Mass Deportation Is Much Harder Than Trump Thinks

Transcript

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

0:00:00 Clip: You must never, ever give up or give in. You must keep the faith and keep your eyes on the prize. That is your calling. That is your mission. That is moral obligation. That is mandate. Get out there and do it. Get in the way. Change happens because people care. The people have the power to make this life free and beautiful. To make this live a wonderful adventure.

0:00:38 Clip: I still believe with all my heart, America can be a place where no child is left hungry, no community is left behind, and no one gets told they don't belong. Country is always worth it.

0:00:57 Thomas: And welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1100, I guess. I mean, the numbering is weird, but sort of like episode 100 with me and Matt. Congrats.

0:01:07 Matt: All right. Awesome. Great to be with you.

0:01:09 Thomas: I'm Thomas. That is the aforementioned Matt, real life attorney. How you doing?

0:01:13 Matt: Feeling good. Ready to get behind the headlines on this one and talk about some of the stuff I know the best.

0:01:17 Thomas: Yeah, for sure. This is something that I know you've been wanting to talk about for a while, the mass deportation thing. I've been very worried about it, obviously. And Matt's going to set us straight on how this might actually work or not work.

0:01:28 Matt: And, you know, just like when we were talking about denaturalization of birthright citizenship, I want to be clear to say, I'm going to tell you how the law works right now and how it's supposed to work. And what I see is the weaknesses in what Trump is proposing to do. But I think the real weaknesses are logistical more than anything, because we can't necessarily say there are legal weaknesses when it comes to Donald Trump and what he might want to do and what the Supreme Court might let him do. So we have to be realistic about that too. Do I think that right now there is a fear campaign that I think a lot of people on our side of things are unknowingly helping with. I think if we kind of drill down on what this actually is, what it could look like, and what realistically the system can and can't actually do. I mean, literally can and can't. I don't mean legally. I just mean logistically and practically. That's well worth a look. So, we're going to start out with some some basics and we'll get into it on what Trump is proposing. And we'll talk about what we might be able to do in our communities too.

0:02:14 Thomas: I mean, this is something I did say I'm like the most worried about this running into the election. It's, it's interesting because it's like, yes, we need to be very worried about this and we shouldn't have elected Donald Trump. But it's like, now that he's in, we like we gotta be more precise than that. We You got to know which battles to fight and how and which our spots essentially. So, all it is that.

0:02:27 Matt: For sure. It's triage. That's triaged. That'S what we're doing.

0:02:34 Thomas: There's a word for it. It's almost like there's a word for it and it's triage. There you go. All right. Well, we're going to take our usual break. The ads at patreon .com slash law and support the show and this quick break, we'll get to it.

0:02:35 Matt: ThatS right.

0:02:50 Thomas: Right. So we can essentially do the pretend I know nothing about how or this, you know, the Ghostbusters one one. Pretend we know nothing, I suppose, about this and give us the one on one on how basic immigration enforcement works oh

0:03:04 Matt: I think that the media has done a terrible job of this, honestly. So I want to just make sure that people understand what the current system is now. And Stephen Miller, for what it's worth, has promised the New York Times that they're not going to go too far outside the existing system, that they don't think they need a new law, but they are going to be pushing it in ways we'll talked about later in the episode. But let's just talk about how immigration enforcement actually works? Because I think there's a lot of misunderstanding and a lot of unreal expectations here on both sides. First of all, of course, we know we have immigration and customs enforcement. We've talked about them plenty. And we talked when we're talking about the Tom the Homan and Stephen Miller, we were talking about ERO, which Tom Horman was in charge of, that's enforcement and removal operations. That's pretty much what you picture when you're picturing ICE, guy with the big ICE thing on his uniform, it goes out and arrest people. Now, the way that they arrest people, I think, is really misunderstood because people talk about ICE raids. And there were such a thing as workplace raids under pretty much every other president. Biden has actually not done a single workplace raid. And

0:03:59 Matt: Those are the kind of the big, big splashy ones when they show up to, you plants and farms. And they they did a landscape supply company at some point that was full of undocumented women, mostly. That wasn't a good look. But yeah, so those are the ones where they can get in there and really do some shock and awe and bring out a lot of people at the same time. And no doubt, Trump's going to be going back to that.

