We want to share a show with you! Democracy Works comes from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State and explores how our democracy impacts and is impacted by issues ranging from climate change to criminal justice to party politics. In this episode, “The immigration stories that aren’t told,” hosts Michael Berkman, Cyanne Loyle, and Jenna Spinelle talk with anthropologist Jason De León. De León spent seven years embedded with a group of smugglers moving migrants across the Mexico bo...
Nov 21, 2024•42 min•Season 2Ep. 7
For the past few episodes, Maren has explored the reality of immigration detention, uplifting the conditions in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) centers where thousands are held under the presumption that they may be threats to national security. In the season finale of Bad Watchdog , we return to where we started, with the DHS’s counterterrorism mission. Maren breaks down the current landscape of terrorism in the United States, where the most dangerous threat isn’t posed by those who’ve cr...
Jul 18, 2024•49 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Content note: This episode discusses suicide and sexual violence. After a years-long legal fight from the Department of Homeland Security, a court order finally gave Nick and other investigators access to 33 reports detailing conditions in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities. The documents showed a disturbing pattern of abuse that extended far beyond the gates of Adelanto Detention Center, spreading throughout ICE detention facilities across the United States. In this ...
Jul 11, 2024•44 min•Season 2Ep. 5
The Department of Homeland Security is a very large, very powerful federal agency. It’s also extremely secretive. Who monitors the agency and holds it accountable the actions it takes as part of its mission to protect the homeland? In this episode, Maren explains how hard it is just to access information about conditions in DHS detention facilities. She breaks down the ways agencies like DHS withhold information from the public — and how journalists and advocates fight back. And she explains how...
Jul 04, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 4
This episode discusses suicide and recounts an incident in which a homophobic slur was used. Maren follows the story of Berto Hernandez, who recounts their detainment at ICE’s Adelanto Detention Center and the treatment and conditions they faced inside. But when people in detention are mistreated, where can they turn for help? Experts from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) investigate complaints involving ICE’s detention facilities, then fil...
Jun 27, 2024•29 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Host Maren Machles learns more about people’s experiences in ICE detention by talking with formerly detained activist Berto Hernandez and traveling to El Paso, Texas, to hear directly from people who were recently released from ICE facilities. She explores how immigration laws and one anti-terrorism law from the 1990s influenced the current political landscape and helped create the conditions that led to the mass detention of migrants. And she unpacks an exclusive POGO investigation that reveals...
Jun 20, 2024•31 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Established in the wake of September 11, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was entrusted with protecting the U.S. from national security threats. Since then, much of the agency’s focus has been on the southern border — with tens of thousands of people held in its detention centers on a daily basis. Host Maren Machles explores how this came to be and delves into what happens to people held in immigration detention centers with the presumption that they may be national security threats. An...
Jun 20, 2024•40 min•Season 2Ep. 1
In the wake of 9/11, and in fear of another attack, members of Congress agreed to create a powerful new agency, the Department of Homeland Security. Now, more than 20 years later, the agency has exploded in size. It’s doubled down on detaining immigrants — sometimes in horrifying conditions. This summer, the Project On Government Oversight’s investigative podcast Bad Watchdog returns, with a new season focused on DHS. Host Maren Machles talks with people caught up in DHS detention, with advocate...
Jun 06, 2024•3 min
We want to share a new podcast with you! Obscured tells stories that unfold largely out of the public eye. Investigative journalists and creators of Obscured Emily Previti and Stephani e Marudas are sharing the latest episode from their series “From Words to Weapons” with Bad Watchdog listeners. Obscured’s sixth episode of “From Words to Weapons” focuses on how county jails treat people with mental health conditions. Emily and Stephanie talk with journalist Brett Sholtis, who investigated this i...
Nov 29, 2023•38 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Last week was the first time DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari testified in front of Congress since Bad Watchdog was released. Lawmakers took it as a chance to hold him accountable for some of the decisions he’s made as inspector general, from his delayed notification to Congress about the missing Secret Service text messages to the sexual misconduct and harassment report his office never published. Investigative reporter Nick Schwellenbach joins Maren to recap the hearing, to break down an e...
Jun 15, 2023•25 min•Season 1Ep. 7
In the final episode of “Bad Watchdog,” Nick and Adam discover that Cuffari knew about even more missing January 6th text messages from the Trump-era DHS leadership team, and Maren asks the million-dollar question: Why hasn’t this guy been removed from power? Experts weigh reforms to the inspector general system that would improve accountability for bad watchdogs and discuss what may be preventing President Biden from taking action. Maren gives Cuffari’s staff the final word. For transcript and ...
Feb 23, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Cuffari’s mismanagement of Homeland Security’s watchdog office has Maren wondering how he ended up with such an important job in the first place. She looks back at his Senate confirmation, alleged ethics violations, and dubious qualifications, and she and Nick talk with Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS), chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, about his efforts to hold Cuffari accountable. Nick and Adam detail Cuffari’s early fights with his own staff, and a group of anonymous wat...
Feb 16, 2023•36 min•Season 1Ep. 5
The Homeland Security watchdog tries to bury a report on sexual harassment and misconduct at the agency, but POGO’s investigators expose the plot. Maren talks to former Border Patrol officer and current reform advocate Jenn Budd about her own painful experiences working for the agency. DHS Secretary Mayorkas responds almost immediately to Nick and Adam’s findings, and Congress starts asking questions about Cuffari. For transcript and show notes, visit pogo.org/podcasts/bad-watchdog Hosted on Aca...
Feb 09, 2023•37 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Nick and Adam discover that Cuffari’s office removed damaging findings from an official report about dozens of cases of domestic abuse by Homeland Security law enforcement agents with access to government-issued firearms, and they poke holes in Cuffari’s excuses for refusing to criticize the agencies he’s supposed to hold accountable. Maren circles up with experts to learn about how the Department of Homeland Security became home to the largest and least accountable law enforcement agency in the...
Feb 02, 2023•29 min•Season 1Ep. 3
A troubling pattern of ignoring serious misconduct at the Department of Homeland Security begins to emerge. Despite widespread condemnation of law enforcement’s use of tear gas on Black Lives Matter protesters gathered in Lafayette Square in Washington, Homeland Security watchdog Joseph Cuffari declined to investigate the incident. Investigative reporters Nick Schwellenbach and Adam Zagorin walk Maren through Cuffari’s baffling refusal to investigate the Secret Service’s role in the violence in ...
Jan 26, 2023•29 min•Season 1Ep. 2
How did a peaceful transfer of power devolve into the first breach of the U.S. Capitol in over two centuries? Deleted Secret Service text messages may hold important answers about what happened on January 6, 2021, but Homeland Security watchdog Joseph Cuffari failed to inform Congress for months they were missing. What’s more, Cuffari refused a request to help recover the text messages, and he halted an internal Secret Service investigation into their deletion. Government watchdogs, called inspe...
Jan 26, 2023•28 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Government watchdogs don’t normally make the evening news. But when Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari failed to alert Congress for months that Secret Service agents deleted text messages after January 6, he was thrust into the national spotlight. And it turns out there was a lot more that he was covering up. In a new six-part podcast, investigators from the Project On Government Oversight explore what happens when a man appointed to protect the people from fraud and abuse decide...
Jan 16, 2023•2 min
