A lot of hands in the fishbowl

This one was spoken by an ICE agent referring to higher ups wanting certain people arrested. Here’s the source:

Federal Agents Describe Unusual Run-Up to Arrests

July 15, 2025 at 3:39 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 25 Comments

“Four veteran Homeland Security agents who helped execute the Trump administration’s arrests of pro-Palestinian foreign academics for deportation testified Tuesday that the orders they received were both highly unusual and described by senior officials as urgent,” Politico reports.

Said agent Darren McCormack, who arrested Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil: “Somebody at a higher level than the people I was speaking to had an interest in him.”

Said agent Brian Cunningham, who arrested Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk: “There were a lot of hands in the fishbowl.”

This is a conflation of “life in a fishbowl” (a place having no privacy) and “too many hands in the pot” (a situation where too many people are involved in a project). Not sure but maybe the agent was averse to saying the word “pot”? A big thanks to John Costello for spotting this one and sending it in!