These Are Death Penalty Cases In Traffic Court

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:52 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode, you know, I think we're going with 1,002. Think that's a good way to keep the straight, keep it organized. I'll tell you, for for the first few episodes and into the foreseeable future, I'm just, playing I'm that intro, like, for me. I'm listening to that before I go, Boy, getting I've missed it. Am really excited to bring you today's episode. This is an introduction to Matt Cameron.

Will tell you about his background, so I don't need to go into it here. He's an amazing guy doing great work. And this recording is so good. I can't wait for you to hear all his stories. Also want to tell you that we had a little idea today, so much going on. I've seen a lot of comments that that people have really needed this show, and there's so much news, et cetera, et cetera.

And while we had the first few episodes plotted out, I was thinking, wait a minute, why don't we just do some practice? I Matt and could always use more practice recording together, we're you just getting our feet wet, we're getting going. So I thought, why not we just record some current events, rapid response episodes. Episodes. Was already, bursting you with things he wanted to say about stuff anyway. They're kind of practices. We won't charge for them, but they'll be on patreon.com/law. The first one will be up soon. Talked about this border bill, this impeachment. Matt takes us through the incredibly ridiculous articles of impeachment that the Republicans drafted against against Mayorkas. Again this is an extra we're doing to kind some practice at recording this show and that'll be available on patreon.com/law. We'll in terms of the regular schedule, told you'll you about that intended schedule last time. We're going to do a little catch up and then we should be there, soon.

You So that means T3BE episode will be out next and then Friday's rapid response. I'm guessing by that time that'll be at the usual release time and then will be golden from there. You're wondering why it was delayed, you could probably find those reasons on or elsewhere. But you are just itchy, you don't want to wait for those things and you're just itching for more opening arguments with head on over to patreon.com/law. extras that we're doing and avoid the ads and so forth.

And once again, want to emphasize that for the time being, all revenues above production cost will efforts on accountability and restoration and all let'S get on Over to Matt, and he's going to tell you some really good stories about, well, his career.

0:03:07 Thomas: Matt why don'T you let the listeners and I know who the hell even are you I

0:03:11 Matt: S start professionally. I m the managing partner of Cameron, Mishrone, and Sylvia, which is

0:03:12 Thomas: Wait Wait, does that mean I have to be professional? Because I don't... Okay, hold on. Let me slap myself in the face. Hi, I'm here with Matt Cameron, who is a lawyer that's going to be on the show from time to time. Matt, why don't you tell the listeners, how did you get into this whole thing?

0:03:19 Matt: I was gonna start with myself professionally, uh, but I'll I'll

0:03:31 Thomas: Oh, thank God. Okay, that was so hard. That was... I'm like sweating.

0:03:35 Matt: Try to be professional.

0:03:36 Thomas: My nose is bleeding. I tried to be... I had a was buttoned for a sec. It was too much. Thank you. Okay, so you be professional. I'll be me. Okay, awesome.

0:03:36 Matt: Yeah.

0:03:46 Matt: Deal. All right, uh, I went to law school because I wanted to be a writer. I was a writing major, um, went into undergrad just to play music and write, and I that worked out pretty well, and went to low school because it's like the most general degree. I didn't really know know exactly what I wanted, but I wanted to do something one -on -one to work with people directly. I was thinking credible defense at the time, and that's a lot of what I do now. Went I to law school in Newark, New Jersey, and it was the first time I had lived in an immigrant neighborhood. So that kind of started to define kind of where I wanted to be and what I was doing.

0:04:12 Thomas: Already would like to ask, just to clarify, do you mean like wanted to do the writing involved in law stuff, or literally you're like, yeah, I'm going to be a writer, so do something that will like line me up well going forward, like a writer writer? What kind of writer are we talking, talking.

0:04:26 Matt: Yeah. I mean, I, of course I wanted to write a book and I'm working on that too, but I really knew that I was going to have to make some money writing, and that just being a writer writer probably wasn't going to do it, if that's what was going on my taxes. I thought I should use my writing for professional purposes, and I was really interested in speech and debate, you know, and did a lot of that. I grew up, actually, I was just listening to an OA today in which you were praising my hometown and saying you wanted to live there, and I was very happy to hear that.

0:04:29 Thomas: Oh,

0:04:49 Matt: I'm Washington.

0:04:49 Thomas: Which hometown is this? Oh, no way. Did not. I didn't know that. Right. Was this a coincidence?

0:04:54 Matt: Yeah. No, I don't think we've talked about this.

0:04:57 Thomas: That's That's wow. That's really cool. I always wanted to live there. I know I didn't didn't end up working. We're we're where we want to be right now. But it was on the list for so many reasons. It's like, right. Beautiful, but I imagine it's got to be by now an expensive place to live. It's been decades since we checked it out, but

0:05:11 Matt: Yeah. I been back in 20 years, so I assume it's changed. But it was a wonderful little place to be. And I moved out here to the East Coast to go to law school first. And I met Casey, my partner, pretty much the first day of law school. And we've been together since then, about 20 years now. From New England. I didn't really know anything about New England, I actually went up to Boston to take the bar. And that was the second time I'd ever been to Boston, which was a very strange experience.

0:05:34 Thomas: You saying you've kind of been there ever since or

0:05:36 Matt: No family moved to DC at some point I when was an adult, and so we've just kind of, we're East Coast people now, but I still think I got the Northwest chill, and I'm very proud of the chill. A Bostonian in so many other ways, and and I'm proud of that. So, you know, got to own it. I have been practicing law since 2006, and I've been practicing almost all immigration law with a lot of criminal defense thrown in. My specialty really is crimeigration, which is trying to help people mitigate the deportation consequences or, you know, inadmissibility consequences of criminal conduct.

0:05:42 Thomas: Sure? Yeah. Yeah.

0:06:03 Thomas: All right. So you started to say it a little bit, but at what point did you feel like that was the path for you? I mean, I'm curious. I know we have a lot of people who either went to law school or a lot who say like, hey, I am going to go to law school now. I have been so inspired. At what point in law school were you like, all right, I have settled on what I want to do? You because I know there is the classic like, all right. If you are going to do the corporate law thing, you got to go on a certain track.

0:06:26 Matt: Never going to be corporate. I knew that for myself. And Casey and I were the of same kind of mind. And there was a very corporate law school that we were going to. And, you loved my law school. It was fine. It's good experience. But that was a lot of the lot of people there were for where we're just getting to get out of the corporate world. And so I didn't have a plan. I'd like to say that I had some kind of road to Damascus this moment where I realized that immigration was the way to go. But I had this experience. I mentioned Vancouver because it's a very white place, very homogenous place. And I'd never been to an immigrant neighborhood before. And here in the Ironbound in Newark, New Jersey, you've got within a couple of square miles, you'd got like 53 different nationalities kind of packed in, living together, partying,

0:06:51 Thomas: Yeah. Wow. Gun to my head, didn't know there there are that many. I actually did. I would have said 40. No,

0:07:03 Matt: Yeah. So I, just I had this That's an experience, though, of being around people from all over the world. Because I love traveling. And that was what I, you know, I had this experience of, I don't have to travel. All these people are here. I get to learn so much about the culture and the food, the parties, you know, it was just a great time. And so I realized I could have a career where people came to me, where I didn't have to, I mean, I still travel. That's still something I love to do. But I get a lot of people to come to me and say, hey, I'd love to travel, but I get people to work with people from all over the world every day and learn about their cultures and backgrounds. And that's just incredibly rewarding for me.