0:04:05 Thomas: Here's here's in Thomas Tom Smith's world, um, rule would be that for any raid he does like that there has to be a white trump supporter ready to do the job that the person was doing like they have to do they haveto do it it's got to be like yeah and they're your full-time now like you're you're it's not like oh for the day no that's your new job like if this is what you think is a good idea cool I guess you also must really want this job so they can just go ahead put them right in there that's how that's how I think it should work

0:04:29 Matt: One -to -one. Yeah. Right. Right. In a meatpacking plant in the middle of Ohio, in a small town, right? You can see how that works out. Yeah, that's sort of the classic classic ICE enforcement, I think what people think of. And, you know, that'll certainly be coming back. Donald Trump actually had one of the most interesting workplace ICE enforcement actions early on in his term. It was actually kind of brilliant, I have to say. Obviously, he didn't come up with it. But they did a raid of 7-Elevens where they went to a whole bunch of 7-11s at the same time, and they arrested like two or three people instead of doing kind of the big wheat packing plant kind of thing. Was interesting for any number of reasons around. Yeah, and it was also because it was the studies later of this showed that it was almost all franchisees so it wasn't then franchisees of 7-Elevens are often foreign-born it it was was an operation targeting foreign-born businesses a really racist way and in a way though that didn't necessarily do a shock and awe kind of thing like where you have everybody down on the ground you know and you're marching people at a gunpoint it's just kind of a casual walk in take a couple of people and leave but no no, he's definitely done some big ones. He will again. I should say too, when we're talking about immigration enforcement, this is something that is not all that political to me because I have worked now through Bush, through Obama, through Trump and through Biden, and I'm fully prepared to do some more Trump. And things changed. Certainly there's been a big difference between Trump and Biden. I'm not going to say there's not. Barack Obama, as I'm sure you know, managed to deport more people than anyone in American history,

0:05:12 Thomas: Like so the work impact is less or something yeah yep

0:06:00 Matt: Any one president in eight years. Talk about kind of the system that he left Trump, but he did plenty of workplace raids and he certainly carried out something that I think you could call mass deportation. I mean, we already do have the largest immigration enforcement system in the world and we detain more people than any system in world by far, except possibly China. We have no idea what's going on in China, frankly.

0:06:19 Matt: So that's very possible there. But there's only about 6,000, 7,000 maybe active officers in enforcement removal operations. That's one thing people people should understand right away when we're talking about logistics. That's the reason, one of many reasons, they don't do, I think, the kinds of raids that people are picturing when they talk about ICE raids, which is house to house, which has kind of like random sweeps of immigrant neighborhoods. Now, I'm not saying it couldn't happen. I'm saying we may not get there. That has never really been a thing, and it will not be a thing. Have been raids, certainly. If you see an ICE officer showing up at your neighbor's house, that's because they're coming to get that person for

0:06:50 Thomas: Was gonna ask about that so they do a workplace raid what do they need to do that like a warrant or nothing like a nothing what do They currently need in order to do something like that so

0:07:02 Matt: Typically, they're going to be carrying out, not always, but typically they're carrying out some kind of enforcement against that business as well. Targeting businesses that are hiring majority undocumented workers. They're prepared as soon as they get there, they have probable cause to believe that there's some kindof immigration employment violations going on. They can stop and search everybody, get their papers, try to figure out immigration status, and then start putting people into deportation proceedings.

