing, and coming up with stuff.

David Gerard: There’s one of me.

BJ Mendelson: Yes, yeah. I know the struggle well. The reason why we stopped doing video is I realized I could not write, break, and report news every day at 7 a.m. and still do all the other stuff on top of it.

David Gerard: Goodness me.

BJ Mendelson: You put out great work. And so I just want to recommend people: the Ed Zitron newsletter is very long, your stuff is digestible. And I think that’s the key difference.

David Gerard: Yeah. His stuff is very long, but you should dive in if you can, because

BJ Mendelson: Yes.

David Gerard: It’s absolutely quality stuff with a fair bit of strong language, because it warrants it. But—

BJ Mendelson: Yes. And that’s something too, like with Monroe Gazette. Like, we swear, and we get some of the older readers who don’t like it. And I’m constantly telling them: the planet is literally on fire. We have a dictator in the White House. At what point can I be allowed to swear? When is it okay to acknowledge that we’re living in this?

David Gerard: Yeah. The rule is: on YouTube, you have to indicate when you’re using strong language. On Apple Podcasts, you just gotta bleep it. In writing, AP Style says that if it’s in a quote, you can say f**k.

BJ Mendelson: Yes, that’s right.

David Gerard: Anyway, you have to bleep that for Apple if you want your clean rating, but that’s your problem.

Palmer Lucky Is Selling War Crimes In A Box

BJ Mendelson: Right, I thought it’s all good. But let me ask you: I originally wanted to talk to you about one of the things I mean, there’s always a ton of stuff—but I’ve been trying to work on this story involving Palmer Luckey and an appearance he had at West Point.

David Gerard: Yeah.

BJ Mendelson: So, for people listening to the Monroe Gazette: at this point, we’ve help break the story that Pat Ryan used to receive a lot of money from Peter Thiel’s Palantir. Recently, Ryan declared that he was going to give all that money back. But what he didn’t do—and what his office refuses to clarify—is whether or not he also gave back the $28,550 from Palmer Luckey’s Anduril Industries, who was recently, this summer, at West Point giving a really weird presentation to cadets.

And I was just hoping you might be able to, because I know you’ve come across Palmer Luckey: tell us a little bit about who he is, his connection to Peter Thiel, and what Anduril Industries is.

David Gerard: Right. So Palmer Luckey—he’s a bro. Like, he is the most broish bro who ever broed. And in fact, that’s his presentation, how he markets himself. He wears this sort of beach-bum outfit as his business uniform because if he wore a suit, you’d think he was a normal guy in a suit. But if he wears the beach-bum outfit, you think, “Wow, this guy must be special. He’s a nerd.” Same way Sam Bankman-Fried marketed himself at FTX: if he dressed in a suit, SBF wouldn’t have got nearly the money he did by dressing like a weird-looking nerd. So it’s business clothes—his beach-bum business clothes. He’s from a comfortable middle-class upbringing. His dad ran a car dealership. He got money, started his Oculus virtual-reality thing, and it was bought by Facebook. Then he got fired by Facebook for being Palmer Luckey. And he started a company called Anduril, which was going to be his defense contractor. And he got the attention of Peter Thiel. And they’re pretty obviously of like mind: Founders Fund, Thiel’s venture firm, led Anduril’s first funding round.

Basically, Luckey is a huge reactionary of a slightly disturbing kind. I saw the video of him at West Point. Well, I watched a bit of the video and I went, “I can’t stand this guy,” so I just read the transcript for the rest.

BJ Mendelson: Yes.

David Gerard: The transcript’s bad enough. He tells the cadets, “I think that Anduril is way more valuable as a company that is ideologically motivated. You know it. It’s the flame of the West.” Now, “West” is a direction, but also there’s a certain kind of guy—when he says “West,” you think that’s reactionary. You see a guy like that on Twitter—well, first of all, he’s on Twitter, but also he’s clearly got a statue icon, or maybe an anime icon, or maybe an anime-statue. He’s got a reactionary political stance. Luckey is telling you straight up who he is and what he is. It’s not obscure. He’s of like mind with Thiel. And putting money into politics—Thiel throws around money like water to causes he likes. It’s not even slightly secret. He funds a ton of podcasts and media operations. He funds all sorts of people he thinks are great, because he thinks the use of his money is to enjoy himself, and he certainly does.

But yeah, so Anduril is like—I mean, that presentation was like a commercial for Anduril. It totally was. That’s what he was there for. They were like, “Welcome, Mr. Luckey. We’re so delighted to have you. Gosh, you’re cool. We love you so much.” And it’s absolutely a commercial. It’s 100 percent an Anduril ad—always be closing. And manifestly, Luckey is a good salesman, right? He knows how to sell this stuff. His job is selling to defense. He talks at length in that video about selling to defense, you know. And the other thing is that Anduril’s stuff, their drones and so on—they don’t work. They don’t work. They keep failing in testing with the Defense Department. They’re not very good. They fail so much. But that doesn’t matter. You don’t need stuff that works for the Defense Department to buy it. That’s the origin of artificial intelligence. They spent about 30 years on the Defense Department dime on a field that was not going to give the Defense Department robot slaves. And they finally stopped giving these guys money, and that was the winter.

BJ Mendelson: Right.

David Gerard: Like, literally, that’s the history. John McCarthy invented the term “artificial intelligence” to market a summer program to the Department of Defense. It was a buzzword—a very cool buzzword with fabulous marketing potential, right? That’s a real achievement. He came up with a great marketing term. And that’s why, if you ever talk about artificial intelligence, someone says, “This technology...”—stop them right there and ask them to be specific about the technology. Otherwise—

BJ Mendelson: Yes.

David Gerard: —you get bozos who say you should absolutely adopt the lying chatbot in your business, because machine-learning systems scan X-rays. If you don’t say the name of the technology, suddenly it’s transparent that people are equivocating and selling you nonsense.

BJ Mendelson: Yeah, and it’s rare how often they say “machine learning.”

David Gerard: Image classifiers for radiology and so on—they can be good. Basically, if the radiologist is in control of them, they’re using them in their job, and they have a say in how these things are used, they help the work go along nicely, you know. They’re not super reliable. Machine learning is not reliable, but it’s good enough that it can assist people. A good system can assist people. Chatbots aren’t the same class of object. So anyone who uses X-ray analysis as an excuse for the chatbot—they might be lying, or they might just be a bit dumb.

BJ Mendelson: Good.

David Gerard: Yeah. With Anduril, it’s like—I don’t think Luckey is a military strategist. He doesn’t know it.

BJ Mendelson: Exactly. That’s why that was my whole—that’s what set me off in the first place: why is this man—

David Gerard: He doesn’t know it. He knows about as much about war as I’m sure he’s well-read on the subject and finds it interesting, but so is any war theorist on Reddit. He’s a Reddit guy about war, and now he’s saying this stuff in front of officer candidates at West Point. And they’re actually educated in this thing. They are there to learn it at West Point. They’re there to get a proper education in it. He’s got a Reddit-bro understanding. I’m sure he’s read Wikipedia articles, you know. And they’re just lapping it up because he’s a good talker. He’s a good popularizer. I mean, I’ll give him credit. He’s good at explaining simple stuff he’s read up on. Because, you know, a CEO’s job—half the job is public relations, you know?

BJ Mendelson: Yes. Absolutely.

David Gerard: Yeah, I’m sure Luckey is competent at the things he’s competent at. He’s an ass, but he’s not an incompetent one—unless you want your drones to work. In that case, he might not be your dude.

BJ Mendelson: So that’s—I mean, that ties this all together, right? Because I’ve noticed with the AI bros in particular, they seem to have an issue with China. And I don’t know about you, but as I was watching the video, he seems—and it’s not just him, it’s Peter Thiel and Musk and all of them—they seem hell-bent on having some kind of conflict with China. Did you get that impression? And do you feel that there seems to be some marketing going on there in beefing up some kind of imaginary feud with China?

David Gerard: I mean, yeah, that’s the whole deal. The great funding era for defense contracting ended in 1992 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. What do you do then? They tried starting a few more forever wars, which are always good for money, but not as good. But if China is the new super-power enemy, well, we have to arm up against them. And he’s got this sort of fantasy scenario of how China invades Taiwan. And maybe they will. Maybe they will. But if they do, it’s because they’re stupid. You know, it’s like—no one would have predicted Russia was going to invade Ukraine because it was obviously stupid, but they did it anyway. So we can’t rule out stupidity. But it would be stupid.

And then he painted this entire—I believe the phrase is “scenario planning”—where you make up a story. And he painted this whole scenario where China, one, successfully invades Taiwan with an amphibious assault, and two, proceeds to invade the rest of the South China Sea. Sure? Yeah. I’m not sure the People’s Liberation Army is quite up to that. It’s not in a great state, but if they really wanted to do that, you’d know about it, because they’d be getting the PLA really up to high quality. Which they could do. But I think China’s too busy making money.

BJ Mendelson: There was an interview on Stupid Sexy Privacy where we spent a lot of time talking about China. And forgive me for forgetting the interview name [Editor’s Note: It was the author Patrick McGee]—I will find it—but the guest had pointed out that the United States seems hell-bent on causing a war, and meanwhile, China’s kind of over there going, “We’re just making money, man. We’re just in this for the money.” Now, that doesn’t excuse or—and I’m not meant to make light of some of the more serious things going on there. But generally speaking, it certainly seems like we’re spoiling for a fight, and it’s the tech bros that are agitating for it, while China is on the other side going—

David Gerard: They’re marketing for defense dollars.

BJ Mendelson: Yes. And I think that’s key. I think that’s such a big point. And so, you know, it struck me as weird that this defense contractor is sitting there giving an ad for his company to cadets who may be in position to make requisitions with those defense dollars. That brings me to my last question: Is all of this a bubble? Like, if we’ve got these crazy scenarios, right—where we’ve got a defense contractor eagerly and enthusiastically selling his stuff to cadets—something doesn’t seem right here. Like, it seems like this business model for the AI companies, and including the weapons that use the AI, is a lot shakier than it looks. What would you have to say about that?

David Gerard: Yes, it’s absolutely a bubble.

BJ Mendelson: Great.

David Gerard: It i it was the bubblyest bubble that ever bubbled. my theory, my basic thesis of the AI bubble is that the whole thing is venture capitalists running a bubble party. And it’s literally the same actual guys, not just people very like them, but literally the some a lot of the same actual guys

BJ Mendelson: Yes.

David Gerard: Who tried to do a bubble in crypto and a bubble in the metaverse and web three and those all fell flat.

And really the crypto the AI bubble makes a lot more sense when you remember that Sam Altman is still a crypto bro.

BJ Mendelson: Yes.

David Gerard: If you think, that guy’s a crypto bro, suddenly he snaps into focus. And Palmer Lucky, I think, doesn’t give a hoot about the AI really. He’d like he he talks a lot in the video about has a lot of how we have certain kinetic weapons which we have

Have troubles with the law. What he means is that he wants to make autonomous drones to kill people and that’s what is actually called a war crime. He didn’t say war crime, but he’s talking about he really, really wants cell machinery to do war crimes. He wants to sell well Pamelahi wants to sell you war crimes in a box. And he’s

BJ Mendelson: Yes.

David Gerard: …very upset he can’t. You know. So, yeah, it’s it’s just necessary to America’s defence, you understand, to give

Palma Lucky, all your money for drones that don’t work and war crimes in a box. But yeah, I mean i he’s very frustrated by war crimes laws.

BJ Mendelson: It seemed it would seem so. And disappointingly no one no one called him out. None of the cadets they were just cheering and applauding, which was l a little disturbing.

David Gerard: It’s somewhat disconcerting, yeah. I was they they were just far too enthusiastic for his defence of the West thing. Yeah. I don’t want to see…

BJ Mendelson: Yeah, that was really disconcerting.

David Gerard: … a bunch of weird reactionaries being set up in the army, but I guess it’s a bit late really.

BJ Mendelson: We’re out of time, so is there anything I did not ask that that you wanted to share?

David Gerard: I don’t know. I mean, he’s I I’ll say one thing for Palmer Lucky, he’s not an AI doomsday believer. He thinks that’s garbage. He wants AI so that he can make his drones that commit war crimes. he wants to sell the Defence Department as many drones as possible. That’s his patriotic duty to bring about a proper reactionary, world of the sort which he believes in. The flame of the West, you know.

This guy is deeply unwholesome and I don’t like him.

We don’t either.

Special thanks to David Gerard from Pivot to AI for joining us this week on the show. Congressman Pat Ryan’s office, at this time, has still not replied to requests from The Monroe Gazette to clarify whether or not he returned the donation he received from Palmer Lucky’s Anduril Industries.

If you would like Congressman Ryan to publicly rebuke money accepted from a Trump loving defense contractor, you can call his D.C. office at (202) 225-5614.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Photo via the official West Point account on Flickr.

I did promise that the podcast would be back after I finished How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos, and I am a man of my word.

In this week’s episode: West Point’s longest serving law professor, Tim Bakken, reveals how he fought back against President Trump and Pete Hegseth’s efforts to censor the civilian professors at West Point, and won.

The Monroe Gazette is ad-free and paywall-free, covering local news in Monroe and surrounding towns as well as county, state, and national issues that impact those residents. We’re truthful. Not neutral.

We need to recruit 982 paid annual subscribers between now and June 24, 2027 to keep our lights on.

If you’re new here or already a free subscriber, press the red button below to upgrade

Our Interview With Professor Tim Bakken

[Editor Note: Riverside.fm generates these transcripts using generative AI. I then, using Duck.Ai — to prevent Anthropic from stealing my stuff — run the transcript through Clause 4.5 Haiku to correct the transcript for any errors, and to make the transcript compliance with AP Style. You may not realize it, but all Monroe Gazette articles follow AP Style. Except when I say the word f**k.

Anyway, I tell you this because I believe any use of artificial narrow intelligence needs to be disclosed, and because there may be errors in the transcript below. If so, blame the robots, and take this as further proof that all of those AI Doomers are bogus weirdos trying to hype their technology before the bubble pops.]

BJ Mendelson

Tim, would you like to take a moment just to introduce yourself and let our readers and listeners know who you are?

Professor Tim Bakken

I am a professor of law at the US Military Academy at West Point. I started in 2000, and I’m currently the longest serving professor in that position in West Point’s history. I have started at West Point teaching constitutional and military law and now teach criminal law, and I’ve done either one of those for the last 27 years.

BJ Mendelson

Could you describe what your experience has been up until February of 2025 when it comes to the way that you might conduct a course?

Professor Tim Bakken

In my courses and in writing publicly or speaking publicly over the course of my first twenty-five years or about twenty-four and a half years, I was free to speak and write publicly, and I was free to tell my cadets what my beliefs are regarding my subject matters. That changed on February 13, 2025 because then West Point created a new rule that prohibited professors, the civilian professors at West Point, from speaking or writing publicly. [The Dean's Policy and Operating Memorandum 03-24]

And somewhat later at the new academic year in August of 2025, the Dean of West Point issued a directive orally that said professors, military and civilian, cannot give their opinions to cadets while in class.

I opposed those initiatives by the dean’s office and West Point. And in September, on Sept. 22, 2025, I filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York contending that all three of those directives — not being able to speak publicly as a citizen, not being able to speak publicly at conferences as a professor, and not being able to give opinions to cadets at West Point — were unconstitutional violations of the First Amendment.

Recently, as of Sept. 8, a federal judge issued a final permanent injunction because the judge found that those three restrictions were indeed unconstitutional violations of the First Amendment and issued a permanent injunction banning West Point from enforcing those restrictions against the civilian professors. There’s one caveat to that. The restriction that professors can’t speak in class, that prohibition is unenforceable against me. But if West Point chose to do it, and I think that no institution should do that, West Point perhaps could argue that it could continue to prevent other civilian professors from speaking their opinions on their subject matters while in class.

BJ Mendelson

Now where did all this come from? Was this an executive order that pushed West Point to do this, or was this something West Point was sort of looking into?

Professor Tim Bakken

The complaint alleges that West Point felt pressure from the new administration and from the new Secretary of Defense, but there was nothing in writing formally that indicated that the military administrators at West Point were required to, for example, ban books in the library — which occurred — and limiting professors from teaching certain materials such as climate change. And there was nothing in the executive orders of the new administration that required West Point to do those kinds of things or prohibit professors from speaking or writing publicly. Nonetheless, the military administrators did do that, and because of that, I thought that was a First Amendment violation and filed suit in September of 2025.

BJ Mendelson

Can you give us an example? You mentioned climate change specifically, but I’m wondering if there’s maybe an example you can give us of what this policy would do to your class if you were forced to follow it.

Professor Tim Bakken

One of the examples I experienced, and I think I indicated three or four of them in the complaint, is that in one instance a cadet asked me my view of the death penalty, and I demurred from that and just tried to tell the cadet that the cadet would have to definitely decide on one’s own with regard to the death penalty. In another instance, I was asked a question about whether the deinstitutionalization movement from the 1970s and 1980s led to more homeless people and to more homeless people being incarcerated or in trouble with the criminal justice system.

And while my opinion is probably yes in regard to that, I demurred in that situation also and said that the cadet might consider doing some research on that particular issue. Those are a couple of examples, but those are instances when I was faithfully trying to follow the dean’s edict — the directive that said professors cannot give their opinions on matters in class. And as a result of that, I thought that was a severe violation, a very extraordinary violation of academic freedom, and sued on that basis. And in fact, academic freedom is a part of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Academic freedom is the concept that applies to college professors and it allows them to speak freely in those areas that I just mentioned in the classroom and while being a professor and doing professor’s work at colleges and certainly also as a citizen. And sometimes we forget that we need to be able to try to find some people somewhere or someplace where we can expect that they will try to search for the truth. That’s not to say anybody is so wise as to know what the truth is, but certainly we all want to be able to look to people who are trying to be as objective and neutral as possible and trying to search for the truth.

One place that we’re able to do that, it seems, although there’s a lot of question about that today, is in universities and colleges. And in my position, was and certainly is: if we’re looking for someone who will try to search for the truth, we should certainly expect our federal employees to do that. That’s what we’re expecting of them. And as a result, because I felt that the West Point rules were restrictive in that way — not allowing either me and my colleagues or anybody else in our situation to speak freely as teachers and not allowing us to speak freely as federal employees — I thought both of those were unconstitutional violations.

And now I can say that they’re unconstitutional, and that sounds a little bit formalistic and highfalutin in some ways, but the result of that, in my view, is this: when people can’t speak or write freely in the military context, then the cadets and students who will go on to become admirals and generals will be accustomed to groupthink, blind loyalty, and conformity rather than critical thinking. We can talk about critical thinking all we want, but unless we’re willing to engage in dissent among each other in any environment — but especially an environment where the cadets will go on to be generals, as is the case at West Point — we want them to have all the possible dissenting and disagreeing viewpoints that exist, so they’ll learn how to make decisions, they’ll have the repetitions necessary to think and make decisions throughout their undergraduate years.

