America's deportation machine runs on secrecy and your tax dollars. I find out who's getting paid, who's giving the orders, and who's caught inside. I'm John Carlos Frey. This is the raid.
On the podcast today is Aaron Parnas. He's known for his rapid-fire, front-facing video delivery style and around-the-clock news coverage. His videos, often recorded on the move or in casual settings, have reached hundreds of millions of viewers.
Parnas has been described as a 20-something Walter Cronkite for Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences, praised for his concise, to-the-point news delivery on TikTok and Substack. As of 2026, he has well over 5 million followers on TikTok, 5 million more across other platforms, and his Substack newsletter, The Parnas Perspective, is the top-ranked newsletter on the site with nearly a million subscribers.
He's on the podcast today to talk about ICE, detention, and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as the upcoming election in November and the state of media today. Welcome to the podcast.
Thanks for having me. Super excited.
So, tell me how you started becoming a voice for journalism. My understanding is that you're a lawyer, or at least you studied to become a lawyer, and now you're doing this. So, how did that happen?
Yeah, so I was a lawyer. I went to law school at GW in Washington, D.C., practiced law full-time for almost 6 years before deciding to pivot to doing this full-time. For a period of about 3 years, I was doing journalism and lawyering at the same time. And it really — I fell into it. I never really wanted to do this work. I always wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to be a public defender for the rest of my life, but then Russia invaded Ukraine and I had family on the ground in Kyiv. I had a 6-year-old cousin sleeping under a mattress in a bathtub for weeks as Russian bombs rained overhead. And I felt as though I needed to share her story, share their story, and make it clear that what was happening on the ground was not okay. And then also kind of share Ukraine-related news to folks here in the United States of America who may not be getting accurate, timely news. And so I just opened up a TikTok account, started making videos, in a week had a million followers interested in Ukraine. And the rest is kind of history.
What were you thinking when you're seeing, you know, you log on and there's a few hundred thousand more every single day? Were you thinking that it was a fluke, or I mean, how did you process that? Because that doesn't happen to everybody.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know about a fluke. It was more of just like I think people were really interested in the content given the fact that this was the first war most young people had experienced. We weren't around during the Iraq War. And so this was the first time that we were really experiencing a war. Granted, it wasn't here in the United States and the United States wasn't directly involved. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of what it was.
Had you studied journalism, or had you used a microphone and a camera before that?
No, no, no, no. I studied law. But in the legal industry, I mean, in law school, I've taken journalism seminars before. I don't have a journalism degree, but I have a legal degree. And a lot of what I learned in law school is what you would learn in journalism school, from investigations to sourcing to just holding yourself to a certain standard. So it's very similar, if not actually, I would argue, a bit of a higher standard when you go through law school.
So when you started to get all of these followers, did you get some kind of a bug and say, 'Oh, I really like this, or I have to do this now for a living?' Or how did that part of it progress? Because this seemed like it just came out of the blue.
No. Yeah, I mean, listen, I didn't make a penny off of this work until 2 to 3 years into it. The first part of it was really just to share my family's experience. That was the goal, to give a voice to those on the ground in Ukraine. It had nothing to do with making a living. It had nothing to do with doing this full-time. I never wanted to do this full-time. It really — there came a point where I just couldn't do both. And I was starting to make a living doing this work. And I realized, you know what? Like, let me just take a bet on myself and see how it goes. And it worked out.
But why did you choose journalism over lawyering?
I just enjoyed it more. I think I could have a greater impact doing this work. I could reach more people. And there will come a time where I go back into a courtroom. Even now, I mean, if the right case presents itself, I might jump. I still have my bar, my licenses. I can go and practice whenever I want. If the right case comes along, I might jump right back in. We'll see.
You don't have the time to do that right now, I'm assuming, right? I mean, everything that you cover is on fire.
It is. I mean, but you could always — I mean, you could co-counsel on a case, be just like a part of a bigger team. So, I mean, there are plenty of opportunities out there. We'll see what happens.
Do you think that there's something to be said about the state of journalism because you got such a huge following so quickly that you were covering something that maybe wasn't covered in the way that you were, or that journalism, legacy media, broadcast media is broken in some way that people were hungry for a different approach? You had a novel approach. I know you didn't necessarily invent it. You were just reporting on your family. And that took off. But that to me says that there's something wrong with the way that media is covering everything.
Yeah, listen. I mean, I think that broadcast media has been broken for a while, but not because necessarily it has to do with the state of journalism, but rather just a generational shift. I think it got to a point where if you asked the average young person whether or not they have a DirecTV dish outside of their house and have a cable subscription, most of them will say no, they've never watched a cable station. And so, it's just a byproduct of kind of the shift in technology, really, is what killed a lot of broadcast media. Young people aren't listening to NPR on the radio heading to work these days. They're scrolling TikTok, they're scrolling Instagram. So, that's where they're getting their news from. That's where they're getting their content from. So, I think it's just a natural shift in the platforms that house journalism.