0:07:07 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:07:28 Thomas: So So was everyone else that you were friends with it at law school? Were they all day? They're just like, "Man, I can't wait to help a company pollute a river." You know, I just can't. Oh, it's going to be so fun. I like, is that that the attitude of corporate school, you know?

0:07:41 Matt: It was Just, it was money. They were talking about how much money they were going to make and comparing salaries out and coming out and just the big law game that you play. And I never understood it, honestly. I'm not just saying that. I just never understood why that would be a reason you'd go to law school.

0:07:41 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Certainly more decent ways to make money, you know, you could only fans you could, you know, there's... there's a lot of way less disgusting ways to making money, I think, in

0:07:57 Matt: There certainly are. Know, the lawyer of the year, I think it was last year or the year before, from some, I thought it was an ABA magazine. Did you see the controversy around this, the Lawyer of the Year? Think about this all the time, because she was in a big firm where she was defending Johnson & Johnson, and you know they had that lawsuit about talcum powder potentially causing cancer, and she represented Johnson & Johnston and successfully got these cases thrown out.

0:08:10 Thomas: No no oh yeah yeah she She represented the cancer, actually. Weirdly enough, it was it was one of those joint defendants that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:08:24 Matt: Yes. Yes. Who will speak for the cancer? For the tumors. No, just, and you're reading this, and I mean this is obviously Twitter was ablaze about this, but you're like, this is who gets lawyer of the year? This what we went to law school for? You know, it's just, I an attorney, I'm sure you've heard this cliche before, but you can use the law as a sword or as a shield. And I really do believe that it's better used as a shield. That's what I've been doing, trying to do.

0:08:52 Thomas: Yeah.

0:08:52 Matt: In our practice, we specialize in deportation defense and asylum work. Do, like I said, a lot of crumigration, trying to keep people from being deported one way or another. It's just incredibly rewarding. I really feel good about what we're doing, and I'm very proud of my partners and the work that we do here.

0:09:04 Thomas: To be serious for a moment, it really is one of the reasons I'm just so excited to be working with you is is just seeing like, oh, yeah there's, you know, not going to lie. I'm a little negative on on some components of the legal system, you you know, just to put it put it mildly. And I I truly have not even dealt with, you hundredth of the shittiest part of the legal system, you know, I've dealt with like the super privileged shitty part, the part that's like I'm lucky enough to be getting screwed by it, you know, and and Still, it's like infuriating, and you can only imagine.

I mean, I can personally only just with my privilege, I only imagine trying to do anything like this where instead of something that that's deeply important to me but still is not my life or the place I live. It's not, you know, the stakes, imagine going through that system and worse, where no help, you, or virtually no help, when when the stakes are astronomically higher. And And just that, that's you the kind of work you do. And those are the issues that really drive you, is a really welcome, I think, addition. And I'm really just thrilled to be able to talk to you about it.

0:09:18 Matt: Sure, sure. Right, right. Wow.

0:10:07 Matt: Appreciate that. I mean, it's great to be here, and this is a really exciting project. Really feel like, you know, what you're talking about, for people going through the worst times in their life, you have to remember that every day when I'm going in, that, you know, maybe I've had a bad day, maybe, you know, my cat's sick or whatever, but these people are about to lose their family member, and we have to take that seriously. I've got, you know, 30 or 40 cases like that at a time sometimes, and it's a lot.

It's been a lot, and I'm not trying to make this about me. I'm just saying, for anybody who wants to go into immigration law, mental health is really my big thing for other attorneys. It's something I try to talk about as much as possible because I've been there and I still have mental health issues. You know, I think that anybody doing this work does. I went into this practice with mental health issues that I hadn't addressed. And I have a responsibility to my clients to do that. And I think everybody does because we didn't talk about it in law school. That just

0:10:16 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh,

0:10:50 Matt: Wasn't part of the conversation at all. I think it is now, but 20 years ago, it certainly wasn't. So, yeah.

0:10:51 Thomas: I bet. Yeah. Yeah. But please do make it about you because I do. My goal. Okay.

0:10:58 Matt: Yeah, I guess that's what we're

0:10:59 Thomas: You can do what you want. My goal is to make this about you, but you can resist, you'll be. That's really cool. So, so, to immigration or you say crimmigration, that'S really interesting. Do you want to talk about that term? I

0:10:59 Matt: Here for.

0:11:10 Matt: The integration. So thanks to Barack Obama in many cases too, because again, sort of the technocracy of bringing, and it wasn't just Obama, it was just the fact that technology grew up enough that they could do this. But State, local, and federal have really integrated more to the point that people with even very minor criminal issues can be put into deportation proceedings, can be detained by ICE, can being put through horrible things, things that you just wouldn't believe are being done with your tax dollars. And as a criminal immigration attorney, is really to go back to state court for the most part and try to fix whatever we can to mitigate it.

Because in most cases, these are people who have done their time, served their probation, paid their fines. They've been rehabilitated, in many cases 20 years later, 30 years later. And they have a conviction that's going to get them deported. And I take a lot of pride in going back and fixing that so that doesn't have to happen. Because these are lifetime deportations.

People that are deported for many of these offenses do not get to come back, no matter what family they have or what their lives are like here. So it means a lot.

0:11:11 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:12:01 Thomas: Even someone who tries to follow this at all, um, it's so confusing and and it is, so it's so irrational. What kinds of cases are you talking about? People are, who came here on document or talking about people who did have a, like a visa or whatever, but then some sort sort of alleged violation of it or, or all the above kind of paint us a picture of like an average, know, I client you might defend.

0:12:22 Matt: It's all of the above, plus lawful permanent residence can still be deported. I think that word permanent really throws people off. But you can have a green card for 20, 30 years and still be deported.

0:12:24 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, like, so then not permanent, I guess would, yeah.

0:12:32 Matt: It's hard to believe for some people because they really believe it. But the five years of your lawful permanent residence status, you're essentially on immigration probation, so you can still mess up and be deported. For things that I think people would be very surprised to hear, just very minor things, shoplifting. I have a guy who's going through hell because when he was 21, he stole a traffic cone, that kind of thing.

0:12:34 Thomas: Oh

0:12:52 Matt: Just really stupid things like that. That. And of course, for serious things as well. But that's part of the problem is that the law conflates things like child sex abuse and shoplifting. You can end up with the same penalties. And that's just, I can't accept that. So it feels really good to go back to court and try to fix these things. And the most rewarding work I do is taking somebody from the edge of deportation within days of being deported for life, and then seeing those cases through for years and years until they become citizens. There's just nothing like it.

0:13:08 Thomas: My God. Yeah!