And then because of that, they’ll do the same kind of thing, the same kind of processing when they become leaders, and certainly when they become generals, we hope. Without the ability of college professors at West Point to do that, and only the civilians are now enabled to do that because the restrictive rule still applies to the military faculty, if the civilian faculty were unable to do that, then there’d be nobody at the military academy with the right to press the cadets on the most controversial, the most serious, and the most difficult issues. Now because of the judge’s decision on Sept. 8, the civilian professors can once again do that without at least formal fear of being disciplined for engaging in that kind of free speech.

BJ Mendelson

Can you clarify for people what the distinction is between, let’s say, a civilian professor versus a military professor?

Professor Tim Bakken

At West Point historically until the mid-1990s, all the instructors except a few in physical education and foreign languages were rotating military officers. Those officers had largely obtained master’s degrees in their disciplines and then come to West Point to teach for two or three years and then left to go back and do something else in the Army.

That changed in the mid-1990s because Congress felt that West Point did not have enough intellectual back and forth, not enough intellectual discussion. And as a result, civilian professors were hired at West Point, and over the years we, the civilian professors, have crafted job security not for the protection of our jobs, but rather the protection of academic freedom. Because if we were, for example, worrying always about our jobs, we would never speak freely if we knew that by doing so we would gather the disdain or the disagreement or possibly sometimes in fact the punishment of the military administrators who meted out those disciplinary measures because they didn’t like something that was being said. That changed, as I said, on February 13, 2025. In those years from the mid-1990s to February 13, 2025, there was at least some kind of understanding among the military administrators that they should not engage in censorship of the civilian faculty members. That all changed on February 13, 2025, and that’s what necessitated the lawsuit to declare that the new prohibitions that the military administrators attached to the civilian professors were unconstitutional.

BJ Mendelson

Now take us to May 26. There’s an injunction granted and then not long after the Pentagon says it’s gonna alter its policy. Can you take us through what happened there?

Professor Tim Bakken

During the course of the case, I asked the judge to issue a preliminary injunction pending the final outcome of the case. The preliminary injunction was necessary, I believed, because during all this time the civilian professors, almost all of them perhaps except for me, were not speaking and they certainly weren’t speaking according to their conscience. And that meant that the freedom to speak and the discussions that could be had from the freedom to speak were not occurring. I asked the judge to issue a preliminary injunction, and the judge did that, holding that the restrictions were likely unconstitutional.

That was pending the final outcome of the case, which was September 8, when the judge finally ruled that the restrictions were unconstitutional. After May 26, and I can’t really speak to this as an expert because the Department of Defense restrictions and the other restrictions at the military academies might still be there because the judge’s decision only applies to the professors at West Point based on my case. Therefore, elsewhere in the military and elsewhere in the government, those kinds of restrictions still might stand. But my plea certainly is that if in this instance the federal judge — and I think it was the first federal judge ever to hold that these kinds of prior restraints, you can’t speak unless the military administrators approve what you say — I believe this is probably the first time a federal judge has indicated that that’s unconstitutional, just because there are so few cases, there are so few people, and maybe only one, who are willing to bring this kind of case.

I would hope the rest of the government, whether it’s in the military or elsewhere, will look at this and say to federal employees that we want you to engage in vigorous discourse and tell the American people what you think is objective and neutral search for truth, regardless of whether your discipline is law, English teaching, chemistry teaching, or other work in the government.

BJ Mendelson

And have you had any contact at all with, let’s say, Congressman Ryan or State Senator Skoufis about like having those conversations? ‘Cause it sounds like we’ve solved half the problem, but we still have the academic portion of West Point that’s run by the military officers still operating under these restrictions.

Professor Tim Bakken

In a 2020 book that I wrote, ‘The Cost of Loyalty,’ I described in my view that the military had become a separate society, and I believe it continues to be a separate society, almost unaccountable to the rest of American society. It’s like a fourth branch of government after the judiciary, the legislative, and the executive branches. My position has been that I try to remain outside of the politics of the matter because my focus is on the constitutional values that are at issue.

The constitutional values supersede all other values — politics, they supersede what Congress does, what I do, what the president might do, what the military administrators might do. But the person who can decide that, what is constitutional, and the only person who can do that, is a federal judge. And that’s the course that I’ve taken. And by trying to isolate my work to the legal aspect and taking it to a federal court, then my view is that I can be objective and neutral, and that people can look to me and say that Tim Bakken is not Republican or Democrat or left or right, but he’s focused on the importance of upholding constitutional values. And in upholding those constitutional values, national security, which is the number one goal of the Department of Defense, will be enhanced. Therefore, to answer your question specifically, I’m trying to stay diligently away from politics and very steadfastly focused on the constitutional issues that are raised.

BJ Mendelson

Let me ask you about what happens now. So the judge has issued the ruling. West Point as of this writing hasn’t appealed it, but what do you expect is gonna happen next?

Professor Tim Bakken

I don’t know what West Point will do or what any other part of government will do, but administration at West Point and the government do have the opportunity to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which sits in New York City, and after that to the U.S. Supreme Court. However, the reason why they would appeal the rule would be to try to reinstate the rules that say that civilian professors cannot speak or write publicly, and they cannot speak or write at conferences and they cannot give their opinions to cadets.

I hope, sincerely, that they take to heart the judge’s decision saying that those things were unconstitutional, and I believe people around the country have looked at the case and said, “We don’t believe that those restrictions should be part of American society, including within the military.” Therefore, although I’m certainly willing to continue to defend the constitutional protections that we have, especially the First Amendment, of course, it seems the most effective thing to do would just be to say, “Let’s stop this. We made a mistake. The judge issued a decision telling us that we made a mistake, that the censorship rules are unconstitutional and we want to stop them.” Therefore, there’s no purpose in going forward, though I certainly will continue to defend the Constitution if necessary, but I would hope that we would all agree that we need to have as much vigorous discussion as possible so that the cadets who hear and work with professors will themselves learn to be vigorous discussants and hear all sides of every issue and therefore, not only when they’re out in the field somewhere in the Army, but certainly just as importantly when they’re generals sometime in the future, they’ll be able to make the best possible decisions in the most critical circumstances.

BJ Mendelson

Tell us, is there anything that I didn’t ask you that you’d like people to know?

Professor Tim Bakken

I think you asked all the good questions. The one thing that I would say to people is that everybody will find that speaking up is a very difficult thing to do. But I would hope that if you find an issue that you believe in and it’s something that goes to your conscience and you want to speak up about it, but somehow there’s difficulty in doing so, then until you’re willing to do it, until you’re able to do it — some people just are in difficult situations and they can’t speak up.

Try your hardest to help the people who are speaking up because as we sometimes know, the person who is alone in speaking up will not be as effective without someone telling her or him or anyone that the cause is a just cause. And that the just cause should continue, and just in doing that, that provides a great deal of support to the person who is speaking up.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Here’s part two in our series exploring the use of LLMs to generate successful FOIA requests.

This time, I am joined by Adam Marshall, director of national litigation at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Adam takes a different position from our previous guest, Lauren Harper, Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy with Freedom of the Press Foundation. You can listen to Part 1 here.

This is important information for those of you who want to stay on top of what ICE and DHS is doing in our community given their sharp uptick in activity that started in July.

A real hero—pictured above—is documenting the increasing presence of ICE in Monroe and in Kiryas Joel.

Full Transcript

[Editorial note: I did attempt to use Claude 4.5 Haiku along with Duck.AI to create this week’s transcript. I am desperate to find ways to save time with anything that’s not investigating and writing, and I absolutely hate doing these transcripts. So, let’s see how this goes. Just note that this transcript may be slightly different from the audio version above.]

BJ Mendelson: Adam, thank you so much for joining us today. Would you like to take a moment to introduce yourself to our audience?

Adam Marshall: Sure, my name is Adam Marshall. I am the director of national litigation at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

BJ: And can you tell us just a bit more about what the Reporters Committee does?

Adam: Yeah, so the Reporters Committee is a nonprofit. We are based partly in DC, but we also have attorneys in states across the U.S. We are primarily a bunch of attorneys that provide pro bono legal services to journalists and newsrooms in the United States. We do a lot of public transparency work—records requests, court access, that type of thing. But we touch on all kinds of issues at the intersection of journalism and law, to try to support reporters and newsrooms as they do their job.

BJ: And I think that’s a perfect fit for what we want to talk about today. Our goal at the Monroe Gazette is to train people to report on news within a ten-mile radius of their house. That’s our overarching desire. And sometimes it bumps into this question of large language models and whether they’re effective or useful. So before we get into it, I’m just curious: up until this point, what has been your interaction with large language models when it comes to the work that you do?

Adam: I mean, I believe when I first typed anything into ChatGPT—years ago when it first came out—the first thing I ever did was ask it to draft a FOIA request, actually.

BJ: Nice.

Adam: Because I was like, this could be interesting. I wonder what it will do. So from the very beginning of public access to these chat interfaces for LLMs, I’ve been testing them out and thinking about them—where they could be useful, where they do helpful stuff, where they are not as helpful or maybe even affirmatively unhelpful. So yeah, it’s been several years now that I’ve been tinkering with it and theorizing about the intersection between FOIA and these tools.

BJ: Generally speaking, do you think they’re useful for generating a FOIA request?

Adam: I’m going to say the lawyerly thing, which is: it depends.

BJ: Sure. Yeah.

Adam: It completely depends on what model you are using, what instructions you give it, and what you are asking about. I think that in general, if you just ask an LLM—certainly some of the earlier models, but continuing through more recent models—to generate a FOIA request for records about X or Y or Z, it will generally produce something that looks like a FOIA request if you don’t dig into the details too much.

But the descriptions of the records in the request are often quite poor. It often misses a lot of key things that requesters should address in the request. And so I’ve been pretty skeptical about just taking the output from LLMs and using it as a FOIA request.

Where I do think there is potential is to create custom RAGs—retrieval-augmented generative tools—that look at a corpus of government record descriptors to try to identify potential records to ask for in a records request.

I think that’s where the real magic of LLMs can be helpful. Because one of the challenges a requester faces in describing records is that agencies are just often like black boxes. There’s so much that goes on, but it’s so hard for a layperson or even a journalist who’s interested in something to figure out exactly what to ask for. And where I think an LLM can be helpful is translating the kind of underlying semantic content of what you’re interested in into the bureaucratic language that agencies might use.

So if I’m interested in, say, a contract at an agency, I might not know how the agency goes about describing those types of contracts or related documents. But if I can use an LLM to examine the agency’s forms and regulations and all kinds of stuff, the LLM might be able to say, this is what you’re interested in. This corresponds to Form 274/D. And that’s really what you should be focused on. And then if I go out and verify that Form 274/D is in fact what I’m interested in, then I think that is a huge benefit to the requester because they can be really precise and the agency then knows exactly what they’re talking about.

BJ: Yeah, and I think you kind of hit some of the problems head-on. And so I’m wondering: what would you advise people if they’re given a choice? Would you say that life before LLMs—is it still maybe a matter of having better success using something like FOIA Wiki, for example, which I know you guys are absolutely familiar with and we can definitely talk about?

Adam: Yeah.

BJ: Would you steer people toward more of those resources than using the LLM? Let’s say you have a new journalist coming to you. Would you steer them toward more of those resources?

Adam: I don’t think there’s a huge benefit to using an LLM for the other parts of the request because of a few reasons. One is that the other trappings of the request seem to be pretty standard, right? It’s like, who are you? How much are you willing to pay for this? What is your address? That type of thing.

And then there are other parts of the request that require some kind of argument. For example, the requester might argue that they’re entitled to expedited processing or a fee waiver. And in those contexts, I don’t think that the LLMs often do a great job in making a convincing argument. I don’t know. The models are changing all the time and getting better and more sophisticated. So this isn’t to say they’re never going to be helpful.

But I think the real value add is in using them to identify very particular types of records that would otherwise be difficult for a requester to know about.

BJ: That takes us perfectly into the example we posted where I found that if not for Project Saltbox and if not for feeding that specific Project Saltbox link into the LLM, I don’t think it would have been able to help me identify the records concerning 800 Corporate Boulevard. But I did find that Claude in particular was helpful in, as you pointed out, saying, okay, well this is specifically what you need and what you don’t need.

Adam: Yeah. And so I was just looking at the preface to your request. It looks like you used Claude 4.5 Haiku via Duck AI.

BJ: Yes. That’s right.

Adam: And you know, I’ve also tended to find—to be honest, I have not played around a lot with Haiku. I think in general the bigger parameter models tend to give much better results. So with respect to Claude, I think I’ve only looked at it using Sonnet and Opus. I don’t think I’ve experimented with Haiku.

BJ: I don’t want anyone to take this as an endorsement for Anthropic or Claude. Yeah.

Adam: No. No.

BJ: I certainly don’t. And I’m one of the plaintiffs in the Bartz v. Anthropic case, so I can factually say they stole my stuff to train their model. So our interest in promoting these things is just: how can we arm everyday citizens to act like reporters, and how quickly can we onboard them? And is this better than some of the other things? Can you tell us a little bit about FOIA Wiki and maybe why that would be the more superior thing for people to go to?

Adam: Yeah, well, I mean, I certainly like it because it’s a resource that the Reporters Committee hosts and that other groups have contributed to over the years. I’m not saying it’s the best one out there, but it is certainly something that we like to send journalists to when they have questions about FOIA. I think that federal FOIA in particular is not always easy to use. And that’s a shame because these laws exist for the benefit of the public at large. But for better or for worse, we have sixty years now of case law and regulations and implementation of FOIA. And I do think it behooves people to understand how the law works, both as a legal entity and as a practical matter.

And to do that, you just have to get your hands dirty a little bit. You have to read agency regulations, understand what are the trade-offs between the scope of your request and how quickly you need it, understand how to make an argument about timeliness or public interest.

I do think that flexing your brain muscles around these things helps ultimately produce better requests. And there are a lot of tools that can help us produce better work product, but at the end of the day, I don’t think there are a lot of shortcuts that can be taken. So I think reading about FOIA from a whole variety of sources, including from the government frankly—the DOJ guide to FOIA—to better familiarize yourself with how the law works is always a good idea.

BJ: Yeah, and I think a good example of using your brain is—I’m sure you’ve heard by now about ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

Adam: Yes.

BJ: Yeah, which Wired recently reported on, an incident in Syracuse, among others, where a poll watcher was approached by two ICE agents who wanted her to sign a form basically saying that she’s been warned essentially not to post nasty things about ICE on the internet. So all of us this week are learning about this office and what it’s supposed to do versus what it’s currently doing. And so using our brain, like what would you suggest someone who wants to be a reporter? How would they even begin to tackle something like that using FOIA?

Let’s say we’re going to take the LLMs out. Let’s say the LLM is not conducive, and we’re going to use some of these other resources out there. How would we approach that?

Adam: So I think, any time anyone is drafting a FOIA about a particular subject, I would just try to read everything that I can about it. Find all of the reporting you can. But then also start to dig into an agency and an office’s organizational chart. That can often be interesting. Start digging into the agency regulations to figure out how different processes flow throughout the agency. What types of records might exist or be required to be created at different points in those processes that you might ask for.

You know, looking at examples of prior requests—MuckRock, for example, is a great resource here. You can see what other people have previously requested from that agency or that office, and then see if those might be updated or built upon in terms of what you’re interested in now. Looking at press releases or statements or anything that the agency itself is affirmatively putting out could provide a basis for asking for records. You could also ask for communications between specific people that mention a word or phrase between certain dates. There are lots of different ways to go about it.

But I think a trap that people often fall into when making a FOIA request is they’re like, okay, I’m interested in this topic, right? Topic X or Topic Y. And then they submit a FOIA request that says, I want any and all records related to Topic X. And that’s not going to work under federal FOIA because it’s not sufficiently specific. You have to drill down more into what types of records you’re actually looking for. And so that’s where it’s really helpful to understand how the agency works, understand what people are involved, what offices are involved, what processes are involved, so you can be more specific in the request.

The Monroe Gazette is ad-free and paywall-free, covering local news in Monroe and surrounding towns as well as county, state, and national issues that impact those residents.

Want to help keep the lights on? We’re looking to recruit 995 paid annual subscribers between now and June 24, 2027. If you’re new here or already a free subscriber, press that beautiful button below to upgrade.

BJ: Let me ask you about what happens if you get something that’s completely redacted. So for people listening, we put in a FOIA request for the EPA where we wanted to know what instructions they received upon Lee Zeldin becoming the head of the EPA in terms of budget cuts, DOGE, and staff reductions. And we received a bunch of stuff that was redacted.

But unlike with FOIL, I’m not at all familiar with how you appeal a FOIA request. So is this something we would go to an LLM for, or what resources are out there for us to look into how to handle either redactions or denials of requests?

Adam: Yeah, so under federal FOIA there’s what’s called an administrative appeals process, which is basically you appeal higher up within the agency and have them take a second look at it. The agency will tell you in the denial letter who you send that to. Requesters will usually have a minimum of ninety calendar days to submit an administrative appeal. And so there are exemptions in federal FOIA scattered throughout the United States Code that allow agencies to withhold either specific records or types of information. And if the agency asserts one of those exemptions, you basically have to come up with a legal argument for why those don’t apply.

There are lots of guides out there that provide requesters information about those exemptions and potential arguments that you might make. So the FOIA Wiki is one of them, but there are lots of guides out there. And the government even puts out its own guide on FOIA exemptions. So in crafting legal arguments, I think it depends upon what specific tool you’re using. But I think there are a lot of potential pitfalls and dangers with respect to using LLMs because they do tend to hallucinate legal citations in a lot of cases, misunderstand cases, or just not really get the issue.

BJ: Right.

Adam: And so I would be extremely cautious in using any of these tools to craft administrative appeals.

BJ: Yeah, and we can flag for readers as well. We’ve talked a lot about FOIL, the New York State equivalent, on The Monroe Gazette. And yeah, we’ve definitely seen cases that have been made up by Claude and by some of the other ones.

Adam: Yeah.

BJ: So what would you say? Like, a new reporter has come to you and they’re like, give me everything I need to know about FOIL and FOIA. What are the tips and tricks that you always start with?

Adam: I mean, a lot of it is about how to craft descriptions of the records you’re after. I spend a lot of time with reporters on that, and a lot of it covers things we’ve already talked about. But there are other procedural things you need to know when it comes to FOIA in particular. Like if you are a journalist, it certainly behooves you to know how to make a request for a fee benefit as a member of the news media. You need to know how to make a fee waiver request if you’re interested. You need to know how to ask for expedited processing. There’s just a lot of minutiae that go into drafting a really good FOIA request, and there are a lot of branches that you have to choose between in drafting a request that affect what it’s going to look like. And so when I train journalists on FOIA, a lot of it is just walking through the basics: who you can FOIA, how do you craft a description of what you’re asking for, and then walking through all of these different branches to figure out or to at least get the lay of the land in terms of all the things you should be thinking about as you’re drafting the request. And you know, a lot of times state or local government agency public records requests can be a lot simpler to draft.

But for federal FOIA, again, for better or for worse, it ends up being a pretty technical exercise.

BJ: Right.

Adam: Yeah.

BJ: And that’s what led us to the LLMs in the first place.

