Air Date 2/21/2025

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JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. 

There is nothing other than racism at the heart of Trump's immigration policy. He wants to deport as many brown people as possible, stop as many immigrants and refugees as possible, unless they're white people from South Africa or the nearly 40 million Canadians he's invited to enjoy immediate US citizenship. This is not complicated. Trump is a disgusting, blatant racist, and always has been, who's trying to turn the US into a white ethnostate. 

Now for those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 45 minutes today includes Amicus; Today, Explained; Make Your Damn Bed; Letters and Politics; and Un-F*ing the Republic.

Then, in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there will be more in four sections: Section A, Rights and Fights; Section B, Gitmo & Haiti; Section C, Bipartisan Exploitation; and Section D, Reality on the Ground. 

Trump’s Unconstitutional Rampage Against Immigration - Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts - Air Date 1-25-25

BISHOP MARIANNE BUDDE: I [00:01:00] ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. 

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: So I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about what it was in that clip of the bishop just imploring Donald Trump to have some compassion. What was that a tripwire for? 

AARON REICHLIN-MELNICK: So when that clip went viral, of course, Bishop Budd showed that mercy is still an important part of the American public discourse, and the idea of compassion still has a lot of strength. And Republican representative Mike Collins stated that he [00:02:00] believed the bishop should be deported for having the audacity to ask President Trump to show mercy. And my response was to highlight how far we have fallen from the discourse that we used to have in this country around compassion, mercy, and justice.

These are not terms of weak people. They are core to our foundations as a country. They have been written into our laws. They are in fact, an immigration law. Immigration law contains multiple. avenues for compassion, where people may be allowed to stay in the United States even if they are undocumented, and that has always been the case.

And so I think what touched a nerve is calling out this anti-mercy, anti-compassion behavior as against the founding principles of this country. 

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: The other, I think, big disconnect that we're all just sitting in, and Mark Joseph Stern and I talked about this earlier in the week when the first executive [00:03:00] orders started coming down, is this gulf between the announced actions and the dictates of the Constitution, or the many statutes that control how law is actually enforced. And, earlier in the week, I said, look, a lot of executive orders are just letters to Santa. They don't have any actual force. And we're going to talk about that in a second. But I think on this question of asylum, we already have CBS News reporting that border agents are being deployed right now to summarily deport migrants crossing into the country without allowing them to even ask for legal protection. At the same time, there's actually no longer any way to cross legally into the country, because on Monday, right after Donald Trump was sworn in, the administration shut down the CBP One app, which threw tens of thousands of migrants trying to navigate a lawful way to enter the country into limbo. 

So I think what I'm trying to ask is this question of how much force did these -- on the one hand, [00:04:00] these executive orders are just wish lists. On the other hand, at least in this context of immigration and asylum, they're very much effective and they're leading to action on the ground.

AARON REICHLIN-MELNICK: Yeah, immigration is an area where the president does have a lot of authority. But immigration is ultimately set to Congress. The Constitution assigns the power of setting rules relating to naturalization to Congress and not to the president. And for the last couple hundred years, that has been interpreted as meaning that it is Congress that ultimately gets to decide who can enter the country and who cannot, and not the president.

When the president does get that authority, it's usually because Congress has given the president that authority, and not because it's an inherent aspect of the presidential power.

But Trump doesn't agree with that. And what he has already said is that he can, in his own view, simply suspend the entirety of the Immigration and [00:05:00] Nationality Act, the laws passed by Congress about how to treat people taken into custody at the border. And he has said that he can simply sweep those aside and order border patrol to turn people away, despite the fact that they do have rights in the law, despite the fact that they have rights under international agreements that the United States is part of. And he says he can simply toss that all aside under his own power. 

So to some extent these things have already gone into effect. And there is more to come. There's a travel ban that can come, restrictions on legal immigration are foreshadowed in the executive orders and will be coming in the future. And that's an area where he does have a lot of authority restricting legal immigration. 

But what he can't do, and what the courts are likely going to intervene on, is the idea that he can simply declare "I'm President, therefore, I don't have to follow the laws if people are crossing our southern border." 

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: So I'm hearing you say that there's just this kind of "L'Etat, c'est moi," I am the [00:06:00] president! I get to supersede everything: the Constitution, every statute, as you said, international law. And, in a strange way, by behaving as though that is true, even though it will all be tested in the courts, there feels like there's a bit of a knock-on effect where entities are starting to behave as though it's true, even if it's not yet.

AARON REICHLIN-MELNICK: Yeah, and we have already seen a number of people who know better simply acquiesce to this kind of attitude towards constitutional authority and presidential authority. Of course, when it comes to things like his executive order to strip birthright citizenship for millions of non-citizens in the country, the Department of Justice is defending this. They have already filed legal briefings in court arguing that the consensus for centuries that birthright citizenship exists in this country is not real, and can simply be tossed aside with the stroke of a pen. So there are people going along with [00:07:00] this. 

The imperial presidency is here, and it's in action, and the question is, how much will the courts push back on it? Because a lot of the institutional actors inside the government are, for the moment, being muzzled, pushed aside, or fired. 

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: Can we talk for a minute about the purported legal authority that underlies the president's claim that he's just going to, on day one, effectively shut down the southern border? Because there's a kind of a weird mishmash of public health claims and national security, anti-terrorism claims, and of course, the good old foreign invasion claim. We knew that was coming. Can you just walk us through what the basis of this claim that there is a catastrophic emergency at the southern border that allows him to set aside existing statutes and constitutional protections?

AARON REICHLIN-MELNICK: Yeah, so President Trump invokes three specific legal authorities. Two of them [00:08:00] are contained within immigration law. One of them is his claim that as president, he inherently can shut the border whenever there is an invasion, which is a pretty radical argument, considering, again, when the Constitution speaks of invasion, everyone agrees who has ever looked at this issue on a legal basis that it refers to a military invasion, an invasion by a foreign government.

And even if you think that there is an argument that colloquially we are being invaded by migrants, I would disagree with that, but I can understand the argument from a colloquial standpoint. Very clear that there is not a military invasion at the border. And in fact, the vast majority of migrants who have crossed the border in the last four years have voluntarily turned themselves into law enforcement, to the border patrol, and are asking for protection. And I cannot think of a military invasion in the history of the entire planet that began with people [00:09:00] voluntarily turning themselves into the law enforcement of the country to which they were invading.

Nevertheless, he makes a claim, first, that under the Constitution, in order to support the constitutional provision that says the executive shall protect the states against an invasion, that he can suspend the physical entry of individuals coming into the United States. Now, what that means as a practical basis remains to be seen.

Separately, he invokes two provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which authorize the president to suspend the entry of individuals. One is the travel ban authority, Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. This is the authority that the Supreme Court said gave him extraordinary deference to suspend legal admissions into the country. And the other is a similar provision that operates for restricting visas. 

The travel ban authority, however, is already in effect at the border. President Biden [00:10:00] invoked this authority in the past. President Trump invoked this authority at the border in his first term. But it didn't do anything on its own. The widespread agreement of the Trump's administration first term and the Biden administration was that this authority, when invoked at the border, had to operate along with another law that let them use that authority to restrict asylum. And the way that worked was that Biden and Trump pushed out regulations saying, if you cross the border in violation of a presidential suspension of entry, we are deciding in our discretion not to grant you asylum. And they had a law on the books that says the Attorney General can set restrictions on asylum that they deem necessary. So there was a pretty clear legal fig leaf. 

Now, and there are good disagreements about how that authority was exercised and whether that asylum restriction was lawful, but nevertheless, they pointed to a specific law and said, this law authorizes us to suspend asylum. [00:11:00] These new executive orders do not do that. They simply assert, I have put this suspension in effect under Section 212(f). Therefore, I am suspending not only asylum, but I am declaring that people cannot apply for any other benefit in immigration law that might permit someone to stay in the country. So that could mean a visa, that could mean applying for a green card through a spouse, that could mean applying for protection under the Convention Against Torture. There are so many other things in the law that are not asylum that a migrant might be eligible for. And Trump is simply saying, I can come in and with a stroke of a pen say every one of these protections that Congress has written into law are no longer available for people.

And that is sweeping. He did not make this claim his first time.

Guantanamo’s other history Part 1 - Today, Explained - Air Date 2-10-12

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: So President Trump has directed that migrants be sent to Guantanamo Bay. What did his order say exactly? What are the specifics here? 

NICK MIROFF: Well, the order is basically to the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security. And it [00:12:00] says, you know, use use the Guantanamo Bay facility to expand holding capacity for dangerous criminals, but then also for whatever purposes you see fit. And that's kind of the key here. They seem to be looking at it both as a place where they can they can send in particular, you know, Venezuelan suspected gang members who they have a hard time detaining and who have been really a focus of a lot of the government's, the Trump administration's messaging around the, you know, worst of the worst criminals. 

 

DONALD TRUMP: Well, some of them are so bad we don't even trust the countries to hold them because we don't want them coming back. So we're going to send them out to Guantanamo. 

NICK MIROFF: But then they also are looking for capacity. 

DONALD TRUMP: This will double our capacity immediately. Right. And tough. That's a tough it's a tough place to get out of. 

NICK MIROFF: They do not have the space in the United States and their existing network of facilities to suddenly increase by thousands and thousands of people. And so that's going to be you know, that's the thing I'm really [00:13:00] looking for, do they plan to to to really bring, you know, up to 30,000 people, as President Trump said to this to this site off, you know, outside the United States. 

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: Is it accurate that we don't have facilities inside the continental United States for that many people? What do you know about that? 

NICK MIROFF: Well, it's not it's not quite accurate in that sense. It's that..so ICE is funded to be able to detain about 40,000 people at any given time in its network of detention facilities. And those consist of mostly, you know, privately run jails, but then also county jails that rent, you know, beds out to ice for relatively short term detentions. We're talking usually about a few weeks for the duration of the amount of time it takes ice to get somebody ready to be deported and to get them on a plane and back to their home country. And so the thing to keep in mind here is that President Trump has launched this incredibly aggressive enforcement operation with the kind of existing infrastructure [00:14:00] of ICE. 

DONALD TRUMP: So it's just an unforced error that we even have to be doing this. Now we need Congress to provide full funding for the complete and total restoration of our sovereign borders, as well as financial support to remove record numbers of illegal aliens. 

NICK MIROFF: ICE hasn't gotten new money. It hasn't gotten a huge increase in officers, and it certainly hasn't gotten a big increase in the number of beds it has available. And so while its current, you know, network is maxed out, it can look to expand by adding, you know, more beds in county jails. You know, we know that it's already talking to private contractors about expanding what they're able to offer. And then they've also looked at military bases in the United States where they could potentially hold people and actually add one more, you know, option that they're looking at. And this really kind of underscores the all of the above approach, which is that there are what they call soft sided facilities along the border, basically tent camps that they have used in [00:15:00] previous years to deal with surges in border crossings. And so they've been using them as kind of processing centers for migrants coming into the country. And I think that, you know, they're going to be looking to see if they can repurpose some of those to hold people who they're trying to send out. 

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: What is going on at Guantanamo Bay right now? Has anyone arrived? There are things being built. 

NICK MIROFF: Yeah. So, so far, they've sent about 30 detainees there on a series of flights and they are being held in the holding facility for the the military detainees, but then also for some of these other migrants, they're essentially being kept in kind of a separate legal distinction. But separately, they are eyeing this, you know, broader area where they would potentially. Build an outdoor holding facility. We know that there have been that there have been dozens of kind of, you know, tents set up for workers there. They appear to be staging, you know, other construction materials in preparation for for the, you know, [00:16:00] the expansion of this camp. And so the question is going to be, you know, how many people are they going to really try to send there? And then, you know, are U.S. federal courts going to allow that? 

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: What do we know about the the men and I'm assuming they're all men who have arrived so far. Are they? I mean, President Trump says we're going to send the worst of the worst there.Are these men criminals? What are they accused of other than being in the U.S. illegally? 

NICK MIROFF: Well, that's the thing. We don't know anything about them. I mean, the government hasn't released their names. It hasn't said what they're charged with, whether they've ever been convicted. We just have sort of broad outlines and know that they're primarily have been, you know, Venezuelan males who are accused by the government of being “Tren de Aragua.” They are our gang members. That's a Venezuelan prison gang whose, you know, members have showed up in the United States and have been linked to, to crimes over the past few years as part of this broader historic wave of Venezuelan migration. Whether or not they really [00:17:00] are Tren de Aragua rival gang members, you know, we no one can assess at this point unless the government starts to tell us more or we see actual, you know, information released about about, you know, why they were sent there and who they are. And in the absence of that, you know, we just we just really don't know.

Know your rights (immigration edition) - Make Your Damn Bed - Air Date 1-23-25

JULIE MERICA - HOST, MAKE YOUR DAMN BED: I want to share some resources that help us to understand our rights. Because regardless of your immigration status, you have guaranteed rights under the Constitution. 

According to the National Immigrant Justice Center, it's important to create a safety plan. Identify your emergency contacts, and memorize their phone numbers. Provide your child's school or daycare with an emergency contact to pick up your child, and provide authorization in writing for your emergency contact to make medical and legal decisions for your child. And inform your loved ones that if you are detained by ICE, they can try to use ICE's online detainee locator to find you. All they will need is your A number. 

Again, [00:18:00] every single person, documented or not, in the United States has constitutional protections. You also have the right to remain silent when questioned or arrested by immigration officers.

And now feels like good a time as any to remind everyone that you should not talk to the police. They are not only allowed to lie to you, but they're allowed to manipulate what you say. Don't talk to the cops. I saw a lawyer say a long time ago when dealing with cops to shut the fuck up, and it stuck with me. But it can make a huge difference in dealing with the repercussions. 

Being stopped by immigration officers or other law enforcement is terrifying, but it is crucial that you stay calm. During any encounter with law enforcement, it's important to do the following: 

One is to stay calm. Don't run, don't argue, don't resist, don't fight. Even if you believe your rights are being violated or you're being treated [00:19:00] unfairly, keep your hands where police can see them and check in with them before you move your hands to check for your wallet or to show your papers. 

Don't lie about your status. Don't provide false documents. If you're pulled over in a traffic stop, ask if the officer is from the police department or immigration, because again, cops can lie, and immigration officers often identify themselves as police, but they're not police. Ask them if they're from immigrations and Customs Enforcement, what we call ICE, or Customs and Border Protection, CBP. 

If they're immigration officers, follow these guidelines about what information to provide to them. If you are a U. S. citizen, or you have lawful immigration status, show your passport, show your legal permanent resident card, show your work permit, or other documentation of your status.

If you're over the age of 18, you should carry your papers with you at all times. If you are [00:20:00] undocumented, you have the right to remain silent, and you do not have to discuss your immigration or citizenship status with the police. You don't have to discuss it with immigration agents or any other official. Anything that you tell an officer can and will later be used against you in immigration court. 

If an officer knocks on your door, do not open it. Teach your kids not to open it. If they don't have a warrant, they can't come in. Officers must have a warrant signed by a judge to enter your home. The thing is, ICE provides warrants that are not signed by judges. They're ICE forms signed by other ICE officers, but they don't grant authority to enter a home without consent of the occupants. They're looking to trick you into that consent. So ask them what judge signed the warrant. You can access sample versions of what these warrants look like so you can see them yourself, at immigrantjustice.org, the link is in the show notes. 

[00:21:00] If you are outdoors and think you see an immigration officer nearby, move to a safe indoor space. But if you're a U. S. citizen and you feel safe to do so, it can make a huge difference if you begin to record the activity with your phone, or write down any relevant information about what you witness. Be really careful not to interfere or otherwise obstruct the operation. And in some places, like the state I live in, it is illegal to film cops within 30 feet or something, so look up your local laws with filming police. But I'm a big fan of the idea that we can not only waste these ICE agents' time, because they're wasting ours, but also ensure that they're doing their job by the book.

Just be careful not to post unverified information on social media, or interfere with the investigation, or otherwise put yourself in harm's way. 

And the ACLU suggests similar things when it comes to knowing your rights. They agree that you have the right to remain silent, and you do not have to [00:22:00] discuss your immigration or citizenship status with police, immigration agents, or other officials. Because again, anything you say to an officer can later be used against you in immigration court. 

But if you are not a U. S. citizen, and an immigration agent requests your immigration papers, you must show them if you have them with you. If you're over 18, carry your papers with you at all times. If you don't have them, tell the officer that you want to remain silent, and that you want to consult a lawyer before answering any questions.

And if an immigration agent asks if they can search you, you have the right to say no. Agents do not have the right to search you or your belongings without your consent or probable cause. Please note that in some states, if you are stopped and told to identify yourself, you must provide your name to law enforcement. But even if you give your name, you don't have to answer any other questions. They can ask you to show your license, your vehicle registration, and your proof of [00:23:00] insurance, but you don't have to answer questions about your immigration status.

Custom officers can ask you about your immigration status when entering or leaving the country. If you are a lawful permanent resident, who has maintained your status, you only have to answer questions establishing your identity and permanent residency. Refusal to answer other questions will likely cause delay. But officials might not deny you entry into the United States for failure to answer them.

If you're a non-citizen visa holder, you might be denied entry into the U. S. if you refuse to answer these officers' questions. 

If you need more information, please contact your local ACLU affiliate. The ACLU has been around a long time, and they have been doing the work. They've been doing the work for communities across our nation for decades. In the show notes there are a ton of resources and further reading on this, and most of these resources are available in other languages, so I [00:24:00] highly suggest you share far and wide, if you can. 

One of the resources I've included is the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement online detainee locator system. So that if someone you know is detained, you can find them in the system and check in on the status of their case. 

I've also included a PDF from the ACLU with a very brief, very easy to read, what to do if you're stopped by police, immigration agents, or the FBI. If you want to read it, share it, or print it and post it somewhere, that would be great too. 