0:07:22 Thomas: They need a judge but it's like because it's not do they Need a federal judge or do how does that work I'm just wondering of that component of it like who who gives the okay on this stuff hmm

0:07:31 Matt: If you're talking about criminal violations of employment law, then you're going to have have obviously a federal judge signing off on criminal warrants, and then everybody on the premises is evidence of that crime. So you need to stop them and search them all individually. If you're coming for one person, you have an administrative warrant, and that's not the same as a judicial warrant. That's just something that's been signed off on by an ICE officer saying that we have reason to believe this person is out of status or that they otherwise are a target for reasons that we're going to talk about. What I'm talking about with workplace raids, that is kind of the splashy TV -friendly version of ICE and what they do. The majority of what what ICE actually does is something that I don't think most people would ever think of. And that most people come into ICE custody is through being detained in criminal process in states and local jurisdictions. You're arrested anywhere in the United States, they are going to run a national background check on you. They're just going to quick FBI fingerprint, uh, I. And soon as that is run, ICE is notified that that person has just had a background check run on them and they will look into them. Have all these data centers where they're checking these people out all the time. Everybody's getting arrested. And if it's somebody where they can't prove their status, if they can'T figure out that it matches up to a known documented person, or if there's some questions about that person's status, they will look into it. And they can send a nice officer over to talk to that person in custody if they're being held pretrial. If they are being arrested and then told to show up to court on their own volition, that has been a really contentious point. And that is something that is going to be litigated again under the Trump administration. But ICE typically has been going to courthouses and grabbing people and taking them away from the pending criminal cases. And obviously very unpopular with state and local law enforcement, even law enforcement that generally supports immigration enforcement, because you're tanking some of these cases. If you're removing a defendant, you're moving a witness, in some cases, removing a victim. And you're also creating a lot of fear in the the community that they can't just go to their courthouses to do courthouse business, that if you want to get a restraining order, right? And it's really bad for the community, it's bad for law enforcement, and it's very bad for generally, if you believe in the criminal legal system as something that should exist in the way it does right now, it is bad for that system overall, because you have a lot of cases that just end up completely unresolved, because ICE has no compunctions about grabbing somebody right in the middle of their case, at the beginning of their case. Previously, there was a requirement that, for the most part, that they'd only take people after they've been convicted of something. The Trump administration opened that up. Other administrations have as well, to just after somebody's been arrested. And they justify courthouse arrest by saying that, you know, this is a place where this person has already been searched. They've gone through a metal detector. We know that they're not armed. It's better than going to their house at three in the morning and dragging them away from their family. It is better better than going to their workplace, but you drawbacks and benefits to all these things. The, the other way though, if we're talking about interactions with the criminal system is that ICE has contracts with pretty much every jail and prison, even in sanctuary jurisdictions and a lot of sanctuary jurisdictions, at least they are watching who goes through the jails and prisons. They know when you're going to be released. So if you're serving 10 years, you know for armed robbery or something they know when your release date is going to to be. They can get you ready. They can send an officer in there to serve you removal. They can send that officer in there to server notice of notice to appear in immigration court. And you can start preparing to defend yourself against deportation if you can. And they even have immigration court sessions that are specifically for people who are being held in state custody. So they can kind of deal with these things so they don't have to be sitting around in immigration custody because they get transferred when their time is up. ICE ICE just comes and picks them up as soon as they're about to be released. So that is actually the majority of people pretty much under every administration that have ended up in immigration custody have been people have had some contact with the criminal justice system. Now, under Obama, that ended up being a lot of people with very minor driving violations. Operating without a license was a very common way to come in contact with ICE. Can range all the way from that all the way up to the worst crimes you can imagine. So that is a place to start when we're talking about enforcement because you that is still the best way and easiest way for ice to intercept people to to be watching in the local and state jurisdictions so Trump has said pretty clearly you know he's been on this kick as we know about criminal migrants and talking about these people as criminals and from everything I understand from what they're saying and I think we can take them at their word on this they really want to start with people that have serious records and it makes sense as a pr thing because they they

0:11:33 Matt: Can spend a lot of time talking about and they're going to be able to plaster these pictures and these stories up just the way they did during the campaign.

