Did The Supreme Court Just Make Protest Illegal In 3 States?

Transcript

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

0:00:52 Thomas: And welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1025. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. That over there is real-life crimigration attorney Matt Cameron. How you doing, Matt? What

0:01:01 Matt: Thomas, I'm resting off having accidentally crashed the Harvard Law School barrister's ball last night. Didn't mean to do that. I know.

0:01:06 Thomas: What's A barrister, isn't that a British thing?

0:01:10 Matt: Oh, barrister ball is something for some reason that every law school has. We had our share of them. It's law school prom, and a lot of people who went to law school, including myself, didn't go to prom, so it's kind of a big deal for us. And no, I knew it was because I was at the Fairmont and Compley Hotel for completely unrelated reasons. I happen to be wearing a suit. And of course, when you're a white guy in a suit, you are wherever you're supposed to be. Um, and you were supposed to me, I'm a white man. I'm not a white person. You are, is what I mean to Say. But, you know, either way. And if you've never been a white meant, that I assume you have been a white guy to see it at some point in your life, but

0:01:31 Thomas: Fair. Hmm. Oh, you're talking to me personally. I'm glad that wasn't like general advice to the audience. Cause that would get a little, little weird.

0:01:43 Matt: Oh, It Was No, It was, that was everybody. If You Just want to try it out.

0:01:45 Thomas: Yeah, well, I, there was a bit of a mini trend. I know it probably COVID killed it, but I think it was right before COVID. There was a mini trend of like adult proms. And many of us either didn't go or had a weird time back when prom prom was. And And then as an adult, you figure yourself out a little more. Go have fun.

0:02:03 Matt: You know, if you're about to graduate from Harvard Law School and go run the world, then you get, you should have a party, I guess. But I do want to be clear, anybody, I was not trying to go to the barrister's ball. I just happened to be at the Fairmont Copley having a drink and enjoying, you know, just hanging around in a suit. My friend had left and there was a bunch of colorectal surgeons in one room, and I thought that's what the event was.

0:02:21 Thomas: Yeah.

0:02:21 Matt: And then I go outside, I'm like, these people are pretty young to be colorectal surgeons.

0:02:25 Matt: And I saw the sign and I walked by and I heard a very large room full of people singing Party in the USA. And at least one of those people is probably going to be a nominee for the Supreme Court in our lifetimes. Quite a thought, isn't it?

0:02:35 Thomas: Oh, God. Nah, I'm already too old for that, actually. There's That's a lot of fun. I wanted to say that we are on episode 1025, and a helpful person on Facebook reminded that we used to reset the intro quotes every 25 episodes. And I put up on Patreon the suggestion thread we always used to do for intro quotes, new intro quotes, and up there if you want to check out patreon.com/law, have some new quotes starting next episode. So 1026 would be when we start that. And we're on the topic, you won't have to hear the break we're going to go to if you go to patreon.com/law. But after the break, what are we going to be talking about?

0:02:39 Matt: It's true. Well, We're gonna start off by talking about uh, Supreme Court decision that has been misreported pretty badly, and then we're going to talk about Biden's border policies, which have been misrepresented even worse, so buckle in. Yeah.

0:03:18 Thomas: Wow. Okay. Well, that's classic OA. OA. The news has gotten something wrong. I can't wait to hear about it after this brief break.

0:03:28 Thomas: This was one listener Thomas S requested that we talk about. It's been reported that the Supreme Court, like, made you protests illegal in several states, which sounds extremely scary to me. It's very believable that the Supreme you Court would do something like that. Um, I was pleased that you hinted that perhaps this might be overblown or misreported, so what's going on? Oh, Thank

0:03:49 Matt: Overblown and misreported, and I will read The actual headline that I saw, which was the Supreme Court effectively, effectively abolishes the right to mass protest in three U.S. states. It is no longer safe to organize a protest in Louisiana, Mississippi, or Texas. That's extremely dramatic from what happened here. So very quickly, this is McKesson v. Doe. It's been up to the Supreme Court for the second time recently, this is involving DeRay McKessin, you might remember from Black Lives Matter, very active on Twitter, know, great social justice organizer who was turning out people for a protest against the shooting of Alton Sterling. It was a particularly bad one.

0:03:50 Thomas: God. Oh, Yeah. Oh, Right.

0:04:22 Matt: I mean, there's no good police shooting, but a 37 -year-old black man who was shot while restrained on the ground. Of course, no charges were filed. This is Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It wasn't that hard to get people out for this one. This was a big one. And so he leads a protest, shuts down a highway. And was pre -COVID, yeah, 2019, I believe. And Baton Rouge police come out, and someone, I don't think anyone even knows who, tossed a large rock or maybe a chunk of concrete, hit an officer, Officer Doe, in the head, and left him with some pretty severe injuries. So at this point, officer sued McKesson for negligence. And

0:04:22 Thomas: Yeah. Was That one pre-COVID, or What

0:04:54 Matt: Kind of a funny detail in this that I found when I went back to the original Fifth Circuit decision, I to add hashtag Black Lives Matter as a defendant in the case. Literally the hashtag.

0:04:55 Thomas: Oh, Yes, please, this is so Great, oh,

0:05:06 Matt: Yeah. And the Fifth Circuit had to note, and you know, if the Fifth Circuit is noticing this, you're probably doing it wrong. Respect to Officer Doe's claims against hashtag BlackLivesMatter, the district court took judicial notice that it is a quote unquote hashtag, and therefore in quote unquote Quote, expression that lacks the capacity to be sued.

0:05:21 Thomas: My God. Yeah.

0:05:26 Matt: That's right, folks.

0:05:26 Thomas: Freaking That's Just, just like a police officer, hey, hashtag Black Lives Matter, stop resisting, you, that's crazy, hashtags Aren't people, my friend, sorry, yeah.

0:05:32 Matt: Yeah, I don't know. That hashtag looks a lot like a weapon.

0:05:36 Thomas: You, you can sue a lot of things in our country, right? I mean, You could sue, there's All, there's those weird ones that are like You know, U.S. v 10,000 salmon, or whatever, you know, Like there's these Weird things, but I Don't think you can, fortunately, or I don't think you've gotten to the point where you can see a hashtag.

0:05:39 Matt: You you can. Mm -hmm. Right, exactly. I Black Lives Matter, of course, is a movement and not really a hierarchical organization in the same way of other things.

0:05:56 Thomas: He eventually figure out to not sue a hashtag, or?

0:05:59 Matt: Yeah, that was cut out pretty quickly that he couldn't add them as a defendant. But I no, mean, this is a very much a leaderless, you know, and that's a good thing. I mean that allows these movements to grow when you have, it's just like hashtag me too, right? It's something that brings people together in a common cause And it doesn't require leadership. But obviously DeRay McKesson is a well-known civil rights leader. So he's out there in front of this protest, and he is sued because the theory being that this was an intentionally lawless protest because they'd shut down a highway, and that he's responsible for anything that comes out of it, which is pretty extreme.

0:06:05 Thomas: -hmm. Yeah, that sounds nuts. That's I mean, especially because you told me just unless this has changed, they don't even know who threw the rock.

0:06:32 Matt: Don't believe they do. I feel like they would have sued that person.

0:06:35 Thomas: That Seems necessary. You know, that seems Otherwise That invites an awful lot of bad actors to throw rocks and then get a bunch of civil rights leaders in trouble.

