Episode 2 - A continuation of ICE, Immigration, Truth in Data & What you & I Can Do

Welcome back. Happy Frigid Friday. Flippin' so cold here in Minnesota. It's ridiculous, I tell you. I can't even ski in this weather. A little Rodney Dangerfield-esque there. I don't know why. So we're back for our second episode of Win with Web: More Curious Than George. And it's a continuation from the first one and a deeper dive into a few other parts. So we'll briefly talk about Renee Goode and show an unbiased source for what occurred., and you're welcome to draw your own conclusions and opinions. We're then going to shift our focus briefly to mass media, and then more to statistics and understanding numbers and verifying data. Should be a lot of fun. We all love statistics, I bet, back in school. And then we're gonna jump into space, see what Earth looks like from up there. I think that's gonna be pretty wild. And then what can we do? You, me, What can we do with what's happening in our country and in the Twin Cities and probably to other cities before long? Well, let's dive in together and we're going to learn and explore and see what we think. So without further ado, what you see here is the about section from Index.NGO, a French-based nonprofit for investigative research. And I'm just going to highlight what I have right there, is that their mission is firmly committed to the pursuit of truth and justice. The purpose of our action is to help establish the facts in cases where their public disclosure is hindered by interests of power. Sounds like politics to me, and it sounds like they are trying to give you an unbiased lens into what happened. This is the source of the video that is analyzed by professionals from multiple angles, slowed down, and all considerations made regarding the tragic death of Renee Goode. I will let you draw your own conclusions. As somebody that is passionate and going to be stating his working point of view as he does his research, this could have been avoided. The officer should be held accountable for murder, and it's unacceptable. And I share in the disgust and the unrest that we all feel at this unchecked, unnecessary tragedy and other unnecessary things that are happening throughout the Twin Cities in terms of the violence and the aggressiveness. It's not okay. So from there, mass media, right? So we've got the newscaster leaning more left. We've got Kristi Noem, obviously right, part of Trump's administration. She heads up the organization that runs ICE, uh, DHS, Domestic Homeland Security, uh, in case you didn't know. And they're essentially— I'm not even going to play the clip, it's just frustrating. It's a snapshot into modern media. They are disputing the veracity of data and the facts on how many people are criminals or violent criminals and what's actually happening and the integrity of the data. And it's frustrating, right? These are people that are supposed to be giving us the most relevant happening things in our country, and it's been this way for far too long. Most of us know this. Mass media is mostly terrible. So briefly wanted to touch on that. So let's go into the DHS, the source from the government. Now keep in mind, whichever party is in charge, whether that's Obama on the left or as we now have Trump on the right, there's naturally going to be bias. That's how it works. These are people appointed by that politician. Politicians have bias. They play a manipulative game. They have campaign promises. Some of them actually follow through on their campaign promises and do good things, and others don't. And most of it, to be very real, is a mix. It's that gray area in between. But we're not going to go down that rabbit hole. I have a tendency to do that sometimes. We're going to stick to what we want to look at here. So they have the worst of the worst in terms of the immigrants and what their efforts are. And the rhetoric coming out is all about the criminals and getting rid of those folks— homicide, assault, rape, all these nasty things. That sounds really good. And you know what? There is some truth to it. You can go to the site and there's country of origin, where they were found or picked up, and what they were doing— money laundering, exploitation, sexual, bad, all these things. I looked at just Minnesota. There's 41 pages of roughly about 12 people per, so it's roughly about 492 give or take, just in Minnesota. I just looked. So that's awful, terrible, really not good, right? So according to the research that I did here, and we can check the sources over here, 20,000 profiles as of January now are on this site, right? So 20,000, I want us to keep that number in mind and not necessarily get into more specifics. It is very hard to get a more thorough analysis on the nature of the crime, to get into the specifics of, you know, were they convicted, were they not? Some of these things, as you can see maybe from some of these bullets, that's less important right now. Let's just go on 20,000 bad actors that are illegal immigrants, okay? Well, we go to the DHS site, we also look at this accuracy tab. Pretty important to me when we wanna investigate the accuracy of our data. Anytime I was in college or school and we had to write a paper, trusted sources