How can a forgotten library artifact reveal both buried family histories and the warning signs of modern authoritarianism?

Rick Rosner, Carole Rosner, and Scott Douglas Jacobsen trace an unexpected journey from a donated Boy Scout handbook to a century-old report card that unlocked a Korean-American family history connected to early Hollywood, the Moongate Restaurant, and archival records at the LA Public Library. What begins as archival serendipity becomes a meditation on how small clues reconstruct erased lives. The conversation then pivots sharply to the present, examining ICE expansion, the killing of Alex Preti, and the politicization of immigration enforcement. The throughline is history’s habit of repeating itself—quietly at first, then loudly, when power goes unchecked.

Rick Rosner: Carole volunteers at the library with book donation intake, and this book came through her station. It’s a Boy Scout handbook from the 1920s. Inside is a report card from—what—1926? 1921? A report card that’s about 105 years old, for a kid who went on to be a…

Carole Rosner: Well, don’t talk about that yet because you don’t know the whole story. 

Rick Rosner: So he’s a different guy than you originally thought?

Carole Rosner: There’s a bigger story, but I’ll tell you when you’re done.

Rick Rosner: Carole went on the internet and found out about the kid whose report card it is, from about 100 years ago.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Who is it?

Rick Rosner: And his family. When did he die? Around 2000? Early 2000s?

Carole Rosner: The clue was Fremont Avenue School. I put his name in. It turns out his brother—his name was Philip Ahn. His brother, Philip, was a very famous Korean-American actor. There are archives within the LA Public Library that the sister submitted, documenting all of them.

This guy was a minor actor, but his brother was a huge actor. The sister put all these photos and content into the LA Public Library website. I only knew that because I put his name in along with Fremont Avenue School.

The family went on to own one of the first Chinese restaurants in Panorama City, in the San Fernando Valley. It was called the Moongate Restaurant. All of that came from having that one clue.

Jacobsen: It’s fascinating.

Rick Rosner: Carole has found so much stuff in books that people have donated. People tuck things into books. She found a $100 Confederate bill, a piece of Confederate money from the Civil War. She finds ticket stubs from plane flights. She also found notes for writing an Elton John TV special. That’s what she’s been doing. History is interesting.

Jacobsen: Did you call your close London historian contact for help on how to do it even more in depth?

Rick Rosner: Yeah, though she has her own approach. Still, it’s interesting to look at history—especially considering we’re living through some nasty fucking history in the U.S. right now—which is a nice segue to Six Immigration.

Carole Rosner: Look—the brother was on Kung Fu. He was a huge actor. In the 1970s.

Rick Rosner: The brother.

Jacobsen: He actually looks like the current Dalai Lama. 

Carole Rosner: He was a huge Korean-American actor, very well regarded. It all came about because I had that one clue on the report card that I was able to follow.

Rick Rosner: So these guys were not sent to Manzanar because they were Korean and not Japanese?

Carole Rosner: No, there’s no record of that.

Rick Rosner: In 1942, the U.S. government forcibly interned large numbers of Japanese Americans—often inaccurately described as “concentration camps,” with Manzanar being one of the most well-known sites. Koreans were generally not targeted under those orders, which appears to be why this family avoided internment. Separately, according to reports from yesterday, ICE and Border Patrol were involved in the killing of another individual.

Jacobsen: A nurse.

Rick Rosner: Yes. According to reporting, a 37-year-old nurse named Alex Preti. ICE and Border Patrol are now operating openly on city streets. In Minneapolis, for example, there were reports of roughly 3,000 federal immigration enforcement personnel present, compared with a typical local police force of about 600 officers on duty. That represents a massive surge in federal enforcement presence, and by many accounts it has been chaotic and aggressive.

Publicly available data indicate that a majority of people detained by ICE do not have criminal records. Estimates commonly cited place that figure at over 70 percent.

Jacobsen: As a reminder, what is the extent of the training most ICE agents receive?

Rick Rosner: The numbers vary, partly because staffing has expanded rapidly. ICE personnel reportedly increased from roughly 10,000 to over 20,000 agents in recent years. Training timelines have also been shortened. Standard training has been reported as lasting several weeks, with expedited pathways for individuals claiming prior law-enforcement experience.

There have been documented failures in screening systems, including automated application processes. According to investigative reporting, some applicants were advanced with minimal vetting, and background checks appear to have been inconsistently applied. There have also been reports of significant recruitment bonuses. More broadly, ICE leadership has been criticized as inexperienced, accountability mechanisms appear weak, and oversight is limited.

In this incident, video footage shows Alex Preti using a phone or camera to record events and attempting to help manage the scene—directing traffic and reducing chaos. He was an emergency-room nurse and was standing on the sidewalk.

At one point, officers pushed a woman who was observing the operation to the ground. Preti bent down to help her up. He was legally carrying a firearm; Minnesota permits open carry with a license, which he reportedly had.

Officers then shouted that he had a gun. He was pushed to the ground and surrounded by multiple agents. Video appears to show one officer removing the firearm and running away with it. Seconds later, officers fired on him. Multiple videos show that he was shot repeatedly, including shots to the back. He later died from those wounds. And all of that is documented on video.