0:13:17 Thomas: Wow! Yeah, I did want to ask you, you don t know how much you re allowed to say about any given thing, but like, Like, is there a case, or at least in can you get on a success story? You because it feels like there aren't those somehow, but maybe that's because, you we know, only hear about the ones that are really shitty because those are the ones where we want to do something about. It's not often that, you those success stories get covered a lot now to that I think about it. Like, actually, I just in this sentence, I'm realizing, like, yeah, when's the last time you've heard some sort of coverage of that end of it, of someone fighting it off? Like, almost never. I'm sure it's somewhere, but haven't I come across it. I don't think.

0:13:40 Matt: Yeah. No. The media wants to cover the misery. They want to cover The Family's Being Separated, which is important. Obviously, we have to see those stories. But it's kind of like a deportation porn sometimes.

0:13:55 Thomas: I'm short. Yeah. Yeah.

0:13:58 Matt: It's like this need to show us the very worst of things because people are kind of really in a prurient kind of way getting into it. And so I do love to talk about the success stories and the ways that we can make these things work. Again, I don't want to make it about me, but I do want to tell you about what I consider to be the most amazing moment of my career. And it is something that sticks with me now. And in the terms of the relative size of the system and everything else.

0:14:21 Thomas: Hmm.

0:14:22 Matt: And it's a wrongful conviction. It was actually a U.S. citizen. It wasn't someone who was an immigrant. I used to take appointed post -conviction cases a lot. I still do a lot of post - conviction. And I met this man and realized that the district court had done him wrong, had done them completely wrong in a way that, you know, you and I, we've talked about season two is serial, right? About sort of hanging around a district courthouse, right.

0:14:38 Thomas: Mm hmm, yeah. My My favorite season, actually.

0:14:41 Matt: Yeah. And and for good reason, it's really well done.

0:14:42 Thomas: Yeah, really interesting.

0:14:44 Matt: And captures a lot of sort of the foibles of district court and of just kind of hanging around and seeing all of the very human things that are happening. And to me, obviously, I have so much respect for my colleagues who are out there clearing murder convictions and rape convictions and things where people are doing massive sentences. But my client in this case did six months, which is enormous for him. Six months was a very big deal. He's an older guy. He lost the use of his legs while he was in custody. He lost his business. He loss his reputation. To me those wrongful convictions in many ways can be just as bad. I shouldn't say just as bad. In many ways, they can cause so much harm that we don't talk about.

0:14:47 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm oh, wow. Yeah, sure. Sure.

0:15:20 Matt: So I want to talk about one, because I'm sure heroin is fun, but there's something about clearing a wrongful conviction, about seeing somebody relieved of a burden. Keeps you

0:15:20 Thomas: Yeah. Well, I mean, you could try both, I guess, and let us know. I don't know. Next, next case.

0:15:30 Matt: Unfortunately, a lot of us do. I do. Yeah, no, I really a rewarding thing because in this case, and again, I'm not going to tell you a story about me being brilliant. I'm just going to look at the record, which it turns out, I mean, no.

0:15:31 Thomas: Yeah, no, No one had ever done before, which

0:15:46 Matt: The prosecutor, the defense, the jury, nobody had actually looked at the records in front of them to see what the story was.

0:15:47 Thomas: My God. Oh, it's so depressing.

0:15:53 Matt: I'm going to tell you how this happened, because I don't understand it. I still don't understand it, but I'll call my client Joe. He's an older guy. And as said, his life was just destroyed over this case. He was a driver. He had a business where he was driving people around town, and he was taking contracts from insurance companies to drive people to medical appointments. And there was a woman that he was diving back and forth to medical apartments. He was getting kind of flirty with him.

And at some point, a message was left on her phone that sure sounded a lot like him, and it was disgusting, it was an absolutely disgusting, like depraved message about things he was gonna do to her, and like, you know, terrible things, and the kind of thing, if you got this message, if somebody you loved got this, you would be very very concerned Yeah, yeah, so I mean, this is serious stuff, and he insisted that it was not him and he had not left this message. And course, you know, the community, it's a small town, they all think he's a pervert now, and that he's the horrible guy, and then, then nobody wants to be in his car. Know, this is all the things, these are things that happen, right, when these

0:15:59 Thomas: Sure.

0:16:32 Thomas: You're terrified. Okay.

0:16:48 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:48 Matt: Things come out. And this is just a sort of a perfect little vignette, I think, of how a wrongful conviction can actually happen in practice in a non -murder Case, right? Because we had to do was look at the phone records, because literally phone records are better than DNA, right. I mean, you have the call, you now how long the call was, you can figure out who's making these calls back and forth. And we were able to prove, prove that the victim had made, well, the alleged victim had made a bunch of back and forth calls to a friend of hers, a male friend.

And then at some point that male friend had called her voicemail immediately after a time when my client had called her to schedule pickup. She'd done this on purpose, like made sure it was timed, you know, close to when he had called and left a second, or whatever, voicemile. So this guy was impersonating my client and left this message. And there was was a reason for it, a pecuniary reason. Were able to prove that she was able to get something from her insurance because she was harmed by this message. And it's the easiest way, because obviously she can't fake other kinds of harm, but she could easily fake this one. And she ruins this guy's reputation for some insurance money. And I'm staring at this, and I could not

0:16:56 Thomas: Really?

0:17:31 Thomas: When?

0:17:53 Matt: Believe

0:17:53 Thomas: You say That so you had to cross reference the phone calls with the national database of whatever and get her, or no, you just looked at the phone, yeah, that's Like, I keep expecting to be, yeah, and then we, down so then we hacked into the mainframe and we got the whatever. It's like, no, we just, so, at it is What we did, who

0:18:01 Matt: No. No, with help of a brilliant law student who helped me to really put it together.

0:18:13 Thomas: Had eyes, yeah.

0:18:13 Matt: And the ability to just list things. Because I was looking And I said, well, you know, one thing I didn't see in the prosecutor's closing argument was, and defendant then placed a call. And here's the call at 3:45 p.m. and it was 43 seconds. He didn't say that. What He said was, you can clearly hear it's his voice, and we've had some kind of, uh, frankly kind of bullshit, uh, analysis, um, the Defense Didn't Effectively Keep On

0:18:16 Thomas: Yeah. Unbelievable.

0:18:28 Thomas: Huh. Wow. Well, can I back you up a little bit just again for the non-lawyers? How do you exactly, to the extent you can say, how do you come across this exactly? And you say this is a post -conviction relief. So is it the case of like this person had a shitty first lawyer or how does this start up exactly? Exactly.

0:18:36 Matt: Yeah. I Mean I think, I'm going to tell you, my theory is that everybody involved except my client heard the message, heard my client's voice, and thought, well, that's him, so We don't really have to check, I'm sure that's him, and who would fake that, why Would They fake it?

0:18:59 Thomas: Hmm. That is wow.

0:19:03 Matt: It doesn't make a lot of sense, and yeah, I, I know. And it is just a freakish case in a lot of ways. But my point is, this man's life for a couple of years was destroyed over this. And he suffered so badly. And I went to see him a few times. And It just was so hard to do, to see Him in there. Six months is, of course, a piddling sentence. It's nothing in the course of the human justice system.

