The Rachel Maddow Show
Trump makes a gross miscalculation about the popularity of his cruelty to immigrants
Tue, 3 Jun 2025
Rachel Maddow looks at fresh examples of communities across the United States rallying in defense of local immigrants being hunted by ICE agents, and notes that while Trump was open during the campaign about his policy of cruelty to immigrants, his expectation that Americans would support him in that cruelty was clearly misplaced.
Chapter 1: Who is Marcelo and why is he significant?
He is a junior in high school. He plays the drums in the high school band. He takes honors classes. He gets good grades. He's been in the local school system since kindergarten. His family knows everybody in town and everybody knows him. He and his family go to a local church. He has a girlfriend. He's popular. He likes cars. And he's really good at sports.
Even though he's a high school junior, he helps coach the girls volleyball team at his high school. And he himself is on the varsity boys volleyball team. And they're a good team. And they work really hard. They're the kind of high school volleyball team that doesn't just practice after school. This weekend, for example, they had an early morning 7.45 a.m. practice.
I played sports in high school and I was into it, but do you know the likelihood of me in high school being at a 7.45 a.m. practice on a Saturday morning? I mean, I was into it, but I was not that into it. But this guy is a high school junior. His name is Marcelo. And this Saturday morning, he was on time, on his way to that 7.45 a.m. volleyball practice Saturday morning.
He was carpooling with some of his teammates to that early morning practice. But then they didn't turn up. And his coaches thought, obvious answer. The guys must have, you know, overslept or something. But then ultimately, one of the boys that morning got through to the coach. He texted him. And he told the coach, hey, they arrested Marcelo. These kids were carpooling.
They were on the way to early morning volleyball practice Saturday morning. And Trump's immigration agents pulled them over and they arrested this kid, Marcelo. Again, he is a high school junior. They said they weren't after him. They said they were looking for somebody else. But they took him. This is a kid with... No criminal record at all.
He is not known to have ever been in any kind of trouble at all. Again, he is a high school junior honors student on the volleyball team and in the high school band. They took him. They've taken him to an immigration prison all alone. They reportedly are trying to move him now to another immigration prison that is farther from home.
He does have a lawyer arguing for him to try to get him before a federal judge to try to get him out. But that is who Trump's agents took on Saturday morning in Milford, Massachusetts. Saturday morning is when they arrested him. Sunday morning, it was graduation day at Milford High School.
And at the graduation ceremony in Milford, Sunday morning, the valedictorian spoke and the class president spoke. And then as soon as the ceremony was over, the whole school marched straight from the graduation ceremony over to the Milford Town Hall to go protest, to try to get Marcelo back.
A Massachusetts town is shaken tonight after a high school junior was picked up by ICE. Good evening, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us at 11. I'm Sam Reed. This comes just one day before the school's graduation. According to the family and friends, Marcelo Gomes came to the U.S. from Brazil with his family at a very young age.
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Chapter 2: What happened during Marcelo's arrest?
A mix of emotions. This is not acceptable. Pouring out onto the streets of Milford. We want him back.
Because he should be with us. He's just one of us. He's just another kid.
It's graduation day, a celebration of hard work and perseverance. But for these students... A sense of sadness, anger, and confusion hangs over as well.
I don't understand why they targeted Marcelo.
Friends and family say Marcelo is a junior at Milford High, taken by ice early Saturday morning on his way to volleyball practice. His girlfriend spoke with him over the phone Saturday afternoon.
He said they had put chains around his ankles and on his wrist. I haven't spoken to him since then. I don't know how he's doing.
This sea of people, some traveled from as far as Providence, is wrapping its arms around her and Marcello's family. Friends say he grew up in Milford and is a key part of the community.
He lights up every room he walks into. He loves God. He loves volleyball.
He's an honors student and honors in AP classes. His volleyball coach says he's a bright light. We didn't know really how to react. I don't think there's a playbook for this.
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Chapter 3: How did the community respond to Marcelo's arrest?
The local Democratic state senator, her name is Becca Rauch, she was there. She spoke to the crowd. The local Democratic congressman, Jake Ochenkloss, was there. That was Milford, Massachusetts this weekend. may remember from a couple of weeks ago, that really, really chaotic scene that unfolded in Newark, New Jersey. Do you remember at the gates of the immigration prison in Newark?