Let me ask you real quick about—again, going back to we want people to be journalists covering news within ten miles of their house. So how would they apply for a fee waiver, if at all?

Adam: You can go look at the FOIA Wiki. We have a whole section on fee waivers. There are two general prongs that you have to make an argument for with respect to a fee waiver. You have to show that there is a public interest in the information that is likely to contribute significantly to the public understanding of the operations or activities of the government. And then the second one is you have to show that it’s not primarily in the commercial interest of the requester. And if you are gathering information to distribute it, especially to the public for free, the latter category is easier to make an argument for. And then on the first prong, you need to be showing: what is it about the federal government that these records are going to illuminate, and how is it additive to what is already kind of known about what the federal government is doing?

And for both of these, yes, there are cases that you could cite. But I think a good common-sense argument is going to go a lot farther than a really chock-full legal brief.

BJ: Yeah, simple seems to be better, right? Like that seems to be at least with this. And is that true as well for expedited processing? Like have you ever seen that actually granted?

Adam: Yeah, so requests for expedited processing are granted. The rate varies agency to agency. Not many requests for expedited processing are granted. But they certainly are sometimes. Expedited processing can be a little more involved because you might need to read the statute in conjunction with the agency regulations.

So there are two specific ways in FOIA—the statute itself—that you can qualify for expedited processing. And then the agency regulations can basically add on additional circumstances in which you can get expedited processing. And then, same thing for these: you can look up case law, certainly on the two main situations in which you might get expedited processing. But a lot of it is just really solid logical arguments.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

We’re teaching everyone how to use FOIA (the Freedom of Information Act.)

If you missed our first attempt to FOIA ICE and the General Services Administration for information concerning 800 Corporate Boulevard in the Town of Newburgh, start here.

This conversation picks up from that post.

The current deadline for GSA to get back to us, according to them, is 20 business days from July 13th, 2026. So August 7th, 2026 is when we will file up with them if we haven’t heard back.

Transcript

(Note: The following transcript has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.)

BJ Mendelson, The Monroe Gazette: Lauren, would you like to take a moment to introduce yourself?

Lauren Harper, Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy with Freedom of the Press Foundation: Of course. My name is Lauren Harper, and I currently serve as the Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy with Freedom of the Press Foundation. Prior to that, I spent over a decade working for a nonprofit based in Washington, DC called the National Security Archive, helping journalists, researchers, and lots of other folks use FOIA to get important documents declassified.

BJ Mendelson: For for our younger members of the audience, could you tell us who Daniel Ellisberg was?

Lauren Harper: Absolutely. Daniel Ellsberg was the legendary whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers in the early nineteen seventies, and these papers proved that successive presidential administrations, both Democratic and Republican, had been lying to the public and to Congress about the odds of success …American success, in Vietnam.

BJ: It’s striking to me. I I had just read The Afghanistan Papers a few years ago and I was struck by history not necessarily repeating, but definitely rhyming there.

Lauren: Craig Whitlock’s book relied heavily on FOIA. I actually worked on the Afghanistan documentation project at the archive while he was was working on that and, absolutely, history repeats, rhymes, all that stuff.

And FOIA, you know, is it’s an imperfect tool, but it was really important in getting …especially the Special Inspector General on Afghanistan Reconstruction Reports out into the public for for that book.

BJ: For people who haven’t read it, I can’t recommend [the book] enough. Especially as a millennial, my entire adulthood was shaped by Afghanistan.

Lauren, let’s put aside for a second that the federal government is broken, right? And FOIA probably is not gonna work the way that it would in an ideal situation.

That said, what we’re trying to do at The Monroe Gazette is train people to use the chat models like like a Claude or ChatGPT to send in FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests.

And that can be fraught with peril.

So I sent you what we had created in Claude to send to the GSA concerning 800 Corporate Boulevard in the Town of Newburgh.

What worked and what didn’t in that FOIA?

Lauren: I’ll just note that FOIA certainly does not work the way it was promised under this administration or really any other. You know, it’s had a lot of longstanding problems that have really snowballed over the decades and years, but I think it’s facing some acute pressure that is unique under this administration.

So long standing problems and acute pressures right now make it a really difficult tool. But I don’t want that to discourage people from using FOIA because I think it remains the best avenue any member of the public has in forcing the government to disclose information that the public wants to see. It’s one of the most democratic tools that we have access to. And I think the more people who use it shows the government that one, there’s a demand for actual transparency and there’s a need for this law, which makes it more difficult I think for the government basically to starve FOIA offices across the board.

But in terms of the request that you sent me, there are a couple things that that Claude did really well.

And I think in general, you know, AI does pretty well when it comes to helping people craft a FOIA request objectively.

You know, one of the things that it is best at is identifying what kind of documents an agency possesses. So AI can be really useful. And I think it was in this case for highlighting specific kinds of records that the GSA (General Services Administration) is likely to keep because you know the GSA has different kinds of records and a different record system than any other agency.

You know, it’s got a different record system than ICE, different kind of records, etc. It can also be really helpful in identifying specific dates, award numbers, amounts, and these are all keywords that can be used by a FOIA officer when they receive your request to help process it.

So I think overall that is what Claude is best at and did best here.

But I think that there are a couple of things… It was almost too good.

For example, you know, the request is really big. It’s got four parts. And objectively, that’s okay. But when it comes to how an agency actually processes a request, it might be better to split that up into four smaller requests.

And I’m happy to talk about some of the other things that you could input into the Claude model to make it a stronger request.

BJ: I wanted to briefly touch on how I relied Project Saltbox and their coverage of 800 Corporate Boulevard. They are the ones that initially had discovered this, I guess, secret intended use for the warehouse of possible transportation and holding of people there.

And so I relied heavily on feeding that information into Claude, which is what generated the FOIA.

In general, would you say it’s best practices to keep these FOIA requests as specific and narrow as possible?

And if so, does that lead into… What you mentioned of instead of like one big request, it it should be maybe more specific, more narrow and smaller requests?

Lauren: I think in general it’s always been best to file a targeted request as targeted as you can. And I think, you know, while a lot of there were a lot of specifics in the request that that you posted.

It really it different sections of it lend itself to an agency coming back with specific exemptions.

So if your goal is to, for example, have the simplest processing possible, like if you’re not gonna sue, that’s when it really behooves you to break up some of those requests.

So for example, one section most likely to get met with trade secrets exemption, the exemption before.

Another one was most likely to see what’s called “the deliberative process exemption.” So if you’re not going to sue, really the best thing to do is to break up that request to a little bit smaller.

And that also allows you to preemptively kind of argue against some of the exemptions that might be applied. But I think for the average person perhaps who might be listening when filing your request, the best thing that you can do truly to put yourself on good footing Is not just the content of the stuff that you’re asking for, but make sure that you identify your fee status in the body of the request.

I noticed that yours asked for a fee waiver, which honestly is something I’m on the fence about because it’s so rarely granted. [Reader note: At this time the GSA has said our request for a fee waiver is “pending.”]

An agency will often come back and deny it. And it just kind of becomes another interaction you have to have with an agency before they process your request. What I’ve found, what a lot of particularly reporters, journalists, whether they’re freelancers or not, researchers at educational institutions and so on, their best bet is to preemptively identify their fee status.

For example, that could be news media. And what happens here, because of amendments that were made to FOIA in 2016, this means that when an agency misses their processing deadline of 20 days, which they most certainly will, or an extra 10 days, even if you do get expedited processing, they can’t charge any fees. And so that’s eff effectively the same thing as a fee waiver, but it doesn’t really require a back and forth with the agency usually to secure it. So I think asking for a fee status is is knowing your fee status and asking for it up front, one of the best things you can do to make the FOIA process less painful and contentious.

BJ: I think that’s great advice. And for us, what we’re trying to do is train people to be their local media. I think that’s great advice. And for us, what we’re trying to do is train people to be their own local media outlets so essentially everything within a ten mile radius of your home is what we’re encouraging people to report on.

In that specific instance, what what could they claim, if anything?

Lauren: I think you could say freelancer. I think you could say freelancer, which is member of the news media. You can pick the news media option when you file your request. That was another thing with your article. I think it mentioned either emailing or sending a hard copy of your FOIA request. You certainly can do that. You’re allowed to do that. What I recommend though, honestly, is going through GSA’s PAL portal, public access link portal. Because any other way that you submit a request, whether that’s you’re emailing it, you are mailing it in, or you’re using FOIA.gov, which is the government-wide FOIA portal, when the GSA gets it through any of those venues, they have to manually take all that information and put it into their their PAL portal. So that just creates another step. Sometimes errors can come in when an agency an agency FOIA officer is re-entering information into their direct portal. I would recommend just going directly into their their PAL portal. It keeps all of your correspondences with an agency right there so you can see it, which makes it much easier when you want to appeal.

But another really common sense thing that I would just recommend your listeners do with any agency that they file a FOIA request with, especially if they’re using AI to help craft the request, prompt your AI to look at that agency’s, in this case it’s GSA’s, FOIA regulations and FOIA handbook to help you craft the strongest FOIA request possible. Because even though the FOIA is a government-wide statute, every agency has specific rules about how they handle it.

So if you can use an agency’s own rule book to really finesse your FOIA request, including understanding the record system and their their processing administrative processing track, that can really put you on a step forward to to having the most perfected request possible.

BJ: So something we discovered in putting together our articles about Newburgh is something called the Office of Professional Responsibility at ICE. And as you might have seen, this is the office that has, allegedly, I mean, you know, according to a number of people, has sent agents to harass people who have posted online, for example xomments that were critical of ICE. So let’s say you’re a reader and you come across this Office of Professional Responsibility and you want to FOIA them, but you don’t know much, what could they do in that situation?

Lauren: Well, I think the the best advice is: Don’t file a FOIA request, I think, until you have a good idea of what you’re asking for. And with the Office of Professional Responsibility, for example, that it was mentioned, I think it was a Wired article, NPR, a couple other places talked about it, we actually at Freedom of the Press Foundation actually filed a FOIA request not only about their visit to the Poll worker who was visited, to put it nicely, at her polling station place of work for posting what appeared to be just a photo of the Wired article that named Jonathan Ross. the best thing that you can do, so we filed a FOIA request about the visit that ICE made. And so things that we did to help target that request was: We named some of the ICE agents, the DHS agents who showed up because those were mentioned in AP and NPR reporting. And we also asked for information that might be related to ICE’s social media monitoring of people who were sharing the original article that named Ross, which was a Minnesota Star Tribune article.

And we also asked for anything that might be used to track articles shared by the journalists who authored that January 8th Minnesota Star Tribune article.

And so really I think the the point here, is if you don’t know exactly what you’re asking for, wait until you do.

And when you do, do your research that can help you identify individual names of ICE agents in this case, for example, individual events. That’s a really great place to start. So the you know, listing the the date of the event to visit, the poll worker is a great way for an FOIA officer to initiate a search.

The other thing that is in your best interest to do, and so for example, if you already know about the ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility or are one step ahead, is to not just submit a FOIA request to ICE for all records at the agency across the board about a certain event. Your best bet is always to examine an agency’s organizational chart to help you identify which bureau or office is most likely to have the records that you’re looking for. And the reason this is important is because the vast majority of FOIA officers across the government don’t have direct access to their agencies or bureaus records. So if I submit a FOIA request to the State Department, for example, that FOIA officer has to try and figure out from my request which bureau is most likely to have those records.

Now they might do a good job guessing, or that might not, but if you can do your due diligence to say those records are most likely to be in this office, you’re gonna help get your request process a lot faster.

And to the extent that you can name individual officials at those agencies, which is not always possible, but when you can, that also gives the FOIA officer a much better shot of submitting the tasking out that request to the person most likely to have those documents and actually be able to find documents to get back to you.

The Monroe Gazette is ad-free and paywall-free, covering local news in Monroe and surrounding towns as well as county, state, and national issues that impact those residents.

If you’d like to keep it that way, we’re looking to recruit 996 paid annual subscribers between now and June 24, 2027. Want to help keep the lights on? If you’re new here or already a free subscriber, press that beautiful blue button below to upgrade.

BJ: Sort of on a similar track, let me give you the background this. So: Before ICE moved to this 800 corporate boulevard address, they had initially wanted a warehouse in the village of Chester, New York, at 29 Elizabeth Drive. And allegedly a conversation took place between New York Assemblyman Brian Maher and an unidentified representative of ICE. where they communicated Maher, due to environmental concerns involving Bob Turtle, they were not gonna proceed with 29 Elizabeth Drive.

Now this is all this is all hearsay, you know, you have believe Assemblyman Brian Maher, and there’s no reason to believe in this case that he’s lying, but there’s no way to corroborate the corroborate the story.

What, if anything, could someone do via FOIA to help corroborate something like that?

Lauren: I would take a multi-pronged approach. Well, I guess in this case, you know, I’m not as familiar with the rules around the FOI law in New York, but something you could do is submit a FOIA request for ICE for all communications between a certain date range that mention Assemblymember Maher.

You know, that a name is a very good keyword search.

And if the alleged reason that it wasn’t built was environmental or the bog turtle, you could also ask for communications that mention the name of the species of turtle, for example. but this again is a request that would be strengthened not just by those keywords, but by going to ICE’s organizational chart. And identifying, okay, which office is most likely to have done the environmental search and which office is most likely to be communicating with legislative or you know policy officials at the federal or the state level, because every agency usually has a single office that’s dedicated to working with lawmakers at various branches of government.

So that would be one ICE office to look at, and then surely there is another one that would be interested or charged with looking at these environmental concerns.

That’s that’s where I would start.

BJ: I would advise people listening to to do as well.

So my last two questions for you are, now what happens when you run into a brick wall. So for example, FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) in New York State is something we’re very familiar with and there are a LOT of exceptions.

So, just for readers, we requested communications from Governor Kathy Hochul to an organization known as United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove, which is at the center of an election fraud scandal in the Cillage of South Blooming Grove.

Hochul, after making us wait a year, claimed under Interagency, to not release any files. Under FOIA, can people expect something similar to their responses?

Lauren: Yes. Short answer unfortunately is yes. And I think my headline is do not be deterred by any of the roadblocks that you’re gonna encounter. I think it’s easy, especially in this environment, to think that you know there’s sometimes an intentional or malicious reason that your FOIA request is not getting responded to. Sometimes that’s true, but there’s also just a lot of bureaucratic red tape that’s built up at agencies across the decades that are kind of just benign benign … benign is the wrong word, but not necessarily malicious reasons why your FOIA isn’t getting processed.

The best thing you can do, is whether you’re going to sue or not, is after you file your FOIA request, find the number or the email or the phone number for that FOIA office’s public liaison and call or send an email every 30 days asking for an estimated date of completion.

This is something that every agency is obligated to provide to you. And I can tell you as somebody who used to work in a FOIA office for the Department of Commerce that when I got those, it always prompted me to check in with the people I had tasked that FOIA request to outside of the agency.” Hey, what’s the status on this? Is there anything we can do to move this forward?” It’s not a pain. You’re not being a nuisance. Just know that that’s your right to do that and to take advantage of that because I guarantee that will get a FOIA officer to think about your request more frequently than they would otherwise.

The other thing to do, especially, not necessarily at GSA, but certainly with ICE, one of the things that FOIA requesters across the board are seeing more of is ICE coming back and saying, and other agencies do this too, but your request is overbroad, even if that’s not true. So even before you get that denial, what I would encourage people to do is to read the FOIA statute and understand what the definitions of overbroad actually means because a large search is not the same as an overbroad search.

And another thing that ICE will often do is say that your request isn’t clear, it requires more clarification. Sometimes that’s true, sometimes that’s not true. So get familiar with what those definitions and parameters are to put you in the best place to appeal.

And as far as if and when you get a denial, there are a couple really good resources that can help you file an appeal, including AI.

You can still use AI at the appeal stage, but my favorite resource to point people to that, that has really understandable sections for anything that you might encounter is something called FOIA Wiki. Now, this was something that was spearheaded by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

I helped contribute it to it when I worked at the National Security Archive, but it’s basically its own little Wikipedia that has information on every exemption that you might face, including agency claims that your request is overbroad.

And on every page, there’s an example, there’s a section on strategies to how to combat this denial, and it lists out case law and stuff that you can go through. And that’s something that you could feed into an LLM to help you craft an appeal for your own specific situation.

Another great resource to look at is the National Security Archives book, Effective FOIA Requesting for Everybody. This also has really good boilerplate appeals that you can use and plug into your perhaps AI for crafting your own appeal as well.

So don’t be daunted, one if you get ignored. File those estimated dates of completion every 30 days.

And if you do get a denial, don’t be, don’t be intimidated by it. Just go ahead and go to FOIA Wiki and see how often this happens and say, okay, what is my best strategy here?

Because when you do file an appeal, that usually kicks your FOIA request up to somebody who knows the FOIA process at an agency better and knows the law better. And this is really critical because over the last year and a half, a lot of FOIA officers have left the government.

So there are a lot of contractors sitting in places like ICE’s FOIA workshop who don’t know the know the law as well as they should. So getting that appeal can get eyes on it by somebody who actually knows the law, which is to your benefit.

BJ: Is there anything I didn’t ask you on the AI front or FOIA in general that you think people should know?

Lauren: The way you framed it is in your article is, you know, the AI using AI shouldn’t be the beginning or the end of your request. Double check everything, but use AI for its strengths, which can be helping you narrow down the kinds of documents these agencies have and know what to put in your prompt.

Things like organizational infrastructure, agency specific FOIA regulations, those are those are all to your benefit. But I I would also underscore, you know, I understand a lot of folks want a FOIA ICE right now, and DHS, I do it all the time. But don’t file that FOIA request until you have a specific idea of what you’re asking for. But when you do, you should be well prepared with all the stuff we’ve talked about to file a really effective FOIA request.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Early voting starts this weekend and continues through Election Day on June 23.

If you live in Orange County and you're a registered Democrat, we encourage you to support Raj Goyle instead of the incumbent, Thomas DiNapoli, because of what appears to be an attempt by DiNapoli to bury the audit of South Blooming Grove. Something his office began in March of 2024 and is still going.

Why?

According to Thomas DiNapoli’s office, “During the audit, we identified matters requiring additional review which has impacted the timing of the audit.”

Our guess is this audit will be done around the same time the remaining two to three million Epstein fiels are going to be released.

Vote for Raj instead. It may be our only shot at full financial transparency from this Village.

The Monroe Gazette is brought to you commercial free and with no pay-wall to access over two years of our coverage of issues in Orange County and beyond. If you would like to help keep the lights on, we’re looking to recruit 500 new, paid annual subscribers between now and December 31st. All you have to do is hit the button below. Paid subscribers get access to occasional bonus content and the ability to comment on posts just like this one.

Note: The following transcript was lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

BJ Mendelson, Editor, The Monroe Gazette: Raj, thank you so much for joining us here on The Monroe Gazette. Would you like to take a moment to introduce yourself?

Raj Goyle, Candidate for New York State Comptroller: Thank you for having me, BJ.

My name is Raj Goyle and I am a Democratic candidate for New York State Comptroller.

BJ Mendelson: Tell us a little about yourself, and a little about yourself before you decided to run.