And of course, I'm including a few other random resources for further reading, if you're interested. But I thought it might be helpful to call out some of the more important PDFs and documents just in case. 

Please stay safe. Stay calm. Stay grounded. And remember that no matter what, you do have rights.

Operation Wetback and the Bipartisan Legacy of US Deportations Part 1 - Letters and Politics - Air Date 1-16-25

MITCH JESERICH - HOST, LETTERS AND POLITICS: One of the slogans we hear from Trump and his supporters and people that he is [00:25:00] selecting to fill his cabinet and other positions in the administration is America First. America First. And I feel like this hasn't been very interrogated. It hasn't been interrogated enough about what that term means, America First. In the history of that term America First. 

There was an American First movement, American First Committee, during World War II, which if you do some investigation into it, you see that was considered a fascist group in the United States during World War II in the 1940s in that period of time.

Is the America First going back in history on your radar when it comes to the treatment and the attitudes towards immigrants in this country? 

ADAM GOODMAN: I think there's almost another parallel that might be more fitting in that sense or in that regard to the World War I era, a century ago.

Again, to where we had mass immigration from China, mass immigration from Japan, and especially from southern and eastern Europe, and increasingly so from Mexico. [00:26:00] But immigrants as a percentage of the overall population reached around 14%, in the 19 teens. That's roughly what it is now. It hasn't reached a similar level in the past century. But there's some kind of echo there historically. And also the buildup of xenophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric and the scapegoating of immigrants for political gain, and racism directed at immigrant communities. It was another kind of echo we hear. 

And I think that one of the things that makes it so effective, both then and now, is that people have real needs, people are suffering and hurting economically, and politicians pick up on that and scapegoat immigrants as the reason why people are suffering. And that's not the case. Immigrants are not the cause of the suffering, but they're an effective scapegoat and much easier to point the finger at them than to actually address the [00:27:00] problems underlying people's hardships. 

MITCH JESERICH - HOST, LETTERS AND POLITICS: Tell me more about what's happening in World War I era, during the World War I era.

 

ADAM GOODMAN: Well, there's a lot of fear about different people who have different political beliefs and who are political radicals, anarchists and socialists from Southern and Eastern Europe, in addition to people who have been coming and pushing out workers from jobs.

So, Chinese labor, which in the late 19th century were seen as in direct competition by many other immigrant communities, including the Irish immigrants, who are moving west to work in mines and to work on the railroad, the transcontinental railroad. Immigrant groups pitted themselves against one another, and push for exclusionary policies and used politicians to try to achieve those goals and to protect their communities.

And, this is something that we [00:28:00] see in World War I era, in the 19 teens, really picking up what at that point was decades of pressure, to cut down on immigration. And the fact that there was such dramatic demographic change in the country in the late 19th and early 20th century, eventually leads to the passage of a series of acts in the 19 teens, 1920s, culminating in the 1924 Immigration Act, oftentimes thought of as the National Origins Quota Act. And what that did was drastically restricted who could come to the United States. 

By that point, most people from Asia were barred from entering. They created what was called the Asia Barred Zone. It didn't allow people who are laborers to come. Some people still were able to make it in around those quotas and around those restrictions, but usually people of means, people who had economic standing. And [00:29:00] it also dramatically reduced those from Southern and Eastern Europe. So places like Russia or Soviet Union, Poland, Italy, Greece, and elsewhere.

And so this is a time when immigrants were seen as a threat, a fundamental threat to the fabric of the nation. And these movements of America First and America for Americans, really pick up steam. 

Now, the fact that there was a war, this war of global proportion, also mattered a great deal. We see that there's a tie or connection between national security concerns and people coming from other countries being seen as a perceived threat or a potential threat. I think that's something there's echoes of as well throughout the past century. 

But, this really restrictionist, draconian act passed in 1924 [00:30:00] led to a dramatic reduction in who could come to the United States in the decades ahead, to the point where immigrants as a percentage of the population went from 14% in the 19 teens to about 5 percent by 1970. And since then, because of changes in law, that's increased again. And I think we're seeing the effects and impact of that now, the current presidency, of Joe Biden, but also moving into the second Trump term. 

MITCH JESERICH - HOST, LETTERS AND POLITICS: It's very interesting. From 5 percent or from 14 percent I think is what you said, to 5 percent after... 

ADAM GOODMAN: and now back up to around 14. 

MITCH JESERICH - HOST, LETTERS AND POLITICS: Now back up to around 14. And this is the 1924 Immigration Act. That would be the law of the land to what, the 1964 Immigration 

ADAM GOODMAN: 1965.

MITCH JESERICH - HOST, LETTERS AND POLITICS: 65 Immigration Act.

ADAM GOODMAN: Yeah, there's some other acts passed in the interim, but it's not until 1965 that another Immigration Act, under the guise of civil rights policy [00:31:00] passed during the administration of, Lyndon B. Johnson, eliminates the national origins quotas. 

But something I should have mentioned about the 1924 Act is that it did not apply to the Western Hemisphere. So it didn't apply to immigrants coming from Mexico, or from the Caribbean for that matter. And what happens is that once most of the migration is limited from Asia and from southern and eastern Europe, which had been supplying the labor that was much needed during that time, employers started looking more and more south to Mexico for their supply of labor.

That labor demand, and also the geographic proximity, obviously, of Mexico and the United States, leads to an increase in Mexican migration during the course of the middle of the 20th century. In addition to programs like the Temporary Guest Worker Program, sometimes referred to as the Bracero Program, which happened in 1942 to [00:32:00] 1964.

But in 1965, a few things happened. The Bracero Program ends, no longer allowing people from Mexico to come to the United States with legal status, albeit temporary and albeit under exploitative conditions. And also the 1965 Immigration Act, which does away with the national origins quotas, liberalizing immigration policy in that sense, puts the first ever cap on immigration from the Western Hemisphere. The first ever cap on immigration from the Western Hemisphere is under the 1965 Act. And this is the punitive side of the Act that people hadn't known as much about until recent work by scholars has focused on this and looked at how the combination of these factors led to fewer opportunities for Mexicans, who had been coming to the United States for decades at this point, to do so through legal channels.

Unsurprisingly, people continued to come, continued to migrate, because they had jobs, [00:33:00] because they had families, because they had created these transnational lives in many cases. However, now they were considered to be undocumented or unauthorized. So it's in part this crucial moment in 1965 that does away with the national origins quotas, but also would create the fundamental conditions politically, and in terms of policy, that would lead to the large growth of the undocumented population in the country.

Extraordinary Cruelty, Ordinary Policy: Immigration and Deportation Under Trump 2.0. - Unf*cking The Republic - Air Date 1-31-25

MAX - HOST, UNF*CKING THE REPUBLIC: We can't talk about immigration without talking about why people come here in the first place. Enter the Washington Consensus. Now, we've covered it before. This was the brilliant idea to treat Latin America and the Caribbean like a commodity store rather than partners. Essentially, we've treated our neighbors to the south as a commodity source—labor, minerals, timber, oil, rather than a partner. We help build entire economies on the other side of the world, while ignoring the potential of the LAC to be more than a strip mine or cheap labor pool. 

Now, as we've said [00:34:00] before, The Washington Consensus is a reflection of ethnocentric attitudes rather than a suite of policy prescriptions and what contributes to this persistent narrative that these countries are filled with unproductive savages who just want to suck on the teats of our welfare programs.

The opportunities remain abundant and available if we only developed a more proactive and less racist attitude toward the region as a whole. And it looked for a moment during the global pandemic that we might wake up to the possibility of true partnership. One that would ameliorate trade, reduce the flow of asylum seekers, and reduce carbon emissions.

Sadly, the Biden administration ignored the opportunity even as the two largest economies in the LAC, Mexico and Brazil, moved further left and tried to open up more productive conversations throughout the region. No one represents this antiquated, paternalistic view of the Southern Hemisphere more than Joe Biden mind you. 

Biden could have [00:35:00] moved to normalize economic relations with Venezuela and eliminate sanctions that only serve to strengthen Maduro's authoritarian grip on the country and punish its citizens. I mean, for some reason, this dictator totally off the table. Every other dictator in the world we can do business with.

This is what led to the surge in migration that gave us Trump, because that was an actual crisis. And Biden could have also finished what Obama started in Cuba by minting it as a major trading partner and opened up the flow of tourism. He could have partnered more closely with new president Claudia Scheinbaum and returning president Lula da Silva to form an economic alliance that would reduce our dependence upon China.

All of this, all of his failures of diplomacy and foreign policy left a vacuum that is once again being filled by the bloviator in chief who's taking all of the wrong lessons from the strongmen in the region and ignoring partnerships with our two most natural allies who also happen to be the biggest trading partners.

Now, Trump [00:36:00] once again designated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism. Repeated his intention to implement punitive tariffs on Mexico, threatened Colombia with sanctions after they refused to take in a military plane of 200 deported migrants, none of whom, by the way, were accused of committing any crimes.

And he's celebrating the brutal economic policies of Javier Millet in Argentina and authoritarian policies of Najib Bukele in El Salvador. Our policies and attitudes toward the LAC region are so short sighted, racist, and depraved it makes my blood boil.

In terms of who's being targeted in these roundups. The biggest threat I can see is in the characterization of criminality and status under the Trump regime. This is where it goes from business as usual, but with more teeth and video cameras, to dictatorship style pogroms. Consider the following scenarios.

MANNY FACES: About 35 percent of the deportations ordered over the past decade were for people who [00:37:00] didn't appear in court under a deportation order. This goes back to Clinton's criminalization catch 22. This person might be the breadwinner for a family here, sends money back home, is raising a kid born on U. S. soil, and is generally a productive citizen.

This person is also considered a criminal and might be rounded up by ICE. 

99 - HOST, UNF*CKING THE REPUBLIC: According to an article in the Texas Tribune, currently nearly 3 million people have legal permission to work and live in the U. S. Under various federal programs that don't provide a path to permanent legal status or citizenship.

The programs can be renewed or scrapped at the discretion of each new presidential administration. End quote. These are the so called collateral roundups that Trump is proposing to include. 

MAX - HOST, UNF*CKING THE REPUBLIC: Okay, alternately, They could be a member of a gang, wanted for a violent crime here in the United States, or perhaps in their home country.

There are immigrants being targeted by ICE currently, and historically, that fall under this category, and this is the pretense under which this administration and most of Trump land [00:38:00] media is operating. A few good eggs will be swept up with the bad eggs, but that's the price we pay for freedom, right?

This kind of aligns with what the young man at the top of the episode said as well. But let's dig into this last part a bit more. Right now, Congress is debating the Lake and Riley Act, which would require ICE to also detain undocumented immigrants accused of lesser, non violent crimes. There's a lot going on here.

So, let's take the undocumented person, Wanted for a crime in their home country. Assuming we have extradition privileges and communication with the nation of origin, this is pretty straightforward path, right? 

MANNY FACES: Unless of course, this person is a political refugee wanted for protesting an authoritarian regime and demanding fair and open elections.

MAX - HOST, UNF*CKING THE REPUBLIC: Hmm, right. Well, I guess a proper procedure should be followed in this instance. But what about the undocumented immigrant that committed a crime on US soil? Surely they have to go, right? 

99 - HOST, UNF*CKING THE REPUBLIC: Unless, of course, this crime involved your family and this person stands a better chance of roaming free [00:39:00] once back in their home country rather than facing our criminal justice system.

MAX - HOST, UNF*CKING THE REPUBLIC: Oh. The Lake and Riley Act adds a bit of clarity by adding non violent crimes, which basically, just helps us weed out bad actors from our society. surely there's no harm in that, right? 

MANNY FACES: Sure, except for the part about only needing to be accused of a crime. In theory, you could press charges against someone you hold a grudge against for taking your parking spot, and suddenly they're in the system, and ICE is deporting them.

So, because you lost your parking spot at Trader Joe's and decided to make a false accusation against someone you don't know and it turns out that they're the only provider for an entire family, working nights and weekends in jobs that Americans won't fill, sending money home to El Salvador, so the rest of their family can survive and not seek asylum in the United States?

And one of the jobs is a caretaker to an old disabled lady whose kids don't live in the same state, so they pay this person off the books? Because her insurance doesn't cover the cost of an aid. And since ice swept up this person and the old lady wasn't notified, she goes three days without eating, gets dizzy, falls and hits her head [00:40:00] and dies.

The family in El Salvador falls in a crisis and the entire family has to flee the country, but they're too weak and hungry, so they die in the muddy waters of the Darien Gap. Everyone died, all because you got an honest immigrant deported. 

99 - HOST, UNF*CKING THE REPUBLIC: Way to go, Max.

MANNY FACES: Asshole.

ANCHORMAN CLIP: Boy, that escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast.

MAX - HOST, UNF*CKING THE REPUBLIC: Point being, this level of nuance isn't being discussed anywhere on the left or the right. So it's important for us not to add to the confusion by getting it wrong.

Before we go, we should reinforce some facts that we've covered before to demolish some right wing bullshit. Now, you've heard it before. Immigrants are flooding across the borders to take advantage of our free social services. Really? Let's count what undocumented immigrants can't get and see there's Medicaid, TANF, Child Welfare Payments, SNAP, Unemployment Insurance, [00:41:00] Disability Insurance, Social Security, basically everything.

But here's the kicker. Undocumented workers pay about 13 billion a year into Social Security that they'll never be able to claim. They pay property taxes through their rent that funds public schools. The only benefits they can access? Emergency room care and public education for their kids, that's it.

And with respect to public education, public schools are primarily funded by local property taxes. These are paid by homeowners or landlords. Tenants pay these homeowners for apartments and rooms or landlords for apartments and storefronts. See how this works? That leaves emergency rooms, which I'll address in the Medicare for All episode.

And it also leaves school lunches. So that's the last thing, right? On this latter point, I have to concede. Undocumented children receive free school lunches. And the federal government is on the hook for that. Let's actually do a little math. Let's see. [00:42:00] The federal government spends around 17. 2 billion on school lunches.

About 7 percent of students are undocumented. That's 1. 2 billion per year Feeding undocumented children. Now the federal budget for 2025 is 7. 3 trillion. So my math is correct. School lunches for undocumented children represents 0. 016 percent of the federal budget. 

MANNY FACES: So she put it that way to port them all.

99 - HOST, UNF*CKING THE REPUBLIC: Stop it.

MAX - HOST, UNF*CKING THE REPUBLIC: These right wing talking points are garbage and the media outlets that repeat them are garbage outlets filled with garbage people, but as leftists, We don't get to pick and choose the facts that support our narratives either. Now look, I get it, we need to call out Trump's cruelty, his racist rhetoric, his intentional trauma infliction.

But we also need to be honest about something. The difference between Trump and Obama [00:43:00] isn't in the numbers. It's in the cruelty of execution and the willingness to put it on display for all of us to see. He's taunted us, for sure. And yet, the left needs to be morally consistent here. Yes, Trump's approach is more brutal, more racist, more cruel, but the machinery he's using?

That was built and maintained by both parties. Clinton criminalized existence, Bush militarized the border, Obama perfected deportation, Biden used it all and then some, and Trump? Trump just took off the mask. The real solution isn't in who can deport more people or build bigger walls. It's in recognizing that the entire fucking framework is broken.

We need to rebuild our relationship with Latin America and the Caribbean, create real economic partnerships, decriminalize immigrant status, and stop treating people like political footballs. But that would require admitting that both parties have blood on their hands, and in [00:44:00] Washington, that's the one thing that's still illegal.

In the meantime, fuck Donald Trump. Elon Musk is a Nazi. Protect those you love, and even some you might not. Because next time around it could be you

Note from the Editor on what we can learn from imaginary borders

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with Amicus discussing Trump's immigration overreach. Today, Explained looked at the plan to send tens of thousands of detainees to Guantanamo Bay. Make Your Damn Bed laid out many of the rights people should know when dealing with police and immigration. Letters and Politics looked at the history of the America First movement. And Un-F*ing the Republic highlighted the Washington consensus at the heart of our broken immigration system. And those were just our Top Takes; there's a lot more in the Deeper Dive sections. 

But first, a reminder that this show is produced with the support of our members, who get access to bonus episodes and enjoy all of our shows without ads. And to have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new, members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at [00:45:00] BestOfTheLeft.Com/Support (there's a link in the show notes), through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcast app. And as always, if regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information.

Now, if you have a question or would like your comments included in the show, our upcoming topics include Trump's other dystopian and racist proposal to ethnically cleanse Gaza, followed by the dangers of RFK Jr. and the future of health in America. So get your comments and questions in now for those topics. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991. We're also findable on the privacy-focused messaging app Signal with the handle bestoftheleft.01. There's a link in the show notes for that. Or you can simply email me to [email protected]. 

Now as for today's topic, I got thinking about Trump's line about the border between the US and [00:46:00] Canada being an artificially drawn line, right? This was all part of his rhetorical trial balloon to see if it might actually be possible to bully Canada into becoming part of the US. To be clear, this is horrible, imperialistic, inhuman, is not something you should do to people, especially when using the threat of economic hardship as a cudgel to bully an entire country full of people who are perfectly happy and proud to not be Americans.

That said, the philosophical idea behind the point about borders being artificial, actually, I think, makes that one of the smartest things Trump has ever accidentally said. Most borders are arbitrary to a greater or lesser degree. They just as often create unhelpful divisions between very, very similar people who should live together, as they create logical divides. 

Most of the [00:47:00] border between the US and Canada simply runs along the 49th parallel of latitude from the Salish Sea between Vancouver and Seattle over to a body of water that I'd never even heard of called the Lake of the Woods in northern Minnesota. And then from there, there are plenty more squiggles that mostly follow waterways and make maybe a bit more sense, but there is nothing more arbitrary and artificial than a straight line cutting across hundreds and hundreds of miles of land.