That was the, you know, pushing and shoving and this real chaos. That's when they arrested the mayor of Newark, New Jersey before they later dropped charges against him. They manhandled all those members of Congress. Ultimately later, they arrested one of those members of Congress, LaMonica McIver.
Do you remember just the scenes of what that looked like, just the kinetic activity there, how chaotic and out of control that scene was, how the law enforcement guys just seemed totally out of their depth? Law enforcement clearly did not know what they were doing, clearly just winging it.
They were obviously scared and confused, many of them masked, very, very much overarmed, but they didn't clearly have any idea what to do. And that made the whole scene like a thousand times more dangerous and chaotic than it ever should have been.
Those totally out-of-their-depth federal agents at that shameful scene in Newark, those guys who really appeared to be panicked and completely untrained for what they were doing there, they are federal agents from an agency called HSI, Homeland Security Investigations.
And if you start looking, when you see scenes like this anywhere in the country right now, you will often see HSI as the logo, if you see any logo at all, on the uniforms or on the patches of these agents. Now, HSI is supposed to be like investigating smuggling rings. They are not an agency that is trained for policing protests or doing crowd control or anything like that.
Nevertheless, Trump has them doing that, over and over again, all over the country. And when they do things like that, it keeps going horribly wrong because this federal agency is clearly totally untrained for this work and is clearly out of its depth.
And so, guess who the geniuses were who so nimbly managed this operation at a popular Italian restaurant in the lovely Balboa Park neighborhood of San Diego this weekend? Now, hi, you guys. Somebody apparently told these guys from HSI Somebody apparently told these guys from Homeland Security Investigations that they were going to be invading Fallujah on Friday afternoon. I mean, this is bananas.
This is a popular Italian restaurant in San Diego. Just as they were opening for dinner on a beautiful Friday afternoon, multiple clown cars full of Trump's HSI agents in full battle rattle with helmets and long guns and flak jackets and goggles and masks and the whole thing.
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Chapter 4: What incidents reflect the backlash against ICE actions?
They said they were going to support their employees every way they could, and they're working on trying to get them back. Local residents have now formed an organization to try to help. The restaurant is dealing with just an outpouring of local support as they try to figure out what they're going to do. One local GoFundMe was set up for the families of the people who were taken away.
They set the goal at that GoFundMe for raising $60,000 for the families. I checked it an hour or so ago, and it was already up over $88,000 raised. San Diego mayor is demanding answers. The local Democratic congressman, Scott Peters, is demanding answers as well. This was Tallahassee, Florida on Friday.
A spontaneous reaction, basically hundreds of people protesting and saying no after they raided a construction site and arrested dozens of people the day before in Tallahassee. This was Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Local folks outraged and intervening and demanding answers as some random local guy was arrested while he was at work.
The federal agents said they were looking for a dangerous drunk driver. Locals say this local guy doesn't drive, doesn't have a car. Trump's agents refusing to identify themselves, refusing to show their faces, getting screamed at and having no answers. As local people in Great Barrington, Mass. objected and screamed at them and demanded answers. They had no idea what to say.
This was last week in San Francisco. People, again, spontaneously protesting and turning up after Trump's agents showed up and started arresting people who had turned up for their court dates. This was Phoenix last week in Arizona.
People protesting there as well, essentially spontaneously turning out and protesting when Trump's agents turned up at the courthouse and started arresting people who had turned up for their court dates as well. This has had a lot of attention in the print press.
The New York Times just did a big feature on a Trump-supporting town called Kennett, Missouri, where the staff at John's Waffle and Pancake House are now wearing shirts that say, Bring Carol Home. Hundreds of people have signed petitions locally. The local Catholic church is organizing prayer vigils.
and meal deliveries for the family of this local woman, Carol, who has been in Kennet, Missouri, for 20 years. Trump's agents just arrested her and took her away. She's got three American-born kids in local schools. Her name is Carol. As I said, the locals recently proclaimed Carol Day in Kennet, Missouri. They raised nearly $20,000 to support her family and try to get her home.
This was Cincinnati, Ohio, this weekend. where Trump's agents arrested three men on Saturday at a Kroger's parking lot in East Price Hill. And that was on Saturday, the arrest. So then on Sunday, again, essentially spontaneously, people turned out to protest at the site of the arrest. This was Tacoma, Washington this weekend at the big ICE immigration prison there.
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Chapter 5: Why is the cruelty towards immigrants politically miscalculated?