0:06:37 Matt: It does. And if that really were the law, then it would effectively shut down protests in a lot of places, I think, because nobody would want to lead one. But already perfectly good Supreme Court precedent in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware from 1982. Supreme Court found in that case that protest leaders can't be held viable for violent actions of protest participants, obviously, and if they authorize, direct, or ratify the decision to commit acts of violence. So you've got strong Precedent already. Yeah, it does. And so he was being sued, though, under a theory of negligence and saying that he had a duty of care to the people around him and that he was responsible for anything that happened to the protest. And so the first time this came up to the Supreme Court, they sent it back to Louisiana to the Court, and they said, "This is a novel question of state law.

You have to clarify it." And they clarified it by saying this was fine, that the lawsuit could go forward. And so the Fifth Circuit sent it back up to the Supreme Court. On April 15th, 2024, Justice Sotomayor wrote decision of the court denying certiorari in this case. And that was what set off these headlines. Lines. Now, remember, this, of course, is one of the few Supreme Court justices I feel like we can trust for the most part,

0:06:48 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. That sounds reasonable.

0:07:46 Thomas: Yeah.

0:07:46 Matt: Sonia Sotomayor. So I think it's worth considering her logic here and what she's saying. And I do more or less agree with what she is doing here, because the Supreme Court can only hear so many cases and certiorari exists, so they can sort of weed these out of questions that need to be answered or questions that don't. Basis for this was that than two weeks after the Fifth Circuit issued its opinion below on this one, Supreme Court decided the case of Counterman v. Colorado in 2023. And Counterman was a First Amendment case. And that was obviously a First Amendment defense here, saying that he was organizing protests, there's a right to protest, he can't be held responsible for things that happen in these ways. In Counterman, it was not directly relevant. It involved someone who was stalking a musician, actually. But the relevant part of it is that you have to have intentional words, not just things that are likely to produce what they call imminent disorder.

And that a recklessness standard is sufficient if you're talking about a true threat, as was happening in Counterman. The man was sending all kinds of threats. But an objective standard like negligence would violate the First Amendment. You can't have a negligence standard to hold somebody responsible for First Amendment speech, protected speech, and protest. So Sotomayor's point in sending this back was that we've already answered this question in Counterman v. Colorado, and that the lower courts will be wise when this suit does move forward to take our opinion into account. It's not very subtle.

0:09:02 Thomas: Yeah.

0:09:03 Matt: "Although the Fifth Circuit did not have the benefit of this court's recent decision in Counterman when it issued its opinion, the lower courts now, do I expect them to give full and fair consideration to arguments regarding Counterman's impact in any future proceedings in this case." So pretty straightforward Supreme Court kind of thing to do, to say this is already covered, we've made this decision. Our precedent directly is on point. And all you have to do is take this back to the lower court and show them our precedent, and the case shouldn't have to go forward.

0:09:28 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. So is this a case of where actually this precedent happened in between kind when this Fifth Circuit thing happened and now? And so it was a legitimate, perhaps mistake, or was it the kind of thing where this Fifth circuit is like testing the newly constituted awful court?

0:09:36 Matt: Right. Right? Yeah. Counterman came out after the Fifth Circuit decision. And so it is, I think, more a case just of we clarified this rule. And now counterman hadn't come out. I think it would have been fair game to take this and try to make sure that this was clarified. Counterman, of course, is not factually directly on point, but it established established this standard about objective review in First Amendment cases. So, you know, it's not ending the right to protest in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, which of course is the Fifth Circuit, and that's the point they're trying to make, is that in the Fifth Circuit it's now legal to move forward on lawsuits against protest organizers, you now, involving anything that happens at a protest. That's just not what happened here, because, it is. I want Louisiana, and Mississippi, Texas have plenty to protest, and we want to keep them at it.

0:09:48 Thomas: Okay.

0:10:18 Thomas: That is a relief. Well, and it was something that, if true, these headlines were obviously awful. And Sotomayor is the one whose name is attached to this whole thing. I was pretty panicked on this. This sounds like a big whiff. How did people get this that wrong?

0:10:38 Matt: It's a good headline, right? I mean, that's a lot of the problem with our reporting right now is if you can get some clicks, if you can tell a story that makes it seem like something really drastic is happening. Not willing to say this was drastic. Now, maybe if the lower court completely ignores the and the Fifth Circuit upholds that, then we have a case, then there's something going on there. But she's making the point that existing law controls. So that should be enough.

0:10:56 Thomas: Well, that's good. Okay.

0:10:57 Matt: Yeah. I thought so.

0:10:59 Thomas: Didn't take long. Okay, good. We can, we have saved plenty of time for something, that people are getting wrong and So, we'll is a big one. I know you've been gunning to talk about this kind of thing for a while. Biden's border policy. I know that's a massive topic. So where, what are we biting off for today's episode?

0:11:13 Matt: Yeah, this is something that listeners have been requesting since I started on this show, and I'm happy to do it. It's just going to be a lot of things we have to cover. We're not going to just do one border episode, but I also want to be very sensitive to not turning opening arguments into an immigration law show. That's not what we're here for. But I do think that this is one of the most important issues in American politics, in American life right now, is the way that the immigration issue, that the border issues are being addressed.

0:11:20 Thomas: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

0:11:36 Matt: And the rhetoric around all of this is fueling Donald Trump's campaign, just as it did in 2016, but it's supercharging in a that it didn't even in 2020. getting just new levels of that I can't, I have no choice but to call it fascist, like straight up fascist rhetoric around, And like how it's okay to call them animals and to dehumanize these people and to talk about just the claims that I have heard about the people that I represent every day and that I know know pretty well at this point. The main, main talking point over and over and ever again, every day on Fox News that you can hear is that Biden's border policies are responsible for the current migration patterns.

And that is obviously just not true. But it's not true in some really interesting ways. Because whenever I hear this claim that Biden'S border policies have any effect on anything, I have to ask people, what do you think those are? And that's what I want to talk about today. Like, what do you actually think Biden has done? Because almost everything that Biden has done with the border has just been undoing Trump policy and restoring existing law that was in place before Trump. So in very much the same way you might remember with the, the Bush tax cuts, right? Those were supposed to

0:11:49 Thomas: Tens. No, hundreds of caravans. God.

0:12:12 Thomas: Yeah. Right.

0:12:39 Matt: Be temporary. They become permanent. And then when you try to roll them back, you're raising taxes, right. It's the same kind of thing that you try to change the status quo back to what it was. And you get a lot of pushback because because people got used to the last, you know, exactly, exactly.

0:12:49 Thomas: And people have instantly adopted that status quo as like, well, that's how it's always been and how it should be. It is really crazy.

0:12:57 Matt: I hate it.

0:12:57 Thomas: That is a Powerful thing in our politics, and it sucks because it just is a really big force to keep entrenched power entrenched, you know, it's it's oh

0:13:00 Matt: Is. Is. To try to remove entrenched power as they did with Alejandro Mayorkas, right? They used all of these lies to file this impeachment that was only just dismissed last week, we talked about already. You know we had an entire episode pretty much about the impeachment, the articles of impeachment, and what was in there. And you think I broke it down and we were able to show that pretty much everything in there was either a lie, distortion or based on overturned precedent. Really just kind of a lengthy Fox News editorial. So just play a quick from Katie Britt, who you might remember from the response to the State of the Union this year.

0:13:37 Matt: Yes, one of the Republican Party's best ambassadors.