0:11:33 Thomas: Plus they can triage too I guess they can they can prioritize especially if you're talking about the practical limits If there is, there are pretty tough practical limits, makes sense to start with the most, I suppose, most like popular part of it for them.

0:11:53 Matt: And you also get great stories on their side of things about child abusers and rapists and drug dealers and gang members, right? Because there are, I

0:12:01 Thomas: Late great Hannibal Lecter, just all these.

0:12:03 Matt: Right. Exactly. Right? Obviously Tren de Aragua and MS-13 and these other gangs that they've been up and down about.

0:12:09 Thomas: I mean, if they get rid of some of those guys, I don't mind. Yeah. Get rid of Some of the awful gang members. Sure. The stuff I would think would happen like a norm, like just normal times, you know?

0:12:12 Matt: Not the worst, right? Does. Yeah. And there have been some pretty effective actions, uh, even around here to, can't argue with the way they did it all the time, but there are real issues with the way that the immigration system identifies and treats people who are alleged to be gang members. And that can really be abused. And we'll talk about that another time, because, you know, there's a lot of people that are But, uh. That's been an issue in many of my cases, but, uh Overall, I think the PR strategy here is pretty clear. They want to numb us out. They want to get us used to the idea that everybody who's being deported is actually a criminal. And the easiest way to do that is to start with people who've already been convicted of crimes. Serious crimes that most people are not going to have a problem with deporting people over. When we're talking about triage, I'm saying, I know who the targets are going to be, because generally speaking, immigration enforcement has predictable priorities. And when you have very limited resources, they have to pick their targets. And I think it's a little disingenuous of the media And honestly, we have a lot of people on our side to act as if there's just going to be this massive random sweep starting on January 21st. Because we know that they have a list of people already who have convictions for serious offenses and also, frankly, for a lot if not very serious offenses. For example, a million people a year get arrested for drunk driving in the United States. I don't condone, obviously, driving under the influence, but it's an extremely popular crime that cuts across race and class and immigration status. And so there are a lot of people who weren't born here who have that conviction. Is not actually a deportable offense. It

0:13:37 Matt: Is actually, yeah, it could be used against you, but it's not, it's because it's considered essentially to be that the mens rea on it isn't high enough. Your intention is not high enough for it to be deportable. And the Supreme Court has actually upheld that way back. Can be used again. And obviously if you have a couple, two or three of them, you might be denied residency over it just as a matter of discretion, but, uh, it'S not automatically, but IT's, IT's It's one that they have been really big on because it is so popular and easy to find people who do it. But more likely, drug offenses, other things that trigger mandatory detention, where if you're arrested with certain kinds of convictions, including minor drug possession, I just had to tell yet another person that not only do they have a conviction when they were told they didn't, but that conviction for a very small amount of, I think it was about $40 worth of coke, that's mandatory. You have to be held and you can't be released on bond for that,

0:13:45 Thomas: Interesting.

0:14:19 Matt: Whereas

0:14:19 Thomas: If it was up to me, drunk drivers, that's worse than that. Driving drunk is worse than just having a little bit of drugs. Too bad that, Reagan you decided that's the opposite. It.

0:14:23 Matt: Way worse. Right. Every priorities. Yeah, and speaking of priorities, this is that every presidential administration has done coming in now, and we're going to link to all three of these memos, but the Obama administration had a very clear enforcement memo where they just kind of set their targets, and they said, here's one, two, three, here are our priorities. The Biden administration has something very similar. The Trump administration, when they came in in February 2017, they just said, we're just not not going to prioritize. We're just going to kind of go with whoever's in front of us. We're not going to say there's strict priorities. That is not a good way to run a system, obviously, to just kind of Go After Everybody. But they still obviously did put people with criminal convictions above everybody else, but they didn't have an organized kind of thing the way that the others had.