were paramount with our teachers. It shows that there's truth behind what we're saying, and it's not just a catchy headline or a manipulated, fabricated story. Important distinction, I would say, wouldn't you? So this is interesting. We extract data from live systems which are subject to change. I'd like to know what kind of changes, and it's a little ambiguous. So, I mean, if you're just saying there might be an error or two because it's a live system and how data is fat-fingered. Okay, say that. I, I think a government agency should have a lot more detail than this nice little tidy 3 paragraphs. Statistical information is subject to change due to corrections. Okay, so auditing, system changes— elaborate, what do you mean there? Uh, changes in data definition or adding information. I don't know why we're changing the data definition? Is it to suit a narrative? Are we learning new words? We're adding to Merriam-Webster's dictionary? I really don't understand that. Again, more detail would provide great context into what they mean here. Previous months' reporting may change during the same fiscal year as records mature due to operational data quality efforts. What exactly are operational data quality efforts? Again, vague, ambiguous, concerning. And then they lock the data down, so that sounds all good, like it's maybe not going to get tampered with, which sounds important— data integrity at that part of it. And then nearest 10%, lots of data. Um, yeah, interesting. So there's just some things that cause concern, that's all I'm saying. Some things that I would like to see more detail on when we think about any legal document, whether it's like signing for your brand new home or something with a will and testament or everyday kind of things, there's a lot of detail because there's a lot to cover, there's a lot to interpret, and there's a lot of ways things can go, and you need to be very specific. I don't see that happening here, and that's cause for concern for me personally. So let's go to cato.org. This is a verified independent trusted, reputable source for data. Okay, so the headline here: 65% of people taken by ICE had no convictions, 93% no violent convictions. Stay with me on that because that's interesting. So what, what does that really mean, bigger picture? Well, let's look at the numbers. And if we look at numbers in detention on November 30th, 2025, so that's already you know, a month and, you know, however many, almost 2 months ago, 65,000 are detained. If we look down here, 48,000 out of that 65,000 have no criminal conviction according to current data. If we go back to what we read from DHS about the 20,000 or so on the worst offenders list, then okay, that roughly adds up 20,000 plus 48,000. Pretty close to 65,000. This is the interesting part. It says right here though, many of those convicted are only minor offenses including traffic violations. Interesting. So I looked into TRAC and Cato, another reputable source with data integrity at its core, independent of political affiliation and You know what they have? Checks and balances and oversight and analysis for accuracy. So I like this paragraph right here. I thought was really informative. It says, because comprehensive and relevant records about what an agency is doing and not doing are essential to a meaningful oversight, TRAC continuously uses the law to obtain new data about government enforcement and regulatory activities. Some agencies are remarkably open. Others are not. Again, interesting. So we do a little Googling, right? So the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse track, you know, looking at, you know, did they have to fight for that data from DHS? And the short answer is yes, they did. So essentially, filing of a lot of lawsuits to compel the release of data highlighting significant inaccuracies in the data that is provided. And we've got a lot of sources here from TRAC that are essentially saying they didn't want to give us data, and then when they did, it was inaccurate. Why would that be the case if it's as clear as these are all criminals and we have all these affirmed records of these convictions and what it is? Why would we need to fight? Why would we need to have lawyers involved? Why wouldn't it just be out there? I think kids growing up probably learn in school, unfortunately, apparently, that when you go to a government website, it's a trusted site and the source is good. Well, maybe not anymore. That could be amended, right? Maybe that's more high school history, the incorrect version, without going down that road. So that's really concerning to me. Really concerning. So this feels a little like doom and gloom and despair a little bit. So I want to shift the perspective that we're all having right now, and I want to take you on a little journey that I'm going to help narrate with the first female Iranian astronaut and her experience when she went into space. So I'm going to play this for us here. A unifying one, a spiritual experience, an awakening. That if leaders could just see what she was seeing, that they would come up with different policies for the environment, for peaceful collaboration across nations, and open our minds and see the universe around us and expand our horizons