Raj Goyle: I’m running to be the affordability watchdog. I think that we need better Democrats, people who fight and not fold, and that we can lower utility rates and that we can get ICE out of New York and build affordable housing. We can invest and attack the affordability crisis and fight the Trump authoritarian administration. I myself am a dad, I’m a husband, I’m a son, got two teenage daughters.

I’ve run a successful New York business. I helped pass the cell phone ban in public schools here in New York. I’ve been a former legislator and perhaps most importantly I’ve been a civil rights lawyer my entire life and so I worked at the ACLU, the NAACP legal defense fund, Public Citizen, and very much believe in holding power accountable.

BJ: Here in Orange County, we’re particularly excited for someone to challenge Thomas DiNapoli for some of the reasons that we’re gonna get into. But before we get into that, I first wanna ask you some bigger national …

Raj: BJ, I I’m sorry, I need to interrupt you because you realize that I’m an adopted son of Orange County. My wife, Monica Aurora, is a a lifelong New Yorker and a native Orange Countian. And so she, my in-laws immigrated from New Delhi with, you know, five bucks to Rochester in nineteen seventy. And then after six months took a bus to Warwick. And some locals took them in and got them jobs in the school system. And they spent 30 years as lifelong union members and public school teachers. And my in-laws built a gorgeous Indian temple off exit 118 off the Thruway called Bartheam under.

BJ: I sometimes feel like we have politicians that will run for a local office that have no connection at all to Orange County. We just had a gentleman, I won’t say who it was, run for Monroe Town Supervisor, who had never gone to a meeting and his only claim to fame was being the chief of staff of a New York State Assemblyman. So there was really no connection that they had with Monroe civically. So I I always love hearing things like that.

Before we get into the Orange County stuff, there’s a bigger question I wanted to ask you about because I I really enjoyed the op-ed you wrote in City and State recently. So I have two questions related to that on some of these large national issues that New York State and the New York State Comptroller’s Office play a role in.

And so the first is… This is something that we had first pointed out to DiNapoli’s office. Where the New York State Common Retirement Fund held just about 3.5 million shares of Tesla, which is worth about $1.42 billion. And this was around the time where Musk was still in the White House and was beginning his cuts, or not long after where Musk was beginning his cuts, to USAID.

It’s projected that the number of people that have died because of these cuts is about seven hundred and sixty-two thousand people, over five hundred thousand of which are children.

So we asked DiNapoli’s office basically, you know, would you consider divesting from Tesla? And we kind of got this non answer:

“We recognize the concerns regarding Tesla’s governance challenges, recent financial performance, and reputational risks, but we must continue to focus on long-term value and sustainability. Consistent with this approach, we prioritize engagement with corporate management, and only contemplate divestment as an absolute last resort and only then when the Fund would not be negatively impacted by such action.”

But I just wanted to ask, if if you were in Mr. DiNapoli’s seat, given what we know now about the Musk cuts to USAID and as well as the, you know, people can’t get accurate weather forecasts because of DOGE…

So given all the damage that we can factually say has been caused by Musk, would you, as the comptroller divest from Tesla and other companies owned or operated by him?

Raj Goyle: I know I would have a fundamentally different approach to Elon Musk than Tom DiNapoli Even in my launch video, I filmed a scene outside Tesla’s showroom in Manhattan because Tom DiNapoli voted for Elon Musk in a Tesla board election, did not seriously audit Tesla after the boondoggle in Buffalo. And he’s been, as you mentioned, when Elon Musk was taking a literal chainsaw to the federal government when he, you know, on on one of his ketamine fueled binges, causing massive death and destruction and of course not saving the government a dollar.

In fact, he will end up costing us vast sums of money. Tom DiNapoli said nothing. And so I will absolutely take just a fundamentally different approach to Musk rather than coddling him.

We will fight to make sure that we have not only our values protected in the pension fund, but moreover, we must have clear corporate governance. Elon Musk is taking a meat cleaver to very long establish corporate governance protections for not just investors, but for the people at large and the SpaceX IPO. That’s coming up is is a great example of that. They’re gonna SpaceX investors gonna be able to dump their shares right away, possibly. There is this … he’s got the Nasdaq to list the company much sooner than the normal lockup period to see which is an important investor protection. And so I would absolutely take a very, very different approach to Musk and of course I’m very open to divesting from Musk owned companies.

BJ: And just for people listening, the it was the Cato Institute that had pointed out that the DOGE cuts would actually cost more money than what was actually saved. (Something laid out in detail from other reports like this one.) So we’re generally left leaning on this show. I think people know that when they listen to read our work, but I just wanna point out that it was even the conservative think tank that had pointed out that Musk would cause more financial damage…

Raj: Well yeah, I mean I think any of us who are who are involved in government and public life, I think could have seen that one a mile a mile away. And I certainly was doing media appearances at the time and and and called that out very, very clearly.

And in fact I predicted that the Musk-Trump relationship would fracture as it did. And so, you know, these are volatile people who have very who have no scruples and don’t mask their agenda. They are about self interest and and corporate greed and they do not care one bit about how we succeed as a community, as a people, as an economy.

BJ: And this is on a similar topic where Orange County was sort of ground zero for this warehouse expansion that was proposed of taking warehouses across the country and converting them into concentration camps. That’s my term for them. I know most people are okay with that analogy, but some aren’t, and I understand why. But there was this big question of whether or not 29 Elizabeth Drive [in the Village of Chester] was gonna be converted. They eventually backed off, they being ICE and DHS.

However, they did open a office in New Windsor that not even the town supervisor was aware of. And there’s also currently a discussion as to what they want to build, if anything, over by Stewart Airport over on the town of Newburgh side. So ICE is very much top of mind, so is DHS. You know, as I write this, ICE is continuing to kidnap Monroe residents.

And so there are a number of companies that are currently doing business with DHS and ICE. Dell, UPS, FedEx, Motorola, Comcast, ATT, Lexus Nexus, Home Depot and Lowe’s, Amazon and Palantir, Palantir being the big one. we’ll circle back to Palantir when we get to the next question. But some of these other companies, it’s sort of the same topic of… if you found that they were doing business that deprived American citizens of their rights. What action could you take as the comptroller to help send the message saying that this is not okay?

Raj Goyle: Obviously there’s two levers here. There’s divestment and then there’s shareholder activism and and pressure on the company. And I believe Tom has failed at both.

Nobody I think fears Tom DiNapoli in terms of corporate responsibility and his strongly worded letters. I don’t know if you listen to the debate we had last week, but you know, a a strongly worded letter from Tom DiNapoli I think, is is sort of maybe worth the Kleenex it’s printed on.

And so I would be an absolute 180 degree different comptroller in terms of going to these companies and ensuring that we rise up and and take concrete action on curbing that behavior that offends our values.

And then of course, if they don’t alter their behavior, we will divest. And you know, the other thing to mention, BJ, is that the enormous leverage that the blue state pension funds would have if we acted in concert. And so just California, Illinois, and New York alone with shared values could have enormous pressure on the way these companies behave.

Look at how Texas and the red states scared corporate America just through some cultural shaming and through the culture wars on Fox News and the Murdoch media. Well, imagine if we actually took principled stands and not just scare tactics but actually spoke factually and and authentically about the behavior of these companies, there would be a sea change.

I know you mentioned that we talked about it later but Palantir, our campaign broke the about DiNapoli investment in Palantir. He continues frankly to lie about it. It is an active position. We have the documents that show that it was that he is he’s launched shareholder proposals of course that have that have been relatively meaningless but he’s launched shareholder proposals at Palantir. The New York State Commons started at around $180 million worth and then got up to $480 million worth. Obviously the index fund didn’t triple its weighting for Palantir, the Tom DiNapoli stock pickers such that he knows what they’re doing, did that as an act of position. So that is outrageous, it’s immoral. Palantir is the technology backbone of ICE, ICE’s war of terror, and moreover, we know that its valuation and its economics are driven by Trump largesse.

BJ: Palantir is top of mind in the Congressional District Eighteen, because Pat Ryan has received Palantir funding in the past.

So. Palantir is something that in this district we’re very concerned with, given the nature of Congressman Ryan’s relationship with the company and other companies like it.

And that brings us to this one other large national thing I want to talk to about, which is the genocide in Gaza and the what looks like, and this is just my opinion, what looks like another attempt at genocide over in Lebanon with the Israeli government.

So I really enjoyed the op-ed that you published in City and State. So I was kind of hoping you could first share with us your position on on the situation, but then second …

What are the levers of a New York State Comptroller could exercise in a situation where they see bad action or something that really is unacceptable or in violation of the human rights charter of the United Nations?

And a lot of New York State residents are upset about what’s happening in Israel. What can we do if anything about the genocide?

Raj: So Tom DiNapoli often claims that he runs the fund free of politics, but what could be a more political decision than in a foreign bond portfolio being overwhelmingly weighted toward one country out of the two hundred and twenty or so countries in the world and that being Israel. their bonds have been downgraded. It makes no financial sense to be so heavily weighted. And then of course I have been the only candidate in this race from day one to talk about the war crimes, about Netanyahu as a war criminal, and of course the genocide and the dignity of the Palestinian people. And so, the state comptroller … and when I’m comptroller on minute one, we will sell those bonds. And that’s no ifs, ands or buts.

And we will cancel the entire foreign bond portfolio in the comptroller’s office and bring that money home to New York. And we will invest in the things that make New York great, which are affordable housing and clean energy and lowering utility rates and doing everything we can to tackle the affordability agenda and let New Yorkers live the best life they can.

BJ: I wanna drill down just a little bit. About how you mentioned that you do things differently. And so I’m gonna kinda walk you through our situation here in Orange County with the village of South Blooming Grove.

So I’m just gonna give you like a little bit of a data dump before I get to my question, which is back in March of 2024, DiNapoli’s office began an audit of South Blooming Grove.

The day before the audit, there was security camera footage of one of the people who is identified often as the co-mayor, Joel Stern, removing items from Village Hall and bringing them up to the United Jewish community of Blooming Grove headquarters.

Above: A copy of an email, forwarded by The Monroe Gazette to a federal agency, concerning Thomas DiNapoli’s office ignoring reports from residents about the movement of documents following news coverage of the Comptroller investigation in March of 2024. The Village of South Blooming Grove delayed, repeatedly, FOIL requests for this and other security camera footage, routinely replying that no footage exists whenever requested.

It’s unclear if DiNapoli’s office ever followed up on, you know, the multiple citations that they that they received from village residents who had seen the box truck that had moved those documents. What is clear though is that the South Blooming Grove audit, as far as Thomas DiNapoli goes, doesn’t seem to exist. It’s never been mentioned over the two years since March of 2024 in his email newsletter. Whenever we ask DiNapoli’s office about it, they’ll they’ll tell us every every audit is on the website, right? But they’ve never actually identified South Blooming Grove in their weekly email newsletter for over two years now.

Once June 2025 had rolled around, DiNapoli’s office went completely silent. it was as if this audit was was just not happening. And then there was a fraudulent election that was held, which drew the attention of the New York State Senate, the Senate Investigation Operations Committee, which then referred a lot of documentation evidence over to Attorney General Letitia James’s office.

James’s office claims the investigation is open, but you know, we can talk about that some other time. But my point here is … There were definitely irregularities flagged to DiNapoli office as far back as January of 2021 about South Blooming Grove. There was a three-year gap before he [DiNapoli] even did anything.

And then in March of 2024, when his office did do something, it became very evident to both residents and the media that DiNapoli’s office had no interest in discussing or even pretending that this audit existed.

So when you say that you’re going to do things differently, I’m kind of wondering if you could walk us through how you would do things differently in that situation.

Raj: So it’s clear that the office has mishandled this audit, failed to use the audit authorities to help New Yorkers, and I will be transparent about my entire audit process. I will hold corporations and individuals accountable. And if I uncover any illegal activity or inappropriate behavior, I’ll use every every lever available to hold people accountable. And it really should not be that complicated. And I have heard this from many people around audits that sort of go into outer space and just sort of stay there.

And I think even more importantly, BJ, we have an office where these audits don’t make a difference in people’s lives. This incredible power to audit every state dollar and to hold power accountable. Instead, Tom DiNapoli preserves the insider’s power. He is the living embodiment of wasted political power. And so you know, it’s like a hundred and eighty degree difference. When Raj Goyle is comptroler, there will be full accountability for any issue that I tackle and take on and transparency will be the hallmark.

BJ: Tell me a little bit about how you would coordinate with law enforcement. So I happen to know that there’s at least one federal agency looking into South Blooming Grove.

And as I mentioned, Attorney General Letitia James’ office claims. I I don’t, honestly, it’s just my opinion. I don’t believe her. And we could talk about that some other time, but her office also claims that the investigation to South Blooming Grove remains open.

But I’m curious about … The word irregularities has come up. You know, in DiNapoli’s office when talking about South Blooming Grove has said, they found irregularities. And so what I’m wondering is if you were to find irregularities, what how would you coordinate with law enforcement in sharing and prosecuting if needed?

Raj: Well, of course, if something rises to the level of necessitating a law enforcement inquiry and or action, we will we will trigger it. Of course it depends on the facts and circumstances of the particular audit and the particular issue that we’re dealing with, but we should not have neither fear nor favor for anyone. And so if if these are political allies or political enemies.

We should the only gold standard is is what’s best for the people and what’s best for New York. And so I will work with frankly any and all and take on any and all fights if I view that the that the right thing to do is to is to take action.

BJ: So my dad is a New York City retiree. He was a New York City retiree. he was a public school teacher and later administrator for 40 years in the Bronx. and so there’s a lot of concern now about the pension funds and whether or not, you know, those pensions are gonna be affected in one way, shape, or form or if that money, you know, will be there.

And so I was just curious if you can talk a little bit about the current situation that might be facing retirees about available funding and what if anything might be able to do to do to alleviate that?

Raj: Well, I believe that the pension fund or New York State Common has been underinvested in because of course he pays so much in Wall Street fees. I’ve been sort of focused on fees for many, many years. I even looked at running at this office in 2018 because I’ve been so long interested in its power and the issues that it can help New Yorkers on.

And so the fact of the matter is that if we had a bigger principle, you know, the New York State pension fund should just be larger. If it was larger, you could of course even contemplate there’s two things that would happen. You’d have less of a need for employer and employee contributions. So that means less taxes and less diversion of people’s wages. And secondly, you could even increase the return that you give to each retiree. So the payouts would be higher.

That is the math and the calculus of simply dividing up a huge pie. And so I know that we could invest this fund more prudently, more economically, and return more money to the pensioners.

Unfortunately Tom has no financial background before he was appointed to the office. And I think we’ve seen a result of that.

BJ: Is there anything that I could have asked you or should have asked you that I didn’t?

Raj: Ask me about your utility bill.

The state comptroller, as I said, should be the affordability watchdog. Tom DiNapoli should be auditing the public service commission aggressively, extensively, thoroughly, and finding out what’s happening with these rate hikes, these proposed rate hikes and why they get approved. And if you look at this last budget, there’s a raft of bills that deal with utility hikes. But.

The tragedy is that the one office that is the that should be the responsible party for looking out for the ratepayers of New York is asleep at the switch, and that’s Tom Dinapoli. And so when I am Comptroller, we will have a very aggressive stand in terms of not only is the pension fund invested in publicly traded utilities and can use the shareholder prong, but can also of course use that audit authority to very extensively find out and open up these books and then of course ensure if if they say that they need a billion dollars and it turns out they needed half a billion, we’re gonna claw that money back.

And we are going to be very aggressive about AI data centers as well.

BJ: Where how can people get involved? How can they support your campaign?

Raj: I appreciate it. Go to RajGoyle.com, Instagram at RajGoyleNY and of course just shoot a note over to us anytime. Email is on the website, and our volunteer page is on the website, and really appreciate all your work, BJ and and if love to keep talking.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Below is a transcript of this week’s podcast. It has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

BJ Mendelson, Host of The Monroe Gazette podcast:

Hello everyone, it’s BJ Mendelson. Welcome to another edition of the The Monroe Gazette podcast. We’re still on break, technically, until I finish my book, How to Protect Yourself from Fascists and Weirdos. I should be done next week, I hope, which we originally said was the 15th, when we’re gonna be coming back from our break. I’m gonna try very hard to meet that deadline. If I don’t, I will let you know.

We will definitely be done with the book this month.

If you would like free copy a free .PDF and a free .mp3 All you have to do is visit stupidsexyprivacy.com that’s our sister website to the Monroe Gazette. Subscribe to that newsletter and as soon as the finished PDF and mp3 are ready we’ll make sure you get a copy.

Before we get into today’s interview, I just wanted to touch on something real quick. New York Focus is a great local news resource here in New York. They cover state news and they do a pretty good job of catching stories that otherwise would fall through the cracks. So I’m a big fan of New York Focus. It’s worth a donation. But man, that doesn’t mean it’s above criticism.

So, something bad did happen over in New York focus this week. They published what is essentially a puff piece on state senator Skoufis. The headline is so nauseating it says The Young Populist Trying to Redefine the New York Democratic Party — and We Don’t Mean Mamdani.

Like, listen …

I’ve worked in PR and marketing, so I can spot these puff pieces from a mile away, because that’s what I’ve done for the last 20 years. I can’t say conclusively that The Parkside Group, which is what Mr. Skoufis has used to prop up the candidacy of a far right MAGA weirdo in Woodbury, which wasn’t too long ago, and also used it to plant voicemails to attack and otherwise defame the (now current) Monroe town supervisor.

I don’t doubt that someone from The Parkside group wrote to New York Focus with a puff piece and basically laid out everything for them and was like, “hey, Senator Skoufis is up for reelection. Look how cool he is and look at this. Look how successful he is in this red district.”

And I just want to fact check this because number one, Democrats outnumber Republicans in Orange County two to one. It is not a red district. It is not redder than almost any other place in New York. And I can say that because I have lived all over New York.

Like if you want to visit MAGA LAND go to the North Country, you will see a red district. And that’s true also, like I’ve lived down in Buffalo and the second you leave Erie County and you’re in a place like Wyoming County, where there’s more cows and people. Yeah, it’s MAGA LAND!

And I’m not, you know, that’s not an attack on those counties. It’s just me pointing out. Factually that it’s very misleading to portray Orange County as MAGA LAND and that Skoufis is some kind of bastion against the bulwark of MAGA because he’s not. The only reason why this man has any sort of political career is because of corporate donors. If you go and look at his finances, you can see that he’s raised over $6 million.

The other reason that he’s done as well as he has is because there is a large group of people who do come out and vote for him consistently, who are atypical when we look at the rest of New York state. If you look at the rest of New York state, we’re unique in Orange County in that we do have a large population of Satmar voters. Many of whom, not all, and I want to underline the words, not all, tend to vote based on what Anash tells them, which is the majority party in Kiryas Joel, for example, or what the criminals in South Blooming Grove, Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein tell people.

So to portray this man, Skoufis, as being some kind of like progressive agent or a populist agent who’s changing the Democratic Party and challenging the establishment in New York? No, that man is the establishment.