0:19:14 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:24 Thomas: Hearing the story, it's almost the six months is almost the least of it. You know, it just, you know, I don't know. I haven't gone through it, but just if I would imagine myself in his shoes, like, yeah. Yeah, OK, that that does suck. But like everything else, just the feeling of violation, the the of like your reputation being ruined. I mean, that's horrible stuff. And to find out it's, you detective work you had to do was just read a couple of things is really depressing, really depressing.

0:19:37 Matt: Sure. Yeah, right. That's what I thought. And this is, you know, I'm fairly young at this point. I'm probably probably 25, 26. Yeah. By that point, maybe 27 doing this case. And I was blown away that this could happen. You I, know, I I've been in district court. I'd done plenty of district court cases by then, but I hadn't really realized the extent to which people just did not look at things. And, you Know, this can happen in murder cases, but it's much more likely to happen in a tiny little case like this, where the prosecutor just doesn't Care. And he thinks he's got you on the voice and that's it. And that's how it went down. And mean, the guy was, it was a and he had a good business and that lost he all of it for a while and know he's so happy when he got it back. I was trying to help him look into wrongful. Oh, that's the other thing, he didn't qualify for the wrongful conviction statute because it was only six months And really unfortunate

0:20:12 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, geez. Oh, that'S interesting. OK, so what would Would that have – is this like specific to the state that you're in or – okay. So

0:20:32 Matt: Yeah, um, Yeah. He would have collected In Massachusetts. Oh,

0:20:38 Thomas: – oh, are you saying – so, sorry. I interpreted that as like that would have helped him get – so this is after you've been – okay, okay.

0:20:43 Matt: Yeah After We fixed it.

0:20:46 Thomas: So So does get any compensation, anything for the hell that he's been put through at all?

0:20:46 Matt: Yeah. And That statute didn't cover him because it, it wasn't serious enough, wasn't enough time.

0:20:54 Thomas: There's nothing else that covers him? There's no general kind of – what And by the way, you don't have to endorse this, but biggest takeaway for me, look, if you're going to rip off an insurance company, that's a victimless crime in my book. But if you're gonna actually add a victim to that, then that's not a victim. Just, you know, cut out the middleman, just rip off the insurance company. Please, people, come on.

0:20:57 Matt: No.

0:21:09 Matt: Yeah. Very true. Is very true. Yeah. No, actually know what happened. I mean, I was just doing that part of the case. I kept in touch with him. I know that he tried to go to the police and show them. don'T think anybody would interest him. It's hard to get the cops to care about some things like this. Know, that she had essentially lied to the policemen. That was it. But I, you know, at that point, and I will say, I expect this. We filed the motion. We put together a a very comprehensive motion that showed exactly the way everything broke down.

And here's the story. And it's inarguable. You absolutely can't say that we've got this wrong, which is pretty unusual in any kind of post -conviction case that you have something this clear cut. I mean, it really is as good as DNA. The motion was granted without a hearing, which never happens for a jury trial, right? A case where it was taken to a jury trail. It's the only time in my career I've ever had a motion for a new trial granted without hearing that went to a judge. Was it was that clear. So

0:21:18 Thomas: Jeez. Yeah. What?

0:21:55 Thomas: Wow.

0:21:56 Matt: That, that was something that I take with me and, you know, wrongful conviction cases are difficult on your mental health too, because you know you've got a responsibility to get it right. They often only really have one chance realistically to get it right, really so consider that even though that was far from my best legal work, it was good legal work but it wasn't anything that anybody else could have done.

0:22:04 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I do like proudest moment as a lawyer that time I read a sentence. God damn it. Yeah, you want to be like, don't you see there was a sub bylaw in the bylaw sub whatever that case of, you V ripoff from 1973 that decided you're like, no, just just open the bill that was, you know, probably sitting there.

0:22:16 Matt: Read a phone record, pretty much. Yeah, exactly.

0:22:32 Matt: At what The jury saw Take

0:22:34 Thomas: Oh, the jury did see it. Or

0:22:34 Matt: Another Look Oh, Yeah, that's the worst part. No, they Saw it. They had these records, but the prosecution just dumped in the phone records. They didn't say, "Check out page five."

0:22:37 Thomas: Oh, wow. Okay. Oh, OK. I'm sure there's... there's a billion and documents of whatever. Right. So it's probably easy for it to blend in.

0:22:42 Matt: Right. Yep, and nobody has the curiosity, just the basic, including his own lawyer, to go back and say, "Well, maybe we should just double check that that call actually came from his phone." Yeah.

0:22:53 Thomas: Wow. Crazy.

0:22:56 Matt: Know, yeah. And I, you know, I get it if, I mean, not that we pay phones anymore, but it went to a pay phone, sure, maybe you can say it's still him, but it was somebody else's distinct phone that we knew who it was, who was an associate of the victim. So anyway, that story. And I really am proud of it.

0:22:56 Thomas: Right?

0:23:09 Thomas: No, that's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that. And sounds like you're not exactly dealing with like -conviction murder, blah, blah. Blah, blah, that people will have seen a million documentaries about. But I always wonder with any of that kind of work, when you're like, man, am I sure I'm helping a good person now or a bad person? You know, does that factor into your work at all? Or is it, not is the kind of cases you deal with where you got to worry about that?

0:23:26 Matt: Yeah. I'm going to be very honest. That is why I don't do full -time criminal defense work. I can't say it in any other way. I have so much respect for my colleagues who are public defenders. I do not want to say anything about what they're doing because they're during incredible work. And honestly, they're better people than me for being able to get through because they are true true believers. I'm a budding abolitionist. I've weeks in prison at this point, in jails and ICE custody. So I certainly don't believe that it should exist in the way it exists.

0:23:33 Thomas: Hmm. Hmm.

0:23:53 Thomas: What'd you do? No, I'm just kidding.

0:23:56 Matt: I often I'll call my mom and just let her know I got out of jail. She likes to know.

0:24:01 Matt: I've spent plenty of time in these facilities. I understand they shouldn't exist in their current form. We are doing people wrong in so many ways. Dostoevsky was right, of course, that you can judge a society by how they treat their prisoners, and you know, I, I really do believe that, I was raised a Christian and one of the things they told us was to go visit people in jail, that for some reason Christians don't talk about that anymore, but Jesus did tell you to do it

0:24:18 Thomas: They must have lost whatever scripture that was written and no longer applicable, I guess.

0:24:19 Matt: Uh just kind of maybe translation error or

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0:24:23 Matt: Something, yeah um Working out my my legal philosophy, but what I do know is, you know, as a kid I heard about how the constitution was written by and for the people, right? And I've been thinking about that a lot. Yeah, Jesus also. And I have thought a lot about that by and that for, because, you know, you think about originalism and right wing law is about by, right. We care a lot About who wrote it and what they were thinking and who they were and, you Know, the people in power who are able to give us the law. Right. But it's the for that we need to think about. That's law isn't for people, if it's not doing anything thing for anybody, then what's it for? What is just amazing to me about our politics right now, is that you have a lot of people who are promising to hurt other people, to worse for other people using the law and using these systems that we practice in. And I just can't imagine, I don't know, I can't relate to anybody who looks at that and says that's what they want.

0:25:52 Thomas: Jesus. Yeah Yeah. Yeah.

