‘It’s Going to Get Worse’: Charlie Sykes Cites Trump Order In Ominous Prediction About ICE

Longtime conservative radio host and co-founder of the Bulwark, Charlie Sykes, answered questions on his new To The Contrary podcast and offered a stark warning to Americans in the wake of the ICE shooting of Renee Good.

A reader asked Sykes for his take on the latest clip to circulate on the shooting, the ICE agent’s bodycam footage.

“And so what we have all witnessed, and I think part of the horror of this, was that you saw a police killing, you saw a police murder of this woman. Was she engaging in civil disobedience? Yeah, maybe. But that doesn’t carry a death penalty,” Sykes argued, adding:

And civil disobedience is not domestic terrorism. These words have consequences. Okay, the question was about this new video.

The key thing about this new video is it does not show the actual shooting. And the story is the shooting. And I think the ugliness that we’re experiencing here is recognizing that this armed brute squad that has been dropped into our communities, that’s supposed to make us safer, in fact, poses a deadly threat, not just to the illegal immigrants, the worst of the worst.

Sykes then offered an ominous prediction that the situation will only get worse, citing a recent directive from Trump to the Department of Homeland Security, “And by the way, they’re obviously not going after them exclusively. But it poses a threat to Americans who are exercising their First Amendment rights, who are protesting against all of this. And it is an ugly moment. It is an ugly moment. And unfortunately, and I have a lot of questions here about the future of ICE. My short answer, it’s going to get worse.”

“And we know that it’s going to get worse because we know the message that is coming from the top. It was just a few weeks ago, after there was some, I think protesters might have vandalized some ICE vehicles, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, issued an order to the Department of Homeland Security telling them to, I think the words were, you basically ‘use any force necessary’ to protect the operation,” Sykes said, adding:

I think that that order is going to be of historical and legal significance, because what it essentially did was to give a green light to anything that they would do, including shooting people.

And I believe, if I’m correct, as of this recording, ICE has shot into something like 10 vehicles, something that most trained law enforcement officials would say is a highly imprudent thing to do and generally are trained not to do this. So what is the future of ICE? Remember the big, beautiful bill allocated something like $150 billion to ICE, which will make them the largest law enforcement agency in the history of the United States, with a budget larger than the budget of the militaries of many of the major countries of the world.

It’s actually, they will have a budget larger than the military of Israel, of countries like Italy, and they’re going to hire something like 10,000 new agents. How do you think they’re going to be trained? Where do you think they’re going to be coming from?

What kinds of people are going to be behind those masks put on the street and told by Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller and Donald Trump to eradicate the scum and the vermin and the domestic extremists and terrorists out there? So when I say it’s going to get worse, that’s not just fear-mongering. That is a clear projection of what this administration has told us they are going to do and what we’re seeing.

Where are they recruiting these folks? Who’s signing up for ICE right now? They’re going to the gun shows. They’re going to MAGA events. They’ve lowered the qualifications in terms of age, in terms of fitness. They’re handing out $50,000 bonuses.

So you’re going to be getting a lot of true believers, a lot of ideologues in the force. And quite frankly, this is going to be Donald Trump’s personal police force. And I’m sorry if that sounds extreme to some of you, but this is what we are living through.

Later in the episode, Sykes also discusses his decision to leave MS NOW as a contributor, asking to get out of his contract early in order to focus on independent journalism and pursue topics he felt he wasn’t always able to discuss.

Watch the clip above.

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