0:13:37 Thomas: Oh,

0:13:40 Clip: Need more border patrol and we need a change in asylum rules and laws. Doesn't the president see what we're saying? Absolutely. This is a failure on President Biden's watch, completely and totally. His policies are actually acting as magnets to draw more and more people here.

0:13:54 Thomas: She in a cathedral? Is this a, am

0:14:00 Clip: You see, he put forth about $1 .4 billion for, to your point, the SSEP program, which serves as kind of a red carpet and a white glove service for these migrants, which attracts them. And so, Assemblyman Lankford is exactly right. It's time for President Biden to come to the table. He should have come to the table a long time ago to give this funding to our allies. We have to secure our border. Sorry for interrupting, but you got briefed last week about

0:14:00 Thomas: I having a flashback? Is that what, oh my God.

0:14:23 Matt: So there you go. I just wanted to give a little taste here. I know that we've all seen this rhetoric. I just wanted to make sure we heard it straight from Katie Britt. Is the party line. Literally, this is what they keep saying over and over again, is that Biden is just rolling out the red carpet, white glove treatment, just begging people to come across the border.

0:14:35 Thomas: Yeah. When I think about the hell that immigrants have to go through to try to get here, what I think of is a cathedral. What I think is white glove service and a red carpet. Absolutely.

0:14:41 Matt: Yeah. She's also blaming the student spaceflight experiments program for some reason. I don't know what that has to do. I don't know either. The SSEP program, that's what I heard her coyly say. I don't know what that has to do with immigration, but I think

0:14:55 Thomas: Space flag. Oh, Did she just mess up her acronym? Him, yeah.

0:14:59 Matt: So. I don't know which one she was going for, but it's to try to encourage STEM for kids, which, you know, I don't know what the problem is there for migrants. But yeah, this is the rhetoric that just makes me nuts because it is, OK, let's go through some facts, like some actual facts. And let's talk about what these policies actually are, because right now this is actually really working. This stuff is really getting into people's heads. There's a poll that just came out today conducted for Newsweek that 20% of Americans surveyed think the US has control over its borders. And that's down from 34% in August 2023. So even just in that period of time, and people are generally blaming Biden for this.

And again, I can blame Biden for a lot of things. And by the end of this episode, I think I'm hoping to convince people that Biden border policies are actually fairly restrictive. We just haven't heard about those ones. Claims that were made in the Mayorkas impeachment really kind of fueled what I wanted to say in a lot of this, because let's just go even to the first page here. In large part because of his unlawful conduct. Millions of aliens have illegally entered the United States on an annual basis, with many unlawfully remaining. Again, no specificity as to what this unlawfulness was that's supposed to be drawing people in.

They also blame Mayorkas directly and that alien smuggling operations have gained tremendous wealth during Mayorka's tenure as Secretary of Homeland Security, with estimated revenues rising from about $500 million in 2018 to approximately $13 trillion in 2022. Is true. Alejandro Mayorkas did not have anything to do with that. Joe Biden had nothing to do avec that. Smuggling operations and human trafficking organizations have gotten very, very good at what they do, and they've taken enormous amounts of money.

And a lot of it has been by lying to people with massive social media campaigns that tell them that they're going to be getting work permits as soon as they land here, that Title 42 being lifted, which we'll talk about in a moment, meant that anybody can come in and won't be deported. Just all these very obvious lies that are just trying to get people to come here. And so the facts, though, let's start before we get into the actual Biden Board of Policies. Cato Institute, which is a fairly conservative libertarian organization,

0:15:18 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Oh. Yeah.

0:16:58 Matt: Actually is great on immigration. I will say, yeah, I'm very friendly with a couple of guys over there. And David Beer has just always put out great numbers and great analysis on this, because these are libertarians who actually believe in open borders, more or less. So it's those kinds of libertarians. And they're actually a great source for just straight up border numbers. And David Beer conducted a very thorough analysis of numbers taken from the House Republicans' own data that they were trying to use against Biden.

And he was able to demonstrate that, first of all, that Biden removed a higher percentage of border crossers in his first two years than Trump did during his last two years, about 51% versus 47%, even though Trump had many fewer total crossings.

And but more so that comparing the Trump years and the Biden years that if Trump were in the same position that Biden is in now with this massive influx that's been coming in that he would have released at least as many border crossers as Biden has during his time, and no matter how much he wanted to crack down, they can't do it, the numbers just are not allowing that to happen.

There, there is not anywhere near the capacity to detain and process people the way that the law is supposed to require. And that's one of the jokes underlying the Mayorkas impeachment was saying, well, you're not doing mass detention of everybody who comes across the border. But Trump couldn't do that either, and nobody could do that because it would require massive

0:16:58 Thomas: Really? Because

0:18:20 Matt: Tent cities.

0:18:20 Thomas: Of the Rules Of time and space, yeah.

0:18:22 Matt: Yeah, yeah, basic. And the fact that people do actually need to eat when you detain them, and they need to be able to sleep somewhere. These things, you know, logistics.

0:18:29 Thomas: The Constraints Of physics, I guess, is a big problem, and This sucks because it puts us into such a bad position because you the few people who besides you who actually do know kind of what's going on here is, who are genuinely concerned with this problem and who are not fans of Biden. So we in a weird position in doing any sort of coverage here where the voters by and large are convinced by the bullshit right-wing talking points. And so they think Biden is too soft on the border. And those are the people, honestly, because of our dumb system, our electoral college system and just the numbers game that it is, those are probably the people we need to reach most.

But then people, you us and to maybe our slight left are probably more accurately saying, well, hold on, Biden. And this is what you're saying. Biden is actually quite restrictive, is doing more of such and such thing than Trump did. And it's a weird place to be. I don't know what you know. Like, it just feels like a no win game for us. Like I I don't understand. I mean, I guess all we can do is just, you you can tell us what the truth is, but it does kind of suck that that's where we are.

0:18:33 Matt: Yeah. -hmm. Yep. Yeah.

0:19:30 Matt: There's no easy way to talk about this, because obviously I'm opposed to most restriction in a way that maybe even listeners might disagree with. But I'm presenting the facts the best I can, but I'm not really comfortable saying, well, look, our guy is deporting more guys than your guy, right? I mean, that's not really great either, right? That's not a great defense. But I think it's something people should know, because it directly refutes the major talking point, which is that somehow Biden is open to the borders. So I want to talk abou - I don't even even understand where the people are coming from on that or why.

And I have to say even, well, I shouldn't say even. I think we both agree on the New York Times. But the New York Times had the Mayorkas impeachment articles annotated. And I was getting very frustrated as a policy expert in this field going through their annotations because there's no pushback. There's just sort of like some notes about some of the facts and realities in this, but they didn't actually explain in ways that I'm hoping I can explain now in future episodes why some of this stuff matters and why, why it's just not true. And especially how this has been consistently what every administration has done since at least '96, when the law changed.

And a lot of this stuff goes back way before '96. Make it seem like some of this is somehow unique to Biden, unique to Mayorkas, is just a lie. That's really frustrating as well, because the president of the United States could very well turn on this issue, because this brings people out, this issue, as we've seen. It, it brings people out in a national way, in a way that it didn't used to 20 or 30 years ago. Has mobilized people.

0:19:48 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. And the thing that is bringing those people out is fake. Like the thing like I know there's a lot going on here. Obviously, there's lots to analyze. But in terms of what people are coming out for, it's just made up.

0:20:52 Matt: Right.