I also think the way that it's delivered. There was such a pressure on making sure that you attracted advertisers and you didn't offend this audience or that audience, and that the news was a little bit varnished and a little bit sanitized, making sure that it appealed to a larger audience. You come on and you just speak your mind for the most part. I'm saying it is fact-based, it's grounded in the truth, but for the most part it's not flowery. It doesn't have a lot of, you know, flashy music, and you're in your living room. So, that to me is very appealing.
For sure. I mean, it's the authenticity factor to it. I think number one, it's consistency. I'm posting 15 times a day, and then number two, it's authentic. I mean, the way I am with you right now is the way I am when I record a TikTok. It's the way I'll be with my wife tonight. It doesn't matter. I mean, I'm just the same person. I'm authentically myself.
I want to jump into what we cover on the podcast, which is immigration, and that's a broad term because it's not really immigration anymore. It's morphed into so many things. The Department of Homeland Security, ICE and CBP has jumped into the election cycle, has become a kind of a militia for the president. It is part of the State Department in some cases. I kind of want to jump in with what happened today with Ilhan Omar. I'm sure you heard about what happened. I just want to know, are you free to editorialize, or do you just want to keep this as a fact-based? Do you have feelings about it?
Well, I mean, feelings. I think that it is —
What goes on in your mind when you hear that HSI raided her place today?
Well, the first thing was is that we're 3 weeks away from an election. Ilhan Omar's on the ballot, and DOJ policy typically prohibits doing this within 60 days of an election. So, I think that was my first thought was, well, you're taking legal action against a sitting member of Congress, someone who's on the ballot, in violation of your own policy, in violation of long-standing DOJ policy. So, that's one big bucket here. I think the second thing is it has been proven time and time again that Congresswoman Omar did not commit immigration fraud. The evidence is out in the open. It has been out in the open. There's no evidence that she did so, and so it's just yet another frivolous kind of way to intimidate someone who the president doesn't like. That's really what it all is, and I don't envision this will ever make it to a courtroom. I think this is an attempt to threaten and to intimidate the congresswoman, not necessarily to get an indictment, because I don't think they'll be able to do that here.
If I were interviewing you as a journalist on broadcast media, which I worked with and for most of my career, I would say that sounds like a conspiracy theory, you know? I'm going to just report the day of what I saw, what press releases came my way, and the details. I'm not going to assume that this is a vendetta or that the president has it out for her or that nothing's going to come of it. But that's the exact way I think that you should report this, because it's clear on its face, isn't it, what's going on here?
Well, I'm also — I'm not making any assumptions. I mean, I'm basing it off of fact. The fact is, in January of this year, the president came out on Truth Social and said that he wanted to see Ilhan Omar jailed, that he did not like Ilhan Omar. That is evidence of a vendetta right there. It is fact that she has been a United States citizen since 2000. She's 44 years old. She's been in this country for 25 years, and there has not been a single issue regarding her immigration paperwork over the course of multiple administrations, including Trump's four years, eight years ago. Those are all fact. And so, I'm not assuming anything. I'm just basing it off of what the president has said and what immigration authorities have looked at.
He's also said that she should go back to her country, go back to her home country. I like that the lineage of facts that you're putting together because they make perfect sense. You're absolutely right. It's a fact-based report that you're presenting, but I've worked for every national media outlet that there is. I wouldn't be allowed to say that. And I think that that does a disservice to the people because I'm not putting those facts together. I'm listening to broadcast news as I'm cooking dinner and feeding the kids and paying my bills, and so it's kind of in the background sometimes. A journalist needs to put those facts together in a way that says, 'Hey, take a look at why this is happening on this date with 3 weeks to go before the election.' If I were working for ABC News, I promise you that lawyers would breathe down my neck and say that you can't say those things. We're going to piss off the president. We're going to piss off Republicans. We're going to piss off our advertisers, you know? So, I'm edited by everything that I say, and you don't. That's what I think is missing.
I mean, listen, I tend to agree. I think the sanitizing of news by legacy media — I like to use the term sane-washing. You take the insane and you make it sane. I don't think we're living through normal times, and I think normal reporting as we knew it during the Cronkite era isn't necessarily what Americans deserve today. I think that Americans deserve reporting that is accurate, that is honest, but a little too honest sometimes. And I think we need to be honest in this moment that attacks on the press and attacks on the president's personal political opponents and his personal vendettas, that is not normal. And if you continue to sane-wash and sanitize this, then we will go down a path. And it all kind of goes back to my reporting when it comes to Ukraine. My family fled communist Russia, Soviet Russia, where you couldn't say things against the regime.