and what we believe exists. When you look at it from up there, you can tell there are no lines, there's no walls, there's no dividing lines. We created all of these fake boundaries. Space is vast and sad where the bright light and warmth of Earth reminds us of a higher purpose and calling, whether it's through God that I believe, or however you want to think of the world, but we're a part of something much bigger in this collective storyline. And we feel empowered at the end of the day, seeing as big as space is, Earth feels so much smaller. It feels a lot more possible to fix and to do something about it. And that inspired me. And I'd encourage you to listen with her own words, and I will share the video clip, um, link as well as other sources. I'll just say as a newer podcaster, it was very difficult to try to share the audio with this. I think I successfully did it once when I was getting used to the tools. Don't know why. Again, getting better on this episode. Maybe next episode I can include an actual video transcript link. I digress. So what can we do? What can you and I do here? Whether you're in the Twin Cities experiencing all this out your front door, in your community with people that you may know, You know, I've given people rides to work— or sorry, not work, but to soccer— that didn't feel like they could go. Donated money to help with people that didn't feel safe to go to their jobs for groceries. We see so many wonderful people out there that are peacefully protesting the right way, that don't want fellow humans to have unnecessary violence perpetrated on them regardless of their status. There's a way to do things and there's a way not to do them. I think as humans, we wouldn't want anyone that we care about to be treated the way that I've seen people with my own eyes and reports being kneed in the face, unconscious, bloody, tear gassed to the face just for protesting. People that are trying to just go to work and do what they need to do. And yeah, part of that percent are bad people, I'm sure of it. But when we go back and look, look look at the statistics when it's 5% and less. You can't tell me that the amount of funding and the significant presence of all the people here in ICE align with that percentage, because they simply don't. They simply don't. So one thing that we can look to do is— my dogs, if you can overhear that noise— is the ACLU, which is an organization that has supported equal rights across its timeline. And I'm not going to read you all the individual ones here, but reproductive rights for women and Roe v. Wade, protecting free speech with Black, um, you know, first Vietnam War, um, Black armbands, excuse me, um, Brown v. Board of Education for racially segregated schools. There's so many things in here that I think most of us with good humanity are going to say, yeah, We're all equal regardless of our skin color, our sexual orientation, our, um, you know, any religious background. You know, it's something I think we can all get behind. So we can donate to organizations like this that are fighting for people to have a better life and to live the American dream. A prelude of something I'm going to jump further into. What else can we do? Well, look at this. Who are my local representatives in Minnesota? Well, we've got Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, and then we've got some House representatives. I'm gonna go with Betty McCollum, represents St. Paul where I live. And we can go to our official site, pretty easy to find, as we see right here. And then from there, didn't take me very long to fill out some official fields and say, I wanna talk about immigration. And you know what happens is this is going to go to a person on her staff that is an expert and passionate about said topic. And it is the job of these folks that are on staff for somebody that is an elected official to help ensure that the voice of the people get to the person that was elected with the power to actually do something and make change. And also pretty important to that person if they want to get reelected that they actually follow through on what they talked about to get elected. The problem is the average American doesn't take the time to do something like this, to reach out and hold their elected officials accountable for what they promised and said they were going to do. A big lesson that I've really been trying to practice in my own life. And it's something that I've made a mistake or two on. And, you know, I've been called out. I'm holding myself accountable, but I've made a lot of great strides and I have pride in the efforts that I've made in terms of my actions representing more of my truth than just words, which can fall empty and not have something behind it. But the actions, how do you show up and what do you do each and every day? That's what matters. So you can write to your person. And for me, I'm writing about taking action on accountability over ICE. I don't think the violent nature of people being hurt, of how they're going about what they're doing, poor training, how they're not being checked in terms of these egregious acts where they're hurting people unnecessarily. When you look at that, less than 5%, 5% are violent criminal offenders and everybody