This is a man who’s told people, I support New York for all, and then came out just recently against it. This is a man who, despite the fact that 1.2 million people in New York state are going to lose their health insurance by the end of this year. Skoufis is the man who said, I don’t want to vote for the New York Health Act because it’s too expensive.

This is not a populist.

So I recommend New York Focus. I do think you should check it out. But I saw that and I was just really disappointed. And I needed to tell someone how disappointed I was. This article did not pass the smell test. This looks like a PR puff piece. And I wanted you to know about it because you’re gonna hear in this discussion in today’s episode about how Skoufis has actively worked against the rights of immigrant communities that live here in New York State and immigrant families. That is not a populist. That is a con artist.

The Monroe Gazette is brought to you commercial free; and with no pay-wall to access over two years of our coverage of issues in Orange County and beyond. If you would like to help keep the lights on, we’re looking to recruit 500 new, paid annual subscribers between now and December 31st. All you have to do is hit the button below. Paid subscribers get access to occasional bonus content, podcast audio, our behind the scenes Facebook group, and the ability to comment on posts just like this one.

BJ Mendelson, Host of The Monroe Gazette podcast: Hi Rosa, thank you so much for joining us today. Would you like to take a moment to introduce yourself to our audience?

Rosa Cohen-Cruz, Director of Immigration Policy with the Bronx Defenders: Sure, my name is Rosa Cohen Cruz. I’m the Director of Immigration Policy with the Bronx Defenders.

BJ Mendelson: And can you tell us a little bit about what the Bronx Defenders does?

Rosa Cohen-Cruz: Yeah, the Bronx Defenders is a large public defender not-for-profit that represents people in criminal court, in family court, in immigration court, housing court, and is really one of the organizations that pioneered this model of holistic defense. Were we’re making sure that we’re representing people and providing services for all aspects of the people we serve, not just like one niche legal area.

BJ: And have you had any any people that you represent that have been sent to Orange County Jail for one reason or another?

Rosa: Yeah, so we are NYIFUP providers, which is the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project. Brooklyn Defender Services, Bronx Defender Services and Legal Aid together have been providing universal representation to people in New York who are detained while facing their deportation cases. And we have many, many clients who are at Orange County jail; and over the years have represented many people detained at the Orange County jail.

BJ: Is there any particular issues that stand out or instances that come to mind involving the jail that you think people should know about?

Rosa: Yeah, the Orange County jail is sort of notoriously one of the worst detention centers that we have had. Where we have had clients. a couple of years ago, there was a reporter that looked at complaints of, harassment by guards and medical issues and various things across all detention centers across the nation. And he sort of picked out some of the worst ones and Orange County Jail was one of the ones that he picked out as, you know, being particularly bad for medical neglect and abuse by guards.

And so, I think that has definitely been the experience of the people we’ve represented. We’ve seen people go in healthy and come out with long term chronic illnesses that really developed because of their mistreatment at the facility. I’m sure you’re well aware that there was recently a report done by NYLPI about the medical neglect at the jail. And it has really been a place where we have seen people suffer and deteriorate. We’ve seen mental health, decompensation. We’ve seen people with strong claims for relief from their removal cases give up because of how horrific the conditions in the facility have been.

BJ: It’s crazy to hear about because if you watch the legislative meetings for Orange County, we spend a lot of money on that jail. And my impression is that that money is not making its way towards better treatment for the people that are detained there. Is that right?

Rosa: I don’t know the ins and outs of how the legislature spends its money, but I can certainly say that whatever financial decisions they’re making, it is not translating into people being well cared for at the facility. People have been suffering there for years. In the summer, we hear complaints about it being extremely hot in the facility. In the winter, we hear complaints about it being extremely cold, about people not being able to access enough blankets or ways to stay warm.

We hear about medical neglect. We hear about the food being rotten. That’s been something that’s been shared for years and years. We hear about guards verbally abusing the people who are in detention there. Bronx Defenders was as part of a lawsuit against Orange County Jail for for transferring people in retaliation for hunger strikes several years ago.

And those people had been protesting the conditions in the facility. So we have years and years and years of evidence of just how harmful this facility in particular has been, how much pain and damage it has caused to our fellow New Yorkers who have been forced to be caged there.

BJ: I couldn’t help but notice that much of these complaints seem to correlate with the emergence of County Executive Steve Neuhaus at the helm of Orange County. The hunger strike goes back to the time where he took over or just after he took over as County Executive. Has anyone tried to bring these issues and concerns to the County Executive Neuhaus

Rosa: Well, the Dignity Not Detention Coalition has been engaged, which the Bronx Defenders is part of, we have been engaging more with him and more with the legislature this year. There have been different points where we had tried to engage with various success, but this year we’ve had, I think we’ve had more success. Of course, this is the year that the state is also finally taking notice of just how horrific things have been this whole time. And I think recognizing that it is morally reprehensible to accept money from ICE to allow them to be caging our neighbors and destroying our communities this way. We’re happy to see that the governor’s, that the proposal, the budget proposal for immigration this year includes ending the IGSA intergovernmental service agreements between local jails and ICE.

BJ: You beat me to it.

Rosa: (Laughs)

BJ: So I was going to mention first, the Dignity Not Detention Coalition before we get to the other stuff. But just tell us a little bit about the coalition and how it came about and what it’s fighting for?

Rosa: Yeah the Dignity and Not Detention Coalition has been around for many years. it has always been around to end ice detention, first in New Jersey, then in New York, really for the places where New Yorkers have largely been held.

A similar bill to Dignity not Detention, the banning of these intergovernmental service agreements did pass in New Jersey. Those jails all ended their contracts. There used to be three jails in New Jersey that had these types of programs. And now after that, win, we turned the focus to New York state and felt that New York state was really behind having not passed these laws when other states like New Jersey and Illinois had successfully banned the IGSA agreements.

In fact, earlier this year, New Mexico even beat New York to this. So, you know, New York is not actually a leader on this issue at all. But the coalition has been really incredible. It is a mix of advocates through not-for-profits, attorneys who represent people in removal proceedings. There are many, many, many volunteers through Indivisible and For the Many, the DSA, and SURJ NYC who are just part of this coalition because they believe in the mission of ending ICE detention here. There are incredible legal service providers that are part of the group and it is a statewide group as well. So you have people from Orange County who have become involved. You have people from Long Island. You have people from Western New York and New York City all working together towards this goal. So the Bronx Defenders has been one of the core members of the group as have Envision Freedom Fund, BAJI, Center for Constitutional Rights, Critical Resistance, Columbia County Sanctuary Movement. I mean, so many, so many groups, I could just keep going, but it’s been a really incredible coalition. And the one other thing I’ll say about it that I think is so unique is that we’ve always worked really closely with folks who are in the facilities, and really being led by folks on the inside to make sure that we’re listening to them and supporting them. So there’s a whole group that works on being connected to folks who are behind bars in immigrant detention and making sure that they have what they need to be able to sort of be in the movement as well.

BJ: Now let me ask you a little bit about the bill itself. So we’re recording this on Friday, May 8th. There seems to be maybe a budget agreement. There’s some dispute as to whether or not there is. My understanding is that the Melt Act is essentially going to be incorporated. So there’s not going to be masks allowed for ICE.

You mentioned detentions on behalf of ICE at places like OCJ also would be canceled out.

But is there any part of dignity not detention that has so far made its way into the budget that was announced?

Rosa: So the core of Dignity not Detention has always been ending the intergovernmental service agreements, the ICE contracts with local jails for detention purposes, because ICE has always relied on local jails to expand attention. And we’ve always believed that New York resources should be for New Yorkers and not for furthering ICE’s mission.

That piece of the bill, the ending the IGSA agreements, that has been the core of Dignity Not Detention and that is as far as we understand in the budget. So that’s very exciting and that’s a huge, huge testament to Assemblymember Reyes and Senator Salazar who are the Dignity Not Detention sponsors who have really worked tirelessly to make sure that this stayed a priority in the budget this year.

And alongside that, there are some other provisions around making sure New York is not a prime area to expand ICE detention in other ways. Thinking of the warehouse issue, for example. so I think that I have not seen language, but my understanding is that what is in the budget approaches some of the same issues that are approached in the Dignity Not Detention legislation. But through slightly different avenues. In our view, as long as it accomplishes the same goals of not allowing ICE detention to expand in our state, we see it as a huge win. And we very much welcome the Dignity Not Detention provisions and goals to be accomplished this way in the budget.

BJ: You mentioned two great members of the Senate and assembly. As you might be familiar, Orange County sort of has the opposite problem, right? Where we have state Senator Skoufis who told people he was for New York for All before he came out against it recently. We have Paula Kay who is for New York for all but doesn’t want her name on it. And then of course we have Brabenec and Maher who, as Republicans, don’t really want to participate in much of anything.

So what has that been like with when you encounter resistance among Democrats in New York State government? Like is there something that you would tell people in Orange County that are listening to this and kind of frustrated at the situation

Rosa: I have been very impressed by some of the local legislators in Orange County. I’ll start there and say that there are local legislators who have really listened and taken this very seriously and who I think really came to see what a huge stain it is on the county to have been participating in torturing New Yorkers like this for years and years. So I need to give them credit.

But it is true that there are many, and especially at the state level, who don’t understand or don’t care that it is morally reprehensible to allow our state resources to be used to cause the death of our neighbors. There was a death in Long Island in the Nassau County Jail because of someone who is picked up pursuant to a 287-G agreement.

So we saw right there the way ICE collusion literally led to the death of a New Yorker and no one did anything about it. Governor Hochul has continued to come out and say, a tragedy, and it is a true tragedy what happened to Mr. Alam out in Erie County, yet none of the things she has proposed would have even come close to protecting him. And I think that people should really scrutinize legislators who say they care about immigrants, but are unwilling to pass measures that would have, you know, could save lives.

There’s no reason for us to be using our enforcement resources to funnel people into ICE detention, where we know people are tortured and killed. Yet the legislature and the governor are, we’re only able to end the detention side of things. But we’re unwilling to really meaningfully address the collusion that funnels people in the first place, which is where New York for All Act would have played a really critical role.

So, I just urge listeners to hold their legislators accountable to the ones that didn’t stand up for immigrants. Truly, this session, they should know that they failed to meet the moment.

BJ: To me, it also represents a failure to just uphold the Constitution. You know, the 14th Amendment guarantees that all people, regardless of citizenship, are treated equally under the law. And to me, Skoufis in particular, Kay, Eachus …

And to me, it’s just a failure to just uphold the Constitution as well. Because as we know with Alex Pretti and Renee Good, these actions tend to bring in people who you might not think are being targeted, but it affects all of us. This is something that affects all of us no matter the issue. And so to that point, I know it’s a little tricky because the again, we don’t know what the final thing is going to look like at the time we’re recording this, but what comes next?

So let’s say...Dignity Not Detention and MELT for the most part are in, New York for all is kinda out. So what does the coalition do next?

Rosa: Well, the Dignity Not Detention Coalition has always been really supportive of New York for All. And we had a rally in Albany a couple of weeks ago where we stood with them, knowing that it was likely that our goals were going to be accomplished. Many of us are … I sit on a steering committee [concerning] New York for All, and I’m also very involved in Dignity Not Detention. And there’s many of us that are in both spaces as well. So I think that it is extremely likely that we continue to see the support of those who are in the Dignity Not Detention Coalition continuing to push for New York for All. I know that we’re going to continue pushing for New York for All because it is truly what is needed to meet the moment. It’s good that we are divesting from ICE detention. It is good that we are saying New York’s resources are not going to be furthering ICE detention, but …

We can’t do that with one hand while also continuing to funnel our neighbors and community members into ICE detention with the other. So New York for All is sorely needed. And it’s no coincidence that Assemblymember Reyes was the sponsor of both of those bills. Those bills have always been companion bills and we always wanted them to get done together. So we’ll definitely keep pushing for a New York for All and for the full comprehensive divestment from collusion with ICE that the state really should be standing for in this moment.

BJ: I think it’s fair to say that the people listening to this podcast already kind of know the score with Skoufis Eachus Brabenec Maher and Kay. But What can we do as residents of Orange County? Both on the Dignity Not Detention front, but also just in terms of assisting the coalition towards the greater effort of New York for All.

Rosa: There was a rumor, or not a rumor, a talking point that was sort of spread around. And I certainly heard Senator Skoufis say this, and I’m sure others did too, that New York for all was just a New York City issue and that immigrants really just live in New York City. So why should we be passing this statewide bill when New York City always has protections? So I think it is really critically important for places like Orange County, to be speaking loudly in favor of this.

To be talking about their neighbors and community members who need New York for all to pass. We’ve seen extreme harm happening in places like Port Chester, New York, which doesn’t even have a 287-G agreement, or Erie County, or across the state. Immigrants living in all of these counties, all of these communities who are afraid to go to work and go to take their children to school and to engage with the public life because of fear that it will lead to an interaction that will cause them to be funneled into ICE detention.

And I think it is more important than ever for lawmakers to hear from folks in Orange County and from folks across the state that we all want this, that this is a statewide issue that the majority, the Democrats really want and that it will, that it is we are truly being represented by our elected officials, then they need to be heeding the call of what people in New York are asking for.

And right now, New York for All has been loudly called for, but elected officials are not going to deliver this session.

BJ: I I asked Senator Gournardes this a couple of weeks ago on the podcast, where I said, you know, January 7th, you were all back in session. New York State has a democratic trifecta. So why wasn’t New York for all it passed? Why wasn’t dignity and non-detention passed on day one?

And the truth of the matter is that New York State Democrats, some of them anyway, are more interested in representing the wealthy than the rest of us.

So to that point, is there anything on this topic I didn’t get to, that you would like to bring up or share with your audience?

Rosa: You know, I think some people are going to say about the ending of the IGSA agreements in particular, I think some people are going to say, well, it’s better to have people in New York than to have them in these other places. And we’ve already heard that. That we shouldn’t be ending ICE contracts here for that reason.

I wanna make sure people know the reality of what is happening right now. The first and most important thing is that everyone is being transferred all the time. Like the fact that we have detention centers in New York does not mean people stay in New York. And in fact, what we’ve seen happen, we’ve seen patterns where the Orange County Jail will be emptied out so they can do mass raids in New York City, or so they can do mass arrests across the state. So. A huge part of eliminating local detention capacity has always been connected to making sure that they don’t have the ability to do this massive enforcement and just put everybody into facilities in New York.

So we do think that there’s an important correlation between detention availability and enforcement aggression. And we hope that this bill really, that the IGSA ban coming into effect will really help limit enforcement. Of course, we also need to see the New York for All Act passed to fully realize that goal.

BJ: Before you go, tell us, where do we find you? Where do we find the coalition? How can we get involved?

Rosa: We do have an Instagram in on the coalition where there will be updates. I think as everything comes out, you know, there’s going to be a lot of guidance about what it all means and what to expect.

The Instagram is @Abolish ICE NY-NJ. Please do follow us. We also have a New York for all Instagram, which is @ny4all_. and that’s where there will be campaign updates and calls to action.

But I also want to just take one moment and say thank you to the folks in Orange County. You guys have really stood with us this year with the Dignity Not Detention Coalition in particular. I know, you know, we did a rally together last month and, you know, we stood side by side fighting against the warehouses and we’ve been really, it has been really wonderful to be working so closely with folks on the ground fighting in their own communities.

So I just wanted to also express gratitude to those of you on the ground showing up every day to protest what’s happening. And that’s how we’re gonna make this kind of change. So thank you.

Thanks for reading The Monroe Gazette! This post is public so feel free to share it.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Pictured Above: A flyer for an event put on by a new local community group, Hudson Valley Caracoles. We’d like to encourage you to attend. Below, Little Dick Energy State Senator Skoufis tries to weasel out of supporting a bill he told numerous Orange County constituents that he supported. He’s not the only Democrat to do so, as you’ll see in today’s post.

This man has no reproductive organs to speak of.

Yasmine Farhang, whom we spoke to in this podcast interview below, commented on the State Senator’s response, sharing with us:

Senator Skouffis’s attempt to rationalize his opposition to New York for All false flat. His rhetoric seeks to demonize New Yorkers by fear-mongering and mis-leading his constituents. He fails to recognize the beliefs that so many New Yorkers hold close - that the importance of keeping families and communities together is bound up with the importance of upholding due process for all. For years, ICE entanglement with state and local agencies has enabled the cruel separation of family members across our state - this includes many people who face disproportionate policing, as well as those who are convicted of crimes and serve prison sentences only to then face a cruel double punishment when funneled to ICE detention and deportation. The bottom line - New York resources must not be used to fuel a federal mass deportation agenda, especially when sending people to ICE is increasingly deadly. I reject Senator Skouffi’s attempt to divide us and we will continue to stand united in calling for New York for All.

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity. There may be errors as it was generated by an AI and read over by BJ, who usually misses a ton of typos on the first read through.

BJ Mendelson, Editor of The Monroe Gazette: Hello everyone, welcome to another edition of The Monroe Gazette podcast. I’m your host, BJ Mendelson. We have two interviews to bring to you today. Both are related to New York for All and some of the activity going on in our community to promote bills such as New York for All and Dignity Not Detention

I just wanted to say something real quick. So I am working on finishing my book, How to Protect Yourself from Fascists and Weirdos. It was supposed to be out in February. We basically went and ripped up the whole thing after Alex Pretti was murdered. I thought about doing it after Renee Good was killed, then when Alex Pretti was murdered, we got pushed over the threshold of … You know, needing to redo the entire book. So we rewrote it. We rewrote the entire thing. So it’ll be out. It looks like the end of May. I need to do a lot of stuff to get it ready.

This is all a long way of saying that May is probably going to be a quiet month on the Monroe Gazette, just so that I can get the book out. My expectation is that things will be fairly quiet until about May 15th. At that point, I will be done. And then other people will hopefully get involved and finish up the actual production of the book and then I can move on to other things. And then at that point, I’ve been thinking of doing some major changes to the The Monroe Gazette

Originally we had two goals. And the first goal was get Tony Cardone out of office, which we succeed in doing. And then the other goal was to sort of document everything that’s happening in South Blooming Grove and try to bring Joel Stern and Isaac Eckstein to justice.

So, I mean, we filed three lawsuits so far, and that’s not counting the federal one involving the stolen election. And it doesn’t involve the one with like the 26 residents who are going to file suit to have the village actually audited, because there’s no way Thomas DiNapoli, in an election year, is ever going to release that South Blooming Grove audit. So we figured we were going to sue.

My expectation is to focus on South Blooming Grove and then what’s going on over in Sullivan County with Kiryas Skever.

I can’t cover everything. And so there’s, there’s a certain like Maginot Line. I don’t know how many of you know what the Maginot Line but like the Maginot Line was basically a barrier that the French created after World War I, where they thought that they would be able to keep the Germans out by building this big ass fortification, which of course did not work at all. It did not work.