0:21:02 Matt: And again, you can see the numbers for yourself. I'll link to them. But Biden has not opened the border and he has not significantly changed policies. And in fact, as we'll get to, he's actually instituted a number of policies that are supposed to keep people from coming through the border and allow better channels for the people that would otherwise come that way. Some of these other policies are actually just repeats of Trump mistakes. And there's also a bunch of exogenous factors, a lot of things that just have nothing to do with who's the president or what else is going on in the world.

One of them being, as we're all very aware, the that major shift in everything that happened in 2020 and thereafter. Are a number of different push and pull factors around the pandemic, starting with Title 42. So let's talk about that very quickly. 42 has a lot to do with all of this because it was an unusual sort of freak black swan event around a black swan even, which of course was the pandemic itself. Title 42 is 42 USC 265, and "Suspension of entries and imports from designated places to prevent spread of communicable diseases." Now, this is not an immigration statute, to

0:21:25 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. Hmm.

0:21:58 Matt: Be very clear, this is a public health statute. So the processing of all of this for these people that were coming over the border had nothing to do with immigration enforcement.

It was literally just turning people around because "whenever the Surgeon General determines that by reason of the existence of any communicable disease in a foreign country, there is serious danger of the introduction of such disease into the United States, and that this danger is so increased by the introduction of persons or property from such country that a suspension of the right to introduce such persons is required," wired, etc, etc. So it gives the executive branch sweeping power to say, well, there's, you know, again, you can imagine if there was like a massive, like, I don't know, something horrific, like an airborne Ebola outbreak somewhere, right? Just some inconceivably awful new pandemic that was happening in, I dunno, in Honduras or somewhere, right? And so you could say, we can, we're just going to shut down the border the best we can to keep this from happening. And, you know, the irony of course, of title 42 is that Trump instituted it at a time when Republicans and Republican states, especially,

0:22:53 Matt: Were doing everything they could to ignore it.

0:22:44 Thomas: Sure. Oh, yeah. Denied that there was even a problem.

0:22:56 Matt: Right. Exactly. Because it's, you know, you're saying that there is a public health emergency on the border. And again, I know we both understand and our listeners understand there is no point in pointing this out. It doesn't matter. But, you know, Republican governors and attorney generals are doing everything possible to deny there's a public health emergency while also screaming about how we have to keep Title 42 in place to be sure that we fight against this public health urgency at the border, because it's the dirty people from the South that are bringing in, right? It's not that because we're not vaccinating and wearing masks. Title 42 was in place from pretty much the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 until actually last May.

It finally ended last May and the CDC tried to end it in April 2022. And again, the CDC has authorization to do that because they're the agency that declares these emergencies, not the immigration services. The Republican attorney generals challenged it when CDC tried to end Title 42, and they said this was being rushed, and that they would be facing a wave of migrants as soon as Title 42 ended. This was the talking point at the time. This didn't actually end up happening, but there was this thought, and I think it's a pretty reasonable assumption, that all of these people who were being turned back, because about, I think, 2.8 million people, totally, were expelled during the Title 42 regime.

That's a lot of people. And generally, it was understood that it was very hard to come across the border at that point, because it was being enforced that way. And again, because of this order, it meant you didn't get a chance to apply for asylum, which is arguably illegal, and you're just being turned back around. And that 2.8 million total, by the way, includes repeats. So that's not necessarily 2.9 million total people, but just total expulsions based on Title 42. a federal judge in Louisiana agreed with Republican attorney generals in April 2022.

0:22:56 Thomas: Yeah. Sure. Yeah, wow. Right.

0:24:28 Thomas: Going to get so many emails that it's attorneys general and I just, I don't care.

0:24:34 Matt: Yeah, from, yeah, so a federal judge agreed that, now this is a very common sort of thing, because Biden has had a lot of trouble ending Trump policies, just as Trump actually had a lot of travel ending Obama policies. It's not as easy as you would think for the president to just say this executive thing that the previous president did is no longer a thing. That should be easier, but it's not because, well, actually, you know what, I shouldn't say it should be easier because I think that we need to have protections even for executive orders to be in place. Case, you would think because he's the president, people think the president can do everything, including, yeah, well, he controls our gas prices. So, you know, obviously, but the Administrative Procedures Act has, as I'm very familiar with, has a number of pretty strict requirements about how and when you can institute and end federal policy. So there's something called the notice and comment period. I'm sure this has come up in LA more than once before,

0:24:41 Thomas: Yeah but one might think it was a lot easier than it is. Stroke of a pen. Stroak of a Pen Matt. Yeah yeah yeah

0:25:20 Matt: But you have to wait months between actually announcing that you're going to be doing a program and instituting it. And there are ways in which you can get around that. There are emergencies and times that you can say this has to go into effect now. But the federal judge found that there wasn't one of those and that they hadn't complied with the notice and comment period. And so that held the whole thing up until May 2023 for about a year.

Will say, I don't think the Biden administration was necessarily in a hurry to end Title 42 because it was very convenient, because it allowed them to continue to turn away people and to keep some control over the border in a way that they couldn't after it was ended, the in same way that all the other Trump policies did. But this one was especially convenient because it's not an immigration policy, it's a public health policy.

But by the time you get to May 2023, finally, the actual stated official public health emergency has ended in the United States, and there's absolutely no basis to keep Title 42 in place at that point. I said, traffickers did promote this idea, but there was kind of a period there where they were expecting a big rush, and it just didn't happen. And had, as you know, unusually high rates of people coming, partly because of the massive trafficking industry I was talking about, and they're coming from a wider range of places than they were. To do with country conditions in those places.

0:26:08 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:26:29 Matt: Some of that has to do with economic crashes after COVID. I met a lot of people that came up here because they were unable to live in their countries because the economies had gone so badly. And most them, for the most part, are people that I've met at least, are people that actually have some reason they're afraid to go back.

0:26:43 Thomas: And well, it just drives me nuts because as you think about it for two seconds, the difficulty and the danger of coming over and by the way, of risking giving all your life savings to somebody is probably going to rip you off. But still they risk doing that. That tells me there's something really horrible going on where they were coming from. I don't I do not understand this mindset that there's like if things are that bad, like, do you think that people just want to come live in America because America is so great and they don't like their home and they they don't, you know, like they want to just leave everything they've known and where all their culture is, where their history, they just want to leave that just because America is great and they want to come take our freedoms. I just, it's so weird.

0:27:04 Matt: And our free stuff.

0:27:26 Thomas: Yeah. It's so strange. It's weird to like have that mindset. Like my mindset is like, wow, things must be really bad. So like, let's approach it from that angle, not from like, well, no, they just, they're so sinister. These, these folks, they're so, it's such a diabolical plot. They tell you what, they want to come vote for Hillary. That's the thing. They want to come, I don't, all right.

0:27:44 Matt: Of course. We'll talk about that in a second. I mean, of course, and again, not that there's any point in pointing this out, and I'm sorry to do it again, but this is often coming from the same people that say, well, my great -grandfather came here from Italy with five bucks in his pocket and didn't know anybody, had no skills, and made everything out of his life, and here I am.

0:27:47 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Mm -hmm And didn't vote for Hillary.

0:28:04 Matt: But of course the story they're telling is the same story of the people that I'm meeting and the people who have made America What it is.

0:28:06 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Well But They Did it Whitefully though

0:28:10 Matt: Yes, that's right. As whitely as possible. It's a story of my great grandparents, too. I mean, coming over young with no money and, so you many American stories.