New York state legislators are now considering legislation that would effectively ban Avello from flying in or out of any airports in New York state, as long as they keep doing what they are doing for Trump's deportation flights. So we do,
I mean, we have limited insight, I think, into the political mindset that's at work, that's driven the Trump administration to do a lot of the things they're doing. I mean, do we know what benefit they see in arresting the drummer from the Milford High School band, right? The honor student high school junior on the volleyball team and locking him up?
Do we really understand what benefit they think that is to the United States of America? Do we know what benefit Trump sees for the nation in arresting the beloved John's Waffle and Pancake House waitress in Missouri? Do we know what benefit Trump sees in sending full battlefield combat gear, clueless HSI agents with grenades into a neighborhood restaurant in San Diego?
Do we know what benefit they think these things are to the country? For that matter, I mean, do we know why they think it's not a benefit to the country to have, I don't know, overnight meteorologist coverage in offices of the National Weather Service in the Midwest? Do we know why they think that's a good thing to get rid of?
Why they think it's not a benefit to the country to have any more work on a vaccine for AIDS or any more notifications of E. coli outbreaks? Why they think it's a benefit to the country to not have anyone available to answer the phone at the Social Security office? Do we know why they are aiming deliberately to cut literally millions of Americans off of health insurance?
I mean, do we know why this is what they want for the country? I mean, imagine if they'd actually run for office on the basis of these things they're doing in office. Imagine if that's like what Trump rallies and Republican rallies had been like, right? Hey, vote for me, vote for us. We'll bring back measles. and AIDS. We're going to legalize machine guns.
And we're also, you know what we're going to do? We're going to destroy the greatest universities in the world. We are going to decimate cancer research. America, you will never again have to worry about the bane of cancer research anymore. Going to get rid of that. We're ending that. I mean, imagine if they had run on these things, but of course they didn't. Trump didn't run on those things.
What he ran on was, in part, promising to be really cruel to immigrants. Right? The cruelty to immigrants, we can't say they didn't warn us about it. Trump ran on that promise. And I think that Trump thought, and all the people going into the Trump administration thought, therefore, that his cruelty to immigrants would be popular once he was in office, right?
That the more people he and his agents arrested, the more cruel they were to people who are in this country who were not born here, the more the American people would like it and applaud for it and like him for doing it. It turns out they were really, really wrong about that. That political calculation was incorrect.
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Chapter 6: What are the broader implications of ICE's actions across the U.S.?
The whole thing is just astonishing, and not just in a foreign policy way, but also in kind of an action movie sort of way.
It also has really serious implications for Russia and beyond Russia and the Ukraine war, because those big bombers that Ukraine just torched, those are the kinds of planes that are not only equipped to carry large-scale missiles, those are the kinds of planes that are also outfitted to carry nuclear warheads.
So if you're Russia or if you're the United States or if you're any country with nuclear weapons, your national security policies are based in part around the fact that you have this sort of impenetrable nuclear deterrent, right?
Why would anyone attack you if you could then retaliate by flying some long range bomber anywhere on earth and blowing your opponent off the map using your nuclear stockpile, right? That's a sort of linchpin idea of being a nuclear deterrent country. Well, does Russia still have that same deterrent capability?
Ukraine just disabled a primary piece of Russia's nuclear arsenal with, you know, handheld-sized devices that look like they came from RadioShack. I mean, Russia now has to contend with the fact that their impenetrable nuclear deterrence may be not so impenetrable after all, even against a much smaller neighbor that they have been hammering militarily for years now.
That said, it's not only Russia that has to contend with what this means. This has really important strategic consequences for every country that thinks of itself as having a nuclear deterrent along the same lines as Russia's.
For our country, this might be a really good time to have a robust, competent national security apparatus thinking about those kinds of implications and making smart, well-informed strategic decisions about how to react to them. Wouldn't it be awesome if that's what we had here in our own country? Joining us now is Nicole Wallace.
Before becoming my beloved colleague here at MSNBC, Nicole, of course, was White House communications director. She knows how this kind of crisis should be handled, at least from a communications perspective. She also has a brand new podcast.
It's called The Best People, where Nicole interviews some of the top minds and thinkers in the country about how to handle this moment we're living through right now. She also talked to me on the podcast for some reason. I'm not sure how I snuck in. The podcast just launched today. It's already number one on Apple Podcasts. Nicole, my friend, congratulations. And thanks for being here.
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