0:26:30 Thomas: I don'T often ponder those specific words because I don't worship them like some sort of weirdo originalist. But like how ballsy to say we the people. It's so indicative of the kind of privilege we're talking about where it's like, yeah, we speak for, look around the room, white landowner, whitelandowner. Yeah. Oh, slave owner, slave. We speak for the people. Yeah. We the people, yeah.

0:26:35 Matt: Sure. Right. You know, the people. Yeah. Here we are. No, totally. Totally.

0:26:53 Thomas: Not, no women, no woman are here. Right. Okay, good. Yeah. We the People. And it's, like, wow. Okay. I they mean it that way? Or do you think that's if we woke them up today, they'd be, like. Oh, we didn't mean, oh, sorry. That's a weird language thing from old timey times. We just meant we the white people or whatever, you know. Yeah.

0:27:07 Matt: We're the people who won the war, I guess. I don't know. If you're looking at it very favorably. And it's one thing I want to talk about at some point is the move to, on both sides of the political system, the move to have a new Constitutional Convention. And what happens when a bunch of people decide they're the people, right? And then we have a whole other thing. But that's another conversation.

0:27:09 Thomas: Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Another. Has there ever been any sort of the opposite where it's that case that didn't maybe go your way or where something happened that that you regret. I don't know. I'm just curious. There must be a toll to this, to this work you do.

0:27:35 Matt: Well, I do have one. And this is a tough one. I do want to talk about it because I think it's an important part of understanding this work. I think that anybody who wants to do this work, and I do encourage anybody who thinks they might be interested in immigration law to talk to me if they want to, talking to me about that, or to talk an immigration lawyer and just find out what it's actually like. I'm open for that, but there are costs as well. And you and I were talking recently about how criminal lawyers in Massachusetts, we don't know anything about capital punishment because we don't have it.

0:27:35 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. Right.

0:28:01 Matt: So we don't know the details of how it actually works, but in a very real way I do feel like I am doing death penalty work sometimes, and it very much is. A former immigration judge named Dana Marks who famously said something that's really stuck with me, that these are death penalty cases in traffic court when going to immigration court. Death penalty cases and traffic court, and that is so true. It's far more true than it should be. There was a client, I'll call just Jose for the purpose of the story, I guess.

But went to see him in ICE custody, and the first thing he told me when, when I sat down, was, "They're going to kill me when I go back," and never wavered. And I've had a lot of people tell me that, but he was so insistent in a way that it just really grabbed me from the beginning. It's what he told his family. It's what he said. He told the judge when we had the hearing and we had an asylum hearing. But the problem is of course, that gang related fears are not sufficient for asylum. So if you're afraid of criminals, you can't get asylum.

And the judge essentially said to his face that, and I don't blame the judge for this at all, to be honest, because he's working with what he's got. But the judge said to his face that I believe you, that your life is in danger, that you have a reason to fear for your life, but I can't protect you. And again, that is just a very hard thing to hear. It's not the first time I'd heard it.

Didn't want to appeal because it's a very long process. He would have had to stay in custody. He just wanted to get back and face whatever he's going to

0:28:02 Thomas: Right? Yeah. Wow. Oh, my God. Wow,

0:29:16 Matt: Face. And I didn't hear here from his family. And a few months later, I was talking to somebody who was in my office who had been in custody with him. He asked me, "Did you hear about Jose?" And I told him I hadn't. And he told me that my client had been killed in exactly the same way he said that he would be, a few weeks after he was deported. And, you know, I, I'm sure that it's not the first time that I've lost a case that said it that way, but to actually be confronted with it, I was wrecked. I was unable to do anything for the rest of the day. And just one of my worst days, worst days ever, just to know. Emergency room doctors who watch people die in front

0:29:32 Thomas: My god. Yeah? Yeah, my god. Yeah, sure. Yeah?

0:29:52 Matt: Of them, but those are people who come in full of bullet holes. You know there's not anything you're going to be able to do.

0:29:55 Thomas: Yeah. My God. And yeah, exactly. It's almost like, feeling of, well, a bunch of people are coming in here, as you say, in, be accidents, could be, say, bullet as holes could be whatever it is. I'm going to do my absolute best to save as many as I can. And I won't be able to save all of them is a whole lot different than, hey, the dumbest fucking thing in the world is going to cause someone to be murdered horribly. The idea that like well fit one more we're actually completely full there was one person shaped spot in the country and then that got filled with a person so no way we can fit anyone else so yeah you have to go die now is the most depressing that like there's something about that that's that's even worse, you know, it really is just so much worse to think of how, how avoidable it is, you

0:30:42 Matt: Exactly what I wanted people to know, and so I had this moment, Thomas, where I sat down, and I still have a very complicated relationship with all of this. I don't really know how to talk about it, but I thought in that moment that, you know, Trump had just been elected. This, actually, you can't put this on Trump. Obama was president when this happened. It doesn't matter though, it's the same system through all these presidents, it's very consistent, um, Know the system is the system that it is with the law that it has, and I'm sitting here and I can't blame the judge, I can blame ICE, I can play in Congress, I can't win the courts.

I tried blaming myself for a while, but there really wasn't any viable legal defense. We did what we could, I told him from the beginning it was going to be hard, and that the best he could hope for is that the judge just finds some way to jam him in there, but, uh, you You know, he didn't want to appeal, and he, I couldn't blame him. There wasn't much of an appeal to be had. It, and, was just, I knew the whole time that he was telling the truth, and he was, he had such conviction about it. So I had to tell this story, and I did, and it went viral, and this is really weird and complicated for

0:30:51 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:36 Thomas: I do not even know this.

0:31:38 Matt: Me. Um, so this is how I ended up with 25,000 and Twitter followers because of this story.

0:31:38 Thomas: Wow. The kind of guy Matt is, everybody. He's never told me this, literally never told me this before, ever. I had no idea that this was true. I could have gone, if we hadn't done this episode, I might have gone to my grave not knowing that was true, so that is the kind of guy you are.

0:31:58 Matt: It so weird and complicated, I still feel guilty about it, that I ended up getting a following because I honestly reported in the raw moment of something that had just happened. People needed a human story to go along with these policies to say, this is what Trump is doing to people. But it was also even more complicated at it because I had to explain, no, this is just the system that Trump has taken over, but it's already doing this.

0:32:19 Matt: Trump is going to make it worse, question. No, absolutely no question he made it worse and that our lives were hell for four years and our clients certainly were much worse in many cases. But that's the other thing. When I talk about this stuff, nobody goes, I mean, I didn't lose anybody that I loved, right? I didn't die in this story. I just was bearing witness and the secondary trauma of it all. And it's weird for me to sit here as a privileged white man sitting in my house in Boston that I own, telling you this story about how it affected me when at the end of the day, I was okay.

0:32:01 Thomas: Yeah? Yeah? Yeah. Mm -hmm. Yeah, of course. Yeah. It's a weird thing to think about. I see what you mean. It is such a, what are you going to brag about this one time I got a bunch of followers because of this horrible thing that happened? Yeah. Well, I will be honest. In this day and age, I think a lot of our culture would do just that, but not you. That is, wow, that is a lot. And that is something that, like know the details of your work, But this has got to be not uncommon. Is that fair to say? Like, you know, like how often are you dealing with this level of I for mean, real. That's trauma in my mind. And, you Know, how do you deal with burnout? How do people in your line of work deal with Burnout? How are they? How is there anyone still doing it? You

0:32:45 Matt: No,

0:33:23 Thomas: Just seems impossible. Possible.