0:28:13 Thomas: It is a really cool story. I mean, it's it's, know, obviously it's problematic in certain ways and like some of that history is revisionist, I think, right? But like, that story, worry I've always liked that bullshit story about the country. Give us your tired, your poor, your whatever, and it's amazing to me that all Republicans do is pretend to worship America and call everything America first and blah blah blah, and they hate every single thing that makes America unique. Yeah.

0:28:28 Matt: Sure.

0:28:41 Matt: No, absolutely. I mean the country obviously was built on settler colonialism, but it was populated by immigration. I mean in a way that very few other countries have been. We talk about that and we used to as a fundamental core American value and immigration policy has been very important for that reason. So, you Know, we all know what the rhetoric has been like. But yeah, like you were saying, a lot of the discussion about this has been Biden wants all these people to come over because they're going to vote and because they are going to influence the apportionment of Congress. I'm sure that's what they are sitting around thinking about.

0:28:49 Thomas: Yeah. Right.

0:29:08 Thomas: Which at least that is at least kind of real, right? Like that's they're not voting, like you're doing, you can't just come here as an illegal immigrant and vote, vote. That's absurd. Like it's not even, you've risked everything to get here. And then you're to cast one vote in our stupid system where your vote doesn't even count anyway. And in all, but like three States, you know, where it matters, you're going to risk, like, it's crazy.

0:29:28 Matt: I get my neighbors to vote. I am trying. The people who have lived here forever. Get out and vote. We have such low turnout, even in Boston, which is a pretty engaged city.

0:29:38 Thomas: Yeah. But the apportionment thing is at least somewhat that, that sounds like it's at least based on something that's kind of real. Like that is true that, you Know, they, they do take into to account, or they're supposed to take into account, any people, not just like registered voters or citizens, right? Yeah.

0:29:46 Matt: Yes. And of course, a lot of these people are going to settle in blue cities and blue areas. So that is the concern. But that is not at all. I mean, Biden would very much be happy to have the border more or less shut down if he could do it. Any president would. They don't want these optics. They do not want these stories. This is not fun for him or for any of the people that are trying to manage this. But of course the irony being that Biden is actually trying to follow the law.

And they are being told that they are lawless and that this is somehow they are just opening the border and they just do not care about the law, when in fact it is all the way the other direction, that they're actually trying to follow the law and process people according to the law, and give them all the due process to which they're entitled. And that's what's happening here.

And the difference, of course, under Trump, and the many policies that Biden undid starting on his first day, is you had policies like Remain in Mexico, which required asylum seekers to wait in dangerous conditions illegally in another country before they could present their claims. And most of them were not able to do that because, you know, just it's years sometimes between court dates. And people just gave up because they weren't able to live safely in Mexico. They're targets, a lot of those migrants in those areas.

Had an asylum ban, like a straight up ban on asylum for anybody who didn't come through a port of entry and while trying to make it as hard as possible to come through the ports of entry, almost impossible. Was illegal under international law because anyone present in the United States, lawfully or otherwise, has an an absolute right to file an asylum claim. That is just a basic principle of international law.

0:30:05 Thomas: Yeah. Makes Sense to me. Yeah.

0:31:16 Matt: Had, obviously, the Trump administration ending temporary protected status, trying to end DACA. Things that Biden has done his best to reverse, he couldn't reverse the DACA thing because that ended up being upheld by a judge. And the border wall, right? Putting just like illegally reapportioning DOD money into a border wall that does nothing for the problems that we're talking about, um, travel ban, right, which we all know, you, from majority Muslim countries.

0:31:31 Thomas: That Ought to stop the border. Well, plus we border, several Muslim countries, so

0:31:40 Matt: Exactly, like keeping people from coming legally, right? That's a great way to have more order at the border. Well, of course, yeah, we gotta watch out for Canada, I guess, um, so, and well, the thing is too, by the end of it, this is something I'd love to talk about another time, but the travel band, uh, and the immigration ban, it wasn't just travel ban, but it became an immigrant visa ban. It was extended to Nigeria, which is not a majority Muslim country and has some issues, obviously, with Boko Haram. But they continuing to allow non -immigrant visas, student visas and tourist visas, but they were banning people from immigrant visas, which makes no sense.

If you really think there's a security issue, you're going to let people come in under the lesser screening, but you're gonna keep them from coming through their spouses and their families. It's just so obvious what you're doing at that point, that you're restricting the the largest, the most populous African nation from coming here. It's not even hidden at that point. So Biden had a lot of work to do in undoing all of these unlawful policies, trying to restore the law back to what it was. But as I said, that becomes lawlessness. That becomes Biden the border. And

0:31:48 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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0:34:07 Matt: Me just explain, because I just assume people know this stuff, and I really shouldn't. Let me be sure that everyone understands what is going on here.

0:34:11 Thomas: Yeah. You can be forgiven if you say anything obvious that we all know, because there's so much misinformation that I do really think it's necessary. Like, I don't know what I've absorbed that's just incorrect. Like, honestly. So to start, we border Mexico, right? I don't know what to believe anymore. Yeah.

0:34:27 Matt: Yeah. Turns out quite a lot of us border Mexico. It's a very large and uncontrolled, border. Like it's not something that you can possibly ever. And that's another big thing central to this, right, is that the idea that you could somehow close a border of that size when so much of It can't even be patrolled. Right. And so there's that. But there's also the fact that people coming to our borders have an absolute right under international law to claim asylum at the border and be admitted for the possibility that they are afraid to return to their countries and have those claims heard. So you cannot actually close the border. It's just not a thing you can do. You can't overturn both international law and domestic law.

It has been since at least 1980 that this has been codified, that you have to allow these people to process their claims. So Trump was finding every possibility he could, lawfully or otherwise, to keep asylum seekers from processing those claims, mostly unlawfully. By restoring all of this, Biden returned to status quo. And at a time when there was a new influx of people coming, it was just terrible timing, but he didn't open the borders. He just restored the rule of law at the border. Disorder, and I know that just sounds like you rhetoric, but that is what he did.

0:34:34 Thomas: Sure. Ridiculous. Yeah.

0:35:32 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:32 Matt: There's no really better way to say it. Um, not only that, but you are making claims about things like, you know, 85 percent of migrants are being allowed into the country under Biden. It has some months, maybe it has been something like that number, but I found that overall on average throughout the Biden administration, as of, I think, through last, last October or so, the numbers I found, about on average, 35% % of people apprehended at the border have been released for further processing. So that's, you know, and again, this is concomitant, more or less, and actually more so for years, than the Trump enforcement. So you can't say this is open borders. You can't saying that this is anything other than just trying to follow the law and let people in to process these claims. It's just that there's this unprecedented wave, from from what I can tell, there's just bigger numbers than there ever have been before.

0:36:16 Thomas: So that part is true, because I genuinely wonder about that. Like, I don't, they you make a huge deal about it, and I even hear Democrats buying into that. So the part where there are more people than normal is true. Can you give us any indication of scale of that? Yeah, is that?

0:36:32 Matt: And, of. There's so many ways to play with these numbers and so many way ways to lie with statistics and these things. So first of all, I think that I could be wrong, but I don't think we've actually reached the peak that we reached in '99-2000. So there was actually a massive, massive wave. And that was, of course, when the economy was very, very good before 9-11. And, and that is the major pull factor for immigration. It's not because they're coming for free stuff, it's because they're coming to work and the jobs are here. And as we've discussed a couple of weeks ago in the Francis Scott Keybridge episode, there are major sectors of the American economy that badly need the labor that's coming over. Even is so low right now, right? That is, if you track the border numbers for the most part, up and down, real big times, the boom times are going to be coinciding with economic growth.