else. Is just a person, and some other interesting things. So again, something that you can do, um, to help make a difference, to amplify your voice, that I want to get to. Um, but I'm gonna pause and we're gonna go on a history lesson right now. We're gonna go to Ellis Island, and I don't know if you knew from history or recall, um, you know, on the East Coast, right after you get past the Statue of Liberty, you're coming in on a boat You're hoping for the promise of freedom, liberty, the American dream, a new opportunity to escape, uh, whatever it is that was holding you back from where you were. 12 million immigrants. Holy smokes. That's a lot of different people over the years that passed through Ellis Island. So looking a little deeper, it had a bad reputation, but really most people that came through here were treated with courtesy and respect. And they're free to get their American lives after a few short hours where a doctor checked them for diseases that were communicable to others, asked some questions, you know, made sure that to the best of their knowledge over that time that this person was here for the right reasons or this family was here for the right reasons to take advantage of the American dream, you know, had an open heart, good person, all these things. Now, yeah, it's not a perfect science, but I'm just saying that's how it worked at the time. And there's a strong likelihood that a lot of us listening myself included, had ancestors that came to America by these means at one point in time or another. And that's why we're here altogether. So looking at the different breakdown: Italians, Russians, Austria-Hungary, Greece, Germany, you know, and then later time, some other spots. But in terms of all the people that were coming predominantly from Europe, Southern, Eastern, and Central Europe, so roughly 40% of current US citizens are tracing their ancestry through this That's very interesting to me. Okay, so that's Ellis Island. It's a little history there. Um, excuse me, one more piece. So it varied person to person, but for 80%, 8 out of 10 people of those 12 million, it only took a few hours and then they got through and they were living in America. Okay, now it still could take years to become a naturalized citizen. And part of that, without getting into all the specifics, essentially says— now keep in mind, this was March 1970— uh, any free white adult alien, male or female, resided within the U.S. for a period of 2 years was eligible for citizenship. I'd say we've come a long ways, obviously, since 1790, and regardless of skin color, everyone has that opportunity. Um, so really what it came down to, you know, without reading all these specifics, and obviously you're welcome to dive into more of the details, is you had a couple witnesses. You would be in front of a judge. You would do sort of a civic test, um, you know, on, you know, kind of learning about America, an oath and allegiance to freedom, liberty, justice for all, a lot of the core tenets of how our country was founded. Um, so it wasn't something— I mean, again, it took time and, you know, there was a process, but that doesn't sound incredibly challenging for somebody coming with a good heart who wants a better life for their families. And last I checked, if we want to do a quick history lesson, the original settlers stole indigenous land and just made it their own. You know, the comedic quip, it's kind of that dark, you know, sad comic, like, well, do you have a flag? Nope. Well, I claim this land because of whatever. So I have pride in our country. Hopefully you do too for what happened after that, which was a land that took itself away from tyranny in an oppressive regime in England because of unfair taxation without representation, the Tea Party, all these things that you might recall, and since then evolved to where, you know, slavery was abolished, women's rights, equality, all these wonderful things that were erasing an ignorant history that you can take pride in as a country that we represent. So pretty cool Statue of Liberty, right? A gift from France and 1865. Édouard de Laboulaye. I probably didn't pronounce that well, but it was fun to try. So a gift from the people of France to the people of the US, an ardent supporter celebrating the centennial of our independence and what our country represents and was moved, as I highlighted here, by the recent abolition of slavery in the US, which furthered America's ideals of liberty and freedom for all. I love that. I mean, how is that not a more shining example of what we can take pride in, is what we want— keyword want— our country to be representative of? And The New Colossus, as it was dubbed, and it's a really interesting poem by Emma Lazarus, circa 1883. But the more famous part of it, and the quote that might really hit home, and it does for me, Give me your tired, give me your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. If that is not a selfless epitomization of what our country can be in terms of giving opportunity to those that haven't had it, that don't come from privilege, that are seeking simple things. If we think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and what we need as humans, safety, shelter, food, basic things