Now, just for fun, as if to make that point abundantly clear, check out Point Roberts, Washington on a map. It's a tiny peninsula of land owned by the United States that you can only access by ferry or by driving through Canada, because it just slightly pokes down from Canada over the 49th parallel. Does that make any kind of logical sense? No. None whatsoever.

So, not that Trump was putting this much thought into it or anything, but political borders drawn by humans are part of a concept called "imagined order." We imagine [00:48:00] things to be true and real, like governmental systems, economic systems, and borders drawn on a map. And they are real only in that we make them real by collectively believing in them and acting on those beliefs. But, in reality, they are imaginary. 

So what I find interesting is to compare this truthful statement about the artificial nature of borders from Trump, and his cohort of America First fascists who put a lot of irrational emotional energy and value on those arbitrary borders that divide up the world.

But all it takes is for Trump to get the idea that if we erase one of those imaginary lines, then he could expand our imaginary empire, and rule over more land and people as the imaginary king that he believes himself to be. That's when the sanctity of the borders completely falls away. 

But if I was just talking about them being hypocrites, that wouldn't be all that [00:49:00] interesting. My point is that when we fully embrace the reality that the arbitrary lines that divide up the world are, in fact, imaginary, it pokes an enormous hole in the idea that people in other countries who just happen to live on the other side of these imaginary lines are fundamentally different from us, or something to be feared.

Trump came to power largely on the idea that immigrants are scary and dangerous, and then immediately pointed out that borders are kind of bullshit. The reality is that most people in the world are perfectly lovely. Some are kind of assholes, and a very few are genuinely dangerous. But you can't tell which is which based on what country they come from.

And I know, it's obvious, Trump and company don't actually care about which country people come from, as evidenced by their embrace of Canada, Greenland, white South Africans. They just pretend that that's what they think, so that they don't have to say out loud that they think they can judge character based on the color of people's [00:50:00] brown skin.

Whereas we know that the best way to judge character these days is based on the color of their red hats. 

SECTION A: RIGHTS & FIGHTS

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper on four topics. 

Next up, Section A: Rights and Fights, followed by Section B: Gitmo and Haiti, Section C: Bipartisan Exploitation, and Section D: Reality on the Ground.

INTERVIEW: Knowing your rights in the face of ICE - The Worst of All Possible Worlds - Air Date 1-30-25

JOSH BOERMAN - HOST, THE WORST OF ALL WORLDS: I wanted to to pivot to talking a bit more concretely about ice, which we've been mentioning immigration and customs enforcement I think that a lot of people have a vague sense of what it is that ice is and what it does Um, but can you be as concrete and specific as possible about who they are?

Uh, where they get their power from and what their remit is both traditionally and as it is now under the Trump government. 

ISAAC ADAMS: ICE is a creation, is a sub agency of the U. S. Department of Homeland Security. So all of this bureaucracy that exists is part of the reordering of the government post 9 [00:51:00] 11. They have attorneys, we call them OPLA, the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor's Office.

They're the people that are essentially the rough equivalent of a district attorney. They are the people prosecuting immigration offenses. The ICE that most people talk about is ERO arm of ICE. It is the Enforcement and Removal Operations. They are authorized by congressional action as well as. All of our layers of legal framework that go with that executive mandate and regulations that have been promulgated as well as judicial authority being granted to them and authorizing them to enforce our immigration laws that does give them fairly broad powers.

to investigate and to question people. They are not police themselves, though. They, they don't investigate actual crimes. There is another part of ICE that is the Homeland Security Investigations Department, and [00:52:00] I'm not familiar with them at all. I usually don't interact with them. Um, that's more of the anti terrorism portion of ICE.

JOSH BOERMAN - HOST, THE WORST OF ALL WORLDS: So those are like actual police detectives, that kind of thing? 

ISAAC ADAMS: From my understanding, but I, I, my day to day interaction with them and understanding of the Homeland Security Investigations arm of ICE is, is very limited. Sure. Enforcement and removal operations during the Biden administration, um, they are the people that deal with the day to day interactions with immigrants who are in removal proceedings.

They, the most common way to deal with immigrants who arrive to the United States, um, is to without documentation and who are placed in any kind of proceeding is to release them on their own recognizance depending on the regime. They may or may not have an ankle bracelet to monitor then and make sure that they go to court but they have to do report dates.

It's kind of like, you know, you're going to, um, your parole officer, checking in, making sure that you're doing what you're supposed to do, that you're going to your courts. 

JOSH BOERMAN - HOST, THE WORST OF ALL WORLDS: And, [00:53:00] and sorry just to jump in here, but when you say release them on their own recognizance, what, what exactly does that mean? 

ISAAC ADAMS: So, the process at the border has, has been for most of my career, An immigrant will arrive at the U.

S. United States border, um, either at a port of entry that was much more acceptable and they provided methods for doing that under the Biden administration, there was an app called CBP one that. Now, those interactions are with a different Department of Homeland Security sub agency called customs and border patrol CBP would find the person, whether they entered at a port of entry.

Through CBP 1 during the Biden administration, or whether they crossed at some other entry point. They're grabbed by ICE. Usually, instead of detaining them, that takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of money, it's inhumane. What they do is they talk to them, they figure out what's going on, and then they determine, okay, this is a person that we're going to, that I can't remove based on our current guidelines for expedited removal.

I'm going to give them a notice to [00:54:00] appear in immigration court, and then I'm going to release them, make sure that we have an address, make sure that they know that they need to go to court. And then they're allowed to go, they have certain requirements, you need to check in, you need to report with us, and you need to go to the immigration court and let the judge know why you shouldn't be deported back to your native country.

JOSH BOERMAN - HOST, THE WORST OF ALL WORLDS: Where are these people usually housed during that interim period? Are these the people who would sometimes be in those detainment facilities that would get set up? 

ISAAC ADAMS: Yes, so this is, you know, the, this is the. Babies in prisons kind of thing that happened to the first time during Trump. Right. Okay. There, they had so many people.

We didn't have the detention facilities for it. This is one of the failures of the Biden administration. That's going to make Trump too much more effective. Biden promised us the first time when he was running for president, I'm going to eliminate the private prison industry. I'm going to close all private immigration detention centers.

That didn't happen. It didn't take very many steps even to try to [00:55:00] make that happen. If we had closed those, we wouldn't have the detention capacity to even be attempting to do the kinds of things that they want to do. 

JOSH BOERMAN - HOST, THE WORST OF ALL WORLDS: Do you have a sense of what the current capacity is? 

ISAAC ADAMS: It's pretty full. I don't know what the full current capacity is.

We have a lot of people in immigration detention, and the rules for immigration detention are quite expansive. This new Lake and Riley Act has made it even more expansive than they were before. Okay. Increasing the number of people who are not only detainable, but mandatory detainees. Um, hopefully we can challenge a lot of this act.

In the courts, I believe that in passing the Lake and Riley act, the Congress has actually exceeded their authority under the constitution in certain extent, in certain areas, there is a lot of leeway for the immigration courts and the immigration detention centers to say. No, you're going to be imprisoned as though you committed some kind of crime, even though you've only been accused of a crime.

JOSH BOERMAN - HOST, THE WORST OF ALL WORLDS: Well, and I think that's a really [00:56:00] important point, that the industrialization of this whole situation, it's basically created an entire separate industry. Like, part of what is going on here is that there is profit to be made, and That is to the benefit of the people who are operating these what are effectively prisons.

This is for the most part, not actually owned or operated by the United States government. These are this is all contract work, 

ISAAC ADAMS: and even when they are government facilities. Their local jails that are subcontracting part of their space out and they're being managed by private companies It's a huge for profit industry 

JOSH BOERMAN - HOST, THE WORST OF ALL WORLDS: So I wanted to take it back to the lake and riley act for a second because when I was watching uh trump Issue the proclamation that I guess we're reopening Guantanamo Bay to house 30, 000 migrants, which I want to talk about a little bit later.

Uh, there was a Fox News blurb on the bottom on their little crawler [00:57:00] talking about that act in basically, you know, framing it up as yet another great example of the United States of America defeating the immigrant menace. Um, and I was hoping you could talk a little bit about exactly what the Lake and Riley Act was about.

Is, uh, what it specifically empowers ICE to do, as well as how it reshapes the landscape regarding immigration more broadly. 

ISAAC ADAMS: Yeah, the, the biggest thing that the Lakin Riley Act does from, from my perspective, and I haven't read the actual full language of the bill, so I, I've just been watching the news reports and then following.

The chatter amongst lawyers groups and seeing what they say. The biggest thing that I've noticed about it is that it creates and expands the nature of what is called mandatory detention under our immigration laws. Mandatory detention says that in certain circumstances, Not only should we consider imprisoning this person and holding them indefinitely for [00:58:00] these kinds of serious crimes, but that it is something that we actually have to do.

We're obligated to keep them in prison while we determine whether or not they're allowed to stay in the United States. The Lake and Riley Act substantially increased the number of things that are considered mandatorily detained and, and expands the ability of ICE to detain people in general, whether or not we actually have the capacity or will have the capacity to detain that many people is yet to be seen, but because of the fear mongering that happens.

The, the levels of crime from immigrants is actually lower than the rate of crime amongst U. S. citizens, but they have made people afraid, oh, if only this person had actually been detained because he was a shoplifter. But what the sentence is effectively for shoplifting is possibly years in prison for shoplifting one time.

And actually the Lake and Riley Act, the language, it doesn't just say if you're [00:59:00] convicted of the crime, it's if you're accused of certain theft crimes. So the mere accusation that you did those kinds of things, and that's where in these states where you have lockstep support with the actual state law enforcement body, they can say, I saw you stealing that, reports you to ICE, ICE gets to detain you, and then you are in prison, effectively, in immigration detention, which is the equivalent of our U. S. prisons, until your case is finished, and that can be a very long time. The immigration courts do a good job of processing cases that are detained faster than they do cases that are non detained. Um, it does still take several months. Like you're going to be there probably for three to four months at the very least.

But if you win a case and ICE decides to appeal that you won that case, you're going to look at years because the appeals process with immigration courts takes years to actually work through itself. And the person [01:00:00] who's appealing that decision has to wait in immigration detention that entire time, if they're a mandatory detainee. 

How To Fight Trump’s Anti-American Agenda on Immigration and Refugees - Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams - Air Date 2-6-25

NAINA GUPTA: The 13 million undocumented people living here, they represent one in seven construction workers.

One in seven agricultural workers in Texas, around 50 percent of construction workers are here in violation of civil immigration law, even though they're contributing richly to that industry in Texas, deporting that many folks or scaring them enough to not show up. That means higher food prices, higher housing costs.

It means not having a workforce for healthcare aid workers. Those are real effects we'll start to feel quickly at the local. Economic level and over time. Um, in our national GDP and on a national economic scale. Now, this is all putting aside the actual direct financial cost of trying to deport this many people at the American Immigration Council.

We released [01:01:00] a report last year where we looked at the cost of arresting, detaining, deporting, Processing and removing a million people per year and over a 10 year period that would cost over a trillion dollars. Those are dollars that could instead of course be used to start head start programs all around the country to build affordable housing.

These are dollars that are being used for enforcement of immigration instead of other solutions that folks have been seeking or that we understand them to be seeking from the results of this election. And the final point I'll make about this. These costs, I mean, all this money and time to try to pull this off, and none of that offers a meaningful solution to a broken immigration system, right?

It actually inserts more chaos, and it wastes law enforcement resources in a way that does not make anybody safer at the end of the day. 

STACEY ABRAMS - HOST, ASSEMBLY REQUIRED: Do we have any current data on how many detentions and [01:02:00] deportations they've actually already carried out? 

NAINA GUPTA: Right now, we know that Ice under the Trump administration has set a target of approximately 1, 000 arrests per day.

Um, in less than two weeks, we've seen ice as a sub agency make around 12, 000 immigration arrests, meeting their approximate goal. We don't know whether they'll continue to meet that goal, whether that number Will increase by day, but we know that this is more arrests per day and per month than we've seen from the U.

S. government in some time and that they are doing this, um, in particular by using community arrests, non targeted enforcement actions, um, and, and are starting to use worksite raids. We don't know how many of these folks are actually being placed [01:03:00] into removal proceedings or how many will actually be deported.

That's information we hope that the, the Department of Homeland Security will make public or at least share with Congress. Right now, what we mostly have are the number of people who are being arrested. 

STACEY ABRAMS - HOST, ASSEMBLY REQUIRED: We are recording this on Monday, February 3rd. And last Friday, Trump's order for U. S. military aircraft to deport detained migrants took effect.

Again, without Republican objection. And so far we know six planes have transported migrants to Latin America. A U. S. official noted this is the first time in recent memory that military aircraft has been used for such removal. Why is this significant? And can you talk about the decision made by Guatemala regarding migrants and the ongoing conversation with Venezuela?

NAINA GUPTA: Yeah, so what's significant about the Trump administration leaning on resources from other federal agencies and the U. S. military is it's [01:04:00] their way to get over these procedural and resource issues. Obstacles, right? If they don't have funding from Congress, um, for DHS to initiate this many deportations.

Um, they're looking to other agencies to the U. S. military to fill in with those resources. So we should be alarmed when we see unprecedented use of the military for enforcing laws in the interior of our U. S. because that's the kind of authority that allows the Trump administration to follow through on this agenda faster than ever before.

And in terms of negotiations with other countries, right, what we're seeing is the Trump administration say to certain Latin American countries, First of all, we don't care what your politics are. We'll negotiate with you if you're going to take more deportees back home. And if you say no, and you push back the way that we've seen, for example, Colombia do, then we're going to threaten you with the use of tariffs.

[01:05:00] Um, that will be economically crippling for your country and your people. 

STACEY ABRAMS - HOST, ASSEMBLY REQUIRED: One of the pieces that's most terrifying to me is that Trump, as well as his fellow Republicans, are using these mechanisms to evade the checks and balances that are often the difference between autocracies and democracies. They are trying to leverage what they can do without having to abide by the laws as they exist.

And one of the ways that he's attempting to do this is the announced plan to use Guantanamo Bay to hold undocumented immigrants, calling it a tough place to get out of. And he later ordered the construction of a 30, 000 bed detention camp at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which is in Cuba. So I want you to talk for a second about this.

What this decision says about the severity of his immigration policies that Republicans are suborning, but also what does it mean in light of the prior uses of Guantanamo as a federal military facility to be used for this domestic purpose? 

NAINA GUPTA: [01:06:00] Chaos, confusion and fear is the point with the Trump administration, right, they want headlines about arresting communities and moving 30, 000 people to Guantanamo. The question is, do they really have the legal authority? For the first time ever to put people on Guantanamo who are actually already here in the United States, and there are some important legal challenges that will be filed to push back against the use of that authority, and I want to flag that up top.

Now, you are correct that what we're seeing is the Trump administration, in addition to its fearful rhetoric. Try to get around the obstacles they face and the delays they face in their mass deportation agenda. And traditionally, Guantanamo has been a place where the U. S. government can do things in secret.

And there isn't accountability for violations of due process. There is an accountability for the conditions people are subjected to, and that is what Trump is aiming to do here. But the reality is that non citizens in the [01:07:00] United States, who would be possibly removed and detained in Guantanamo Bay, still have a right under immigration law to access immigration court proceedings.

And if the Trump administration does not allow them to access those proceedings, there is legal pushback that will be filed in the federal courts. Because he is still subject to the authority of Congress as expressed in the Immigration and Nationality Act. And what we're seeing, of course, across sectors, is the Trump administration overstep its constitutional bounds.

Ignore direction from Congress. And so, with the use of Guantanamo, That legal pushback in addition to public outcry will be incredibly important here. 

STACEY ABRAMS - HOST, ASSEMBLY REQUIRED: Well, that takes us nicely to the part of the show that is so important, which is what do we do about it? Um, you talked about the fact that we can engage in legal action.

You talked about the protests that happened earlier. [01:08:00] So I want to start with level setting. What would a humane immigration policy look like one that helps people move out of the shadows and allows them to fully participate in American life, both financially and socially? 

NAINA GUPTA: Yeah, this is the question. And unfortunately, in a moment like this, when we're inundated with so many changes and so much chaos, it's easy to lose track of the path ahead and the path ahead has to include some plan for giving.

The 13 million people who are here, who've been here for decades, a pathway to legal status. Now, the thing Americans have to understand is that ultimately, we want a system that encourages people to comply with the law. Right? To follow the rules. That's the mark of a successful system. Right now, Immigration enforcement agencies are being funded at unprecedented levels.

That has increased over time. And yet, there are more [01:09:00] people in violation of immigration law. That means our system is not working. It's not helping people comply with the law. It's not incentivizing them to do that. What we can do is have a system where we say, Look, if you're in violation of the law, there are certain consequences.

No, it should not be deportation as a one size fits all consequence, right? We should not be sending people to death and indefinitely detaining them when they're contributing in this way to our country. But there can still be some kind of consequence, like, Oh, you know, you have been here in violation for this many years, here's a pathway to citizenship, but you will have a two year path to get there.

And if along the way you violate other rules, it might take longer to get that, right? You can have a system of consequences that's more humane. and more reasonable, but that actually puts people on a pathway to getting out of the shadows and honoring what they've been contributing to our country. And so a shorter way of saying this, [01:10:00] that we hope to hear more Democrats frankly talk about, is a fair system is one that is both including legalization and that has enforcement.

And the two can go hand in hand. And they absolutely should not include at large community raids, or terms like mass deportation, or use of the national military. There's no reason to do that. These are not folks who make our lives any less safe. In fact, they create opportunities. Immigrants create jobs for other people.