0:36:34 Thomas: Mm-hmm.

0:37:14 Thomas: Makes

0:37:15 Matt: So, lying with a lot of these numbers, they're pumping these things up, they're making it sound worse, but we are in a period of high migration. That is true, uh,

0:37:15 Thomas: Sense. I saw some stock footage where there's at least, I don't know, dozens, maybe 100 people walking. Fucking that means definitely millions all the time

0:37:27 Matt: Yeah. Yeah, and they're turning themselves in, by the way. They're not running across the border and disappearing. They're turning themselves in to Border Patrol so they can be processed, which again is the lawful process that you follow. So when people are saying that, even talking about them, and I don't use this word, I consider this to be an offensive word, but talking about themselves as illegal aliens, as illegals, right? That's not true. If you're turning yourself in and going through a lawful process, you're being paroled in, you are being allowed to be here, you've been given a work permit, um, you're allowed to be here until your case is finished. That's not illegal immigration. Don't know how else to say it, uh,

0:37:31 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Well, Then I'll say it. It's like if, at the end of The Fugitive, they still were just calling Harrison Ford the fugative all the time. Like, what, I'm not the, I'm not a fugitive, I turned my, I'm, it's all, it's all legal now, we're all, we're all good now. He's the fugive just forever, he's just a fugative.

0:38:08 Matt: Yeah. Well, and we just don't like the way you did it, this is really what it comes down to, right? I mean, you should have done it, should have done the right way, well, what's the right way.

0:38:13 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, which which, fair. Okay. Maybe bad comparison. I don't know, man. That wasn't a good analogy, but you know, you see what I'm driving at.

0:38:19 Matt: Right, right that's what you're saying, because, but it goes to the, the kind of thing, though, because that, one of the other constant miss, I was going to say misapprehensions, but it's just a lie. I think, honestly, some of these people might believe it. We're talking about people who make laws saying these things. They talk about how you should be seeking asylum in your home country. And what they're thinking of is diplomatic asylum, which we we're were talking talking About in the Context of the Mexican Embassy in Ecuador being invaded by Ecuador. Door.

Someone like Julian Assange is seeking, in the same instance, seeking asylum diplomatically in a consulate, in an embassy, that's very rare. That's not something that people can just do. There have to be really good reasons for that. And it's usually pretty temporary. But actual asylum requires you to be present in the United States or on our borders. So that's just a very basic understanding, right? But there have been multiple tweets and statements from actual members of Congress saying that these people should be seeking asylum in their home countries. And I, I don't know if they know that's not true or don't care if that's not true, but that's the fact.

0:38:32 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Yeah, it really could be either.

0:39:20 Matt: Yeah, I'm willing to believe either or both. Remember too, of course, in the early 2000s, we didn't have anything like the CBP that we have today. We didn't have the massive militarized border force because before 2001 we weren't thinking about it the same way, and they weren't putting the same kind of money into it. So we don't even know how many people crossed.

There's all kinds of ways that economists and people who study these populations have tried to figure out how many people entered at that point, but what we really know is by apprehensions, and even the apprehensions were extremely high, even with the enforcement they had at the time. In 2000, so there were a lot of people coming over at the beginning of this century, and there are a lot of people coming over now.

It's just waves, that this is the way things happen, um, at some point that may slow, it might change, it's, I just, again, I want to make the point that nearly all of Biden's border policies have just been reversing Trump policies and trying to restore the status quo, and that he has been on the wrong end of a series of events that have nothing to do with him or Andre Mayorkas or anybody else in the administration.

0:40:15 Matt: Administration. I'm gonna tell you about his actual board of policies, some of which I have concerns about, some of what you're good. We'll start with some of the good ones. Parole programs. Now, this was a major basis for the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas.

We talked about it at the time, but parole operates under INA 212 D five a, and it is a very broad provision that allows the Attorney General or the executive branch, basically, to parole any non -citizen into the United States temporarily under such conditions as the Attorney General may prescribe, only on a case -by -case basis, for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit. So this is an extremely broad provision. It's supposed to be.

It supposed to allow the president flexibility to declare different kinds of programs in response to different things. Um, program has been used, after for passed in 1952, and it was used in different times to bring over people from Eastern Europe, from the USSR, to respond to different wartime needs, right, of just bringing people over after disasters and wars and allowing a certain number of people to come over through certain programs, and is used at the border when people come in and they're applying for asylum because we cannot hold them, we don't have have the capacity, as we're discussing, to actually hold onto them.

So we parole them in, which gives them a basic lawful authorization to be here during the time that they're processing their claims. And that's about it. Can also be used, for example, if you need to testify in an American trial, or if a loved one has died here and you need to come to the funeral, you can apply for parole to come in for that purpose. It's not guaranteed, but you can ask.

But the difference with the Biden parole programs programs was a little unique because they systematized it in a way that is a little unusual. It's not completely new, but it's a little unusual. In, and fairly humane, understandable reasons. For example, there's a parole program from Ukraine after Russia invaded. Pretty straightforward.

I think even people who have a problem, or even people who support Russia, have to understand that you have a right to allow people who are fleeing a war to come in on a case -by -case basis, if you can show that that's what they're coming here, if they have a sponsor who can bring them in. A Pearl program for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, the CHNAV program.

And that is specifically designed to cut back on people coming to the border from those countries, which were providing some of the most border crossers, for obvious reasons, for things that were going on in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaraguan, Venezuela, especially Haiti and Venezuela right now are in pretty bad shape. I'm sure you know, I hope listeners know

0:40:14 Thomas: Oh, yeah.

0:42:27 Matt: That Haiti is completely without a government at this point.

0:42:29 Thomas: Yeah. No government. Crazy. Yeah.

0:42:31 Matt: Gangs are running the place, right? And so, you know, I know so many Haitian families desperate to bring their relatives over here, and that parole program works very much, I think, the way that Americans think that a lot of our immigration system works, which is that you just have a sponsor who can vouch for you and brings you over, and as long as they meet those requirements and can show they're otherwise admissible, they're allowed to come in, and that keeps people from coming over the border. So this is a Biden border policy, but it's not one that brings people to the border.

It's one that keeps them away from the border, and was, for some reason, one of the bases for the Mayorkas impeachment, was this idea that he's lawlessly allowing people to come in using the law rather than going through the border. So I don't know. I guess, again, it's not on us to try to explain the logic here or to point out the hypocrisy because it's just right out there. This entire system of parole is very open-ended on purpose under the statute.

There's not even much guidance on how it's to be used. But most presidents and most administrations since 1952, when it became law, have used it in one way or another. This is nothing new. So that's one of the better Biden policies that's made life a little easier and has tried to ease up on the border. They did a similar thing for family reunification.

If somebody is waiting on a very, very long family visa, and I think maybe we've talked about this, but sibling visas from some countries potentially could be more than 100 years at this point.

0:42:42 Thomas: Oh, wow.

