NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I also want to bring into this conversation Amanda Moore. She’s a reporter who focuses on far-right extremism and state violence. Her recent piece for The Nation is headlined “Notes From an ICE Chaser.” She spent months covering Gregory Bovino and the immigration crackdown for Mother Jones and other outlets.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Amanda. We’ve just been talking about Bovino at this Remigration Summit in Portugal. Could you talk about what you did? The title of your piece is “Notes From an ICE Chaser.” You chased Bovino?

AMANDA MOORE: Basically, yeah. I followed Bovino and the surge of federal agents into Illinois, North Carolina, New Orleans and Minnesota, and so just kind of tailing his caravan, usually, and his men as they drove around.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And what did you hope to do by doing this? What did you hope to accomplish by doing this?

AMANDA MOORE: Well, I mean, we were recording what was happening, right? So, you know, there was an extreme amount of violence, especially at the Broadview ICE facility outside of Chicago, but also just having the agents driving around and stopping random people at bus stops or, you know, just walking down the street and tackling them, taking them away. You know, without journalists dedicated to following that, you’re really relying on community members happening to be around and happening to think to pull out their phones.

AMY GOODMAN: You last were at Delaney. You were in Minneapolis. You were in ICE — you were in Chicago. Talk about what you saw, what the ICE agents were doing, how they were trained, and how this fits into your overall coverage of far-right extremism and state violence here.

AMANDA MOORE: Sure. So, I mean, Bovino led Border Patrol. And so, though these were, you know, considered ICE surges, and a lot of federal agents were moved over to ICE, whether they were with ATF or IRS or any other agency, you know, there is a different culture between Border Patrol and ICE. And so, a lot of ICE agents now that were previously hired before the Trump administration or before Trump 2.0 kind of are not very positive about their experiences in these cities, because they don’t like that everyone is now considered ICE. They don’t like, you know, Bovino’s cowboy-style tactics. They felt like they were put in danger.

But, you know, with Border Patrol, it was different. I think, you know, there would be an escalation of violence outside of the detention facilities where people would be protesting, just massive amounts of tear gas, even when they were in neighborhoods. You know, they would snipe us with rubber bullets from rooftops by the detention centers. And then, in Newark, most recently, at Delaney, it was clear that they had been told they had to tone down the visual effects, which meant instead of tear gas, people were getting tased, and they were being sprayed with extremely powerful pepper spray.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain what commuters are in the context of those documenting the effects of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, Amanda.

AMANDA MOORE: Sure. So, in each city, there would be groups of people, regular citizens, who would also be following ICE and Border Patrol around. And so, they referred to themselves as commuters, as in, you know, “I am commuting behind a caravan full of, you know, ICE.” And they would have Signal chats where they would discuss, you know, this is — you know, “We’re turning on this street here, if you want to follow along with us.” They would honk horns and blow whistles to alert people in the community that immigration officials were around.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, as we’re seeing Bovino attending this far-right so-called Remigration Summit in Portugal, and, you know, the images of him in Chicago wearing that Nazi-like green wool coat that he had specially made, your thoughts?

AMANDA MOORE: Yeah, I mean, you know, that’s a photo that I think Bovino has been quite proud of. Ever since it was taken, he immediately started using it, as well as clips of him doing, you know, the hand gestures and the salute as he was getting into the car. So, I mean, it’s not something that he’s ever hidden, that, you know, this is kind of how he feels. And I don’t find it very surprising that he was at the summit.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, I wanted to go back to Charles Davis and ask you about another member of the administration, if you have researched him, and that is Sebastian Gorka, who, I mean, I think his current role is deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism on the White House National Security Council. A top post, Gorka advised Trump in his first term, but was pushed out after The Forward newspaper revealed he once had ties to a Hungarian far-right, Nazi-allied group and that he supported an antisemitic and racist paramilitary military in Hungary once he — while he served as a Hungarian politician. Just to round out your coverage of the far right in Europe.

CHARLES R. DAVIS: Well, yeah, I mean, I think Sebastian Gorka, the fact that he has returned in the second Trump administration, just like another figure from the first administration, Darren Beattie, who got fired for speaking at a white nationalist conference, shows how, like, unleashed the second Trump administration is, and how it is dead-bent on forging these ties with far-right extremists.

I actually want to go back to Stefano Forte, because although he’s just a member — just the president of the New York Young Republican Club, he’s actually a key intermediary between the MAGA right and the far right in Europe. So, he invited AfD members, who attended his first gala as president of the New York Young Republican Club last December. And he was just invited a few weeks ago to address members of the AfD in the German parliament. So, it is at multiple levels the Trump administration is seeking to forge ties with extremists abroad. And it’s certainly something that, again, I think there needs to be a drumbeat of coverage from major media to, like, really drive home to the average American that this extremism should be viewed with alarm, that it’s not just those on the left calling people fascists. It’s these people themselves describing themselves as such and still receiving the support from the Trump administration and members of the MAGA movement.

AMY GOODMAN: Charles Davis of The Redoubt, we’ll link to your new article, “Why did the press ignore a gathering of the world’s leading fascists?” And, Amanda Moore, we’ll link to your new article in The Nation, “Notes From an ICE Chaser.” We’ll link at democracynow.org.

Coming up, as the U.S. continues to threaten Cuba, we’ll speak to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Princeton historian Ada Ferrer. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: The Cuban singer Silvio Rodríguez, performing here in Central Park almost a decade ago.