Look, we can have an orderly system that makes Americans feel safe, but that also gives a pathway to legalization. For the many people who've lived here and who contribute richly to our country.

Criminalization of Immigration: The Power of Grassroots Organizing and Storytelling - Art of Citizenry - Air Date 2-13-25

MANPREET KAUR KALRA - HOST, ART OF CITIZENRY: Grassroots movements play a crucial role in the fight for justice by amplifying the voices of directly impacted communities and challenging unjust policies and systems through collective action.

These movements mobilize local resources [01:11:00] while holding governments and private actors accountable by centering lived experiences and nurturing solidarity. Grassroots organizations create sustained pressure, ensuring that immigrant rights remain a priority in public discourse and legislative agendas.

The 

MARU MORA-VILLALPANDO: work is, is vast because there's no one easy way to have a solution to this nightmare, such as structural manufacturer. crisis for immigrants, um, and people of color in general, that it takes a lot of effort to undo all the harm done. And so the work in itself is divided in several areas. So one of the main area is to be in touch with people in detention daily throughout the day.

So La Resistencia has three phone lines to which people in detention can call and report what's going on. They help decide what the strategy should be taken on outside. Many times people [01:12:00] in detention take their own strategies and they're organizing by launching hunger strikes or doing You know, some sort of actions, uh, in the inside.

Uh, there's a lot of campaigns, individual campaigns, a lot of people want to take their own campaign public because they have, uh, lost their cases. And we, we know immigration law is very complicated, it's extremely difficult. And it's made for people to lose, right? And so the work, um, in regards to working directly with people detained, it's both working and supporting their organizing inside, to supporting hunger strikes, to supporting their actions, uh, making public all the horrendous, uh, things that happen inside, you know, the conditions, um, and at the same time, It's taking on public campaigns, which they call the freedom all campaigns, which, uh, are meant to be focused on one person, but the angle of the campaign is to free everybody.

So that's one way the work is done. Another way is through [01:13:00] direct action by La Resistencia and a lot of ally organizations. They go outside the detention center as often as possible. They do vans, uh, Protests, demonstrations, anything that can be done. There's something that is called Solidarity Days, which at least once a month is done.

And, you know, we bring people to the detention center facility. And there's a video calls being done and paid for, you know, by La Resistencia. Eh, so people in detention can see through the video calls what's going on outside that people are definitely outside. People are rallying and they care and they're doing everything they can to support the Resistencia work to shut down the detention center.

And then there's another bucket of work that is a lot of policy. So it could be at local level with the city of Tacoma, you know, making them accountable to the fact that the, the detention center is in their city, a state level as well. They have passed a lot of state [01:14:00] legislation to bring accountability to the detention center itself, such as, you know, having inspections and they have also worked at a federal level trying to, you know, bring accountability to the federal, uh, congressional delegation, which hasn't really worked very well, but they keep trying.

And the last one is at an international level, which is to involve the United Nations and the Inter American Commission for Human Rights to intervene in behalf of, of those detained. So as you can see, it's a little bit of everything at every level and every angle, uh, available. And what I can say that I've learned a lot about, you know, migrant justice, uh, it takes a lot.

It's a lot of effort. And it's not fair that those that are supposed to lead the fight are not allowed to lead the fight because they probably didn't graduate from school, you know, they're not bilingual in English or trilingual, and that the resources are not provided to these kind of groups. [01:15:00] It goes to big groups, you know, that know how to write grants.

And so, Not only they have the burden of leading, they have the burden of leading in a very precarious way, even within the migrant justice movement. 

MANPREET KAUR KALRA - HOST, ART OF CITIZENRY: Grassroots organizers face significant challenges, including limited funding and resources. Additionally, it's not uncommon for activists to face political and legal barriers, such as surveillance or criminalization, to suppress dissent.

Despite these challenges, grassroots movements remain established. essential for driving systemic change and holding institutions accountable. 

MARU MORA-VILLALPANDO: I've done organizing for many, many years. I think I, that was kind of my path even since before becoming myself an immigrant, leaving my own country, being forced to leave my own country.

And so having the experience of being forced to migrate, having the experience of becoming undocumented, having the experience of, uh, becoming, you [01:16:00] know, part of the community has been criminalized. Uh, just because we are just because we exist is what pushed me to organize with my community as undocumented when I was I was undocumented for 25 years.

And so that led, uh, to my. need to, to connect with my own community and organize with my own community, which sounds easy, but it's not because a community being criminalized is a community that is being surrounded by fear, by poverty, by stigma. And so there's so many challenges that those communities have to face just to survive.

Now it's even more so when they're trying to lead. And so it took me years to actually be able to get to a point where I could say. That I was organizing with my community, the community that is experimenting all these, uh, terror from, uh, Immigration Customs Enforcement is [01:17:00] able to sit down and think and strategize what are we going to do and how are we going to do it and who's going to do it, um, and what's going to happen afterwards.

And so I think that that experience, one, of being undocumented myself, but also looking for the space. And the resources to be able to do the work. It's what really informed how I work and why this work needs to be done.

Birthright Citizenship: The SCOTUS case that solidified the 14th Amendment - Civics 101 - Air Date 1-23-25

 

FELIX POON: There are a lot of Chinese men traveling back and forth to visit family in China at this time, and many are getting denied reentry to the United States. Some of them just give up and make the trip back to China a trip that takes 33 days, according to an old newspaper clipping. But others fought their detentions in court with the help of the six companies.

NICK CAPODICE - HOST, CIVICS 101: The six companies? What's that?

FELIX POON: Well, companies is probably a misnomer. There are really six prominent Chinese associations in San Francisco, [01:18:00] and they came together as one to provide social support, but also to provide legal support to Chinese Americans. Here's Bethany Berger again.

BETHANY BERGER: In the first year of the exclusion laws, they brought 7000 cases challenging Chinese exclusion. And they were so successful in doing this that Congress and the customs officials kept trying to amend the laws to make it harder for them to win these cases.

HANNAH MCCARTHY: That's actually very cool.

FELIX POON: So the six companies are there for Wong Kim Ark. They file for habeas corpus.

NICK CAPODICE - HOST, CIVICS 101: Habeas corpus, that little Latin phrase that means bring the unlawfully detained person before the court.

FELIX POON: Yep. That's it. It's a right to a trial. Meanwhile, Wong Kim Ark is still off the coast of San Francisco on a ship, and that ship is about to sail back to China.

BETHANY BERGER: So we put on to another [01:19:00] ship, and then that ship wants to go back, and he's put on to another ship. And so this is a period of months in which he's confined, looking over at his hometown, but unable to set foot there.

NICK CAPODICE - HOST, CIVICS 101: So is he granted habeas?

FELIX POON: They do grant him habeas. But what's interesting here is that the judge actually agrees in principle with the U.S. government that Wong Kim Ark is not a citizen. But he says he has to go by legal precedent that was set by earlier court cases. And so he rules that Wong Kim Ark is a U.S. citizen because of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment.

HANNAH MCCARTHY: So this judge makes explicitly clear that he has a racist idea here, and that he is only making this decision based on precedence. He basically says, this is against my better judgment, but I'm going to do this anyway. And so just as a reminder that citizenship clause of the 14th amendment says all persons born or [01:20:00] naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. So Felix Wong Kim Ark won.

FELIX POON: Yeah. He won. Woo! I mean, he was still unlawfully detained on three different boats for five months, but at least he won his court case.

NICK CAPODICE - HOST, CIVICS 101: So is that it, Felix? Like, is this happily ever after for Wong Kim Ark?

FELIX POON: Um, no. Not quite.

JULIE NOVKOV: Uh, the government immediately appeals. Yields. So they take it all the way up to the US Supreme Court.

FELIX POON: This is Julie Novkov. She's a professor of political science at the University at Albany and coauthor with Carol on their book, American by Birth. Wong, Kim. Ark in the battle for citizenship.

JULIE NOVKOV: The majority opinion is written by Justice Horace Gray, and his response is that if [01:21:00] people are in the United States and they're following the laws of the United States, and basically they're not in some sort of special category like that of a diplomat, um, they are living under the sovereignty of the United States, and therefore, children who are born to them in the United States are born under that sovereign power and therefore, according to common law principles, going back to England, uh, they are entitled to citizenship on the basis of the 14th Amendment.

FELIX POON: In writing the majority opinion, Justice Gray did reaffirm that there are exceptions to the Citizenship clause. Diplomats are not subject to the jurisdiction of the US. If they commit a crime, they don't face the justice system the same way that we do. So their children that are born here, not US citizens, children born here of a foreign occupying [01:22:00] force. Hasn't happened yet. Knock on wood. But if it did happen, not U.S. citizens. So what the majority opinion boils down to is that Wong Kim Ark does not fall into any of these exempt categories, so he is indeed a US citizen.

NICK CAPODICE - HOST, CIVICS 101: But hold on. If this case was decided the other way, wouldn't you then have to revoke the citizenship of millions of children born to European immigrants?

FELIX POON: I mean, basically. And Justice Gray wrote this in his opinion that to deny Wong Kim Ark his citizenship would be to deny citizenship to thousands of persons of English, Scotch, Irish, German or other European parentage who have always been considered and treated as citizens of the United States. This ruling is a big deal. It solidifies a path to citizenship for all immigrants that is based on the 14th amendment. But then there were some unintended consequences in the aftermath of the ruling. [01:23:00] Like what? So there's this phenomenon of paper sons.

NICK CAPODICE - HOST, CIVICS 101: Paper sons. I actually know about these. Do you Hannah?

Hannah McCarthy

I don't. I would imagine it's someone claiming someone as their their son or daughter, but it would be son in this case.

So since the only way you could be a legal Chinese immigrant to the United States was if you were a family member of somebody who had been born here, a child of somebody who had been born here. So you have all these people claiming, right? So all new Chinese immigrants to the US are claiming that they are the children of people already here on paper. Therefore, paper sons.

JULIE NOVKOV: Some of these paper sons were maybe not necessarily the sons of citizens, but they were close relatives. Maybe they were brothers, maybe they were nephews. But because there's an awareness among immigration officials that that this is happening, uh, they become far, far more suspicious. What evolves out of this is that you you wind up with kind of a cat and mouse game between [01:24:00] Chinese who are trying to get into the United States, and immigration officials who are trying to keep as many out as possible.

FELIX POON: And exclusion laws only get worse.

JULIE NOVKOV: By the time we get to 1924. Legislation is basically excluding almost all Asian immigration and denying, uh, immigrants from Asia any possibility of gaining citizenship. Um, this actually goes as far in the 1920s as denying citizenship to, uh, to to Japanese who had served in World War One.

SECTION B: GITMO & HAITI

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering section B: Gitmo in Haiti.

Trump Sends 10 UNCONVICTED People To Guantanamo! - The Bitchuation Room (with Francesca Fiorentini) - Air Date 2-10-25

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: 10 migrants, uh, have been sent to Guantanamo who are now being held in cells that used to hold Al Qaeda suspects. Now I'm someone As I don't think that people should have been held in Guantanamo without charges for [01:25:00] decades and decades and decades.

Everyone is entitled to due process. So for me, I'm like, yeah, Al Qaeda suspects should also not have been treated that way. But holy shit, Kyle, like 10 men sent to the prison base. There's a picture of a cell that used to hold Al Qaeda. They are presumed to be. Members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

KYLE KULINSKI: Um, Nonsense. Not true. It's not true. Look, let me just, I'll put this very simply for people. This is fascism. What we're looking at right now, 100 percent is fascism. There's no way around it. The whole point of Guantanamo Bay is that it's in Extrajudicial prison, which means no due process, no habeas corpus, no recourse, they don't care what your side of the story is, there's no hearing, your ass gets thrown in a dark cell, and you have to stay there, full stop, period.

And even back when it was George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, it was always alleged terrorists. Well, guess what? We [01:26:00] learned, not that long after, the overwhelming majority of the people that they arrested were totally innocent. One of the first stories I ever covered was about a guy by the name of Murat Kurnaz, who's a German citizen, who was arrested in Pakistan on a bus, brought all the way to Guantanamo Bay, and then the government of Germany had to say, uh, hey, George W.

Bush, take Cheney. What are you doing? This is one of our citizens. They didn't do anything wrong. There's no evidence of any wrongdoing So that was when it was alleged terrorists. It wasn't that that's fascism as well Now he's gone above and beyond we're gonna arrest people On u. s. Soil who by the way, once you're on u.

s. Soil, you have rights period. That's how it works legally you have rights Yeah, like you get due process all that stuff. You have a right to all of that stuff and guess what? We just learned last week one of the people that ice arrested and is about to deport You Is a middle school teacher from miami dade who is a dreamer who was brought here as a kid They arrested a puerto rican family, including a toddler.

They arrested a [01:27:00] u. s. Veteran in newark, new jersey People are now deputizing themselves As part of ice like this is we are so far beyond even the twilight zone The idea of sending them to el salvador that is wildly illegal and unconstitutional Absolutely so the fact that like this in The fact that this isn't a bigger story the fact that more people aren't talking about this and the fact everybody doesn't draw a hard line and say We literally can't do this.

This is insane. We are a rogue nation any reasonable country would look at us now and say We should do regime change there because look at how they're acting it just blows my mind 

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: No, absolutely. And I I think the other thing is like we've we've allowed ourselves I think mainstream news has also helped in this dehumanized immigrants Dehumanize immigrants to the point where, like, I didn't see, the New York Times did one piece pushing back on the cats and dogs and talking about Haitian migrants in Springfield, for example.

That was one piece. It was weeks later. Where's the camera crews? Where are the people talking about, like, [01:28:00] you know, the teachers who have DACA? Like, right now, they should be out there speaking. I mean, obviously, nobody wants to, like, out themselves, and the fear is, is real, you know, obviously, is very real.

But there's half a million DACA recipients. Like, my friends are DACA recipients. What the f k? Like, what is going to happen to them? Um, they were promised by the U. S. government that they would, this would be a pathway. That they would be safe. They would give their information. That's the whole point of seeking asylum, of seeking refuge, of being a refugee, of coming to this country and wanting to either do it right, or at least say, I'm going to register myself, living here undocumented, but you have my information.

Like, it is to say, like, So long as I'm, you know, whatever, abiding by laws, slash, paying a bunch of money into a social security fund I'll never see the, you know, benefits of, this is not a crime to live here, right? It's not a crime. So, obviously this administration doesn't see it that way, and Kyle, any dimwit, I'm [01:29:00] sorry, who thought that this wasn't the ultimate goal, like, I mean, you should really not be in the news space at all.

Like, there's no way that we all know that this was happening. We all knew that undocumented equals criminal. It does, it doesn't matter whether anyone actually committed a crime to say nothing of the fact that undocumented people commit far fewer crimes than American citizens. Um, so yeah, it's a, this is a huge story.

And the other thing that, you know, Maybe you know who it is, but apparently there's word that inside the Trump administration, there are people who like loved the Japanese internment as well. 

KYLE KULINSKI: Stephen Miller. It's got to be Stephen Miller. 

FRANCESCA FIORINTINI - HOST, THE BITCHUATION ROOM: So, you know, and these are the things where it's like, I mean, I felt like Gaza brought this up for me where everyone, you know, was suddenly talking about like, you know, World War II and, you know, Hiroshima, Nagasaki.

And it was like, well, we had to do it. And I was like, wait, wait, wait, hang on, time out. Wait, do you do people think that dropping the a bomb is justified [01:30:00] given that we knew Japan was going to surrender given the, you know, millions of lives lost? Like what? And then now you're like, Oh, no, no, we're in that upside down where people are now, like, actually, Japanese internment was a good thing, um, despite it.

Right. All of what we have learned, the horrors, the atrocities, the survivors of it, um, but under the Alien Enemies Act, uh, which Donald Trump has invoked by executive order, um, he allows this wartime authority allows the president to detain or deport natives and citizens of an enemy nation. The Alien Enemies Act has been invoked just three times in the American Hi in American History eight War of 18, 12 World War I, world War ii.

Obviously best known for incarcerating Japanese people during World War Two, provides sweeping powers to detain or deport foreign nationals, and is ripe for abuse. I mean, the fact that we even have this on the books, so it's like, again, I It is not hyperbole to say that [01:31:00] these are mass detention centers, gulags, whatever you want, that this is a threat.

And just today, what is it, some news channels being investigated for their coverage of Trump? Some from radios? Yeah, 

KYLE KULINSKI: San Francisco radio station, the FCC is investigating them because they didn't like how they covered immigration. So, look, it's a war. Or on the first amendment, it's a war on the constitution.

When it comes to it, there is no more international law anymore. This is a part that is genuinely chilling to me. And it all started with the genocide in Gaza that we've been witnessing. And then now Trump is already taking international law, which is laying on the ground, bleeding out of its nose, semi conscious.

He's taken a shotgun directly to its face when he comes out and says. Oh, we're going to take over Gaza. We're going to own Gaza and we're going to develop it. And man, they have some beautiful beachfront front property and whoa, we could build some hotels there and stuff. What we're looking at right now.

Everybody needs to realize we are living. We rolled back the clock to the 1800s and we're living in a situation where international law is [01:32:00] fake. There is no international law. The UN is now officially like the league of nations where Trump just came out today and said, we're sanctioning the ICC because they issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin and Yahoo.

And it's like, how many schools did Israel bomb? How many hospitals did they bomb? How many aid workers did they attack? How many world central kitchen workers did they attack? How many kids got sniped directly in the face? Like how many concentration camps did they set up? And all, they look at all of that and they go, We have the biggest military, so we can do whatever the hell we want, and everybody can shut up or complain about it, but nothing's gonna change, and we're gonna do what we want, so it really is a war on the notion of human rights, the notion of international law, and what we're witnessing is an outright assault On everything that we hold dear, right?