0:15:05 Thomas: Yeah. Now, what does that do for them? Obviously, like you said, there is the image of it, but does that speed them up? Is there a sense that they're able to do more if they don't have to prioritize?

0:15:18 Matt: Thing was that they weren't going to exempt people from potential enforcement? Because the Obama administration actually said, if you don't have a criminal record and your removal order is more than five years old, you're at the bottom of the list. You're not somebody we're actively looking for because we have all of these other people to look for. Again, 6 ,000 or 7 ,000 officers, potentially tens of millions, maybe, undocumented people, nobody knows. Still did have a sort of a priority list, but they wanted to make it very clear that they were doing things differently.

0:15:42 Thomas: It's like rhetorically, they didn't want to say like, oh, these certain people are fine.

0:15:46 Matt: And exactly, which Obama basically did because they they could they they had to be realistic they just couldn't get everybody and and Trump also opened it up so that as could pick people up who had just been arrested and not necessarily convicted also required officers when they were doing searches in houses looking for one person if they came across other people they required them to also pull them in And that was something that Obama wasn't doing. So what happens when you're actually, just if you're in a workplace raid or if you happen to be in that situation, and if you've never had any contact with the immigration system before, you're going to be put into immigration removal proceedings, which are deportation proceedings. That's in front of an immigration judge. It's not in front OF an actual judicial judge that's been nominated by the president and confirmed by by the Senate. Confirmed by the Senate, you're going to be put in front of a judge who is an employee of the Department of Justice, who is basically a DOJ lawyer in a robe. As we were talking about a episodes ago, the immigration court system is run by the Attorney General, by the Department of Justice. And so they have a lot of power there to hire and fire. Do have a union, so they Have some powers of their own to set their own workplace. But Trump put a lot Of pressure on immigration judges, and I'm sure that he will again, to try to set quotas, to try to change their systems, to Try to move things forward faster. Disaster, but there are so many pending cases right now that, they have been growing the pipeline, but realistically speaking, now assuming that they're going to be going through the existing immigration court system, which I am for the moment, but we're going to talk about some ways they may not, only so big, and it takes a while to train and to hire immigration judges. It's a complicated job. And same with ICE officers. Trump has promised to, I think at this point, quadruple the size of ICE.

0:17:15 Thomas: Yeah. I was going to ask how easy it is to staff this stuff up. Is it just a budget consideration does he need authorization for any of that or can they just find money somewhere

0:17:23 Matt: Stephen Miller has said that they're going to be looking for major funding and that they're already working out a package with income in Congress to do that they definitely will need more money to go to ice to do this but it is a matter it's going to take a while to staff everybody up and get it going and even if you quadruple the size of ice you're still even if you're just talking about people that have deportable criminal convictions and old deportation orders just those populations alone even ice times the the size that it is right now is going to have a hard time getting all of those people out. Just as a matter of priorities, just think about what that means, you know, just in terms of mass deportation. I think that people right now are picturing, again, I'm not saying I couldn't come to this, but they're picturing vans in the streets, just like pulling people out of immigrant neighborhoods and sending them to camps and then deporting them. And, you Right now, that's not where we're at. And we'll be watching it closely and maybe we'll get there. But for the moment, I think that it's going to follow pretty predictable