We will go down that path if people continue to just say, 'Oh, this is normal. This is like just another day in America.' This is not normal, and we can't assume it is normal.
Aren't we there? Aren't we down that path already? A pretty far way down that path. Look at the big merger that just happened with Warner Brothers and CNN. What happened to 60 Minutes? What's happened with ABC News and lawsuits and places that I used to work?
We are down that path in many respects, but with the rise of, I think, this independent media movement and the rise of social media, I think that has actually pushed back a little bit and halted some of that progress towards authoritarianism when it comes to the media. And I will also say this, I've said it from the beginning. I don't think we are near where Soviet Russia once was until the courts fail. The courts are the last line of defense, and the courts have stood strong in this country regardless of everything we're seeing on a day-to-day basis.
I would also include in that the vote. If the vote is corrupted in some way, if your vote doesn't count anymore and the administration stays in power and it looks like they have tainted the vote in some way, how do you get these people out of power? I've covered Latin America for decades and that's what happens. You know that the people are upset with their leadership and they go to the polls and they vote and they stay in power. You know, because you can't count on the election. So, we're going to see that pretty quick. I want to see if you could dissect what happened today with Ilhan Omar a little bit more. You made some very strong points about a vendetta, about going after her during this cycle right before the elections. So, what does that say? What does that say about the Department of Justice? What does that say about the president? What does that say about trying to affect the elections? How do you put those pieces together?
Well, I think you have to look at who's leading the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice is being led by a man who's the president's personal criminal defense attorney, who previously on multiple occasions, both before and after being confirmed as AG, has said that independence between the DOJ and the White House should not exist, despite years, decades of attorneys general saying that there should be some type of firewall between the Justice Department and the president. And so you're now at a situation where the president is dictating DOJ policy. There's been confirmation and reporting that the president himself even authored parts of briefs for this Justice Department. You could tell based on the capitalization, certain paragraphs and certain briefs filed at various courts. The president is actively looking at what the Justice Department is doing. So the president has an itch. Today that itch is, I want to go after Ilhan Omar. The Justice Department now says, 'Okay, let's do it.' Now there's a broader picture here. Ilhan Omar is Somali. Ilhan Omar is a congresswoman in Minnesota. The president has also been baiting Minnesota residents to go after Somali residents. You had the whole Nick Shirley fraud Minnesota situation. Vance, now the head of this White House fraud task force, they're targeting Minnesota. But it all stems back to Governor Tim Walz. They're upset that Governor Tim Walz was Kamala Harris's vice presidential pick. And they want to terrorize, they want to make his life a living hell as governor. He's no longer running for a third term because of it, because of the threats and because of how it all worked out. And so now with 3 weeks to go, you have to look at what they're doing. I mean, you have to look at just general trends in electoral politics. The trends are you have a Republican in the White House. Democrats are going to overperform in a midterm election. And so what do you do if you're a Republican in the White House? You throw anything you can at the wall to see what sticks. You throw out $5,000 checks to Americans with the hopes that people will vote for you. You say that there's another caravan coming through Central and South America with the hopes that there is some fear. And then you say, 'Well, look at Minnesota, you have a congresswoman part of a community that is the worst of the worst that is defrauding Americans.' This is just another way to throw something at the wall with the hopes that something sticks.
That's the policy, is to just keep throwing chum in the water to see when the sharks come to feast, or to sort of suppress the vote, to scare people, to taint it, to make people think twice about it. I think she's got a secure seat, so it's not directed at her necessarily, right?
No, it's not directed at her. I mean, it's directed at her in the sense that she's the one being targeted, but it's not directed at her in the sense that like there's a broader play here. And the broader play is that undocumented immigrants and immigration fraud, and there needs to be this massive immigration crackdown. And that's what they're setting the stage for.
I can hear your lawyering, as you said at the beginning of this conversation, that it's a step above what it is to be a journalist. You have incredible deductive thinking, and I appreciate that. And you're willing to stand behind it because it's based in facts. I mean, you're putting facts together in a way that are reasonable, that makes sense. And that's the way that you should, because this is a corrupt government. What you're describing is not following the letter of the law. It's using these branches of government. It's using these powers and these authorities for their own bidding. You know, they're corrupting the system in a way that elevates them or keeps them in power. So, the play that you're describing, that's what they're doing.