0:43:49 Matt: Of them are a couple of decades, but it really depends on how many people are in line for that visa in your country because you can only give a percentage of so many to each country in each category every year. So if you're waiting to bring your sibling here, if your sibling's waiting in Mexico or Colombia, somewhere else, you know, that has a high percentage of people coming, this gives them the right to come here while they're waiting on that visa to become available, because the visa could be approved, the visa approval just means that this is your relative. We recognize the family relationship, but actually being able to use the visa is not allowed until you have a number that comes up that becomes available in the waiting queue.

0:43:50 Thomas: Like like in the end of Beetlejuice, basically.

0:44:24 Matt: Right. Exactly. Very much like that. If you're Mexican, you're going to be waiting forever the sandworms are doing what they're doing. I don't remember very much about that part, but yeah, the waiting room. Yeah, this is just an easy humanitarian program. And that wait was actually driving a lot of people to come over, right? You can imagine if you have to choose between being separated from your family for 25 or 30 years, or just having the chance to come over when you see that a lot of people are able to make it over, you might do that. So if you're giving people an orderly way, they'll choose that. They will absolutely take that over dealing with traffickers. That's what the Biden administration has done, that they're inviting people when their visas are approved, and they're waiting in this long line to have the chance to be reunified with family.

And their program's been working pretty well, too. So, you good stuff. These are things that kind of fill in the gaps and help to address real problems. Also some bad stuff. They were using a carrot and stick. They're saying, essentially, we're going to open up some of these new channels. And if you don't take these new channels, and especially if you're from these countries that are getting these special parole programs, we are just going to deport you immediately if we find you without permission here.

We made an agreement with Mexico, the Biden administration did, to accept Venezuelan, Haitian, and Cuban migrants who don't come through port of entries. And the difference being, of course, that if you're coming through a port of entry, you're processing through CBP right there rather than crossing the border illegally and turning yourself in, which is what most people do. But you have to do this through an app. There's an actual app that you can put on your phone called CBP

0:44:41 Thomas: All right.

0:45:42 Thomas: Called

0:45:42 Matt: One, which Yeah, pretty much. Well, it's about that quality.

0:45:43 Thomas: Health care dot gov. Yeah.

0:45:46 Matt: Mean, Famously, the CBP app, I don't know if this is still true, but for years, coincidentally or otherwise, it was having a lot of trouble recognizing Black people. Uh, just didn't really recognize the photos because it's relying on AI, you know, essentially, to match up the photo that you take with the app with your ID, having all kinds of trouble, you know, just matching photos. Um, the whole thing was a buggy mess, it was very hard to use.

I talked to plenty of people who've used it and may have managed to get through, but it was a lot of work. They made it very, very difficult just to make an appointment to apply for asylum on the border. And so if you don't use this buggy app or come through the port of entry, which is a long wait and very hard to do, be then denied the right to asylum and deported immediately, is illegal under international law.

Also made an agreement with Venezuela to start taking more people back. Venezuela is still one of the places that people are coming from. That one's a little complicated because a of those people are coming for reasons that Republicans, again, not that anybody should care, I guess, but the Republicans should appreciate, because they're fleeing a failed socialist state. Know, you think that would be good headlines, that we're taking in people that Venezuela is not able to support, or who oppose the Venezuelan government.

As a lot of the people coming from Venezuella do, that actually means that a lot of the people who are coming from Venezuela are the equivalent of Tea Party members in VENEUZUALA. Basically, they're PEOPLES who are pretty hard right or have fairly Republican ideas that we're deporting pretty quickly. It's worth, I don't know if anybody cares.

0:45:47 Thomas: Cool. Yeah.

0:46:59 Matt: BUT YOU KNOW THAT'S JUST SOMETHING NOTE TO know, you just making an agreement with Venezuela to take more people back, again, more enforcement. And these things aren't making the headlines. I'm not touting them, I am not saying these are great, I m just telling you these are what the actual border policies are. But it gets worse. There are two really bad Trump ideas that the Biden administration is trying to bring back.

Of them is the asylum ban I was talking about, where if you didn t come at a port of entry or through the app, that you could be be denied the right to apply for asylum. Now, you could still apply under this rubric for what's called withholding of removal, which is a lower form of asylum. It's like asylum light, basically, and it doesn't get you a lot of benefits.

And it allows the government to deport you at any time if they think that it's safe for you to go back. Asylum is actually a pathway to residency and citizenship if you win it. This asylum ban, as I said, is just flat illegal under international law.

The Biden administration tried to bring it back, and it was brought back before the same federal judge who denied the Trump one, and he actually made a joke about how it's like the year for sequels, that we're bringing back, you know, these bad ideas, because it wasn't the first one he'd seen. And basis for this 2018 asylum ban, originally under Trump, that was struck down ina 212 f which is a very broad provision.

I just want to mention very quickly: the president finds that the entry of any aliens or any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may, by proclamation, and for For such period as he deems necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non -immigrants, et cetera, et cetera.

So 212F is a very broad blanket thing that's supposed to be able to react to any number of things that might require us to shut down the border to some degree, to some people, for some reason. And it's supposed be, just like with the parole provisions, it's supposed to be flexible. But there's this argument that we can actually use it to keep people from coming here and applying for asylum. And that is just not possible.

The federal judge at the time, the same one that was brought back in front of under Biden, concluded that this is just an absolute violation of both international and federal immigration law, and that whatever the scope of the president's authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden. Been. Ninth Circuit upheld this and denied the Trump administration's attempt to try to stay that order. The asylum ban died.

To bring back in a different asylum ban, which was again killed, and I believe remains dormant at this point. Been reported within the last month or so that Biden is considering trying to use 212F again. Even this administration has to know very well that it won't work and that it's not allowed. But I think at this point, you know, they're susceptible to public opinion and to the backlash from all this as anyone else.

And I think that they're just going to be reaching for whatever they can. But I think it does go to show, this is not what they want. They do not want people coming over the border in large numbers. I don't think any presidential administration does, Republicans or Democrats. And this talking point that Democrats love illegal immigration, it just couldn't be further from the truth, historically, certainly.

Other point that I think is worth making is that stricter immigration enforcement, building walls and getting enough Border Patrol agents to basically link hands across the border, so I think what they're going going for just a unified human chain, um.

0:50:01 Thomas: Yeah, also.

0:50:02 Matt: That does is, is drive up attempts at illegal migration and it also makes them more dangerous, for the most part, if you have. A more.

0:50:08 Thomas: If. Anyone has. To go to the bathroom, it's like, yeah.

0:50:10 Matt: That's. True, you. Gotta swap somebody in, yeah, that's, that's a messy process. Uh, but it's, there's a lot of research on this, but because you cannot, the southern border is ungovernable, like it cannot actually be completely closed. And to actually close, close the border, to actually stop all traffic from coming over the border, which they've proposed, some of the more extreme people have talked about, would be a massive hit to our economy, because it is such an important part of our trade, that land border with Mexico.

Even talking about trying to close the order to what they call illegal immigration, which includes asylum seekers, is impossible legally. Efforts that they have made, made, make it more dangerous. And, you know, Texas, I'm sure you saw with the barbed, the concertina wire, right? And the buoys are trying to put in the river. All that stuff just drives people to more dangerous parts of the river to cross, and they end up drowning.

And the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, was out there on Fox News constantly talking about how these deaths are Biden's fault somehow. And he kept saying that all of these problems, all of this immigration and everything we're seeing, is Biden's.

0:50:11 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:51:08 Matt: Fall, that it all comes back to him. And, I think we, first of all, we have to get out of this mindset that everything that happens in in the United States has something to do with the president. I don't know if we're ever going to unlearn that, but it's just not. So this administration is not excited about any more than any other administration has been about illegal immigration.