So I kind of look at [this situation] as crossing the Maginot Line. Crossing the threshold. And we’re definitely at the Maginot Line in terms of like the Monroe Gazette in terms of like its finances. I held on for as long as I could for about two years doing it at a loss. I can’t keep doing that. So in order for it to continue as a publication, it definitely needs to expand its scope a bit in terms of what it covers. So I’m kind of leaning towards just doing like this radical change of focusing again on South Blooming Grove, Kiryas Skever as opposed to sort of the local news. That doesn’t mean we won’t cover the local news. There’s certainly things that’ll come up that are important and that we’ll write about, but it’s just not something that I’m gonna spend so much time on. So I’m telling you this in advance.

We’re gonna take a short break. We’ll be back on or around May 15th or probably after that when the book is done. And then after that, we’re gonna kind of…figure out what exactly the Monroe Gazette is going to be covering and what it’s not going to be covering because it just can’t, it can’t continue in the shape that it is.

But for now we have two wonderful interviews that we’re going to share with you concerning New York For All. The reason why I went on this whole tangent is because something that really frustrates me is that people don’t want preferential treatment for the Haredi. But those same people don’t want the law to be applied to people that are here, quote unquote, illegally. Again, no one here in America is here illegally. Technically, we’re all here illegally. We’re living on stolen Indian land. That’s a whole other thing. But it doesn’t matter what we think. It doesn’t matter what you think. It doesn’t matter what I think, because what matters is what the Constitution thinks. And the Constitution thinks in the 14th Amendment that the law of the United States applies to everyone equally, regardless of whether or not they are a citizen.

And so I kind of struggle with this thing of, you know, you don’t want preferential treatment for the Satmar which I understand, but at the same time, you’re saying the law shouldn’t count towards people that are here, quote unquote, illegally. So my thing, the reason why we talk as much as we do about New York for all, Dignity Not Detention, and some of these other things is because our philosophy at the Monroe Gazette is very simple: Everybody counts. Everybody.

And that’s sort where we’re coming from in our coverage of South Blooming Grove plus Kiryas Skever plus things like New York for All.

So I just want people to understand why we spend as much time talking about it as we do, because we think it’s important, because we think everyone counts. And with that said, let’s get right to those interviews.

The Monroe Gazette is brought to you commercial free; and with no pay-wall to access over two years of our coverage of issues in Southern Orange County and beyond. If you would like to help keep the lights on, we’re looking to recruit 500 new, paid annual subscribers between now and December 31st. All you have to do is hit the button below. Paid subscribers get access to occasional bonus content, podcast audio, our behind the scenes Facebook group, and the ability to comment on posts just like this one.

Interview #1 Yasmine Farhang

Yasmine Farhang, Executive Director of the Immigrant Defense Project: My name is Yasmine Farhang and I’m the executive director of the Immigrant Defense Project. And for those who are not familiar with IDP, we have been around for almost 30 years and we fight for justice for immigrants who are impacted at the intersections of the immigration legal system and the criminal legal system.

BJ: Can you give us an example of that? Because I try to explain to people that being here in a country, quote unquote, illegally is not actually a criminal offense. It’s a civil offense. Is that right?

Yasmine: So IDP was born in the wake of the 1996 immigration laws, which passed Congress and were signed by former President Clinton, which were some of the most draconian immigration laws that kind of shaped the detention and deportation system that we have today. But what people might be less familiar with is that those laws also bound up the criminal legal and the immigration legal systems together to really try to use kind of the policing, the worst of kind of racist policing and the criminal injustice and the criminal legal system to also funnel people to ICE detention and deportation.

So, at IDP, we have a really core principle and that principle is that everyone deserves dignity and nobody is disposable. And we know we also approach this work from a racial justice lens and we know that disproportionately black immigrants and immigrants of color are disproportionately impacted at the intersection of those systems. And so, you know, that has been our mission for the last 30 years. And of course, the systems that were built back then are being supercharged now.

BJ: Previously we had Senator Andrew Gounardes is the co-sponsor of New York for All. He’s walked us through what the bill does and what it doesn’t do. I’d to hear your perspective on New York for All, why it’s important and what it does.

Yasmine: Absolutely. So New York for All, it really is there in the name. it’s really about ensuring that all New Yorkers all around our state, no matter what county they’re living in, no matter what their immigration status are, can rely on the ability to participate in their communities and all the daily ways that immigrants do right through their families, through their workplaces, through their places of worship, through, you know, any other number of things without having to worry that local and or state resources are going to be used or the local and state agencies that they interact with every day, like local law enforcement, like shelters, like hospitals and schools, that those agencies are going to be used to funnel their information to ICE and that those agencies are going to be, putting them at risk of ICE detention and deportation.

And this isn’t actually a novel idea. The idea of having these kind of broad prohibitions on local and state resources being used for a federal deportation agenda is not new. And in fact, the first Trump administration, many other states around the country passed legislation to do just that because one of the few things that states can do in the face of a deportation agenda as a mass deportation agenda as we have today, is to actually say, we’re not participating, right? We’re not going to be part of this harm.

So the first Trump administration, we saw Illinois and Washington and Oregon and California pass these laws and we had this bill in New York back then and yet it never got over the finish line. And so here we are all these years later under a second Trump administration with obviously a more increasingly harmful and deadly and authoritarian reign every day.

And yet this bill has still not passed.

BJ: Right. Yeah. It’s outrageous to me. I asked Senator Gounardes why on January 7th when we have a democratic trifecta and everyone was back to work in New York State government, why wasn’t this passed on day one?

It’s deeply frustrating and speaking of frustrating I wanted to read to you I was forwarded an email from the Monroe Town Supervisor Maureen RIchardson. There was a group of residents who have been pushing for a ceremonial resolution that the town would pass in support of New York for All because our state representative Senator Skoufis does not support New York for all. He says he does, but then we’ve also gotten reports from people where he’s alleged to actively try to undermine it so …

We were trying to get like these ceremonial resolutions passed to kind of push Skoufis and the rest of New York State Democrats to support the bill because in Monroe, you know, we have about 40% of our population is Latino and we have a significant undocumented population that’s been terrorized by ICE since at least this summer. I’m just gonna read these to you real quick. So this is from the town supervisor in Monroe, Maureen Richardson, writing to a constituent. She said:

“I have since looked into New York for All and I don’t support the bill. It does not appropriately address the issues at hand.”

(She doesn’t say what the issues are)

“… and limits the functionality of local police in any even perceived quote collaboration with federal agencies on immigration issues. This has been criticized as overly restrictive and imputing daily functions even by allies with experience in PD. So no, thank you.”

BJ: I was really disappointed to see that and to read that. And I’ve heard that same criticism of the bill come up. So I was hoping you might be able to speak to that.

Yasmine: I think fundamentally we know that all New Yorkers want safety, right? And there’s this way in which safety is talked about in a way that suggests that safety is about some people against some other people, right? And we know that that’s not true. And we know that, the way that safety is defined and who it’s for is really, really important. And, the New York for All Act is in fact a bill that’s about creating more safety for all New Yorkers.

So when people think about sanctuary policies, whether it’s at the local level or the state level, I think often they think about this as a sort of special policy for some people when in reality these policies are critical to everyone’s safety, right? So if somebody is experiencing, unsafe conditions in their home, unsafe conditions in their building where they live with other residents, we want that person to report those conditions. We want them to share what’s happening and to seek help and to seek oversight of what’s going on.

If somebody is experiencing labor exploitation, We want them to be able to report that and to expose that and to be able to seek help from relevant local and state agencies. And similarly, if somebody is a survivor of violence. We want them to be able to avail themselves of whatever services or programs they might need for themselves or their families.

But if people feel that they cannot reach out for help, they cannot share information, whether it’s for themselves, for their loved ones, or for that neighbor, that puts everybody at risk. That puts everybody at risk of a variety of harms.

And what we know from the work that we have done to document some instances of local law enforcement, police around the state in particular, colluding with ICE over the course of the past year is that often what we’re seeing around New York state are really egregious and very clear instances of racial profiling, right, of police, local law enforcement stopping somebody we know from the work that we have done, instances of local law enforcement police around the state in particular commuting with ICE over the course of the past year is that often what we’re seeing around the world state are really egregious and really serious instances of racial profiling, right? As we believe in your philosophy of stopping ostensibly because they want to question them or they are investigating something.

But, you know, the ultimate conclusion is that they are handing this person over to ICE and that was often very clearly their principal goal in the first place. So we see that with many instances of policing and actually if you go to our website of immigrantdefenseproject.org, there’s a tab under resources for what’s called the New York ICE Collusion Watch. We have a map there where we’re kind of focusing on the police to deportation pipeline by really exposing these patterns, right?

And you know, whether it’s a phone call from a local police officer that brings in an ICE agent or state troopers pulling someone over or, county signing a formal 287-G agreement, we’re seeing all the ways in which this police to deportation pipeline unfortunately is very, very active in New York.

I want to just tell one story to kind of illustrate the harms. and this is a perfect example. Also, I think people are aware that we have, you here in New York City, we do have some protective laws, right, around sanctuary that were passed over a decade ago. They need to be strengthened. But we do have those. And yet when you leave the confines of New York City, what, you know, the collusion with ICE changes drastically. And just north of the city in Port Chester, New York. In January, there was a story of a community member. He was headed to the train on his way home from work, and he was stopped by Port Chester police on the sidewalk. And they informed him that they were going to give him a ticket for having an open container violation. Instead of giving him a ticket, they put him in handcuffs. They took him to the precinct. They asked him whether he had papers. And then they put him in a cell. And shortly after ICE came and detained him, and he was transferred far from New York, and he was in ICE detention for for months.

Later, that open container citation that he was told he was getting in the first place, that was actually dismissed, Much later, that was dismissed. And I think this is exactly an example of sort of the way in which policing tactics are really being used for purposes of ensuring that they can funnel someone to ICE custody. So I think it’s certainly not the sort of racial profiling and kind of arbitrary decisions by police officer without any kind of state regulations restricting them is very dangerous for New Yorkers around the country. And then for those in the criminal legal system who do have convictions, right? And who are for being a sentence or who are on probation or whatever it might be for them to then complete their sentence or complete their probation or whatever it might be.

And then from there, be funneled to ICE detention is a really cruel form of double punishment for people who should be able to go back home to their families, go back to their communities. And the loss and the harm that it causes not just to the individual, but to their family members, is really awful.

BJ: Absolutely. And the thing I want to point out to listeners is we’ve seen both sides of the policing coin here in Orange County. On one hand, the village of Monroe Police Department. I personally find them to be trustworthy and transparent on this issue. And they’ve repeatedly told both the Monroe Gazette and other media outlets and the public that ICE just appears like they don’t have any communication with them. They don’t even know when ICE is going to show up which is disturbing, like on a whole, like that’s a whole other set of issues, right? Where you just have this rogue agency appearing.

But on the other side, we have Orange County, which does house ICE detainees, over 100 of them at Orange County Jail, who lacks any sort of transparency. Like right now, we are fighting with them over FOIL requests for all of their communications to ICE and ICE representatives, which they will not share. So. It’s sort of this like, don’t know if I can completely trust the police given behavior like what we see with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Let me ask you a little bit about this weak, watered down proposal from Governor Hochul. Could you explain that to listeners and why it’s not the way to go?

Yasmine: We obviously have been pushing for New York for All for years. And, we thought that this was exactly the moment where the legislature and the governor would come together and recognize that this is the time for a comprehensive solution, We can’t have a piecemeal approach that creates some limited protections in some places and not in other places. And so, after the governor first announced her bill, the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, that bill includes a provision that would end 287-G agreements, these formal agreements between ICE and local law enforcement.

And we know that that was a meaningful step. But when we look at the harms that we are seeing every day, like the story of the community member in Port Chester that I just described, none those would be protected by her bill. Because these are the actions of police officers that are making in counties and towns and cities that are making choices to engage in this kind of collusion with ICE, even without a 287-G agreement.

And so we continue to sound the alarm bell that we needed New York for all in its entirety. And unfortunately, what the governor came back with, not once, but twice, was a proposal that would actually still empower the police to use their unfettered discretion to decide whether or not they’re gonna notify ICE of someone.

So first she [Hochul] came out with a proposal using this kind of probable cause framework, That as long as the police officer has probable cause to make an arrest, that they can then notify ICE, share personally identifying information about someone. First of all, it’s deeply dangerous. It flies in the face of due process and presumption of innocence that all New Yorkers are entitled to, to funnel someone to ICE when they’ve just been arrested.

But secondly, it would just give total deference to police officers to decide, whether or not they have the ability to notify ICE. So the governor came back with a second proposal that was arguably even worse. So that proposal essentially creates a way for any local law enforcement to only have to say that they’re investigating a crime in order to notify ICE.

So that could be something as simple as, somebody is stopped in their car while driving. A police officer looks in the back seat. Maybe they see a bag. They decide that they, have a concern about that, they want to initiate an investigation, they can articulate this, and they can say, I’m now kind of investigating a crime; and I’m going to, as a result, I have the ability to notify ICE about this person.

There’s no legal standard around what she was proposing. It’s really made up. It incentivizes the worst of racial profiling and discriminatory policing. And I think what’s worse is that we were trying to be sold on this as some kind of meaningful step to curtailing the collusion and the police to deportation pipeline when, in fact, it was actually taking an area where the law is currently silent and codifying a way in which police would be authorized to notify ICE.

So it was actually not just not going far enough. It was taking us backwards.

I think advocates and not just advocates in the coalition, but immigrant rights advocates, civil rights advocates, faith leaders, labor unions, you know, people responded very quickly and very robustly to these proposals and said, no, we don’t want this, right?

We don’t want you to give law enforcement this kind of unfettered discretion. So our understanding as of yesterday is that that provision that’s in the budget that the governor was trying to sell us on has been removed. And so that’s great. And yet also it is deeply disappointing that we are in a position where we have to be fighting off these harmful provisions rather than celebrating a comprehensive bill.

And, one other thing I’ll note is that we’ve also been tried to be sold on the idea that this is about protecting victims. And there was some language in this provision that sort of they would be able to exempt victims as though, police would be making that determination when they’re in these, in these circumstances. But the idea that police in any meaningful way would be making that determination about who they or aren’t funneling to ICE is really concerning. Often victims themselves face allegations. Not to mention there are cross complaints. It’s not a workable approach.

Often victims themselves face allegations and not to mention that there are cross-complaints, right? So it’s not a workable approach. And the last thing I’ll say is that, you know, we are calling for New York for All we want it in its entirety. This is the long-term solution. But I would say that advocates have put forward more incremental ideas. That would be more about kind of creating more building blocks towards restricting collusion. But those have not been entertained by the governor.

Anything that doesn’t hinge on an officer having unfettered discretion has been out outrightly rejected.

BJ: And that echoes the other statement we have from Supervisor Richardson where she had forwarded the email that I was reading from to State Senator Skoufis’ staff noting her quote, “vocal dislike of New York for all because it removes local authority from local boards and police and how they choose to run their own locally funded police.”

Where do things stand right now? Because people will be listening to this. Hopefully, they’ll be on strike. Tomorrow is May 1st. This episode will be out May 1st. No school, no shopping, no work for May Day.

And ideally, I have a sneaking suspicion that the budget situation won’t be resolved. So if they’re listening to this on Friday, May 1st, what should they know about where are we right now?

Yasmine: Well, one thing I want to say first, because listeners will be tuning in on May 1st, is that I think it’s one thing that’s been really incredible and encouraging to see is that we have seen a huge show of support for New York for All from labor unions over the course of not just the past year, over the course of the past several years. It was just before May 1st last year that a dozen unions wrote a letter to the governor and the Senate majority leader and the assembly speaker explaining that New York for All is necessary to protect workers, right?

And to protect the right to organize. Unfortunately, we are here a year later without New York for all having having passed, but labor unions have continued to be some of our strongest allies. So I wanted to just name that. And then in terms of where things are at, we know that there is a package being negotiated in the budget that will have provisions that are related to immigration.

And we know that there will be some things in there that people will celebrate. And some of those may be meaningful steps and some of them may be quite hollow and quite superficial in terms of actually having an impact to New Yorkers.

We know that no matter what happens in the budget though, that we as a coalition and with our allies, we are going to be right back there in Albany after the budget for the rest of the legislative session. Urging our state leadership and the governor to take action. They may say they’re done, but we’re not done. We will see what the budget has once it’s completed, that is not going to dictate our continued organizing and advocacy to get the actual solution we need.

BJ: My last question for you is for people in Orange County, it can be frustrating because we have a state senator who tells you he supports New York for All, but he’s alleged to be actively undermining it.

And then we have three assembly representatives in Paula Kay, Chris Eachus, and Karl Brabenec. [And Brian Maher.]

Brabenec being a Republican, he doesn’t support the bill. Kay says she supports the bill, but doesn’t want her name on it. And Eachus does whatever Skoufis tells him. So it can be really frustrating for Orange County residents when it comes to their state representatives.

What can we do? What can people listening to this do that want to support the Immigrant Defense Project and want to help pass New York for All given our representative limitations?

Yasmine: First I’ll say that we’ve been very lucky to have such strong sponsors on our bills. I, you know, we’re incredibly grateful to both Senator Gounardes as an assembly member, Reyes, for being such champions on New York for All. And I will say we have many champions and that is part of what has has kept up the momentum, right, who have joined us ⁓ in this fight.

And then we know that there are those who might have their name on it, but are not really doing much else or who are actively opposing it. And what I would say is that, for people in communities with representatives who are turning away from this and not understanding how key this is, not to let them look away from the stories. We know, and again, folks should go on our website and check out our map, New York Ice Collusion Watch.

It certainly is not comprehensive, right? This is through anecdotes and that we confirm once people share them and folks should feel free to reach out. But we want to make sure that people are humanizing kind of the impact and not letting their representatives off the hook.

We saw the tragic death of Mr. Alam, earlier this year, would likely still be alive today if it weren’t for the fact that, local law enforcement had shared his information with ICE and CBP.

And yet, we saw so many legislators say that they stand with him and with his family. We saw the say that she stands with his family. And yet, I think that hypocrisy needs to be exposed. And so I think I would tell people to make sure that they don’t lose accountability to their constituents. So make sure that those constituents who are impacted, whether it’s because they’re teachers or school, families who are scared or they’re in hospitals, whatever it is, that they go and they meet with them and they don’t let them off the hook.

And that they call them and they email them and they show up outside of every space that they can to have their voices heard and that they join us in Albany. Because we are gonna be back. We’re not going anywhere. And so I encourage people to follow the immigrant defense project. They can follow us on Instagram and on social media. We also have a New York for All specific Instagram page. And we’re going to continue to, that’s NY4ALL, and we’re going to continue to keep people posted there.

BJ: I strongly encourage people to check it out, and if you have a few bucks, make sure to contribute as well.

BJ: We have an upcoming event on Saturday, May 2nd, I want to tell you about from three to seven PM called Seeds of Freedom. It’s going to be at Downing Park Lake in Newburgh, New York. All you have to do is look out for those red balloons. And I’m here with one of the organizers of the events. Would you like to take a moment to introduce yourself?

Geleni Fontaine: Yes, thank you so much for having me, BJ. My name is Geleni Fontaine, and I’m with a group in Newburgh, New York called Semillas which means seeds. And we’re put together in order to create energy and support for migrant folks in our community and particularly people, families that are impacted by state violence. So we’re excited about having this free event in the park.