Every single thing we hold dear. And that now includes and this is the first time it's ever been in our lifetimes. Now, that 

includes even trying to roll back the few social safety net programs that we have, which have remained in place since the new deal. [01:33:00] Now, they're even coming after those. So it's like, this is it, guys

Trump's Mass Detention Plan for Guantánamo Harkens Back to U.S. Detention of Haitian Asylum Seekers - Democracy Now! - Air Date 2-4-25

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: The Pentagon saying some 300 additional soldiers have arrived at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have begun constructing a tent city to detain up to 30,000 immigrants and asylum seekers. On Monday, the Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel condemned the Trump administration’s attack on asylum seekers. This is what he said.

PRESIDENT MIGUEL DAZ-CANEL: [translated] For Cuba, the violent and indiscriminate deportation of immigrants by the United States, arbitrary detentions and other human rights violations are unacceptable. These measures are also used as a political pressure and blackmail weapon against the peoples of our America. The establishment of a detention center at the American naval base in Guantánamo, where it is intended to imprison tens of thousands of people, constitutes a barbaric act.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: So, that’s the president of Cuba. Miriam Pensack, your forthcoming book is on [01:34:00] Guantánamo. Can you give us the history of how the U.S. has used it?

MIRIAM PENSACK: Sure. So, something that I should mention first and foremost is that before Guantánamo became what it was known for in early 21st century, the sort of “forever prison in the war on terror,” the way that its ambiguous sovereignty, as a U.S. base coercively held on Cuban soil, functioned was to hold tens of thousands of circum-Caribbean asylum seekers, first from Haiti, roughly 40,000 from Haiti, then 35,000 Cubans who fled the island during what was called the Special Period, so the collapse of the Soviet Union, which prompted the total collapse of Cuba’s economy in the mid-’90s. So, this is actually a sort of back to basics, unfortunately, for Guantánamo.

And those initiatives, first the Haitian internment and then the Balsero crisis of Cuban rafters a [01:35:00] few years later, what happened with the Haitians, they were, by and large, repatriated to extremely dangerous conditions in Haiti, where a coup had taken place against Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. And Cubans eventually made it to the United States, but not after — you know, after effectively being held in what were concentration camp-, detention camp-like conditions in Guantánamo. And they were allowed into the United States because — in part because of the establishment of what became known as wet foot, dry foot.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Yeah, I also wanted to ask you about the Dominican Republic, where Rubio will also be visiting. The Dominican Republic has for years been involved in its own migration crackdown against Haitians within the country, massive attempts to deport Haitians from the DR. [01:36:00] What do you sense might come out of Rubio’s visit there?

MIRIAM PENSACK: I think there will definitely be a willingness to collaborate on immigration and deportation. You know, the Dominican Republic has been building a wall between itself and Haiti, which it shares the island of Hispaniola with. You know, there have been these mass attempts to deport Haitians. There have also been efforts to strip Dominican citizens of their citizenship if they have what has been in many cases very flimsy proof of Haitian origin or provenance. You know, so it’s very anti-Black, because Haiti was the first Black republic, and Haitians are — there are plenty of Black Dominicans, I should say, but there is a huge degree of anti-Blackness involved in that. And the Dominican Republic has, in fact, left some [01:37:00] of its citizens who it deemed Haitian stateless, because Haiti did not recognize them as Haitian citizens.

Guantanamo’s other history Part 2 - Today, Explained - Air Date 2-10-12

JEFFREY KHAN: From 1981 to 1989, Haitians who are stopped at sea are ostensibly screened for asylum characteristics on Coast Guard cutters, And only six out of 21,461 who are screened get to come to the U.S. to pursue their asylum claims. Then in 1991, the first democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide, is overthrown and thousands of Haitians take to the sea in an attempt to reach the United States to seek refuge. So the US government says, all right, what are we going to do now? We have thousands of Haitians piling up on these Coast Guard vessels in the Northern Caribbean. Should we bring them to the United States? 

Well, if we do, then they're going to get access to US courts and we're going to [01:38:00] have to deal with the US court system scrutinizing how we're handling these claims. The other option is, well, let's send them to Guantanamo. And so that’s what they do. And so they end up opening up a camp at Guantanamo Bay to detain and to screen for asylum characteristics the Haitians that they stopped at sea. At its peak in the 1991, 1992 period, you have over 12,000 Haitians being detained in these camps. It's men, women, and children who were held at Guantanamo. So it’s a vast tent city, it's crowded. It's miserable. And it's also confusing. Right, the Haitians who are there not exactly sure what their fate is going to be. They're not exactly sure how these immigration screenings operate, they don't have access to attorneys to inform them about the particularities of U.S. immigration and refugee law. [01:39:00] And there's a feeling like they're in a state of limbo and they're not in control of their destiny. 

BILL DVORNICK: Biggest problem right now in the camp with the kids is they’re frustrated. They’ve been here a long time and they’re ready to go home. Actually they’re ready to go anywhere at this point, a lot of them…the frustration level. 

JEFFREY KHAN: It's not an ideal situation to be in. You know, maybe you've spent a couple of weeks at sea, some sort of a difficult voyage. The Coast Guard picks you up, takes you to Guantanamo. Sometimes it may take a while for you to get to Guantanamo, so you're crowded onto these...the deck of a Coast Guard cutter exposed to the elements. And then when you arrive, you have to undergo what's called a credible fear screening to find out if you have a credible fear of persecution, which is supposed to be lower than the well-founded fear of persecution standard that [01:40:00] governs asylum claims within the United States. Now what happens at the time is the United States was hoping to resettle some of these Haitian asylum seekers who had passed their credible fear interviews in third countries other than the United States. But those third countries, according to the government, had asked that the Haitians be screened to determine whether or not they were HIV positive. So what the government does is they screen Haitians who have been shown to meet this credible fear standard, for HIV. And then if they test positive, they're not brought to the United States and they're put in a separate HIV camp on the base. And according to the Haitians who were there, told that they may be required to stay there indefinitely. Later on, what happens [01:41:00] is the government plans to hold full-blown asylum hearings for these HIV-positive Haitians at the base without attorneys. 

The camp itself was in a remote part of the base, which now houses a lot of the war on terror detention facilities. But at the time, it was sequestered from the populated areas of the base. And the Haitians really felt that. They're out in the middle of nowhere. They're isolated. They're told that they may have to stay here forever. And the conditions are poor. They had to take sheets of plastic and put them up on the windows of the shelters in which they live to keep the rain out. They complained of infestations of rats. They complained of abuses on the part of the military. When they formed protests, [01:42:00] they were met with a draconian response including pre-dawn raids by hundreds of military police with police dogs and this prolonged sense of limbo ended up creating really difficult conditions and a very traumatic experience for the Haitians who were held there. And so when I've conducted interviews with folks who were held in the HIV camp, and you know, it almost always brings them to tears when they remember their experiences being held in this HIV prison camp at Guantanamo.

JEFFREY KHAN: At the time that the HIV camp was shut down, the US was not sending any Haitians to Guantanamo any longer. Now, when Clinton came into office Guantanamo was reopened again, and Haitians were [01:43:00] sent to Guantanamo in 1994.

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: And we are discussing what our response should be. There has been a significant increase in Haitian refugees…

JEFFREY KHAN: Cubans started taking to the sea in makeshift rafts, and the US decided to send them to Guantanamo as well. And so you had this period in 1994 and 1995 where you had tens of thousands of Haitians and tens of thousands of Cubans at Guantanamo at the same time. So since 1991, effectively, there has been a migrant detention operation at Guantanamo. In 2002, the creation of the Migrant Operations Center paved the way for small numbers of asylum seekers to be held at the base. And there's a specific process that governs the detention there. And [01:44:00] the idea is to send a message to people fleeing their home countries in the Caribbean that if they attempt to reach the United States by sea, they will be picked up and in very rare circumstances, if they pass their credible fear interview, they'll be sent to Guantanamo, but they will never reach the United States.

 Hey, so Jeff, is Donald Trump actually doing anything that we weren't already doing? Like this has made so much news, why? 

No immigrants have ever been sent to Guantanamo from the United States. This is the first time that has ever happened. 

JEFFREY KHAN: This is, from my perspective, in large part, political theater. The Trump administration has been hammering this idea that the crisis at the border [01:45:00] is an invasion. And an invasion requires a military response. And so what better way to equate immigrants with an invading army than to send them to Guantanamo, which is this place that in the public imagination is associated with the war on terror, with a war footing, with kind of exceptional reaction, exceptional powers, the use of Guantanamo to detain immigrants currently in the United States is doing a lot of symbolic work for the Trump administration. 

The messaging in some ways is very old. But the use of Guantanamo in this way is intended to cement in the public imagination this equation between immigrants and [01:46:00] an invading army of criminal aliens. 

SECTION C: BIPARTISAN EXPLOITATION

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: You've reached Section C: Bipartisan Exploitation.

Operation Wetback and the Bipartisan Legacy of US Deportations Part 2 - Letters and Politics - Air Date 1-16-25

ADAM GOODMAN: For a couple of years in the middle, the latter part of the 1950s, U. S. immigration officials, in collaboration with Mexican authorities and private Mexican companies, in addition to some private US companies, deported tens of thousands of people across the Gulf of Mexico on cargo ships that were designed and transported. meant to carry produce, you know, bananas, for example, that were taken from the Mexican state of Tabasco to states in the U. S. South like Alabama. And then on the return trip, these Mexican, privately owned Mexican cargo ships would pick up a group of deportees, 500 people, 800 people, depending on the ship, from Port Isabel, Texas, in the lower Rio Grande Valley, and then take them across the Gulf down to Veracruz, further away from the U.

S. [01:47:00] Mexico border. Now, you know, what this was really was an attempt at prevention through deterrence as what we later come to think of it as an effort by U. S. officials to make the conditions on these ships and to make the experience of deportation so miserable, um, and so challenging that people will decide not to return to the United States in the future.

If that doesn't happen, we know that if people do return, there's many factors that influence and affect people's decisions. But the conditions on these ships, you know, people, um, liken them sometimes to 17th and 18th century slave ships. Um, you know, the food was rancid. The conditions were just really inhumane.

They were not built for human consumption. Humans to travel on them, but there are humans in this case, Mexican migrants were thought of as human cargo, not just by us officials, but by Mexican officials and business people as well. It was an important [01:48:00] class dimension, class dynamic to this story. And eventually this operation ends after this, a mutiny aboard 1 of these ships where people jump overboard and.

You know, it becomes a national international news story, and it's no longer tenable. For the Mexican government to support this operation. So it ends, but that's not to say that, you know, the punitive tactics used to deport people stops. And that's something we know that continues in various forms. Um, you know, really in the decades since.

MITCH JESERICH - HOST, LETTERS AND POLITICS: Can you tell me more about the mutiny?

ADAM GOODMAN: The mutiny, you know, what we know is that, you know, there are a number of individuals, um, who jumped overboard on these ships when it was nearing Tampico. Which is. A little less than halfway, perhaps, um, on the trip from Port Isabel to Veracruz. Um, you know, really tragically, some people died after jumping overboard.

They were not. Not able to make it to shore, and [01:49:00] their remains were later found identified in some cases by the Levi's jeans that they were wearing. But this, you know, for understandable reasons, I guess, becomes. Delay a flashpoint and Mexican officials now kind of backtrack and try to try to go back on their support for the operation.

But if you look at the archival record. You know, the Mexican officials were very much in favor of the separation. Um, in the ways in which they described Mexican migrants, I think people would find. Equally important as the rhetoric used by the US officials. So in this case. You know, this operation was just one example, but we can really see the ways in which the business of deportation, um, and the necessity to deport mass numbers of people relied on physical, psychological harm.

And also material costs, you know, so profits, [01:50:00] um, you know, really drove this operation in addition to domestic and foreign politics. But there's these perverse economic incentives that, you know, are still around today in different forms, which people have probably followed in part through the stories about the private detention facilities.

But I should emphasize, it's not just, you know, the private, um, industries and businesses that are benefiting that are driving these operations. It's also in the public imperative, and this is something that we really see. Uh, the policies creating opportunities for. So as I mentioned earlier in our conversation, it's the policies that created a market into portable people and turn this into a business.

But the policies were different and people could come to the United States, you know, through legal means or regularize their status after some conditions are met, then they wouldn't be subject to these, you know, horrific experiences. 

MITCH JESERICH - HOST, LETTERS AND POLITICS: So, so it's a bad look. [01:51:00] People are learning and it's being covered.

People are learning about, uh, people are being deported on these ships that are, you know, uh, jumping off the ships, many of them drowning. It's, it, this is a catalyst for the end of this, for, for ending this program. That's how the program 

ADAM GOODMAN: essentially ends, you know, 50, 000 people later, um, and at roughly 75 trips.

On these boats, which carried again between 500 and 800 people on the vast majority were men, although, you know, roughly 10 percent from some of the ship logs and records. I identified where women and children, some entire families. Um, so, you know, this wasn't just a story of, you know, single male laborers, which wouldn't make it any less horrifying, but it's important to understand kind of demographic context as well.

And the different ways and the different people. Uh, that U. S. officials, uh, targeted in collaboration with Mexican officials and private [01:52:00] industry. 

MITCH JESERICH - HOST, LETTERS AND POLITICS: I think it's safe to say there has always been resistance to what has been happening dating for the last century, but it's really in the 1970s, isn't it? When we start to see the rise of something we would recognize today as an immigrant rights movement. 

ADAM GOODMAN: Yeah. As you point out, I mean, people have been organizing and engaged in activism, you know, long before the 1970s.

But I think we start to see. Both the current dynamics on the enforcement side as well as on the resistance side in the 1970s. You know, I refer to this time as the dawn of the age of mass expulsion. It's really the time in which, because of increasing presence of immigration officials and communities across the country, uh, deportation or the possibility of deportation becomes a fact of everyday life for many undocumented people.

You know, and some people here with legal status as well. And in response to that, in response to the fact [01:53:00] that an average of 900, 000 people per year are deported, starting in the late 1970s and really going to the present, with some fluctuations year to year. 

MITCH JESERICH - HOST, LETTERS AND POLITICS: Is this where we get sort of what we recognize today as raids?

ADAM GOODMAN: There are mass immigration raids happening all the time in the 1970s. And. You know, this is something that I document extensively, including, you know, one particular raid at a shoe factory outside of Los Angeles and. In the San Gabriel Valley in the town of El Monte. And there's a shoe factory there in which in May 1978.

A group of around 40 immigration agents descended on the factory. Surrounded all of the exits, close them off. And went in. And lined everyone up, lined up all the workers. And just based on. Broad racial profiling, you'll hold them down to their. Downtown Los Angeles headquarters at the federal [01:54:00] building.

And they were going to be on their way back to Mexico for deportation. Through these voluntary departures, because they're pressured to sign by these forms, agreeing to leave the country. Or be threatened with much harsher consequences, including. And indefinite time and detention while their cases played out.

And a group of, um, workers are boarding the buses to head to the border. And what happens that day is that the buses never make it to the border. Because in the background, behind the scenes, a coalition of labor organizers, immigration lawyers, immigrants themselves, and people who are involved in resistance work never I had filed an injunction in federal court and a judge had approved that and prevented their deportation.

So the buses have to circle back. And this case plays out over the course of the next 14 years, but long story short, is that many of the people were able to win their. [01:55:00] Cases they're able to have their deportation stayed and. They are not forced to leave the country and there's also a major class action lawsuit that's 1 that led to.

The victory in the sense that immigration officials would now have to inform undocumented people of their rights, uh, according to the Constitution, you know, when they were encountering them and apprehending them. And that was something that started with a group of 60 workers or so that fought their cases that led to, you know, that class action suit, which affected more than a million people in the country at the time.

So that's one story, um, of many, but yeah, immigration raids are happening, you know, across, um, urban areas and in some rural areas, agricultural areas, in which hundreds, sometimes thousands of people are rounded up. So, in 1982, just to give one other example, there's something called Operation Jobs, which is really a publicity effort, you know, to say that, look what we're doing to [01:56:00] crack down on, you know, immigration.

Um, immigration and immigrant workers who are supposedly taking the jobs of U. S. citizens who are desperate to have them, although that wasn't the case, which in a single week in 1982, 6, 000 people are rounded up in a series of mass raids. So, you know, what the incoming administration is promising has a long history and also in response, just as people are doing now to organize, um, and to plan that has an equally long history.

And, you know, that, that counterweight and that pushback. Uh, from the community and people looking at ways to transcend kind of the conventional definitions of belonging. Um, I think, you know, that's an important piece of the story that we need to, you know, really put front and center and not just, you know, feel impotent or that it's doom and gloom all the time.

Imperial Migration - Against the Grain - Air Date 2-4-25

EMILY MICHELLE-EATON: What I'm going to do is sort of zoom into the town of Springdale, Arkansas, um, which is the town where, um, which has become the largest new community of Marshall Islanders outside of the Marshall [01:57:00] Islands.

To think about first just why, why this town, why Arkansas? In fact, that chapter is, the subtitle of the chapter is Of All Places because, um, to many people, including to me when I started the research for this book, Arkansas seemed like perhaps an unlikely destination for Pacific Islanders. Certainly, there was not a long history of Pacific Islanders in the state.

Although, as I pointed out previously, there was, in fact, a long history of, um, migrant and refugee and asylum seeker flows into, into Arkansas. 

C.S. SONG - HOST, AGAINST THE GRAIN: So then why did Marshall Islanders in such significant numbers end up in Arkansas and in this city of Springdale, particularly? 

EMILY MICHELLE-EATON: So as I mentioned earlier, in 1986, the Marshall Islands elaborated the Compact of Free Association with the United States.