0:51:25 Thomas: And I isn't something that anyone's figured out how to respond to, to something that's basically just fake, that is actually effective. You know, there are plenty of fake attacks from the right that don't work that well. But this is one that works with enough people. We have not figured out, it seems to me, and I don't know what the answer is. I also don't assume there's some super easy answer that Biden's just not doing just for fun.

0:51:37 Matt: Yeah, sure.

0:51:49 Thomas: I don'T know what The answer to this is, I don't know what the answer to combating a completely fake thing is. Because, you genuinely at a loss. I'm not sure what he is supposed to do other than we just have to try to clear up the facts and, you with things in a humane way. But I think there are times when I, It don't know if it's the right move, but I think there are terms when the administration is certainly judging. And me if I'm wrong, I think they're judging it'sthe right move to tryto combat this fake perception that these too weak on the border by being more restrictive on the board. Then I, like some Republicans have been.

0:51:49 Matt: No, no, sure, not at all.

0:52:19 Matt: That's true. And again, it is an election year and they need to win this election. And you're talking at this point that there's like 26 % approval, if you'RE handling an immigration, you have to try to do something, obviously, as a political person.

0:52:28 Thomas: 26%. Wow.

0:52:31 Matt: Yeah, that was February 2024. again, the word immigration, in the same way that Trump just throws around these words, right? It just means so many different things to different people. And a lot of what it means at this point is just lies. It's just things that people have no context for. And the frustrating thing about immigration policy for me always, and I always start my class with this when I'm talking to students about this, because as Americans, and again, I'm talking as American. We're talking not necessarily just to an American audience, but I think this is true of anybody in any country.

The policy that you're familiar with in your country is the policy that directly affects you. We all have to deal with the healthcare system at some point. We all have go outside and see what the weather is at some time. We live in an economy, but very few people, and certainly most people who were born here, actually have to do with the immigration system relative to the overall population.

We don't have a practical sense of it the way that I think everybody understands that the healthcare system is badly broken and is driven by capitalism in a way that is killing us, literally, a very real way, the immigration system kind of is too. It's very hard to explain when people have not had this experience. And I've watched American citizens who are trying to petition for their spouses have a complete turnaround on this. People who walked into my office and complained about illegal immigration and why can't they all just do it the right way, two years later when we're still trying to get this visa for their wife, suddenly you understand what we're talking about, you because

0:52:40 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:53:46 Matt: After seeing it in action, but of course in the same way that you can't, not everybody can have a gay brother and suddenly support gay marriage, right? You just can't have that connection. You can't make everybody have that connections, it's just very frustrating to try to explain policy that is so badly understood because nobody has to actually encounter it.

0:53:47 Thomas: Yeah.

0:53:57 Thomas: I wish we could do some polling on like trying trying to assess what people know about board, How accurate their view of border policy. That would be fascinating if anyone's done that.

0:54:07 Matt: Yeah. I that would be very depressing, I'm sure for me, but people don't understand how the government works to begin with, like how the basic structure

0:54:12 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, but if anyone has done that, it would be interesting. I know nothing works. There's no easy solutions. But it would be a signal to anyone who doesn't want to just be incredibly wrong that maybe they should shut the hell up for a second and actually study what's really happening there. You

0:54:34 Matt: I you remember of Congress and you're out there saying that people can apply for asylum in their home countries, like you should be deeply embarrassed about that, like that's bad, it's bad enough when like my neighbor says it, right? I mean but come on, come on, like if the the level of literacy on this is that bad, um, yeah, but that's why Fox and these other outlets can just say whatever they want because nobody knows and nobody cares and as far as most Americans, still especially older Americans at this point, seem to seem to think anybody who wants legal residency could just get it if they wanted to, but for some reason, they're just doing it this other way, right? They're they're

0:54:43 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, sure. I just want to do it the wrong way just for fun.

0:55:04 Matt: Yeah they just, they want to crawl through the the Darien Gap, you know, which has no roads to get here, you know, through Central America, much preferable to just filling out some forms, obviously, or dealing with lawyers. Well, that part I understand. But yeah. It's, this is just a little taste of my frustrations here. But there is so much more to talk about with immigration policy with the border, I want to get some really good experts in to help us understand this a little better. This is an election year. And I got to say that on the right, this is the driving issue. This is the thing that is going to be driving votes in very much the same way that I hope that abortion rights and reproductive freedom is going to be drivering things on our side.

0:55:18 Thomas: But also on the center, that's what concerns me. I think this is an issue that appeals to the center. And again, when I say it's an issue, it's so frustrating because it's fake. The thing they think is fake. Not that there's no problem at the border. Of course, there is a problem. There are not anywhere near the solutions that people think there are. But it's also the thing that people are demagoguing is made up. And so how do you, it's just so frustrating to know. It's like if you were getting a performance review and your boss was like, okay, first thing I'm going to do, I'm gonna ask a random person on the street to just say what they think you've done here at the company. And then we're going to review you based on that. And it's like, well, the, but they don't know anything. Yeah. But you know, you better get your performance up, mister. It'S like, I don't have, what do you do? I don'T know yeah cool I just yeah

0:55:43 Matt: Sure. Yeah. Right. This guy in Texas thinks you're way off. No, it really is. That is what we're dealing with here. It is very frustrating. And this stuff really matters because these policies determine country is going to be and how it's going to work and how our economy is going to function. This is not just sort of ancillary policy. This has core to who we are as a country. And that's why they're so determined to fight it as well, because we're getting to the point where we're not far off now, where I think that the majority of babies born in this country are not going to white.

And, that's the real thing. That's what's actually driving this, no question, is that fear. And of course, you see more and more people who are not white coming across the border, and you want to stop that. I think that's just the natural racist response. It's getting to be more and more obvious with the rhetoric that we're seeing this year, in a way that it hasn't been obvious in our lifetimes. It's pretty bad. So, a little reality there, for what it's worth, and plenty more to talk about.

0:56:32 Thomas: Yeah uh Matt. Well, thanks so much for that. I know we've barely scratched the surface, but very interesting info there. And yeah, share the show, maybe spread the word that everyone's wrong about the border pretty much. And that is a start. The first step is admitting we have a major misinformation problem, maybe.

0:57:37 Matt: Hope so. So, and, you know, again, this show is not just going to be dedicated to immigration policy, but I do think it's very important this year, especially. We'll be returning to this and we'll be bringing on some great people to talk about it, too.

0:57:47 Thomas: Right. Well, that's the end of the show. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Go patreon to patreon.com/law to support the show, Matt. We got to get on a lot of awful movies for the month. Excited I'm for that. We've got to Get On That. There's going to be that, the ad -free episodes, the goodies, the intro quote suggestions, so many good reasons to be on over there. Thanks to those who do support the show and make it happen. Thank you, Matt, for the breakdown. We'll see everybody on Wednesday.

0:57:56 Matt: That's right.

0:58:10 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. As well as TruGreen does it. In just three easy steps, TruGreen's online tools help customize a treatment plan for you.

0:58:28 Thomas: Now I have to watch an ad okay cool foxnews .com this is the problem all right we'll just we'll

0:58:35 Clip: Our science -driven expertise ensures your...

0:58:36 Thomas: Juste do you want to fix your lawn

0:58:38 Clip: Several border patrol chiefs say Biden's policies

0:58:38 Thomas: Matt okay here we go uh