Based on the available video, it appears consistent with an unlawful killing. He was legally permitted to carry the firearm. He was not behaving aggressively. He was holding a phone.

Almost immediately afterward, figures including Donald Trump, Tom Homan, Kristi Noem, and Stephen Miller publicly characterized him as a “domestic terrorist.” That narrative has since faced significant pushback from across the media spectrum, including journalists such as Jake Tapper, Kaitlan Collins, and even Maria Bartiromo, many of whom have described the shooting as unjustified and deeply troubling.

That is what is unfolding in Minneapolis. Commentators like Matt Walsh—the pundit, not the actor—have continued to argue that the victim was at fault simply for carrying a gun at a protest. The actor Matt Walsh has the misfortune of sharing a name with him.

Many critics, including gun-rights advocates and liberals alike, have responded by pointing out the contradiction: the same voices who champion the Second Amendment are now condemning a man who was legally armed and killed for it. The prevailing response has been that he was entirely entitled to possess that weapon and should not have been killed for doing so.

That is the situation.

Jacobsen: What has been the justification for a five-fold increase in state or federal agency enforcement?

Rosner: The simplest answer is that the administration chose to do it. The stated rationale shifts, but critics argue the underlying motive is political retaliation. Minnesota is a Democratic-leaning state, and Minneapolis is governed by officials who openly opposed Trump. Trump explicitly promised vengeance during his campaign, and many see this surge as an example of that pledge being carried out.

One explanation being circulated is that Minneapolis has a large Somali population and that Somalis are allegedly committing widespread fraud or abusing welfare systems. There is little evidence that such claims correlate meaningfully with undocumented immigration. Most Somali residents in Minnesota are lawfully present—through citizenship, permanent residency, or asylum processes.

These narratives rely heavily on racialized fear. Somalis are repeatedly portrayed as threatening figures in right-wing media, often drawing on stereotypes and pop-culture associations rather than facts. They are treated as convenient boogeymen for audiences conditioned to fear them.

Minnesota does border Canada, but undocumented migration across the northern border is rare. Minneapolis itself is roughly 300 miles—over 450 kilometers—from the border. Border Patrol typically operates within about 50 miles of U.S. borders. In this case, federal immigration enforcement was operating hundreds of miles inland.

There is a great deal of misinformation, political theater, and bad-faith justification surrounding this deployment.

Minnesota, with an estimated undocumented population of roughly 2 percent of its residents, has far fewer undocumented immigrants than Florida, which is estimated to have well over one million. Despite that disparity, enforcement pressure has been concentrated in Minnesota. The administration’s explanation is often that Florida cooperates fully with federal enforcement, while Democratic-led states do not.

Critics argue the real motive is political punishment: targeting a blue state with a visible immigrant population that can be portrayed as threatening. Maine is now being targeted as well, despite having a very small undocumented population—estimated at around ten thousand people. Maine is the northernmost state in the continental U.S. and has a fraction of the undocumented population found in states like Florida or Texas.

The disparity is striking. States with vastly larger undocumented populations face less aggressive enforcement, while states with relatively few undocumented residents are subjected to heavy federal presence. That pattern appears less about immigration numbers and more about politics.

Federal immigration enforcement agencies operate under the Department of Homeland Security, whose overall budget has increased dramatically since its creation, now exceeding $80 billion annually. Immigration and Customs Enforcement itself has also seen substantial funding increases over time. Meanwhile, Kristi Noem, the current Secretary of Homeland Security, does not come from a law-enforcement background.

These are bleak times in the United States. What we are seeing now feels like an early exposure to authoritarian governance. The country has gone more than two centuries without a president openly devoted to undermining democratic institutions in pursuit of personal power.

Richard Nixon is often cited as a previous example of executive overreach, but even at his worst, Nixon believed in the United States as a system. Donald Trump, by contrast, appears motivated primarily by money, power, and personal grievance, with vengeance as a recurring theme.

One more thing. I keep talking about ICE being incompetent. In July 2022, a Brink’s truck carrying jewelry inventory between California jewelry shows was robbed at a rest stop near Lebec, north of Los Angeles. Early reporting produced a wide range of value estimates; Brink’s put the declared loss around $8.7 million, while other estimates and later federal descriptions put it closer to about $100 million, which is why it has been described as possibly the largest such jewelry theft in U.S. history.

Most of the affected jewelers were uninsured or underinsured, and later reporting and litigation described how declared values can differ from true values because insurance and carriage arrangements often hinge on what is listed on manifests.

ICE is incompetent from top to bottom. I am sure there are some good people in ICE—there are about 22,000 officers—so statistically there have to be thousands who are not complete incompetent dickheads, but there are plenty who are. All right, let’s do something else.

Rick Rosner is an accomplished television writer with credits on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Crank Yankers, and The Man Show. Over his career, he has earned multiple Writers Guild Award nominations—winning one—and an Emmy nomination. Rosner holds a broad academic background, graduating with the equivalent of eight majors. Based in Los Angeles, he continues to write and develop ideas while spending time with his wife, daughter, and two dogs.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.

Photo by Sergiu Vălenaș on Unsplash

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