This gave them sort of, uh, unique migration privileges to the United States, we could say. And this really facilitated a dramatic emigration from the Marshall Islands to various sites in the United States. So, you know, obvious, [01:58:00] obvious destinations might seem might be places that were much closer, uh, Honolulu, uh, Guahan, uh, California, even, and then, uh, but then in, in the mid 1980s, we start to see the arrival of some of the earliest Marshall Islanders in Arkansas.

A lot of times, sort of, you know, People will talk about, uh, one of the first Marshallese arrivals to the state, John Moody, who had been in the area, um, previously to attend college. But, uh, Marshallese started to arrive to Springdale in really significant numbers in the mid 80s. Part of this was because of the sort of affordable cost of living in Arkansas compared to places like, uh, certainly in California and Hawaii, um, especially in terms of housing.

And Northwest Arkansas also offered a more robust employment opportunities, especially in the poultry and meatpacking sector. So for those unfamiliar, Northwest Arkansas, and Springdale in fact itself, is the headquarters of Tyson Poultry, the birthplace of its founder. And, uh, meat packing and, and chicken processing in particular, [01:59:00] uh, shapes so much of the, the physical, the geographical landscape and the political economy of that region as well.

Um, so that was sort of an initial draw that plus the cost of living. Then, of course, you know, it became a place that had a sort of a critical mass of community and with many, as with many immigrant, uh, communities. Flows, right? Once when people have an established community, have contacts, friends or family members that were there, it became easier for Marshall Islanders to relocate in that area, not as resettled refugees, but as sort of non immigrant migrants with a special, um, unique immigration provision.

Now, over time, We're talking about nearly 40 years now since this migration stream began, we see the establishment of, uh, sort of a more institutional presence of Marshall Islanders in the community. So we see the, the presence of Marshallese, uh, interpreters, non profits, uh, churches, over, there are over a hundred, uh, I believe Marshallese, uh, churches now in Springdale, as well as local agencies and [02:00:00] institutions that sort of have familiarity with Marshallese culture and the unique legal and policy landscape for Marshallese immigration.

So that's, those are some of the factors that help to kind of, um, establish and then, and then cement this, this growing community. 

C.S. SONG - HOST, AGAINST THE GRAIN: That's the voice of Emily Mitchell Eaton. She is a geographer based at Colgate University. Her recent work engages feminist theories and methods to map geographies of death, birth, care, and disability.

We are talking about her book, New Destinations of Empire, Mobilities, Racial Geographies, and Citizenship in the Trans Pacific United States. I'm C. S., and this is Against the Grain. I mean, a hundred churches that that's really kind of startling and amazing. Um, Springdale as a result has, of course, changed in dramatic ways demographically.

And in this book, you take us back to Springdale's origins [02:01:00] and reveal that Springdale was constructed As a white settler town, um, talk about that construction. Um, I'm, I'm guessing that Springdale at it's when it was begun was largely or solely white. Um, talk about that construction and what it had to do with or how it related to the presence of indigenous peoples in Arkansas in that region before white settlers came.

EMILY MICHELLE-EATON: One of the things that I'm Trying to unpack in the book is how we understand what are sometimes referred to as new immigrant destinations, places that have not historically received large immigrant populations in the past, and how they're changing over time. Uh, what I'm trying to challenge here in this chapter in particular, um, is, That zooms in on Springdale is the idea that this was sort of a quote unquote, naturally white town that all of a sudden in the 1980s started to receive migrants from [02:02:00] the Marshall Islands, as well as Mexico and Central America.

Now, I'm trying to sort of think about the construction of this as a white town through various processes of racial, Exclusion, uh, as part of a larger settler colonial process, um, and my essential argument here is that migrant arrivals to new places are shaped by longstanding racial geographies, right?

Landscapes that are forged both through kind of discursive and material processes of white supremacy. That are central to sort of empire making, um, and that those longer racial histories and geographies dramatically impact the way that new, uh, arrivals are received, are made sense of, experience place, and get worked into sort of the new narratives about those destinations.

And so, um, Springdale, as you guessed, uh, was established sort of as a white settler town, but preceded by, uh, processes of displacement of indigenous and [02:03:00] native populations through that region. So the book looks at. Um, how Springdale was created through sort of four main processes of racialized exclusion and dispossession.

Uh, first I, I spent some time thinking about Springdale as a site of indigenous removal, uh, as a site on the, on the Trail of Tears. So Springdale and neighboring Fayetteville in Arkansas were directly sort of along the path, the Trail of Tears, or the path along which, um, indigenous, uh, Peoples from what is now referred to as the Southeast United States were, were relocated, forcibly relocated, um, through, uh, what is now present day Arkansas into what is now Oklahoma, Oklahoma Territory.

Um, and so for quite some time, we have sort of the presence of Kapa, Chinooka, Caddo, and Osage. Populations in what we would now refer to as Northwest Arkansas, as well as being moved through that, that area, uh, forcibly and violently in order to make way [02:04:00] for a new white settler population. This period was followed by, in the early 19th century, the solicitation by sort of town, the town establishment of white workers.

Uh, which we see documented in historical newspapers and ads to bring workers to the area. Um, oftentimes touting the absence of black populations or other racialized, um, worker populations, as well as investors. And again, all of the sort of advertisements at the time were, were celebrating this as a white town.

Uh, you don't have to worry about these other sort of troublesome populations. This is a sort of a lily white town where your investment will, um, will bear fruit. So that's, those are sort of two early ways in which this town was constructed actively and violently as a white town. 

C.S. SONG - HOST, AGAINST THE GRAIN: Springdale was also for a time a sundown town.

Remind us of what sundown towns were. And I know you also want to talk about Japanese American internment in relation to Springdale. [02:05:00] 

EMILY MICHELLE-EATON: Sundown towns, uh, existed across the continental United States. Generally, that term refers to a place that excluded or forcibly removed its black population, um, at least for the purposes of living there, um, at sundown.

So what that might look like is having a sign at the edges of town saying, don't let the sun go down on you. So a very explicit, very violent sort of, um, way of marking the landscape to, um, threaten violence against, um, black workers who might seek residency in that town. Now, I was never able to find a photograph of the, the sign, uh, in Springdale, but many people told me that Many Springdale residents, long time residents, told me that that sign, they could remember it being there up until the late 1970s.

So this is a very recent part of Springdale's racial past. And then, uh, I also spent some time looking at, uh, Japanese and American internment and wartime othering. How Japanese, as well as [02:06:00] other East Asian populations, although smaller in numbers, were, um, both brought to the state more broadly, but then also faced racialized exclusion and othering in the town of Springdale.

So, um Um, as they were kind of drawn in, worked into that larger narrative about threatening outsider, perpetual foreigner, you know, these sort of larger tropes about, um, East Asians and, and Japanese Americans in particular at that time. So the main point that I'm trying to make here is that the creation of quote unquote all white space, even if only in our imaginations, this is a fiction, if you look at the history carefully, the creation of all white space in a settler colonial context is one that takes constant and violent action at many levels.

Discursive, the way we talk about places, who belongs there, who doesn't, at the policy and legal level, uh, and even in the shaping of the landscape, in the exclusion of certain populations from certain areas, in the, in the building of sort of, um, basement back door entrances for black workers and the construction of signs at the edge of [02:07:00] town, all these different ways in which, uh, white space has to be constantly shored up, uh, which is to say that it is not natural.

Um, And these racial, these histories of racialized exclusions continue to resurface over time in the way that local residents in Springdale talk to me about the meanings of their town, the racial histories of their town, uh, over the past several decades.

The Criminalization of Immigration: Profiting From Detention with Anthony Enriquez - Art of Citizenry - Air Date 1-30-25

MANPREET KAUR KALRA - HOST, ART OF CITIZENRY: How much transparency do we have into government contracts with private corporations? Public private partnerships are a significant public policy tool. However, these partnerships can raise concerns regarding incentives and motivations, including how open these partnerships are to scrutiny and oversight.

Remember, taxpayer money is funding these contracts. 

ANTHONY ENRIQUEZ: Yeah, the layer of contracting around immigration detention is pretty legally complex. And so, the federal government, uh, in some cases, will contract with a [02:08:00] locality, who will then subcontract with a private company. And there's really a bunch of different channels that you have to dig through in order to determine exactly how our Funds being spent some of the companies are not publicly traded companies and so therefore are not, uh, subjected to the same disclosure laws as a publicly traded company as well.

You know, I should also say the nature of privatized attention. It's not just 3 companies that own the building that is housing people. It's also the commissaries. It's also the phone companies. It's also. Some of the private medical services companies that are part of this large privatized machine as well, too.

So it's a very decentralized system. You know, there is no central database that shows us this is exactly how much they spent on that. Um, this is the report that they owe to [02:09:00] Congress or to some type of public oversight body that can explain where these fundings when that can justify how much salary, maybe a CEO is paid versus someone who.

Is a low level employee, you know, and and they're being paid for what at the end of the day is a public function. It's supposed to be law enforcement. Uh, and so unlike other types of law enforcement, this one uniquely really has a shroud of secrecy around it. 

MANPREET KAUR KALRA - HOST, ART OF CITIZENRY: Understanding this context around the detention center complex helps us contextualize the infrastructure in place to support hardline immigration policies.

How did we get here? Unpacking the history of immigration policy helps us better understand the way immigration conversations are shaped. The 1996 Immigration Reform Act marked a significant pivot towards a punitive approach in U. S. immigration policy. What were these policy shifts [02:10:00] and what were the social or political factors that drove these changes in immigration policy?

ANTHONY ENRIQUEZ: Let's start with the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act was the official name. It's often called IRA IRA within legal circles. It was really A momentous law, it completely recast undocumented immigration as a crime and really represented a fusion of immigration, civil legal enforcement with criminal legal enforcement.

It instituted an entirely new fast track of deportations called expedited removal, where immigrants were no longer given the opportunity to see an immigration judge, but instead could be deported very, very quickly at the border and a number of hours in some cases before they had the opportunity to seek legal counsel.

It [02:11:00] instituted a regime of mandatory immigration detention. For certain classes of immigrants, including people who are coming to the border or people who had previously served a criminal sentence, had been declared rehabilitated, had been released from underlying criminal detention, had, you know, potentially been reintegrated into their communities for years, if not decades, this group of people would now be subject to mandatory immigration detention.

And what that word mandatory means is the government never has to show justification for detaining you. There's no reason that we have to say you're, there's a need for your individual detention because you are a flight risk or you're a danger. And it means that you have no opportunity to challenge your detention before a judge.

So this also feeds, of course, into the privatization of detention, because if we have people who are [02:12:00] guaranteed to be detained, well, that sounds like a great business deal for someone, you always have a built in consumer of your product. You know, the year that this law passed, 1996, right, it might be difficult for people to remember, but this was in the heyday of a democratic presidential administration.

This was actually under Bill Clinton's presidency. And the political shifts that drove this type of tough on crime, tough on immigration law are part of a really concerted bipartisan effort to use a tough on crime approach as a bipartisan driver in elections that drives some people to the polls. So no matter who you are, that is part of.

And what your political platform and that's part of getting people to the polls. And we see this for instance today when there's still really, there's a lot of focus on crime, on how dangerous everything is when [02:13:00] statistically speaking, actually, crime has gone down. Major crime has gone down. There are small exceptions and things like vehicle theft, but for the most part, major violent crimes have gone down around the country.

And yet we still hear a really direct focus on how we're at danger and we have to get tougher on crime. 

MANPREET KAUR KALRA - HOST, ART OF CITIZENRY: It's important to note that the current administration is attempting to fast track deportation without due process. Recognizing that many of those most impacted by these policies are individuals from communities of color, it is crucial to critically examine the deep rooted racialization of immigration policies.

Throughout history, political leaders have weaponized fear by demonizing immigrant communities and framing the other as a threat to unify and mobilize their base. These tactics only further perpetuate systems of exclusion with harmful manufactured narratives [02:14:00] underpinning the policies that they are pushing forth.

This raises a critical question, what role does race play in shaping immigration policies? 

ANTHONY ENRIQUEZ: So, Race is kind of the red elephant in the room when we talk about immigration. Um, uh, I'm always wary of saying immediately the root of all of this is racism. And if you're against this, you're racist because strictly from a pragmatic sense, you know, that's really isolating people who say, well, Hey, I have a question about immigration or I'm uncomfortable.

And, um, You know, I like to keep a big time approach where I say you're welcome to have a conversation. We should learn from each other. Um, tell me about your concerns. I'll tell you about mine. But, uh, race has been a motivating factor in immigration policy from the very start, you know, the United States, [02:15:00] notwithstanding that we have an image of statute of liberties and gives me a tired.

Um, notwithstanding that we think of ourselves as a country of immigrants in many ways, the United States has always had an ambivalent relationship with immigration and with immigrants. You can think about the roots of a national immigration policy in the late 19th century was what are called the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Where the federal government said, we will not permit anybody of the Chinese race to come to immigrate to the United States. And, you know, after a long tradition of, of Chinese people coming and Asian people from other countries as well to coming to the United States, building the railroads that helped cross the planes from the East coast to the West coast.

Coming parts of vibrant economic communities on the West coast as well. You can think about the shift in the early 20th century to Southern and [02:16:00] Eastern European immigration. That was the root of really restrictive immigration laws and quotas on immigration from certain countries that occurred in immigration laws in the 20th century.

You know, this is back at a time when. Italian was thought of as a different race than white in American cultural imagination. And so, you know, the story of race is part of this, but also the story of class is a part of this as well, too. It's always been the case that some immigrants are welcome. You know, the, the president himself, his wife is an immigrant, the richest person in the country right now, who, you know, Elon Musk, who has been come a real stalwart ally of the president, he himself is an immigrant.

So there are certain immigrants who are welcome. Who we think of, we want them here. And, and, you know, [02:17:00] president Trump himself said things similar to this during his first presidency. We don't want those immigrants from those countries. We want people from this region of the world. That's also a story about class, not just race.

Um, you know, whether or not everybody who opposes immigration is racist. I, I, I don't believe that to be the truth. I do think what's happening here is people are looking for. The truth, and people are willing to settle for a narrative in some ways, this sense that we're all fighting for a piece of a decreasing pie.

And I think that's where, you know, we really owe a conversation with people, where we can give them the narrative and give them the truth about what's happening with things like immigration detention, where yes, you're absolutely right. Someone's getting rich off of this. It's not you. It happens to be someone who's taking your tax dollars, pocketing them in a multi million dollar [02:18:00] salary, and using this system of abuse.

And in the meantime, you know, the policies that current leaders are saying they want to expand are going to deepen that abuse. Both of the immigrant, but also of you. Of the economic abuse of you.

News Brief: Trump's Anti-Migrant Terror PR Strategy, Dr Phil's ICE Reality Show & NYT's MAGA Assist - Citations Needed - Air Date 1-29-25

 

ADAM JOHNSON - HOST, CITATIONS NEEDED: We wanted to kind of clarify some things about what’s going on on the ground as it impacts immigrants, both at the border itself and also within the communities that they live, and talk about the ways in which the US media has really set the table for the moment of, unlike in 2017, there is really not any kind of meaningful partisan counterbalance. It is almost uniform consensus that migrants are sinister and bad and a cancer to society. And the debate is whether or not we need to deport 100% of them or 50% of them. That’s kind of the range of debate right now in our media, because the parties that the terms of the debate and the media follows from that largely and this kind of priming the pump for Trump’s crackdowns.

[02:19:00] And again, high profile, and when we say terror regime, it’s sort of what it is explicitly, which is to say they want to scare people and make them frightened, to create an environment of fear and snitching that in their mind, deters immigration, but also gives law enforcement a very wide berth to kind of do whatever they want. And in this context, we saw the New York Times doing this before Trump even took office. The New York Times read an editorial to kind of prime the pump for liberals on January 10, 2025, called “A Big Idea to Solve America’s Immigration Mess,” which has some liberal bromides about humanitarianism, but accepts a lot of the premises, the MAGA premises, and then goes on to scold Democrats for being too far left by writing a sentence that is absolutely, 100%, factually false. It is just not true by any objective metric, especially in the last election, where they wrote quote, “in recent elections Democrats increasingly cast themselves as full-throated defenders of immigrants, regardless of legal status,” [02:20:00] unquote.

Now, in 2024, the Harris campaign and Democrats in general, for both the House and the Senate, ran on explicitly a quote-unquote, “Republican immigration plan.” Chris Murphy, the White House, among others, adopted what they described as a Republican immigration plan that would have tripled the budget of ICE enforcement, that would have exploded, to the tune of billions, so-called immigration enforcement, increased raids, increased deportations. But the New York Times again, all for nothing, it seems, in terms of getting quote-unquote “credit” for it, The New York Times is still operating under this assumption that there’s this far-left open-border policy and this kind of semi-pragmatic Republican Trump policy. We need to kind of meet in the middle, or meet closer to the Trump agenda.

They published a poll before Trump took office that also deceptively gave the impression that Trump’s immigration policies were popular. The headline was, quote, “Support for Trump’s Policies Exceeds Support for Trump: A new poll found the public is [02:21:00] sympathetic to the president-elect’s plans to deport migrants and reduce America’s presence overseas.”

The “reducing America’s presence overseas” question is laughably vague to the point of meaningless, but the immigration questions are fundamentally based on contradictions. Every single poll that’s been done about mass deportations has within it a total contradiction that is never reconciled by those promoting this idea that the people, the masses, sort of overwhelmingly want mass deportations. Recent polls show that 64% of Americans say undocumented immigrants should have a way to stay legally. 56% support mass deportation. But among those who support mass deportation, 43% say undocumented migrants should have a way of staying.

NIMA SHIRAZI - HOST, CITATIONS NEEDED: So it all depends on how you frame the question.