BJ: Tell me bit more about the organization for people who might not be familiar.

Geleni: Sure, we’re brand new. So we’re actually still in the process of creating a mission statement. But what matters to us that we’ve all decided on, that we’ve all discussed pretty thoroughly is that we want to be supportive of people who are directly impacted by the kind of violence that immigrants in this country are facing right now, the kind of terrorism really, particularly that’s impacting children and families.

So we want to create events and spaces and conversations in which people are able to not just find different ways of plugging in to experiences that are resisting that violence, but also doing different things to support each other and themselves. So we want to create spaces that are healing spaces. And that’s part of the reason for having this event in the park on

BJ: Was there a moment that triggered the creation of this group?

Geleni: I don’t know if there was a moment that did. A number of us are involved in all different kinds of organizations and groups throughout the area. I think that particularly as the crisis started happening in detention centers and as we started thinking about how a lot of the leadership of some of organizations, particularly mainstream ones, is among White folks and people who aren’t directly experiencing this kind of violence.

We wanted to create spaces to help move leadership up, from people who are most impacted. So I think that was the the kind of driving force behind it And and that’s something that we hope to to work on our what are our we’re actually as a group We’re not called semillas That’s the name of the event. Our group name is Caracoles which is snails. And for us, it’s a really evocative and wonderful image and metaphor because snails move slowly, snails create community. So there’s the idea of just kind of creating a pace in which everybody can move forward together. So that’s really what we’re about.

BJ: I really like that because we constantly try to tell people that fascism isn’t defeated in some big climactic battle. It takes thousands and thousands of these little steps that you never see and never even hear about that finally take it down. It looks like it’s coming down all at once. And snails are perfect metaphor for that.

Geleni: Yeah, absolutely. And coming from the earth. You know, really from the grass roots, from the ground up.

BJ: I know it’s early days, but if someone is listening to this and they’re interested and they wanna get involved, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Geleni: Well, I think one great way would be to come to the event if they’re able to. People who right now who are part of Caracoles are, know, most of us are in the mid Hudson Valley, but there are also a lot of us that have New York City roots. I think we have one member who’s in the Bronx, but yeah, but we’re creating different kinds of coalitions and relationships. So. We’re definitely open to including more people in that conversation.

BJ: Is there any significance to the red balloons?

Geleni Fontaine: I think the red balloon is just really to be visible so that folks can find us easily.

BJ: Tell us a bit about what’s happening? So Saturday, 3 to 7, Downing Park Lake in Newburgh. What can people expect to do? Like what’s being given away?

Geleni: Well, it’s gonna be a pretty mellow community space. There’s going to be community singing, different kinds of freedom songs, from various multicultural traditions in which people use singing together as resistance and community healing. So that’s gonna be a big part of it. We’ll also have a zine that’ll be offered for free that includes information about supporting different kinds of resistance against state violence, against migrant people, about building community power and healing. So that’ll be available.

There’s going to be a seed planting stations, which will be really great. And that’s very much in keeping with our message and with this happening the day after May Day. And it’s, the event is about seeds, what we can grow together.

So there will be a chance to actually grow something physical together as well. There’s also gonna be a children’s story time circle. There is a campaign called Read Them Home campaign that is in support of detained children in the Dilley Detention Center in Texas, and also detained children and families everywhere. So this is a campaign in which people come together and read children’s stories, in honor of these children and also promoting that kind of community space and those circles. So we’re having a family story time hour, that’ll be part of that Read Them Home campaign.

I’m also, an acupuncturist. I’m going to be offering community acupuncture in the space. And I think that there’s also gonna be some food and probably a lot of other things, because it’s been growing, as more people have offered to support in different ways. So, yeah, and the weather looks like it’s going to cooperate. So we’re excited about that.

BJ: Yes. I’m going to keep my fingers crossed because I know there was the event in Goshen and the weather was just terrible for that day.

Geleni: I’ll mention we do have a rain date of Sunday, the following day. But I think both days are supposed to be cloudy but not rainy. So at least during the time of the event. So hopefully it’ll all go well.

BJ: And it’s so for the rain day, would it be the same times from three to seven?

Geleni Fontaine: Yes.

BJ: And tell me just a bit more about the zine. Because I’ve noticed that this is, mean, this is something I remember from my twenties, back in the punk rock days of, you know, getting worried about music scenes, but I’ve noticed that a lot of the movements across the country are using zines as a way to, basically cut past, the corporate media. I would just love to hear a bit more about that.

Geleni: Yeah, a number of folks who are involved in caracoles are artists. And one person particularly, Chivita, is someone who has worked a lot through the use of zines, the medium of zines, in different social justice spaces. So that became a little bit of a nexus for us. So we thought that we would have this event as a way to distribute the zines and also to include a lot of information about social justice movements and different kinds of support within community. We want to offer space and information that centers community care. So that’s a big part of the zine, including the history of different kinds of care. There is a piece in the zine that is about the tradition of acupuncture that developed in New York City in the 70s that was very much led by people of color liberation movements. So, you know, there’s information about that and about so much more, including resources. And we just want to make sure that that’s something that we can offer to communities.

BJ: It’s such a great thing too, because it gives people something to take home. And that to me is incredibly powerful. You’re not just going to an event, you’re taking something home with you that you can continue your journey on.

Geleni: Yes, and it allows people to share it too, which is great.

BJ: Is there anything that I haven’t touched on about this event that you want people to know about?

Geleni: I like to highlight that it’s free so that everybody is welcome and that it’s also family-friendly.

BJ: Yes, I think that’s so important too, especially finding free stuff, what to do with your kids and your family on the weekend is always tough, finding something that, you know, I don’t want to say like going to the movies isn’t a positive thing, of course it is, but going to a community event with your kids, I think is something that could inspire them.

Geleni: Definitely. And you know, another thing I’ll add is that we’re trying as much as possible to make it a bilingual space according to our capacity so that everything will be offered in English and Spanish. So it’s a bilingual zine. Services will also be offered in both languages. There will be interpretation available as needed. We can’t provide access to other languages, unfortunately, but we wanted to to do what we could. So that’s something that matters a lot to us.

BJ: Absolutely. I mean, yeah, it almost goes without saying. Just the importance of making sure anything that we do as resistance work is accessible to as many people as possible. And that’s fantastic. That’s something that I hope other community groups listening or the volunteers listening keep in mind for their events as well.

Geleni: Yes. Yeah, definitely.

BJ: Is there anything about the group that you want people to know? how can they get involved? Can they find you online? Like what?

Geleni: We don’t have an online presence right now. We’re very new, but we’re committed to continuing and we’re going to have a conversation when this event is over about what comes next for us. So we should be reaching out soon. And in the meantime, people can look for us in Downing Park.

BJ: Seeds of Freedom, Saturday, May 2nd from 3 to 7 p.m. with the rain date of Sunday, May 3rd, 3 to 7 p.m. at Downing Park in Newburgh. Make sure you look for the red balloons.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

New articles on The Monroe Gazette are on hiatus until BJ finishes his book, “How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos.” It will be released in late May or early June of this year. If you would like a free .pdf or .mp3 copy of the book when they become available, subscribe to the Stupid Sexy Privacy newsletter here.

Articles will resume on The Monroe Gazette in early May. Until then we’ll be running brand new episodes of the podcast.

The Monroe Gazette is brought to you commercial free; and with no pay-wall to access over two years of our coverage of issues in Southern Orange County and beyond. If you would like to help keep the lights on, we’re looking to recruit 500 new, paid annual subscribers between now and December 31st. All you have to do is hit the button below. Paid subscribers get access to occasional bonus content, podcast audio, our behind the scenes Facebook group, and the ability to comment on posts just like this one.

The following is the full transcript from this week’s podcast. The transcript has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity where neded.

BJ Mendelson, Editor of The Monroe Gazette: Rory, thank you so much for joining us on The Monroe Gazette. we’ve had a couple of representatives from the Electronic Frontier Foundation on our sister podcast, Stupid Sexy Privacy. But because this is The Monroe Gazette podcast, I was hoping you could take a moment just to introduce yourself and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Rory Mir, Director of Open Access and Tech Community Engagement at the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Yeah, I’m happy to and thank you so much for having me on. I’m Rory Mir. I’m the Director of Open Access and Tech Community Engagement at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF has been fighting for over 30 years now. I wasn’t there the whole time, but over 30 years defending our civil liberties online. Basically bringing digital rights into a digital world. So a nonprofit law firm constantly defending innovation, privacy, and I’m particularly interested in defending consumers from bad tech practices from tech companies.

BJ Mendelson: The reason why we’re having this discussion on the Monroe Gazette as opposed to Stupid Sexy Privacy is because right now there is a provision in the New York state budget that the Electronic Frontier Foundation caught concerning 3D printers. Could you walk us through that?

Rory Mir: Folks that are familiar with the New York budget process know a lot of things get wrapped up into the budget And as usual it gets delayed quite a bit. So we’re still pushing back on it right now. There’s a couple of provision impacting 3d printers which folks are familiar with 2d printers, but 3d printers for folks that aren’t familiar are kind of like hot glue guns that you tell a computer to control and that slowly builds up a shape in three dimensions. Often you see this being used by artists, making cool statues or cosplay costumes. It’s also really common in more commercial settings where people are making prototypes or researchers testing a new shape for things. So it’s really this cool technology that lets you fabricate things without going through big manufacturers and kind of iterate quickly and build up new creative ideas. So we’re fans of this open innovation that it brings to folks on the grassroots level.

And what this provision and the budget does is threatens that basically. It curtails a lot of that expressive freedom by mandating a software that we think is dangerous, a print blocking mandate that is yeah so out of fear of ghost guns and people making firearms and firearm components with these machines basically New York State in this proposed budget would have a database of forbidden files and mandate — without any details I need to emphasize — a way for all of these 3D printers to not be able to print shapes that could be used in that context, which I think there’s a lot of good intention coming into this.

People are concerned about gun violence and unlicensed firearms. However, when you speak to people who actually understand how these machines work and just the nature of making a 3D shape, it is not something that is possible. There are many ways that any algorithm trying to detect shapes can be undermined quite easily.

So we’re concerned that while the people that are being targeted, the people who are trying to make firearms and similar components with these machines will be able to follow a quick tutorial to get around those blocks, the many, many other creators, researchers, innovators, that use and rely on these machines are going to be stuck with this technology that the only real way to do it is to have it be surveilling users and there’s no safeguards in those in the provisions for that.

So we’re really worried about the impact that it’ll have on the lawful use of these machines and really just don’t want it to be rushed through this budget process without any safeguards or oversight for those regular lawful users.

BJ: So let me break that down a little bit. Because I think the concern from the ghost guns came from the murder of the United Health Care CEO and the claims that Luigi Mangione may have used a 3D printed gun.

But my understanding is it’s actually really difficult to make a functioning gun from a 3D printer. Is that right?

Rory: Yeah, it requires a level of understanding the craft of it. Technically, you don’t even need a 3D printer. Homemade DIY guns have existed long before 3D printers because it is ultimately a simple machine that once you know how to machine it, you can do it. So 3D printers... You can make a cheap error prone one that might blow up in your hand if you don’t already have that existing knowledge of how firearms work and how to properly put one together. So while it is possible for someone to make one with a 3D printer, there is a level of know-how that has to go into it as well.

BJ: Right, and I have to imagine, and this is all getting into hypothetical territory, but I have to imagine that if someone is particularly motivated to print a 3D weapon, that nothing is really going to stop them from doing it.

Rory: Yeah, I mean, that gets into this mandated software on these machines. One of the things is that it is easy enough to alter it because it’s unlike something tightly regulated and standard like currency. People will point to you’re not able to print a dollar bill, but that is a very specific reference with very specific design standards. So being able to detect whether it looks like that is quite simple.

With a firearm, you’re talking about a function. So any shape that can or can potentially serve that same function falls into that definition. And that gets even further complicated by the fact that with 3D printing, the machine only sees what you’re printing in the moment. So if you print something that has a lot of extra adornments, you can maybe shave it down to a core component. And likewise, if you... kind of print a bunch of pieces of a firearm and then later fuse them together, you can also make one that way.

So the machine isn’t gonna see your intention, right? It’s only gonna be able to look at the file and that’s what makes it so easy to game if you are determined to make these firearms.

BJ: Right, and so my concern here is the way that this software is described, sounds like, and just how you’ve explained it, it looks like it’s not specifically targeted at guns, it’s targeted at gun-like shapes, is that right?

Rory: Yeah, so we’re seeing a few of these in different states that have slightly different language. The New York one is really less detailed than ones we’ve seen in Washington and California. It’ll be decided by a working group without peer review, which is concerning to us. So it could be loaded with people with financial interests on how this works.

The thing that is shared across these bills is often the receiver of the firearm, which is the part that needs a serial number when you buy or alterations, which is even more abstract of simple shapes that can turn a handgun into a machine gun, you can make with literally a clothes hanger, or you can 3D print a shape that looks like that. And that is the same sort of abstract shape that is being implicated in these bills.

BJ: You were kind enough to send me a bunch of material, which I read through. And I found that I was kind of lost as to what exactly the software does, who exactly would enforce the penalties and then the penalties themselves seemed kind of outrageous. Could you explain those to us?

Rory: So in New York, a lot of it is really focused on the sellers. So a lot of the penalties will come to a seller who sells one of these machines that doesn’t have this mandated software on it. So that one of the things that really strikes me about that is that that extends to the second hand market that someone who has a printer today, if this passes in a few years might want to sell it to recoup some of those costs, or maybe get a new one. And then they would be implicated in these same penalties, which really range, but include potentially financial penalties or liability for anything that is done with the machine that is sold.

BJ: I was kind of shocked at this suggestion that people would have to buy, [the 3D printers face to face.]

So if you lived in our region and you wanted a 3D printer because you saw what was being done at SUNY New Paltz, or you are interested in resistance work where you want to print out whistles for detecting ice, that you would have to go and meet someone in person to purchase a 3D printer. Is that right?

Rory: Yeah. It’s absurd. I feel that not only for the purchase, but for the delivery of the device. And there’s no exception to commercial folks. So this bill includes 3D printers as well as something called CNC machines, which are similar to 3D printers, but kind of do the opposite. They carve a shape out of metal or wood instead of adding plastic together. And those are very expensive. For machines that are typically used by huge industries, aerospace, automotive, medical, manufacturing, these huge commercial industries would also have this silly face-to-face requirement. But then the other thing I think of … I lived all over New York state in my life, including quite a bit of time in the Finger Lake region. And frankly, you having to drive to one of the few stores that has this, which, you know, I don’t know that I can only name a handful off the top of my head that even sell 3D printers.

You have to drive there to buy it instead of ordering it online. And that has all the inherent limitations of having to be buying in person of whatever’s in stock. Whatever brands has a deal with that reatalor So there’s a lot of practical headaches for the people who want to get into and would benefit most, I think, from these printers, people who want to repair things without having to take it to the nearest shop or have things sent over from the other side of the world.

BJ: Yeah, I mean, you mentioned the finger legs. I was just thinking of like a student at Alfred State having to drive a few hours to go and meet some random person to buy a 3D printer. It sounds like you’re buying drugs. That’s the thing that struck me was, you know, I feel like the marijuana dispensaries right now, I could just walk into one as long as I show my driver’s license. And I don’t like I don’t have this weird requirement that I can only buy it in person, face to face.

So, who benefits from all this? This really seems to me like it’s more the tech companies are pushing this than people who are actually concerned about gun violence.

Rory: Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear that the winners from this aren’t the gun safety advocates, but are the major makers of these printers and retailers that sell these printers that it would become far more difficult and burdensome for someone to break into the market once you have this sort of regime set up where you have to not only build this technology upfront in order to, again, this like magic bean technology of being able to prevent a firearm from being printed, but then the ongoing costs of keeping that updated, meeting the requirements and it creates this huge headache that would only really benefit from a handful of the biggest makers of these devices.

BJ: And did you see that in the … I saw the California legislation that had been proposed and the Colorado legislation that had been proposed. Do you find that it’s the same group of people that sort of pushing this?

Rory: I think there’s a lot of similarities on the gun safety side of it, which again, I think is well intentioned and I value gun safety there. But then I think a lot of the discussion on the industry side of it, of, it has been pretty secretive. We’ve met with one or two major manufacturers between these 3D printers, but they never seem to mention who they’re meeting with. So, you know, one can draw their own conclusions from that. But I think it is remarkable that the big printers have been so quiet on this, something that would impact their customers so negatively. [Emphasis added.]

BJ: Right. You had a great term. I know what it means because we’ve interviewed Cory Doctorow So we’ve talked about enshitification quite a bit. But you used, I saw the term used by the EFF of an “enshitification lock,” which is essentially what this legislation is trying to do. And I was hoping you could explain that to people who might not be familiar.

Rory: So I’ll actually back it up a little bit to talk about digital rights management software, which folks might not be familiar with. And there’s a pretty good analogy for this print blocking technology where … Basically, it is now a federal crime and has been since the DMCA passed to alter any code that exists to prevent copyright infringement. And this is what makes it difficult to move an e-book from one device to another. And people are, famously people know about it, restricting people’s ability to repair tractors like John Deere tractors.

And a lot of that comes from having this code that has this special permission that makes it difficult for users to navigate around. So DRM gives manufacturers the special leverage over customers so that we can see it manifest in 2D printers with HP. Making it difficult to get ink for your printer. There is a DRM protection that you can only use the appropriate ink and that makes it more expensive to use the ink. And a lot of that is because of this special code that you’re not able to circumnavigate and just get the cheap ink that would be otherwise available.

So by building this in and making it a mandate and tying it to the legal system, you’re creating not only a huge incentive but a legal protection for these anti-competitive practices on the part of the tech company making it.

BJ: Yeah, and I think it’s I find it troubling that we’re not talking about doing away with that DRM in the budget, but we are talking about adding like additional DRM to these.

Rory: Exactly. And yeah, again, with this one, it really creates this incentive of surveillance, right, because they are asking for this big abstract type of blocking that you can’t really do with the type of firmware that’s on these machines.

And it would be difficult to do with the slicing software, which is the software you use to use the printer on your own laptop. So it’s really encouraging it all going to an AI analysis in a cloud somewhere, which means everything someone prints being sent and observable to these folks. Privacy violation. Chills speech.

And it has a lot of practical considerations, particularly with commercial buyers with intellectual property theft. Those other extra risks that are being introduced by this.

BJ: Was the Colorado law thrown out over free speech. Was that a successful lawsuit?

Rory: So the Colorado law, right as it was reaching the finish line, removed a few provisions that were making it criminal to share the files for these gun components. And it was removed at the last minute by the governor due to First Amendment concerns. And I haven’t given as much attention to it, but that is also one of the provisions in this New York budget of making it a crime to, in certain circumstances, to share or to possess these files. So we have similar First Amendment concerns about what’s in the New York provision. That as nice as it’s, again, it comes from this sort of well-intentioned place, what if we can just mandate that things were nice, without the real practical considerations that criminalizing information doesn’t work.