0:33:23 Matt: I know. I'm going to be hitting 20 years within the next couple of years. And I'm thinking maybe I can change directions a little bit because I feel like I have done my time. To be honest about it, I've got a great support network. I play in a band. I have a good time here doing what I can to kind of enjoy it. Were war times in my life when I was escaping in less healthy ways. And that's something that Unfortunately, mental health in Massachusetts, there was a survey of mental health in Massachusetts. I could pull it up, but the results were staggering.

It was really bad. Many people dealing with addiction and with depression and anxiety and all the things that I think are inevitable when you have other people's lives in your hands in a very real way. And again, I feel so strange talking about this and making it about me, but if you want to go to law school, if you wanna do any of this kind of work where you're gonna be working directly one -on -one with clients and taking this much responsibility in their lives, take, take care of your mental health first. That's just, I cannot stress enough how important that is.

0:33:42 Thomas: Yeah.

0:34:14 Thomas: Thanks so much for telling both of those stories, by the way. So instructive, both of them. Is it comes to other successes, I guess, again, ordinary success stories to pin your kind, bit of your mental health on? I don't know, like, are there, are there, okay, this person, you, the stakes are not murder, I'm sure, but like, this person was gonna get deported, um, something stupid, but I was able to save them. Are there more like everyday successes that you're able to stack up in a way that would help deal with some of this mental health burden, or is the system truly so shitty that when people are, are your door, it's, it's a low batting average kind of thing where you're just scrambling to try to help them?

0:34:52 Matt: Fortunately, my entire practice is not deportation defense. It's just a lot of what we Do. But so I do have a lot work with USCIS where you can actually take a lot of pleasure in doing something quickly and efficiently and getting it right and helping someone get their residency faster than they might have otherwise.

0:34:54 Thomas: Sure. Yeah. So

0:35:05 Matt: That feels good. Oh, I'm sorry. With citizenship and immigration services. So, you know, what people would call the legal side of immigration, right? The people who are applying for things, right. So we do the the full gamut. And that could be very rewarding in itself, because CIS, things can really get hung up. As you can imagine, it's a huge bureaucracy. And just kind of getting things unjammed, getting them back where they should be and getting people fixed, yeah, yeah, feels good.

0:35:05 Thomas: What's USCIS? Oh, okay. Gotcha. Yeah, that's a great example. It's something where I'm Sure, if you weren't able to help him, do these tend to be people who are really, you want to get that secure foothold to know they're going to be able to be with their loved ones and not worry about being deported? Any

0:35:38 Matt: You're right. It's mostly people with U.S. citizen spouses and kids and people that need them in their lives here. Otherwise, But even just helping somebody get a professional visa quickly is fulfilling. Helping an artist who has really contributed something and has something to give this country, and I'm not that much of a nationalist, but you know what I mean,

0:35:46 Thomas: Yeah. Going to say like, I'm sure we already both agree. I don't really give a shit if someone has, if someone needs to live here, they should be able to live in my book, but yeah.

0:35:57 Matt: No, of course. No, no. Now, smoke smoke weed and sit on your couch. I really don't care, but I don't. That's always bothered me with the DACA thing, and I think I might have fallen into that before of talking about exceptionalizing young people who have DACA, because there are a lot of them. There are a bunch of people who are exceptional.

0:36:01 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. This. I interviewed somebody on SIO DACA and I remember the first thing too, was I referred to, or, and everybody kind of says DACA recipient, you and I can't remember what the better term was, but that wasn't a good term because again, from my memory, you can correct me if I'm wrong. DACA is like, Hey, we're going to help you pay tax money to the government.

0:36:32 Matt: Yeah, right.

0:36:32 Thomas: It. And it's like, wow, I'm a recipient of give you money.

0:36:33 Matt: You exist.

0:36:36 Thomas: Awesome. It's calling it recipient was, and it's just the natural language. I think that's kind of just like, oh, you know, that's what they're referred to as in the media and stuff. And I just never thought of it. And it'S like, yeah, recipient. What do you, I mean, anyway, it's, it'S so many ways that our language kind of fails to, to just communicate how stupid and capricious a lot of this stuff is.

0:36:43 Matt: You Yeah.

0:36:56 Matt: Got a great example of that, actually, I wanted to mention, since you just mentioned the language. And language is so important, obviously, in the law, but especially in this kind of law where they're constantly trying to mask the human parts of it. They want to make it seem as cold and neutral as possible. So before the big reform in 97, when the law changed, the act of 96 and a change in 97.

0:37:00 Thomas: But Mm hmm. Mm hmm, yeah, right.

0:37:15 Thomas: I won't make you explain all of that, but give us something. The what of 90 what and the what? Yeah, yeah.

0:37:16 Matt: Yeah. 1996, Joe Biden, among many other people, pushed through the largest immigration reform that's happened pretty much since 1996. Since then, nothing has really passed, as you know. So one of the things that this bill did is it changed deportation proceedings to removal proceedings. And it's a small change, but I think it's extremely significant because everybody knows that deportation is sort of an act of state violence, right?

0:37:43 Matt: You're being grabbed off the street and sent out to your country. You're literally being deported, right? But removal is what you do to a stain on your couch or a tree stump in your yard, right? And it's this sort of inanimate, inhuman thing that you're doing to people. And I use deportation when I talk about deportation proceedings. I know they're called removal proceedings. Please don't correct me.

0:37:43 Thomas: Yeah,

0:38:06 Matt: Somebody will.

0:38:07 Thomas: Ever get a correction, I am going to play God, what movie it is. Oh, it might be, okay, it's too obscure, but it's like Mystery Men or something, and Sim's saying, ah, don't correct me, and if you ever get that, I will gladly play that clip, because that is a totally valid stand to take. Yeah, if it's reading too much into it, but yeah, we also have waste removal. Like, is it that kind of, you think it's that kind of language that that is sort of driven to yeah yeah yeah oh horrible

0:38:20 Matt: Yeah. Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You're an inconvenience. Yeah? Yeah, you're not a person. And was actually sort of indicative of the changes that bill made. And I'm sure you know, we should talk about this bill sometime. It's a really important part of the immigration story. But we could also talk about non immigration things. I have a number of things to talk about.

0:38:35 Thomas: Yeah and we will, I'm sure, but yeah.

0:38:47 Matt: I mean, today, too, I have some other thoughts. Because I am primarily an immigration and criminal defense attorney, but I have a wide range of appellate experience and done a number of other things. But I wanted to talk about a more positive, immediately lower stakes thing that I got to work on about 10 years ago. Was a grassroots effort here in my neighborhood, here in East Boston. And I should tell you, East Boston is a predominantly immigrant neighborhood, at least it has been until recent gentrification. It's historically always been Boston's immigrant neighborhood. I live and work here and I have since 2007, very proud of that.

0:38:47 Thomas: Oh oh oh, okay. I've Seen Goodwill Hunting. I know there's many different kinds of white people there from they come from other white places, I'm just kidding.