ADAM JOHNSON - HOST, CITATIONS NEEDED: It all depends on how you phrase the question, and the New York Times asks a push poll where they don’t refer to the people as “undocumented,” they refer to them as “illegal,” or they’re sort of “immigrants who are there illegally.” Sort of they keep using this loaded push language. They don’t even mention the contradiction that a good quarter to 30% of Americans simultaneously support mass deportations of [02:22:00] undocumented immigrants and want them to have a pathway to stay and become citizens. Because, guess what? A lot of people are super contradictory and have contradictory opinions, and there isn’t any kind of mass support for Trump’s policies. Peter Baker ran a similar article saying that while Trump may be not popular, many of his policies are. But that’s not true. If you actually run down a list of top 20 Trump policies, most of them are unpopular, depending how you phrase the question and the extent to which they’re popular or not, this is not why Trump is doing them, and it’s not why Democrats are doing them, and to the extent to which you can kind of manipulate and torture numbers until you get this broad consensus, is pretty much a textbook example of how you manufacture consent on the eve of Trump taking office. You give this impression that, well, Trump may not be popular, but increasingly people really want mass deportation, and that is not borne out by the evidence.

And there were so many weasel words in this article: “some,” “many,” “may.” Because they don’t really know what people want. And what Trump is doing, whether or not it’s popular or not, is of course, not why he’s doing it, and it’s not why Democrats are supporting it. There’s [02:23:00] an emerging national security consensus that climate chaos, again on display recently with the LA wildfires, that will increase refugees from the Global South to the United States, and that there needs to be a heavily militarized border. And everything after that, this idea that they’re all kind of just responding to this organic upward anger from the masses, is totally reverse-engineered, because, again, party polarization plays a large part in this. And when the most famous, popular leaders of a party begin to mimic Republican rhetoric on immigration, you’re naturally going to see people veer to the right on immigration. But even within that veering, like we mentioned, there are so many contradictions. There are so many ways you could frame this in a way that is not dehumanizing and doesn’t present immigrants as inherently sinister or a cancer on society, but that’s just not the way the media has chosen to do this.

Unlike 2017, where there was more of a sense that Trump’s policies were fascistic, they were a veer from the norm, they were not necessarily popular, they were dehumanizing. And now what you have is this kind of bipartisan consensus [02:24:00] that Trump, while his tactics may be unseemly or he may go too far, that the broad outlines of what he’s doing, the broad contours of what he’s doing, that there’s a mandate and it’s necessary and overdue. And so these extreme border policies are being presented as kind of normal policy. So he’s challenging birthright citizenship, which would have been unthinkable six months ago, is now presented by both the AP and NPR as, quote, “a sweeping new strategy,” unquote. This is just another sort of strategy the White House has taken. And in doing so, NPR quotes the Center for Immigration Studies to talk about why birthright citizenship is well within the purview of acceptable debates. The Center for Immigration Studies, or CIS, is a eugenicist, anti-immigration think tank that NPR, I criticized NPR for citing them seven years ago for FAIR.org. They’ve been categorized since 2016 by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. They have tons of connections to antisemitic and white nationalist groups. CIS is just presented as this Washington think tank that deals in immigration, because the [02:25:00] Overton window has been ratcheted so far to the right that we now have NPR, again, as they did in 2017–

NIMA SHIRAZI - HOST, CITATIONS NEEDED: Being like, well, I guess that is up for debate.

ADAM JOHNSON - HOST, CITATIONS NEEDED: Well, going to white nationalist groups that have ties to antisemitic and far-right conspiracy theorists as a sort of sober–

NIMA SHIRAZI - HOST, CITATIONS NEEDED: As some kind of authority, right.

ADAM JOHNSON - HOST, CITATIONS NEEDED: And this is the current environment with which we find ourselves, and nobody wants to own it. And so the New York Times and other liberal groups, and even ostensibly neutral reporters, keep laundering this far-right policy shift as something they’re doing reluctantly because the masses demand it.

Building the Deportation Machine for Trump 2.0 - The Intercept Briefing - Air Date 1-17-25

MIKAYLA LACY - HOST, THE INTERCEPT BRIEFING: I've seen some of the reporting about does the infrastructure or the the technical capacity to actually do this exist? Can you talk about why that is not really the point? Point. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? 

JULIANA MACEDO DONACIMENTO: It's twofold, right? One is the rhetoric. It's fear mongering.

It's getting people to, you know, go back into the shadows. It's um, it's taking away people's statuses. It's [02:26:00] about getting people to Like leave the country by themselves, but it's also about scaling up the capacity that they have right now. Right? Like right now they have, you know, 40, 000 beds, uh, funded, um, Tom Holman, who's supposed to be the new borders are, has already said that he would expect Congress to fund them to tune of 86 billion to ICCBP and DHS, which is An insane amount of money, right?

Like more than triple their current funding to scale up, right? Texas has already offered space for them to put up new facilities. They're talking about soft sided facility facilities. So it wouldn't even take a long time to build them. So they are thinking about. How to scale up, how to do this on a mass scale, even though, you know, Tom Holman has also [02:27:00] said that we won't see mass work rates.

They don't have the capacity for doing that right now, but he is expecting to be funded to be able to do it. So, we are worried about the rhetoric, but we're also worried about what we can see by the end of the year. 

MIKAYLA LACY - HOST, THE INTERCEPT BRIEFING: Sean, you've been digging into the Lakin Riley Act, which empowers state attorneys general in immigration cases.

What does this actually allow them to do, and why are you concerned about it? 

SEAN MUSGRAVE: So these are provisions of the Lakin Riley Act that have not gotten nearly as much attention as some of the other features of it. So the Lakin Riley Act. would mandate detention of immigrants who are just accused of, um, or arrested for things like, like shoplifting or theft.

So those parts of the Lake and Reilly Act have gotten a lot more attention. The provisions I'm more interested in are the ones about state attorneys general, which do not typically have much, if [02:28:00] anything, to do with immigration. immigration. Some Republican attorneys general lately, particularly Ken Paxton in Texas, Andrew Bailey in Missouri, have spent most of the Biden administration just suing the Biden administration to try and expand their footprint in immigration.

What these provisions of the Lake and Riley act would do is just to, is do, do what Ken Paxton has asked numerous courts to do often unsuccessfully, which is to say state attorneys general can, can weigh in here specifically the Lake and Riley act would allow the state attorneys general to, to sue DHS or the attorney general, if they want a particular.

Immigrant to be detained or deported. So this is a really big expansion of the role of a state attorney general to say this particular person should be detained or deported. If I didn't agree with that determination, the other provision about state attorneys general, which is even even bigger is to. Uh, kind of bigger in scale [02:29:00] would allow someone like Ken Paxton to sue the State Department, uh, over visa policy over whether to grant visas to an entire country, uh, under the Provision called the recalcitrant countries, the policy, but I mean, in short, it's, it's a really big expansion of the input that a state attorney general could give into immigration, which up to this point, that's been a federal matter, not a state one.

MIKAYLA LACY - HOST, THE INTERCEPT BRIEFING: Yeah, I want to just like zero in a little bit on how unprecedented something like that is the idea that you could have a state official being tasked with using state resources to target individual people based on. Suspicion or sort of the bare minimum standard of not even evidence in some of these cases.

Can you just like talk a little bit more about how that's different from what state attorneys general are typically responsible for? And [02:30:00] why? Why? That's particularly alarming in terms of the Bleeding of the responsibility across these different agencies and across different policy spheres. 

SEAN MUSGRAVE: Yeah, this would just totally change the way that, uh, detention and deportation decisions.

Operate so this would what these, uh, the provisions about individual. Detention and deportation decisions would do would create. Kind of a new track for state attorneys general specifically, and it's it's a 1 way, which is interesting as as. The current version of the bill would not allow a state attorney general to sue ICE or the Department of Homeland Security to say we don't think that this person should be detained or deported.

It's one way they could only do it if they think that the person should be detained or deported. The other thing it would do, it would pull this into federal district court through, uh, The motion [02:31:00] of the attorney general and take this out of, um, kind of the typical immigration, um, court and like detention proceeding process.

So it really is just kind of a new track to give state attorneys general input into the very life altering decision over whether to detain or, or deport an individual. 

MIKAYLA LACY - HOST, THE INTERCEPT BRIEFING: Julianna, can, I want to bring you in here too on, on the Lincoln Riley Act. How is United We Dream thinking about this? What are, what are the major red flags here for, for you all?

JULIANA MACEDO DONACIMENTO: Yeah. I mean, the, uh, the provisions that Sean was mentioning are very worrisome to us. We know that Ken Paxton has, you know, targeted immigrants for a long time. And the issue of standing is one of the ways that we've been able to actually, like, defend, you Our communities in courts, right? Like it's how courts have been able to like stop some of the, some of his attacks, [02:32:00] but the mandatory detention is something that definitely is top of mind for us because of the potential for, um, you know, mass detention and mass deportations.

There's been some chatter about quote unquote dreamers or immigrant youth, as we like to refer to them. Ourselves are not affected by this. They're protected. That's not true, right? It doesn't even have an age limit, potentially underage. Immigrants who enter the country unauthorized and are caught shoplifting could be detained indefinitely, right?

So we are very, very concerned about this. We've been trying to raise the alarm in showing the potential for this to be tied to mass detention that would be funded by the upcoming reconciliation process that then is just a pipeline to mass deportations. Thank you very much. So there is like a through thread here of the plan of the next administration and how this bill [02:33:00] fits into it that folks are just not seeing and how dangerous it is.

SECTION D: REALITY ON THE GROUND

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, Section D: Reality on the Ground.

The Reality at the Border with Jonathan Blitzer Part 1 - Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast - Air Date 2-4-25

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Take us back to 1980 and when we get the first kind of version of what will become the embedded asylum law that is now at the center of so much of our immigration debates.

JONATHAN BLITZER: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in 1980, at the start of this legislative push to create the 1980 Refugee Act, there was no legislation really ever in American history that dealt with asylum or refugee law in any kind of meaningful codified way. And just to be clear, I mean, you know this distinction, but it’s always worth just clarifying, asylum is providing protection to people fleeing persecution when they arrive at the U.S. border or at U.S. territory.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: They have their foot on the shore or they get across the border. They are here now, they’re asylum seekers.

JONATHAN BLITZER: Exactly. Whereas refugee policy concerns people also fleeing persecution who by law, deserve some form of protection, [02:34:00] but who are processed outside of the United States --

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Yeah.

JONATHAN BLITZER: -- either in a third country or before they leave their own. And so what had happened up until 1980 was essentially that president after president had to deal with ad hoc humanitarian emergencies in the world, where you’d have large numbers of people fleeing persecution, civil strife, war, famine, you name it. And what would happen is the president, through power enshrined in the 1950s, would essentially parole into the United States, grant a kind of temporary sort of reprieve to a particular population. And then what would happen is once that group of people were in the United States, Congress would have to pass what was called an Adjustment Act that would basically give them a legal avenue to regularize their status.

And so obviously over time, this becomes incredibly unwieldy. Every time there’s a humanitarian crisis in the world, and you can imagine in 1982, you know, you’re at the heart of the Cold War, there are all these international entanglements. The United States is really very much asserting itself on the world stage, there [02:35:00] was a kind of chaos that started to set in where every time there was an issue, you’d have 100,000 people, 200,000 people paroled in, then a subsequent act of Congress passed to regularize their status. And so the idea in 1980 was to finally put an end to that kind of improvisation and to actually codify some basic mechanisms for bringing people fleeing persecution into the United States in a kind of steady established form.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: And there’s a geopolitical aspect to this too. Like Vietnam’s a great example, right? Where, you know, sometimes those refugees are leaving because they were our allies in a war we unsuccessfully fought for essentially over a decade. And then when Vietnam unifies under communist rule, these people have to leave. And both domestically and internationally, it looks a little bad for us to be like, sorry guys. I mean, it’s very similar to what happened in Afghanistan, right, with folks that helped the U.S. forces or translators. And so there’s this push to be like, we look pretty horrible here. We have both for political optics and [02:36:00] maybe some actual substantive moral obligation, which I think some of the people involved in this really feel we have to have these people come here.

JONATHAN BLITZER: And you know, it should be said, this is a general consensus that held, I think essentially until the first Trump administration, which was bipartisan and which consisted of stakeholders as diverse as the Defense Department and human rights advocates --

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Yes.

JONATHAN BLITZER: -- who all believed in the value of the U.S. taking its sort of moral responsibility in resettling people in need. And this wasn’t just a matter of extending a lifeline to people who had been loyal to the United States or a victim of any number of atrocities tied to U.S. foreign policy, but also from a kind of Defense Department or State Department standpoint, it was a real impediment to diplomacy in the world to basically show that the United States was not doing more to help people who had been allied with the United States. And how could the United States say --

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Right.

JONATHAN BLITZER: -- for example, following Vietnam, oh, look, we need all of these countries in Asia or in Europe to take on refugees --

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Right.

JONATHAN BLITZER: -- at a time when we’re [02:37:00] ourselves reluctant to. So there was really a kind of --

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Right.

JONATHAN BLITZER: -- broad consensus behind the basic underpinnings of the 1980 Refugee Act, which just to fast forward briefly, I really think held up until the first Trump administration. You would have Republican and Democratic administrations which disagreed on foreign policy, which generally disagreed on domestic immigration policy, but by and large recognize the utility of having a thorough going refugee policy that could meaningfully account for American involvement in the world.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: And there’s also this Cold War dimension, which you mentioned, which I also just to skip ahead for a second, it’s so striking to me right now as the population of people the border has shifted over time and it actually is the people you write about primarily from what’s called the Northern Triangle, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in Central America during 2023 at that peak was a lot of Cubans and Venezuelans. And what was interesting about that is, if you go back to 1980, right? It’s like they’re fleeing the communist regime of Cuba and the sort of ostensibly socialist dictatorship, [02:38:00] presidential dictatorship in Venezuela.

And you can imagine a version of right-wing politics. It’s like, we have to take these people because they’re fleeing the depredations of left-wing policy, which was part of the animating force that held this consensus together, as I understand it from your book.

JONATHAN BLITZER: Well, and so in the early ‘80s, you have the collision of two things right out of the gate. So you have the 1980 Refugee Act. And again, the idea is to, in a certain sense, remove ideology from the equation to say, anyone who can demonstrate that they’re being persecuted based on their identity in these specific ways laid out in the statute --

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Yes.

JONATHAN BLITZER: -- is entitled to legal protection in the United States. And yet there is a real tension between that legal imperative and the clarity of the language of this new statute and the realities of the Cold War. And so in the early 1980s, you had large numbers of people from Central America fleeing absolutely brutal military regimes who were all allied with the United States in the Cold War. And so these people arrive in the United States with straight ahead, almost textbook claims for protection according to [02:39:00] this new law, which in many ways is a laudable piece of legislation, a real step forward for American immigration policy, human rights policy, foreign policy, and so on.

And yet, huge numbers of people from Central America fleeing right-wing regimes were denied asylum because if the United States were to grant asylum in large numbers to people obviously fleeing repression at the hands of American allies, the U.S. would essentially be recognizing its complicity in those atrocities. And so right out of the gate --

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Right.

JONATHAN BLITZER: -- you have the promise of this law brought into check by geopolitics. And so in the early ‘80s at a time when, I believe the statistic is something like, you know, 23% of people seeking asylum were granted. You had in countries like El Salvador and Guatemala where people were fleeing absolutely unspeakable repression at the hand of U.S. allies, rejection rates that were 98 and 99%. So, you’re getting between 1% and 2% of Salvadorans and Guatemalans applying for [02:40:00] relief actually are getting it in the United States. Whereas by and large, most other people fleeing --

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Right.

JONATHAN BLITZER: -- say Nicaragua at the time, where a leftist government was in power, and that accorded with kind of the general American view about what its role and stewardship should be in the region, those people were getting much higher rates of acceptance when they applied for asylum. And so, immediately there was this problem of the U.S. needing to square this new law with kind of deeply embedded geopolitical Cold War era orthodoxies.

"Fascism Is at the Door": Trump Threatens to Deport Pro-Palestinian International Student Protesters - Democracy Now! - Air Date 2-4-25

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Momodou Taal, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Africana Studies at Cornell University, almost deported last year after being temporarily suspended for his pro-Palestine activism. [Momodou] , if you can talk about what happened to you? We would report your story in headlines. There was tremendous outcry and pressure on Cornell to remove the suspension so you wouldn’t be deported. Explain what happened.

MOMODOU TAAL: Yes, so, [02:41:00] we partook in a protest at Statler Hotel on Cornell’s campus. And in that careers fair, which was taking place in the Statler Hotel, there was Boeing and L3Harris, who are targets of our divestment campaign, because we know that L3Harris and Boeing are directly involved in shipments and armaments of Israelis’ genocide against the Palestinian people. We eventually brought the careers fair to a standstill. And about a few days later, I was told that I was suspended. And someone on the F-1 visa being suspended means that you lose your student status, which triggers the loss of your visa, effectively being deported, being asked to leave the country. I was told in that meeting that I would have about 48 hours to leave the country.

With, as you said, public pressure, support, Cornell University backed down, and I am [02:42:00] allowed to finish my degree. However, I am still banned from campus. I’m allowed in one building on campus to work. I had to fight to be able to get library access. And I think there’s somewhat of a great irony that students who were protesting apartheid are now subject to forms of exclusion bordering on apartheid, with our movements restricted, and we’re only allowed to go to designated places on campus.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And how has your work as a graduate student continued to be affected since the university rescinded your suspension?

