CALÓ News partners with The Raid, a new investigative podcast featuring ICE raids frontliners

CALÓ News will be featured in a new investigative podcast that looks to document and highlight the current administration's deportation effort and the violation of human rights occurring in the increasingly aggressive immigration raids that have hit Los Angeles and other communities of color. 

CALÓ News staff, including reporters and editors, will join the podcast titled The Raid, hosted by Emmy Award-winning journalist John Carlos Frey, who has been covering immigration in the United States for more than 20 years. 

The podcast, which aired its first episode in late November, has already featured various voices from the frontlines of the ICE raids, including Jenn Budd, a former border patrol agent turned whistleblower; Alvaro Huerta, an attorney at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center; Pedro Trujillo, a director at CHIRLA; George Retes, a U.S. citizen and veteran who was wrongly detained by ICE and Nick Schwellenbach, a journalist, among others. 

“This podcast isn’t just about one raid—it’s about what the raids represent,” Frey said. “It's characteristic of an authoritarian takeover, where immigrants are treated as threats to the government instead of lives worth protecting.”

The podcast is recorded and produced in L.A., one of the cities hit the hardest by the ongoing raids, which began at the start of June, leading to a rapid response from communities and multiple protests in Downtown L.A. Since then, ICE has detained over 10,000 people in L.A., according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recent reports, many of whom did not have any criminal convictions. 

The decision of CALÓ News to be a guest on the podcast came from wanting to shine extra light on some of the local immigration stories and humanize the statistics and data of those reported. 

The editorial decision to participate in the project also came from showing the ways the community is resisting and protecting one another during these times. 

“The Raid is a great opportunity for the CALÓ News team to expand on our coverage of ICE raids and everything the community is doing to protect each other,” Denise Florez, editor of CALÓ News, said. 

In the latest episode, Florez, along with staff reporters Jacqueline Garcia and Brenda Verano, talked about some of their most impactful immigration stories, the responsibility of caring for their sources, especially those who are undocumented and their mental health as journalists during the raids. 

“Journalists are expected to be neutral and objective in their practice, in the stories they write. That's not an option anymore. For many of us, immigration is personal and the terrorizing of our communities is happening in real time, before, during and after each deadline,” Verano said. “That is not something we can look away from.” 

As the CALÓ News reporters mentioned on the podcast episode released on Friday, everyone who has been targeted by the raids has an intimate and personal story, oftentimes not captured in mainstream media. 

“It is very important to tell people's stories coming from them or their loved ones. When we see in the news people getting deported, we just see numbers, but every person has a story to tell and our job as journalists is to report about it, to create awareness of the situation, make a change or let the audience know to take action,” Garcia said. “We know the stories in depth because we are part of the communities we cover. We won't be silenced; we are a small but mighty news site that reports the facts and exposes injustices.”

Additional reporters of CALÓ News are also expected to make an appearance in future episodes of the podcast. 

Frey said behind the podcast is the need to pull back the curtain on what is happening nationwide and why, especially as the government prepares to access over $170 billion allocated to ICE and border patrol in the “Big Beautiful Bill” beginning in January of 2026. 

Frey grew up on the U.S.-Mexico border, sleeping with the noise of a helicopter that looked for people crossing to the U.S. He said, even as a small child, he understood people were coming here to work. 

For him, it was this upbringing that contributed to his work as a journalist and he said immigration today is not a border issue but a test of American values and constitutional rights.

“I want to use this podcast to expose the injustice of it all. I'm required to expose a corrupt government and I plan to do just that,” he said in the podcast introduction episode. “These are not normal times and legacy media is broken and mostly ineffective at holding the current administration to account.” 

The episode featuring CALÓ News is now live on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all the other major streaming platforms where people listen to podcasts.

For more information, including a list of guests and episodes, visit theraidpodcast.org.