Someone who’s intent on getting these files or sharing these files are gonna find ways to do so, which we see with things like copyright infringement and piracy, that it’s not really a barrier, it’s just an extra charge to throw at someone when they’re already doing something that’s illegal. And that’s something I haven’t emphasized yet, but it is already illegal in New York to produce or sell one of these 3D printed firearms. So we’re just adding additional laws that hurt consumers for something that’s already illegal. [Emphasis added.]

BJ: You beat me to it. was gonna say, isn’t it already illegal to like, make and possess these weapons?

Rory: Yeah, as of I believe 2022, yeah, to, I believe it was passed in 2019. But yeah, to produce these firearms, these unlicensed firearms is already a major crime to produce or sell.

BJ: It reminds me a lot of like the digital ID, digital driver’s license push, where I understand where some of it comes from, where you, okay, you don’t want kids to access horrible content. I completely get that. But in the process of, you know, quote unquote, protecting the children, you’re actually creating this huge digital database of everyone’s driver’s license and everyone’s face and all of the data that comes with it.

And do you really want to be doing that right now when you have an authoritarian regime running the federal government? And so this to me, seems like sort of the same deal, right? There is a good idea. I’m adamantly against gun violence. The problem with guns is guns. I would get rid of all of them if I could. But to me, it seems like we’re not really solving the problem here. We’re just using the problem as an excuse to enrich certain companies and at the same time create yet another database, right, of stuff that you don’t necessarily, you might not, you might be listening to this thinking I have nothing to hide, but you might be, you live in a very fluid situation.

For example, if you were to move to a red state and abortion is illegal, right, then if you print out material about abortion, you are committing a crime according to that state. So even if you, quote, have nothing to hide at the moment, laws like this have a tendency of coming back and biting you in the ass later.

Rory: Yeah, yeah, it’s ultimately about defending grassroots innovation and user rights. And yeah, today it is something that feels very sympathetic and can only grow from there once this infrastructure is in place, right? Right now it’s about the safety of building something that is more inherently dangerous, but one could make a similar argument about the safety of printing your own repair parts, that do you really want people repairing their bicycles with a 3D printed component if, you know, maybe it would break and not be printed correctly? And then I think the natural next step is, of course, copyright. I’m sure many companies would like a way to prevent people from printing their own cheap alternatives to either commercial sold repair parts or even if you think about toys and things that a lot of people make 3D printers with, know, your toy Pokemon figurines might be blocked just because Nintendo doesn’t want people buying or building their own instead of buying from them. So I think there’s a core kind of creativity we’re defending here, even if it starts with something that is harder to defend, right.

BJ: It’s one of those things where it’s, again, it’s all presented under, all of this stuff is always presented under the best of intentions. But once you start to look underneath, you start to realize, oh, OK, this is a little bit more than what you’re saying it is. Let me ask you in the time that we have left, what, well, I guess it’s a two-parter, which is what can or what is the EFF considering on this front? And what can people do that are listening to us, what can they do to get this out of the budget?

Rory: Yeah, I think right now it’s such an important time to reach out to representatives since we’re in this prolonged budget. Going to Eff.org/3dprintNY is our action page that lets you easily message your assembly member and state senator with a customizable message so you can include your own thoughts and we’d encourage you to.

And I think really it’s we’re in a state of it’ll pass any day now so taking that action now is really urgent. I think beyond that it’s not going to be the last 3D printing legislation we see other bills introduced that would require a criminal background check in order to buy a 3D printer.

You know, and again, this is a fringe use of 3D printers. Right. And it’s also a fringe way to make a ghost gun, like overwhelming ghost guns are made from DIY kits that are mass manufactured. [Emphasis added.]

BJ: Right, it’s not common at all. I think that’s something we should stress is that like the…

Rory: So it’s a fringe from both angles. This is, we’re talking about a very small subset of people and to subject everyone to already face-to-face sales, but potentially as well, these background checks is pretty ridiculous and will just disempower local communities and local makers.

So I think keeping an eye out for these other bills as they come up. But right now, we’re in a big mobilization push for this budget. Since, again, we’re on borrowed time.

BJ: Rory, thank you so much. Where can we find you? I mean, you mentioned the Action page. How else can we get involved and support the EFF?

Rory: Yeah, so if folks want to support EFF’s work, they can go to EFF.org/join and become a supporting member. If you want to follow me, I’m on a little site called Mastodon, false mirror at Masto.nyc. But yeah, I think following our work on the main site at EFF.org is probably the best way to keep in the loop.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe

Below is a transcript from today’s episode of the podcast. It has been edited for brevity and clarity. Above is a flyer for tomorrow’s event. We hope you can be there.

The Monroe Gazette is brought to you commercial free; and with no pay-wall to access over two years of our coverage of issues in Southern Orange County and beyond. If you would like to help keep the lights on, we’re looking to recruit 500 new, paid annual subscribers between now and December 31st. All you have to do is hit the button below. Paid subscribers get access to occasional bonus content, podcast audio, our behind the scenes Facebook group, and the ability to comment on posts just like this one.

BJ Mendelson, The Monroe Gazette: Hello everyone, welcome to another edition of The Monroe Gazette podcast. I want to let you know that on Saturday, April 25th, which will be tomorrow for most of you that listen to this, there’s going a national day of action stop other ICE warehouse detention centers. As some of you know, we for now have blocked 29 Elizabeth Drive here in the village of Chester from becoming a ICE detention facility. But you know, the fight goes on across the country.

Tomorrow (Saturday) From 12 to 1.30 p.m. at the Orange County Government Center at 255 Main Street in Goshen, New York. There’s going to be a National Day of Action that’s organized by Indivisible Goshen, Rural Migrant Ministries, and Gateway House among numerous others. So we really hope to see you.

As a lot of you know, even though we did block the ICE Detention Center from opening up in Chester; over in Orange County Jail in Goshen, they still have an entire wing that is dedicated to housing ICE detainees.

So. ICE is not completely out of our community. All that said, I’m joined today by a representative of Public Citizen, which is one of the organizations that put this coalition together.

Omar, I’m hoping you might take a moment just to introduce yourself and tell us what you do at Public Citizen.

Omar Angel Perez, Rule of Law Coordinator at Public Citizen: Hi everyone, my name is Omar Angel Perez and I am the rule of law coordinator for Public Citizen and in this role I work with different grassroots and community organizations across the country.

We’re focused on protecting democracy and the rule of law. And in this case, working with different partners, and primarily the Detention Watch Network organizing this day of action across the country.

BJ: And can you tell us real quick, I know some of our older listeners might be familiar with Public Citizen from the days of Ralph Nader, but could you just tell us some of the other things that Public Citizen does that they might not be aware of?

Omar: Yeah, so Public Citizen is an organization that has been around for 50 years now and its primary focus is the protection of democracy regardless who is in power and the White House and the Congress.

In the last two, three administrations, we’re just keeping an eye on how the administrations have been conducting themselves in this case since the first Trump administration, Public Citizen joined other organizations on different occasions, beginning with a focus on preserving democracy in the country and protecting communities who have been under attack.

BJ: And just full disclosure for people listening, I am a paid member of Public Citizen. I get the newspaper. I recommend that everyone join. Omar, can you tell us a little bit about what is happening this weekend?

Omar: Yeah, so as we all know, because it’s been in the media a lot, the Trump administration has been expanding their capacity to target immigrant communities, regardless of their status.

And we witnessed the deployment of national guard and ICE agents in different parts of the country, different cities taken over. I’m based in Washington, D.C. I live in Washington, D.C. I have two kids who go to elementary school here in the district. And We witnessed how ICE agents were literally taking over our streets, targeting our neighbors, arresting people. Arresting teachers, caregivers outside our schools. And that’s one way how this administration has been targeting our communities and neighborhoods.

The other way they’ve been doing is expending their capacity by Republicans in Congress allocating more money to fund DHS and ICE. And expanding also the detention centers by buying warehouses across the country. We know because there’s a lot of reports out there about the horrible conditions.

People are being in this detention center, some people calling them actually concentration camps because the conditions they are on there.

BJ: Yes.

Omar: Right like there are in Daly, Texas outside of San Antonio, there are incarcerated minors, minors who’ve been in, you know, with no way to be in contact with the loved ones, with their attorneys, like nobody knows what’s happening to them.

We know stories of pregnant women with no access to medical care in these detention centers. There is a report that’s coming out about forced labor. People in detention, migrants have been forced to work through this program that ICE has in place and all that they get paid is like one dollar per day. And so there is these horrible conditions that this administration are …

BJ: Wow.

Omar: Keeping our people under. And now they want to increase their capacity to continue detaining people, churning people, and they want to expand their capacity by buying these warehouses, and with a capacity of detaining between 1,500 to 10,000 people. And these warehouses have no conditions to, like … They are warehouses.

They’re not to, you know, house people. They’re there to store stuff, but not people. So we’re missing what’s happening right now. We just cannot imagine what will be the conditions these people are going to be held if they are allowed to, if they are able to expand their capacity by buying these warehouses and expanding these detention centers.

So Public Citizen, the Disappear America campaign, Detention Watch Network and Indivisible, Move On are the core partners of this day of action that is started by a group of folks coming together and thinking, okay, what we can do in this moment to bring attention what is happening and also responding to the outcry of the community in different parts of the country? Pushing back this intention of expanding ICE capacity of detaining people. So we started basically with the idea of saying, okay, let’s organize the day of action. And then it went from that idea to like massively have a response from the communities across the country.

And what we started, we’re thinking about, we’re going to have like one action, probably in DC, expanding out to almost 200 actions across the country.

If you go to the mobilize page, you will see the map. And it’s, we’re talking about, you know, from Texas to Alaska, from Washington state to New Mexico, like it’s all over because people are tired of this situation and people are, speaking out after the horrible condition we witnessed people are in these detention centers.

BJ: Absolutely. And I think it’s important to stress to people that even when the media moves away, they being ICE and DHS and the other federal agencies are still snatching people. They’re still snatching people in Chicago. What they did was they moved more towards like the outer rim of the city. I have a lot of friends in Los Angeles and we still are hearing reports every day of strong ICE activity.

So even if the cameras are gone, it’s important that these events happen because I think people need to realize that it hasn’t stopped. ICE hasn’t gone anywhere. Even if you don’t hear about it in the news so much, they are still very active out there.

Omar: Yeah, they are very, very, very active. As you say, just yesterday I was with a driver, happened to be this woman from El Salvador. And she was telling me how she has to like work multiple jobs now because her husband was detained just like a few days ago while he was on his way to work. And even when he was, he has a case, a legal case, and he was going through the process of the case, he was a team with another group of coworkers, and now he is being deported to Guatemala, a country that he left when he was a minor. He’s been in the country for more than 20 years, and what we’re seeing is precisely that, right? Like, they don’t care who you are.

If you look at it as an immigrant, you are a target. Regardless what your status, regardless you have a criminal history or background, whatever it is.

And I just want to say here, right, a parenthesis, people have this narrative about like the good and bad immigrant, who is deserving, who has a criminal record and all that. We need to remind ourselves since the Trump administration, they criminalize being an immigrant. They criminalize being in this country. Like, regardless the way how you came in, regardless how one was brought in when you were a kid. This dehumanization of immigrants by criminalizing everybody, right? And, and it’s very punitive. By doing that, they are violating basically all laws or processes or proceedings. They themselves don’t respect the laws that they have in place by the way they are acting.

BJ: A number of studies have come out since the first Trump administration that demonstrates if you are here as an immigrant, you’re more likely to contribute to your community. You’re more likely to pay your taxes. You’re less likely to commit crime than an American citizen. It’s sort of like the we’ve allowed the the corporate media and the Trump administration to kind of tell people the opposite is true.

Omar: Absolutely, yeah. we see also, I there are polls coming out almost every day that shows where the American people stand on this, right? Like, they are not only against the incarceration of immigrants, they are not only not happy about how this administration is handling the immigration, the immigrant issue, but they actually now are pushing against ICE. Like the polls are showing that more than half of the population are for the dismantling of ICE as an agency because the way, the violent way they are targeting our communities. And we witness, It’s not now, it’s not only, they are not only targeting immigrants, right? What we witness in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, they are targeting non-immigrants as well. So they’re targeting all Americans who are speaking out and pushing back against this administration.

BJ: Yeah, and I think people need to know that the Supreme Court said, they call it the Kavanaugh stop, where if you’re not white, then you can be pulled over by law enforcement for suspicion of being here, quote unquote, illegally. So it’s something that poses a real risk. I think about Marimar Martinez, who was pulled over. They shot at her. They didn’t kill her, but they then tried to detain her after she was shot. They like absolutely were harassing this poor woman. And she’s here as a citizen and that did not stop them from hounding her.

So yeah, you’re absolutely right to point out that it’s very easy to think, well, you know, they’re just going after quote unquote the bad ones, right, or the criminals, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Omar: Absolutely, you’re right. you know, just earlier today, I was in communication with some partners a lot of the work that Public Citizen does is through the Not Above the Law Coalition, we work with also veterans groups, organizations, veterans …

Something that I come across to recently is the story, a couple of stories of spouses of military members who’s being detained at the moment where the military members were reporting to be deployed to Iran.

And there is this story of this guy who reported to his base with his wife and his wife. She in the country legally, but she is a resident and she’s like, you know, she’s waiting for her case. Well, guess what? While he was waiting, they were waiting, the ICE agent show up and detain her and now she’s in a detention and she’s going to be deported.

So you think like, what’s the logic here? Right? Like they are, we’re talking about people who are serving their country, but this government is not even respecting their basic human rights and they’re targeting their spouses and relatives. So that’s immoral. I don’t even have words of how to describe this.

BJ: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s criminal. It’s absolutely criminal.

I think people need to understand that, you know, because the thing, we’re kind of a purplish area, right? So when we do events like the one on Saturday at 12 p.m. at the Orange County Government Center at 255 Main Street, sometimes we’ll hear people say, well, you’ve got to do it the right way.

But what they don’t understand is the right way is broken. Like it was intentionally broken. The apps don’t work. We’ve completely understaffed our federal court that handles immigration cases. So people could be waiting forever just to get a hearing. And in that time ICE comes and grabs them.

Let me just switch gears just a little bit. So here in Chester, we were able to, for now, stop ICE from acquiring a warehouse. They were dead set on it. There was a bipartisan, pretty ferocious backlash to it and ICE kind of backed away. But we still have this specter of, ICE could come back at any time because ICE lies.

Pictured Above: Readers asked us for an update on the Chester Concentration camp. Above you’ll see ICE’s response to The Monroe Gazette on April 21st, 2026.

BJ: And I was hoping you might be able to just touch on that a little bit, that this agency that is supposed to be the one handling it and allegedly protecting us is consistently lying to the point where you have a community like ours where we think ICE is gone, you we think that they’re not going to grab that warehouse, but it’s just constantly hanging over us that they can come back at any time.

Omar: Yeah, that is true. If you pay attention, we pay attention, ICE became basically Trump’s private army. And they are just doing whatever he’s doing. If he’s saying that they need to, well, actually, it was [Stephen] Miller who said a quota of the things for today.

BJ: Yes.

Omar: So they need to fill that quota. They’re gonna go and do whatever they gotta do in order to meet that quota, but also they need a space where to send those people. And when you think about the polling, the number of deportations that are aiming towards, which I think the latest was like a million per year, they need to work with the countries they are sending, they’re reporting those people to.

And that takes a lot of work and a lot of time. So it’s not something like easy that they were going to put people on the next plane, next flight, and then they get rid of them. That’s why they need spaces to incarcerate them. And not only that, right? They are a handful of private companies like GEO Group and others who are making profits out of the suffering of people on those detention centers.

And they are signing like this huge multi-billion contracts with the government to run those spaces, those detention centers. And they’re doing it to us. So because all these reasons, they are gonna come back over and over because that is what they are told to do and that’s what they want to do, right?

So for our communities, we need to continue being paying attention. We need to continue being in relationship with local elected officials. We need to continue being on those meetings and those spaces, continue speaking out, lifting our voices because they are going to try to find ways to go around us in order to buy those warehouses, open those detention centers, and those goes in detriment of our own local communities, right? Like the resources that we have, they’re gonna use it to ruin [the environment], and to run those detention centers. So we need to be paying attention to that constantly.

BJ: What more can we do as people listening to us? Aside from becoming a paid member like I am, of Public Citizen, what are things that people can do to help kind of bang the drum on this?

Omar: Yeah, so I think there are a lot of things that we can do, right? Locally, one is talk to your neighbors. You have an immigrant neighbor, check in on them. Just go say hello, ask how they are doing, what they need. If it is like any local mutual aid group, get connected. Go to talk to them, ask how you can help.

There is a lot of need for now. There is a lot of people who are suffering in this country in this moment and they need your help. If you are a member of a church, even if you are not a member of a church, you can go to the local church and ask them if they are doing anything. If they don’t, you should talk to your pastor and say, hey, pastor, we need to do this. This is the moral call. And continue organizing, continue participating in these kind of actions and bring your friends. Bringing your own networks, build your networks. Right now the immigrants are the scapegoat. The next we know are citizens and it’s already happening. Something that I wanna put on people’s minds, people who are listening to us in this moment is if you are a citizen, don’t be sure that you are protected.

Look around, just look around and what’s happening in this country. Because the next thing that I’m gonna wanna get rid of is your citizenship.

BJ: Yeah, and you know, we already have three citizens that were killed. You know, like, factually we can, two of which was on camera. One was not, and then there’s also the Marimar Martinez shooting. So you have three that we know for sure that were killed and one that was shot. [Editor’s Note: Rene Good, Alex Pretti, and Ruben Ray Martinez were killed by ICE.]

And that’s just what we know about. And that’s not even talking about, you know, I know that one of the deaths recently in these concentration camps, which is what I prefer to call them, was recently ruled a homicide.

And the number of deaths reported by ICE since their founding. It hasn’t been higher than it is right now. And I always try to tell people, you know, what do you think they’re going to do with these warehouses after they’ve deported everybody? You know, like they’re going to, they’re not going to turn around and say mission accomplished. They’re probably going to go and start rounding up other people, myself included, as a journalist.

Omar: Yeah, totally. that’s something that we have witnessed in other parts of the country, You look at history, history tells us a lot. And you’re right. They will continue profiting out of those spaces, out of those detention centers. So who are the next one after the immigrants? Just imagine a day without immigrants in this country. Who are going to be those ones who they’re going to put in those detention centers?

BJ: Yes. Is there anything on this topic that I should have asked you or could have asked you and didn’t that you’d like to touch on?

Omar: No, I just appreciate you. I appreciate the work that you do. And I appreciate everybody who’s taken to the streets this Saturday. We need you. Your community needs you. Your country needs you. this is the way how we are supposed to, to act and react in this moment. So thank you.

BJ: Absolutely, and thank you for all you’re doing. And just a reminder for people listening, April 25th, that’s Saturday, 12 to 1.30 at the Orange County Government Center, 255 Main Street is going to be our location for the National Day of Action. Omar, thank you so much.

Omar: Thank you.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.monroegazette.com/subscribe