0:39:23 Matt: Right. That's correct. Dulce Sloan said Boston's the only place where white people are racist against different kinds of white people. And there's still some truth in that, I think. But East Boston has always been kind of the dumping grounds of the city, and it's where the airport is, and uh, it's it's where a lot of our industrial stuff is, and they wanted to put a gigantic casino a couple miles from my house, and I should make it about my house, it was the neighborhood, that wasn't why I got into it, the casino Yeah, but I, I had the chance to work on this grassroots campaign as their attorney, and you can do, I, this is just a easy pro tip for people who want to go to law school: if you don't give a shit about getting paid, you can do whatever you want. That's my advice.

0:39:35 Thomas: Yeah yeah.

0:39:52 Thomas: Case wasn't Matt's house, the city of, yeah.

0:40:08 Thomas: Yeah can

0:40:09 Matt: You can just jump in and call yourself him.

0:40:11 Thomas: Tell you something incredibly stupid, um, always dreamed that the end game of, uh, on OA would be somehow being able to pass the bar and somehow just doing something for people who have no help. I don't know what or how or what time I would have to do it, but in the back of my mind, it was this stupid fantasy that some, I don't even care if it's like one thing, it was like, all right, one time a year, I could somehow just help somebody who doesn't have any way to get that legal help because, ah, it takes a lot of resources, to put it mildly. Was that always kind of this dumb fantasy of mine? And I, you know, I guess it's still possible, but yeah, wish they didn't, well, the rules around passing the bar are just so stupid, but you just have to, you have to go to law school or have like, don't there's, let you just take the damn test. Oh, well, sorry make it about me.

0:40:47 Matt: It's not too late. You're still a young man. Be able to apprentice with an attorney, but I think you should just submit the entire body of work of OA. Just say, that's it. I'm ready.

0:40:59 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, you can, you actually can do that, but it is a, I think it's a long, it's along process. Maybe, you never know. Get that started. Sorry to make that about me, but we need a remember the true victim, Matt's house. OK, go ahead. Yeah.

0:41:13 Matt: Sure. No, no. I appreciate Property owners, yes.

0:41:22 Matt: I got involved because my clients were concerned about it. And because I started to do some research about casinos and about the industry. And as I'm sure you know, it's a dirty industry. It is really one of the worst we have in the country. And they intentionally put themselves into places where they know that they will cause addiction. And their model works on addiction.

0:41:36 Thomas: Can Yeah, yeah.

0:41:38 Matt: They know that there's a certain number of people that are going to be addicts that are gonna come into those places that will not leave and will just keep coming back. And I got really energized around this because I didn't, it's not what I wanted for this neighborhood. I love this place. And I knew that something like that was going to dominate the neighborhood. It would become a casino neighborhood, right? And we were outspent more than a hundred to one. And, you know, it was really just kind of a classic, like plucky group of misfits just doing what we were doing.

0:41:59 Thomas: Wow. What is this action? Exactly. What are we talking here? You're opposing like a permitting thing or what

0:42:09 Matt: It is interesting because it started as an election campaign because there there was going to be a referendum. And so we actually won the referendum. And the weird thing about this, this is just one of the many weird stories from my career. Had an immigration judge ask me the other day, Mr. Cameron, do you ever take any normal cases? And that's how I feel a lot of the time. Because we won This election, but this casino was going to be in East Boston, which is in the city of Boston. And like a quarter of it was going to be the town of Revere, the town over. And what happened was Revere said they wanted it, but East Boston said they didn't. So we ended up with a split kind of decision. And we all thought, well, they were going to build most of it in East Boston, so this isn't going to happen. But no, they just rejiggered the whole thing and they put it in Revere. And so we had to try to fight that because it wasn't really clear, the referendum didn't say that they couldn't build wherever they wanted to.

0:42:13 Thomas: OK, yeah, I've got there's

0:42:56 Matt: Turned into, so we got involved in local politics and I still am a bit

0:43:00 Thomas: No rule that says a dog can't make a casino.

0:43:01 Matt: It. Exactly.

0:43:02 Thomas: You know, and and-

0:43:02 Matt: Exactly right. And put it in Revere. Then it morphed into this thing where I had to learn, I became an expert in Massachusetts gaming law, which is funny because it had just been written, right? So I'm just picking up this thing that didn't exist before. And I got to go up here before the gaming commission multiple times and testify on behalf of this group. And again, all you have to do is not get paid, just be willing to run your finances into the ground if you want to do something like this. And it was fun. I had a great time and it was partly

0:43:02 Thomas: Yeah. Oh.

0:43:24 Thomas: Love running my finances into the ground. All right. Just

0:43:26 Matt: Yeah, that is one thing to warn people about if they do want to get an immigration law.

0:43:33 Thomas: As Soon as I have finances, I cannot wait to run them back into the ground in this new way. Yeah.

0:43:37 Matt: Just point them right back. Yeah. No, it's a very important part of your mental health as an immigration lawyer is to make sure that you are getting paid by somebody for something, the hard way too. But the casino thing was just such a rush because to me, ultimately, yes, it mattered, but it wasn't life or death like what I was used to. And I got to get involved in civil law, which I hadn't really done before. And I had a great time just really kind of doing that.

0:43:39 Thomas: Yeah.

0:43:57 Thomas: Did did you win What is the thing? Did you, did you look at a phone record? Was it the ha- the casino did call the something or

0:44:02 Matt: No, were just really annoying. That's the easiest way.

0:44:07 Thomas: Other way, you win things, okay, and then in the law, yeah, yeah.

0:44:10 Matt: Oh, no, I'm telling you. Honestly, that actually translates back to the last story, to district court too. One of the best ways to win a district court case I've recently proven is just to be very annoying. And eventually maybe you get your way. But no, a lot about local politics and about sort of the lay of the land here, I had a great time. And it was just one of those things where I never would have expected to ever get involved with gaming law, but I was interested in it. And that's kind of how I judge my work is what I want to be doing is, is it going to be fun and rewarding? Now, detained immigration cases are not fun, but they are rewarding. And I make sure at this point, my assistant doesn't let me have more than one at a time. I do actually have two right now. Cheating, but yeah.

0:44:38 Thomas: Of course, yeah. Shit don't tell your assistant, okay.

0:44:46 Matt: Yeah, now I had to break a tear because I do much better work when I'm just doing one at a time, and I have my regular caseload, but it's also more about just making sure I don't get bogged down. There was a time when I was doing six or seven.

0:44:57 Thomas: But I mean, how much of this, not to not to derail you, but like, how much of this is just yet another reason why this is such a hard thing to help people with? You know, it's like the people who are, are the most in need are, and the people who want to help those people are going to, it's the most like mentally difficult, you know, mental health impacting thing. And it's like, yeah, I can take one or two at a time. And I, and I, 1 million percent get it, but isn't it just another way that the, kind of the deck is stacked against some of these folks?

0:45:30 Matt: Well, I want to say too, I'm in Boston, which as you might know, if you check a map, it's several thousand miles from the southern border. So we're a little isolated from the real chaos. I went down to the border a number of times to volunteer in Tijuana with Ella Trelato and the amazing work they're doing down there. And those people are on the front lines, and the people on the border are on their front lines that are actually seeing just people and people and people.