that those of us that listen to podcasts like this take for granted because we have privilege. Aren't we supposed to be a nation that welcomes people with open arms that simply want to better their lives and their circumstance? Isn't that how our ancestors got here? Something is very seriously broken today. That our current environment is rampant with aggressive violence against people that for the most part, 95%, want to be here and want to be a part of this country. It gets me fired up. So those folks back at that time, 12 million Ellis Island, they were escaping extreme poverty, you know, not making much money, barely getting by, famine. That's scary. That's no good. Religious persecution and political unrest. That's all pretty bad. I would say it's just as bad, if not in some circumstances worse for others that come here. I think about everything in Mexico with the drug lords and the cartel and how some of these people are just trying to get to a country where they can have simple freedoms that we take for granted. And it's awful. That anyone should have to be born into those circumstances. I think we can all agree if we think from a human perspective, and if we think about Iranian astronaut above in space— we're all on one planet. All these borders and lines we made up. We're all human at our core. We all have hearts. We all have the ability to have compassion, to have concern for our fellow man and woman. And to be selfless people that think of others first. I think of these images of Earth, and we see them if we walk into kids' classrooms, right? Regardless of your skin color or where you're from, it's people coming together, together. I care about the beauty of this planet, the nature, the abundance that we get, the joy that we have because we get to exist and we're all on this planet together. And I think a lot of people have forgotten that, and we need to do better. We need to do better. So this is where I leave you. I'm not sure what my next episode will be on. I don't know if I want to keep continuing this, but I might. I'm going to solicit feedback from those close in my inner circle and, uh, really looking forward to continuing this journey. I appreciate anyone that took the time to listen, give me feedback. Again, the goal of this is to share what I'm learning sort of in a book club-like way. What my thoughts are as I'm learning and digging in. And gosh, there's so much I don't know, and there's so many individual parts that you could dive deeper and deeper and deeper on. But these are the surface— I'm sorry, these are conversations that are so much harder to find because there's so many polarized opinions. There's people that could be smart that are bullying other people into their way of thinking. There's people that just don't have the patience to take a step back and have a conversation and to be curious, that bring an emotion into something instead of seeking truth. And I am hopefully creating more of that thoughtfulness. How can you help create positive discussion, to be curious, to learn, to genuinely try to understand? And then how can you make your voice heard? How can you amplify it? Send stuff to your senator and House of Representatives, like I said, fund an organization that's out protecting equal rights. Give somebody a ride. Give somebody money for groceries if you can, if you're in that privileged spot. I'm not here to say that it's as simple as everyone deserves to be here, but I looked at some more statistics. I don't have them up here right now. And if we just want to look at criminals, there's plenty of criminals that also happen to be US citizens. And I think it would be far more appropriate for us if the government's mantra is we're after the worst of the worst and the criminals. Shouldn't that also include U.S. citizens that are doing all these really terrible things as well? And I'm not diving obviously into the systemic issue with, um, immigration at this time. I mean, that, that system is clearly broken. It is way too hard for somebody that genuinely wants to be here for the right reasons to attain legal status. That needs to change. I'm calling on people that are representatives right now to have more accountability and checks and balances on ICE because they're out of control and it's unacceptable. There's no reason that people should have this type of violent aggressiveness perpetrated on them. Somebody gets arrested, no matter the crime, there's a certain decorum or way that's followed. And when most of the people that are being detained aren't criminals at all in that way, What are we doing? We need to be better. We need to remember our humanity. One collective, one human race. It's only one way to go in this to me. So I will for real this time say, Chris Webb with Win With Webb, more curious than George, signing off from frigid Minnesota. If you're here locally, please be safe. Reach out, let others know where you are. Anyone around the country, my heart's with you. I am hoping for more peaceful and better times ahead, but for now we gotta charge forward and be real and face fear in the face, dig deeper to learn and uncover the truth, and just have each other's backs and be there for support. One love, much love. Until next time, see you later.