MOMODOU TAAL: It continues to be impacted, because, first and foremost, I’m excluded from campus life. I was teaching a class to undergrads, which was — I’m effectively banned from teaching. My class was taken away from me, which everyone knows is a [02:43:00] huge part of progression with your degree. My movements remain restricted. I had to fight, as I’ve said, to be able to use the library, to have work from the library — right? — to be able to go onto campus and to use certain access of certain parts of campus. Right now, as I said, I’m still only allowed in one building on campus. To demonstrate the egregious nature of this, I had to even fight with the university to say, if I use Cornell Health, go to see a doctor, initially I was told I have to inform them every single time I have a doctor’s appointment to be allowed onto campus.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Momodou, can you respond to Trump’s executive order, as he talks about alien students being deported, your colleagues at Cornell and other places that you’re hearing from, what kind of effect that this has had? And also, I mean, you were born in Gambia. You’re a [02:44:00] British citizen. Why you support the Palestinians and were involved in those protests?

MOMODOU TAAL: Thanks for both those questions. For the first one, of course, the executive orders, the language in which — the framing and the language of the executive orders clearly are targeting pro-Palestinians protesters, international students. And I think they’re intended to have a chilling effect on Palestinian protests, pro-Palestinian protesters, in order for them to stop protesting at the threat of deportation. The message that is being sent out is, if you are an international student who comes here legally, then you should not be involved in exercising your First Amendment right, or you will be subject to deportation. And that is the intended effect. I don’t think it’s going to work. I think, if anything, when fascism is at the door, what we do is come together and unite even stronger.

However, as for your second question, I think, fundamentally, yes, I’m Gambian. Yes, I’m British. [02:45:00] But fundamentally, I’m a human being. And I think what Palestine does, when we say Palestine is a litmus test, we’re saying that it is not that we privilege the Palestinian cause over every other cause, but rather Palestine holds a mirror up unto the world and says, “What kind of world do we want to live in? Do you want to live in a world in which every single international, multilateral institution is rubbished? Do you want to live in a world where the ICC and the ICJ are rendered defunct, and the U.N. rendered defunct, and there’s no such thing as an international cooperation of a world, and people are able to do — and leaders are able to act in any way they see fit, and kill women and children and men and boys, and enact genocide?” So, I think, fundamentally, why I get involved is because I’m a human being.

And finally, I will end with, the university was presented with a crossroad. That crossroad: Will they protect their students? They failed initially by suspending so many people. [02:46:00] Again, now with Trump’s presidency, the university is presented with another crossroad. And I’m calling on the university to not just be a bystander, but take an active position, an active role to defend their students and say, ’We’re not going to allow Trump and the right-wing fascists and outside agencies to come onto campuses and collect foreign students.”

The Reality at the Border with Jonathan Blitzer Part 2 - Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast - Air Date 2-4-25

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: If 80 to 90% of what you’re dealing with at the border for what used to be called INS and border patrol is Mexicans coming over to work, right? There’s actually different legal regimes. And in fact, it’s encoded in the bureaucratic language in the acronym OTM.

JONATHAN BLITZER: Exactly, yep.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Which you, as an immigration reporter, you will encounter and you will see. Explain what OTM is and the difference between what you can do with a Mexican you apprehend coming over the Rio Grande or at Eagle Pass and what you do with someone who’s OTM from Nicaragua.

JONATHAN BLITZER: Right, exactly. So OTM is sort of border patrol [02:47:00] parlance for other than Mexicans.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Think about this, those are the two categories, right? Like, it just shows you though, like how kind of vestigial the categories are.

JONATHAN BLITZER: Exactly.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Because like 90% of crossings right now are OTM, I think, or something like that. So it’s like, it makes no sense anymore, but back then it was like mostly Mexicans and then this other category called other than Mexican.

JONATHAN BLITZER: Right, and so, you know, administratively what that meant was the U.S. could summarily deport Mexicans back to Mexico. There was very little kind of bureaucratic complexity to it. What starts to happen, even in the early ‘80s, when you start to have larger and larger numbers of Central Americans fleeing these conflicts in El Salvador and in Guatemala and in Nicaragua and so on, is you have border patrol agents just having to spend the time filling out the paperwork for people who now have to be detained for a period whose asylum claims have to be heard if their asylum claims are eventually rejected. And there’s a whole administrative process for that, for how that plays out.

They then have to negotiate [02:48:00] with the governments in the region to begin to deport these people back to their home countries. And so it’s not a kind of summary expulsion. So that’s a layer of complexity. And then of course, there’s just the matter of, okay, well, if someone from another country is showing up at the southern border and claiming asylum, you’ve got to give them an initial screening, an initial hearing to determine whether or not they are credibly fleeing some form of persecution. Then eventually that claim has to be adjudicated. Now there’s like a lot of bureaucracy around how those claims got adjudicated over the years. But the point is, this immediately causes a bottleneck because the government is not prepared to deal with all of the administrative holdups associated with the population other than Mexicans who can just readily be pushed back across the border.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: I mean, the one way to think about it is like if the ratio of labor hours per every Mexican apprehended is 10 labor hours per person, the aggregate labor hours per every OTM, is like a thousand or something. I mean, it’s [02:49:00] literally orders of magnitude, right? So one of the endemic parts of the system, when we get to 2014, it blows up is bureaucratic backlog is the defining feature of the whole thing. Like that is the system, it is, and people overuse the adjective Kafkaesque, but it truly is like the closest you get to the trial of Josef K in the U.S. is immigration processing.

JONATHAN BLITZER: Truly. I mean, it’s like, to the extent you can say this about the use of the word Kafkaesque, that’s an understatement. I mean --

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Yeah.

JONATHAN BLITZER: -- you know, if you were to take sort of two snapshots of the kind of bureaucratic absurdity of how this looks, I mean, I was very interested in knowing, you know, in the kind of mid ‘80s, you know, what it meant if you’re working border control and suddenly, rather than apprehending a group of Mexican adults crossing, you apprehend, say, two Salvadoran families, or a Guatemalan family --

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Yup.

JONATHAN BLITZER: -- or so on. These guys walked me through. Border patrol agents from that time walked me through just the actual assembly [02:50:00] line they had to create on an ad hoc basis in their office, whether it was in Arizona or in South Texas, where, all right, this guy’s got to work on the typewriter and start to create files. This guy’s got to take photos of every person who’s passing through. And someone’s got to get food for them. And this obviously becomes much more dramatic as the numbers grow over the years. There was also this question of, all right, well, where do we --

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Where do we put them?

JONATHAN BLITZER: Where do we put these people?

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Physically.

JONATHAN BLITZER: Yeah, what do we do? And so like literally in the ‘80’s, in the earliest days in some of these kind of remote border patrol outposts, you would have someone running to get like burgers for people. That was like one of the jobs in the assembly line. Which is just to say, I mean, for all of the money and kind of political posturing around the border and the need to secure the border, there was this kind of enormous logistical problem that just went undiscussed for many, many years. And then you fast forward to a moment like 2014, and there are historical underpinnings too, which we can talk about that lead to that sudden influx of people seeking asylum, and the [02:51:00] government is completely unprepared for it.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: So let’s talk about 2014. I want to be clear that you tell the story of, there’s a sort of protagonist in the book named Juan, who is this incredible character, sort of leftist, who is a doctor and active in sort of leftist resistance to the like homicidal military junta that is ruling El Salvador at the time and murders an archbishop quite famously, Oscar Romero, who is part of the initial wave of this, right? And then in the early 1980s and you tell his story. I was there in 2014 covering this when people started showing up at the border. And it felt a little from our context, right, of like the national news media, like it’s dehumanizing to say it felt like an alien invasion, although often that was kind of the way I think it was characterized on TV.

But in the same way that in a film, there’s just a moment where like, it’s like, whoa, what’s going on here? Why is this happening? It felt that way. Of course, [02:52:00] that’s ludicrous. Like it was brewing for a long time. And you talk about this in the book, you report extensively, including Angelina who gets deported. Why does that, like, why is it 2014 that all of a sudden it feels like to Americans, these kids start showing up at the border from Central America?

JONATHAN BLITZER: Yeah, I mean, in some ways, this was one of the biggest things I wanted to explore in a book.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Right, was to answer the question of like, quote, “all of a sudden.”

JONATHAN BLITZER: Yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, because in the U.S., right, this is like announced overnight. The Secretary of Homeland Security at the time is like flying back from visiting his kid in California and gets a call from like a Border Patrol officer saying like, sir, you got to get down here. I mean, it is like that. It is almost cinematic in the kind of abruptness of it --

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Yeah.

JONATHAN BLITZER: -- from the U.S. perspective. And yet this has obviously been many years in the making. So to my mind, there are sort of two general movements to understand in the history behind 2014. The first we’ve already alluded to is the fact that, all through the 1980s, you have hundreds of thousands of what would in theory be legitimate asylum seekers. Many of them, again, were [02:53:00] never given the opportunity to meaningfully seek asylum, who flee places like El Salvador and Guatemala because of these intense, murderous civil wars that the U.S. had a major role in perpetuating and in arming these military regimes that brutalized their populations.

And so that’s the first piece of the broader puzzle that gets kind of set in motion because you have U.S. foreign policy actually creating a kind of new demographic in the region of people fleeing their homes in Central America and coming to the United States. And so, you know, in L.A., for example, over the 1980s, you had the size of the Salvadoran population expand by orders of magnitude to hundreds of thousands of people in that city who were in many ways starting from scratch.

And so one of the things you start to see in the early 1990s is what that looks like in inner cities across the country, particularly in Los Angeles, when you have the arrival of a new population that doesn’t necessarily have [02:54:00] immediate family ties or deep connections to the country, are starting from scratch, necessarily are doing so in kind of rundown urban enclaves where there’s already a lot of kind of racial strife and kind of an urban gang hierarchy that they have to immediately reckon with.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Yup.

JONATHAN BLITZER: And so in the early ‘90s, you have a small, but significant element of recently arrived Salvadoran youth who get brutalized on the streets of Los Angeles by Mexican gangs, by black gangs, and who don’t yet have an identity in American terms, who are kind of these newcomers who are immediately vulnerable. And some of them begin to form groups of their own, essentially in self-defense. Those groups over time start to harden. They start to harden as they get jailed in California, where the ethnic and gang identities sharpen even further in detention.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: And they sure as hell harden in detention. I mean, inside prisons, it’s like, you can’t be unaffiliated, essentially. I mean, particularly along ethnic racial [02:55:00] lines. Like, you just are sorted that way. That’s the fundamental structure.

JONATHAN BLITZER: Exactly, and so, now your listeners, of course, know about MS-13, because kind of amazingly to me, when you go into this history, now, MS-13 is a household name --

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?: Right.

JONATHAN BLITZER: -- in the United States, which is a kind of shocking thought when you think about the broader history of it. But gangs like MS-13 started in Los Angeles. They did not start in El Salvador. And in many ways, like the 13 in MS-13 is a nod to the Mexican mafia, which basically ran the California prison system from the inside and that these newly hardened Central American gang members had to appease in order to stay safe in prison. And these guys start in small numbers at first to get deported back to Central America in the kind of early ‘90s at a time when I have to say the politics mirror a lot the politics we’re seeing now.

The Border Has Eyes - Latino USA - Air Date 12-26-24

REYNALDO LEAÑOS JR: Tina was O'odham Nation, which is southwest of Tucson where And her people are known for thriving in the harsh [02:56:00] desert climate.

The reservation is about 2. 8 million acres or about the size of Connecticut. The nation is made up of 11 districts and there's about 34, 000 enrolled members. The Tohono O'odham people were separated when the border was created. This ended up splitting the nation with Tohono O'odham people now living on both sides.

The nation has not wanted a border wall for many reasons, but one of the main ones is because they worry that a physical wall could further cut their ties with the Tano'o'otam people in Mexico.

So we just entered the nation. 

VALENTINA ANDREWS: And so we're going to take a drive down south close to the border and check out one of those surveillance towers. 

REYNALDO LEAÑOS JR: Tina and I are heading to a small town on the nation named Cells. Our plan is to meet up with Tina's friend Joshua Garcia. He's also a tribal member who was [02:57:00] raised on the reservation.

He lives in the Chukuk District, which sits on the border where some surveillance towers were built. 

VALENTINA ANDREWS: Did you have this truck last time? I feel like it's a good one. 

JOSHUA GARCIA: No, only had it a year. Okay. Tina 

REYNALDO LEAÑOS JR: and I hop into his truck and head south to the Chukuk District on the border to go see one of the surveillance towers on their land.

Both Tina and Josh were outspoken against the Towers, and they tried to raise awareness about them. Tina had a podcast, and Josh would go around the community to talk about the surveillance Towers. This was their way of resisting the Towers. But despite theirs and many community members criticisms, The towers were still built.

So right now we're pulling up to one of the Alpette towers and we're still on this dirt road. You know, it's kind of bumpy, it's very rocky and to the side of us there's saguaros. And yeah, now we're kind of directly in front of [02:58:00] this tower.

In 2014, U. S. Customs and Border Protection approved the building of surveillance towers across southern Arizona, including several on the Tano'otam Nation. The multi million dollar contract was awarded to Elbit Systems of America. It's the U. S. division of a company named Elbit Systems, which is one of Israel's largest military companies.

More than 50 integrated fixed towers from Elbit would end up being built. This is a commercial that Elbit ran on their YouTube page in 2021. 

YOUTUBE: From cockpits to combat vehicles, Elbit Systems technologies are operational in dozens of countries. Our solutions enable domination of the battle to engage threats with power and Precision.[02:59:00] 

REYNALDO LEAÑOS JR: And they're also a global leader when it comes to the surveillance industry. Elbit has actually used similar surveillance towers on their border with Palestine. This connection between Elbit, Israel, and Palestine was a concern that many on the nation stressed. Some on the Tano'atam nation felt that having this same technology on their land felt like an occupation.

JOSHUA GARCIA: Should we stop and take a look? 

REYNALDO LEAÑOS JR: Yeah, let's

JOSHUA GARCIA: stop. I just think somebody's watching us. 

VALENTINA ANDREWS: For sure. Well, I'm gonna take a look, too. Bye. Wow, these panels are huge. 

REYNALDO LEAÑOS JR: The Elbit Tower is huge. It shoots more than 120 feet into the sky. And it's about the size of a 12 story building. It looks like a metal communications tower. Or a cell phone tower. If you look closely, you can see a camera at the very top of it.

These towers have the ability to see up to [03:00:00] 7. 5 miles within its radius. That's about the length of more than 110 football fields. They can watch cars, people, animals, and birds. really anything within its range. And these towers are sometimes within close proximity of each other to make sure they capture everything within its line of sight.

It's like surrounded, you know, by a chain link fence with some barbed wires around it as well. And directly in front of it is a massive solar panel. It's about the size of two trucks to help power these towers. These surveillance towers are part of a broader network known as The Integrated Fixed Tower System.

It's basically a bunch of towers on the border that monitor and talk to each other, and let border agents know when they detect movement in the area. This network has been described by some experts as the spinal cord of the virtual wall. [03:01:00] Both Tina and Josh stare at it. They have to tilt their heads back to see all of it.

Standing in front of this tower, what goes on in your head, just, like, looking at it? 

JOSHUA GARCIA: Seeing it, just know that somebody's there watching us, and at the same time, you know, hearing the birds out there singing, and how it's just such a desecration to the space. So to me, it just makes me really sad to see the signs here on our own supposedly sovereign land.

REYNALDO LEAÑOS JR: Tina and Josh tried their best to fight against these towers, but ultimately they were constructed after leaders from the nation approved the towers on their land. It was reported that this happened in 2019. CBP secured enough money to allow for 10 surveillance towers to be built [03:02:00] on their lands. It was also reported at the time that tribal leadership thought that by permitting these towers being built, it could help eliminate the need for a physical wall.

But federal officials have said that the need for the wall has not been eliminated. 

JOSHUA GARCIA: Even though the community It's on your side, but really it's those officials in our, our nation's governments that are the ones that are making these decisions. That's something that's the kind of hardest thing.

REYNALDO LEAÑOS JR: But it doesn't stop there. Elbit has already been awarded a contract to build more surveillance towers, possibly including these same types of integrated fixed towers along the border in the next few years. 

VALENTINA ANDREWS: Looking back on it today and seeing where we're at and what it is, and then actually standing next to one, you know, what we just did today was very, um, very surreal and very like, I'm just [03:03:00] still like, processing how the day went.

REYNALDO LEAÑOS JR: Tina says that when the towers were being built across southern Arizona, there's been a steady presence of Border Patrol agents in their community through the years. And they work hand in hand with the surveillance towers. The towers notify agents when they detect movement, and that tells agents that they need to monitor the area.

So it's not just the towers on the border that Tina has seen and had to deal with, it's also border militarization.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always keep the comments coming in, I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or our upcoming topics, which includes Trump's other dystopian and racist proposal to ethnically cleanse Gaza and the future of American health under the leadership of the conspiracy theorist in chief RFK Jr.

You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at (202) 999-3991. You can now reach us on the [03:04:00] privacy focused messaging app Signal at the username bestoftheleft01, there's also a link in the show notes for that, or you can simply email me to [email protected] 

The additional sections of the show included clips from the Worst of all Possible Worlds, Assembly Required, Art of Citizenry, Civics 101, The Bitchuation Room, Democracy Now!, Today, Explained, Letters and Politics, Against the Grain Citations Needed, The Intercept Briefing, Why is this Happening, and Latino USA. Further details are in the show notes. 

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist trio, Ken, Brian, and Ben for their volunteer work, helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at BestOfTheLeft.com/support, through our Patreon page, or [03:05:00] from right inside the Apple Podcast app. 

Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes along with a link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion. And don't forget to follow us on any and all new social media platforms you may be joining these days. 

So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington DC, my name is Jay! and this has been the Best of the Left Podcast coming to you twice weekly thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from BestOfTheLeft.Com.