0:45:37 Thomas: Good point. Yeah.

0:45:49 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah.

0:45:55 Matt: It's somewhat more refined by the time it gets up to Boston. People are coming to live with the family. They're situated, they're settled. But dealing with these raw cases of people, especially during the Trump years when they're detaining families the way that they were and them. I mean, it was just the raw human of that. Even just the volunteer tier work that I did down there burned me out for quite a while. I can't imagine how they were doing it every day.

0:46:07 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I just wish there was some way we could get it to where that's of this stuff is the kind of law that makes you bazillions of dollars. And then the people who want to go like help a company pollute a lake have to do it for the love of it. You know, they're like, "Yeah, I just really, I just get a warm feeling out of the lake, actually, because it's acidic now. But I get it's a warm feeling in my heart, too. It went to my heart. I'm actually dying of the the lake as well.

But I got, you know, like it's too bad that it's not the other way around where it's to the kind of person usually that's going to be driven to a lot of this work is going to be a really compassionate, empathetic person. That's why they're there. That's why they're turning down the big Palooza Lake money to do this. And then you tell that person, "Okay, cool. Here's what you're gonna have to do." Through the most, most traumatic thing imaginable as a lawyer, essentially, over and over and over, and as much as you possibly can. Be interesting to talk to people in your line of work just to see on average kind of how they handle it. Do you try to turn it off, you know, but then does that have other consequences as well? I don't know.

0:46:26 Matt: For the game.

0:46:40 Matt: Yeah, it is.

0:47:13 Matt: Think that should be something we do, talking to people who are on the front lines. But I think, no, I mean, I've described my job before as beating my head against a brick wall for money. Mean if you're going to beat your head against the brick wall, you should probably get paid pretty well for it, but that's not how it works. Always had moral difficulty charging a lot of money for for an asylum case. I just think that feels wrong. But these people don't get appointed attorneys, and you can't win an asylumcase without an attorney, for the most part. So here we are.

0:47:15 Thomas: Yeah.

0:47:37 Thomas: Sorry. I interrupted. Back to your house v. City of Earth. We finished that one.

0:47:42 Matt: Now, yeah, I think we got the casino.

0:47:43 Thomas: Okay, good.

0:47:43 Matt: But yeah, and then I know.

0:47:44 Thomas: Oh, you got the casino. Oh nice. Are you,

0:47:46 Matt: Yeah, I go there all the time.

0:47:46 Thomas: That's how you're able to afford all this. Yeah. All these other cases. Yeah, wow.

0:47:49 Matt: That's right. Yeah. No, it was actually it was that I should mention, actually, that campaign was called the greatest sort of upset in Boston political history by our former mayor. And I was very proud of that, because we were outspent so badly. And nobody thought it was going to work. It was really taken as a done deal. But that's the power of just getting together and being super annoying, like I said.

0:47:59 Thomas: That's awesome. That is amazing. That so cool. Cool.

0:48:09 Matt: Otherwise, I guess I could talk about a few other things I care about very briefly here while we're here. Care a lot about drug policy. That's something that I really try to keep a watch on. I want to do an episode on drug scheduling at some point, but I really think that drug policy is holding back our human development and our flourishing or who we should be, because it's just to pick two, right? We have cannabis and MDMA are both schedule one substances. And it's unbelievable to me because do you know the definition of schedule one?

0:48:35 Thomas: Vaguely, but it's, this is a in which you should just explain it anyway.

0:48:38 Matt: Mention it. Yeah, I guess so. We could just warm up here. Means that you have a high

0:48:42 Thomas: It's number one on my schedule to go. No, I'm sure someone has made that joke before.

0:48:45 Matt: That's right. Go do some MDMA. You know, I've never heard that one.

0:48:49 Thomas: Oh no way. That's so funny.

0:48:51 Matt: You've made a new joke. But it's a high risk of abuse or addiction and no medical value, which to say that about marijuana is absurd, obviously. And I can tell you for sure to say it about MDMA is insane. And just the results that I've seen personally.

0:48:52 Thomas: Yeah. Oh So I guess conceptually speaking, and I'm sure we'll do more on this later, not to get too into it, but conceptually speak, okay, I get that that kind of makes sense as a definite, like that's the category you would want to be the, I guess, most restrictive is hear addictive, but is harm included in that? Or is that just assumed?

0:49:21 Matt: That's a great point. No. I mean, abuse or addition, I guess, implies that you're going to end up harmed, but I No, I've said that many times that if caffeine showed up right now and we never heard of it, it would be a schedule one probably. It doesn't really have medical value, but it's good for your heart or whatever, maybe the schedule too. But yeah, no, we are so boneheaded about this. We are just not actually doing anything to help anybody. And it's another conversation. But I like to say that immigration policy is really, of all the policies that are out there, I think it's the one that we have the least connection to as citizens, if you're born here, right? If you have the privilege of being born here.

0:49:25 Thomas: I'm addicted to caffeine for sure. Sure. Wow. Yeah, OK. Mm hmm. Yeah yeah.

0:49:54 Matt: Have to go to the doctor. We all have to walk outside and experience the weather, right? We all have to interact with these things that our federal policy impacts. Very few people have to actually see the immigration system in action. And I feel like it's been very important to me to try to tell people about what that actually is, what's actually happening inside it, and how, how it's been through four uh presidential administrations for me now. Oh, really think that it's is another thing that needs sunshine the same way that immigration policy does that we need to be talking more.

0:50:18 Matt: I know a movement right now to get Cannabis off the Schedule One uh list, obviously, but It was was never supposed to be there. Nixon wanted it there, even though he's told not to, you know, of the hippies. Some things I care about. And I think that's a pretty good overview of me. Did we miss anything?

0:50:13 Thomas: Yeah and Right. Yeah Yeah that I'm sure we missed a lot. I mean, given that I have learned so many new things about you that seem pretty significant to me, I am sure there is going to be plenty more that you are like, oh, did I mention I wrote the guitar solo from, I

0:50:44 Matt: Comfortably numb. The best guitar solo of all time. Yeah, yeah.

0:50:47 Thomas: And you will be like, yeah, I mentioned that, right? No? Okay. So, we will see. We will leave leave it for another time. Matt, this was, seriously all seriousness, really eye -opening, really inspiring, you not gonna lie, a little depressing, but that's not your fault. That's also just the state of the world and the system. And, but at the same time, depressing in a way that's like, yeah, I cannot wait to talk more about these things and to get people more energized on them and, you know, to be part of the long, but necessary fight to make some positive change.

0:51:17 Matt: Absolutely. I'm all for it. To me that I get to even participate in this project. I'm really thankful for it, and I think that that's the best place to end. From everything that I've talked about today, all of this can change and it will change if we want it to. Thank you.

0:51:29 Thomas: Right. Great place to leave it. Matt, Cameron, thank you so much. Looking forward to speaking more.

0:51:34 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.

0:51:51 Matt: Mr. Cameron, do you ever take any normal cases?

0:51:53 Thomas: As soon as I have finances I cannot wait to run them back into the ground in this new way yeah