I agree. I mean, I will say this though, I think that what the president has done, which I find actually very interesting, which people don't really talk about, is not that he's corrupting an uncorrupt system. He's just taking advantage of a system that's been corrupt for so long that other presidents did not. Everything he's doing that hasn't been struck down by the courts is legal per se. It is not completely illegal or unconstitutional. He's trying to — and I compare him to a velociraptor in Jurassic Park. When in Jurassic Park, velociraptors, if you know anything about the movies, there are these metal fences, metal wiring, and they test the metal wiring to see where they can break through, where there is a non-electric part. And the moment they find that one part, they ram through. That's what this president, this White House has been doing. They're testing the Constitution, they're testing the law, they're testing their executive authority, where they can break through and really push, they ram right through. But, 95% of the time they're blocked by the courts or they're blocked even by the American people.
Do you think that the court system is designed to be the wall, the estate that keeps everything together? I think that that is probably crumbling as well.
No, I disagree that it's crumbling. I don't think it's crumbling. I think the courts have really stood strong and continue to stand strong. I don't think the court system is designed, though, to handle all of this in the sense that you take the White House ballroom and the destruction of the East Wing. The courts weren't able to act fast enough before they were able to tear down the East Wing. That created an inherent issue in the courts in that there are times where this administration will do something and then ask for forgiveness later rather than asking permission in the first place. That's where the courts aren't built for this. Now, generally speaking, I think the courts have stood up pretty well and I think the courts have really blocked a lot of unconstitutional policy, but at the end of the day, it's just moving a little too slow.
But we have to throw in the X factor of the Supreme Court, too, that seems to favor the president. So, that's where I was sort of talking about the courts crumbling a little bit. They seem to favor him in many ways. Also, in immigration court, this is a system that is completely broken. I mean, the firing of judges and the replacing with pro-Trump kind of policies and this mass deportation machine is all geared to sort of skirt the law. I mean, immigration law, well, for the most part, is pretty broken.
Yeah, well, let me be clear. What I'm saying when I say the courts, I don't mean the immigration court system at all. I think the immigration court system has been decimated. That's completely separate. And I also don't even really consider the Supreme Court when I say the courts, because even when you look at the Supreme Court, you have a conservative 6-3 majority. Only 70 cases a year make it up to the Supreme Court.
The president is actually losing 70% of cases at the district court level, more than 50% at the appellate court level, and then he still actually loses about 30 to 40% of cases in front of the Supreme Court. They're just not reported on as much. And so, he's actually losing a lot more than he's winning in the federal court system. In the immigration court system, completely different story, but I would argue immigration courts have been broken for as long as I've been alive. I mean —
And they shouldn't be part of the — Right. They should be — Yeah, exactly. So, they should be — anyway, we agree on that, and I don't want to have a debate with a lawyer. Trust me, I will lose very quickly.
Of course. Of course. I want to go back to Ilhan Omar in the opposite way. Do you think that this tactic, this way, as you say, of testing the fences, the Jurassic Park model, could also have a backlash effect to it, that people are pissed off that he's doing this 3 weeks before the election, that might embolden people, that might rally people? I don't know if his base gets excited that he's going after Ilhan a few weeks before the —
election or it gets Democrats to the polls or people who are voting against him, independents and Democrats, let's say.
I don't know how much this is going to change what happens in November, honestly. I don't know if this is going to energize Democrats who haven't already been energized. I don't know that this is going to energize Republicans who haven't already been energized. I really think this was a bit of a miscalculation on the DOJ's part. And I would argue that given how fast the news cycle is going, for better or for worse, tomorrow we're going to not be talking about it anymore.
I see. So, it's just a flash for today?
That's what I... And the reason why I say that is because I don't think there's anything that's going to come from it, right? I think they raided her house and then tomorrow we're going to be talking about something else. The next big storyline here would be a grand jury presentment and then an indictment, which will not happen between now and election day.
And to me, it's a testament to the destruction of the federal government. The fact that you can just say that they raided her house a few weeks before an election and tomorrow we're not even going to be talking about it. That's the pace at which this government is bulldozing through so many understood ethics here for the most part, you know, just kind of thumbing your nose and doing whatever they want. I want to go back a little bit into what we cover, which is immigration, detention, ICE. You cover it well, you cover it frequently. It's daily in the news and it's such a large issue. It never used to be this big, but it's infecting people's daily lives when somebody shoots somebody in a car with a 5-year-old kid in the backseat. I'm just curious, you have a newborn. You have a new family and I'm wondering when you cover it, do you think about those kinds of things? Like I do.
I'm Latino. I was born in Mexico. My mother is Mexican, pure Mexican descent, and so it affects me very deeply and I want to cover it that way. I want to make sure that there's some passion in what I talk about or cover it in a way that covers those kinds of facts because this is affecting our population more than just immigrants.
Yeah, 100%. I mean listen, I have that passion when I report, but...