0:18:17 Matt: Going to be a lot stricter. And it's going to be closer to what Trump was doing during his term before, which is why I feel like I know something about what's going to be happening. When you're put in front of a immigration judge at the moment, it's taking a couple of years to get through that entire process. You have the opportunity at that point to raise any defenses that you might have to deportation, to apply for asylum, to apply for residency through a family member if you can do that. To leave voluntarily. And the judge can always give you the chance to leave without a deportation order if you take that deal. The end of that, if you are ordered removed, you have the chance to appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals, or you have a chance to just let the order go and to go home. Let you, at this point, when the removal order issues, it's not like an ICE officer steps into the immigration court and takes you away the way that you would if you're serving a criminal sentence. You walk out of the court, and then you have to prepare to go. ICE will be in touch. They'll try to facilitate your deportation. There are a lot of people that don't end up leaving, and those those are going to be the second priority after people with serious criminal issues. I will say anybody with a serious criminal issue who also has a deportation order can expect to be top of the list. No question there. They've already gone through the process and they're the lowest hanging fruit. ICE already has a lot of people who are checking in for one reason or another that they can't deport. And we do have people from places like Vietnam and Cambodia that won't take their citizens back. And so they're just kind of on a check -in schedule. Has been talking for for a long time about pressuring those countries, doing things as drastic as not issuing any new visas to citizens of those countries until they agree to take their people back, which is actually authorized by the Immigration and Nationality Act. So we'll see what happens with those. But those check -ins are the lowest hanging possible fruit. Those are people that they know exactly where they live. They know exactly that they already have a removal order. They are usually in the process of trying to negotiate with that country already to take them back, because even the countries that don't take a lot of people back do take some of them back. And it's kind of a trickle right now.

0:19:57 Thomas: The that's the other end of the equation that no one we often don't think about is like do we just quote-unquote deport anyone or is like you have to does have to be some cooperation with these other states right

0:20:08 Matt: Yeah. So, I mean, if you came here as a refugee and your country doesn't recognize you, which is the case with a lot of the Cambodians, Vietnamese, you don't have a passport. They're not going to give you a passport and the countries can just say, I don't know. I don'T know this guy. Never heard of him. Does happen a lot. Piece But by piece, they've been able to get travel documents for a lot OF these people. And that's what it's about. But the Trump administration was also eyeing some creative ideas, like sending people to the Turks and Cacaos, among other places, the Bahamas, potentially, just right.

0:20:31 Thomas: Just send people a different place just not even cool

0:20:34 Matt: Which, you an easy joke there, about how you're sending people on a tropical vacation, but it's not funny. I mean, this is, you're still talking about deporting somebody, potentially for the rest of their lives, and now to a place they've never really never been to, away from everything they know here. And deportation, I should say this clearly, is not considered to be a punishment under law. The Supreme Court has upheld this again and again. It is a civil sanction. It's just a thing that happens to you when you break the immigration laws. But because in immigration court, I want to say this as clearly as I can, as many times as I can, you are not being charged with a crime in immigration court.

0:21:06 Matt: You're being charged with a violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act. It is a civil offense. The outcome is deportation. It is not prison time. But of course, there a few prison sentences that can be as devastating as many of the deportations that I've seen, because many deportations are for life. You will not get to come back. And that is a really hard thing to have to tell somebody that has their entire lives here, that has her families here, that has kids with special needs, anything else. These things can't be considered in many of these cases. So,

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0:23:00 Matt: That's essentially how it's been the entire time I've been practicing for 18 years I've spent a lot of time in immigration detention facilities I've worked with a lot of detained cases I can tell you that there is really no psychological torture in the entire criminal punishment system that can compare to immigration detention because they're often people that have never been through anything like this before are being held very long long term in places that are to hold people with serious criminal records, you're talking about people that don't know what's going to happen to them from day to day, that don'T understand the process they're going through, that DON'T understand why they're in court sometimes, and who DON'T know from day -to -day if they're gonna be released or if they'RE gonna have to wait another six or eight months. You know, you DON'T have a certain date that you'RE getting out. So this is something that we used to presume we DID NOT do to people, and now it is something that we very much presume that we DO to people. And these detention facilities, for the most part, are contracted with state and local governments. They're just like an extra wing of a jail or prison that's not being used, and they're good money for those jurisdictions. That those contracts, but there's also, of course, private contracts with private contractors who run private prisons. We don't have those here in New England, but that's a popular thing as well. And as we've been saying, Joe Biden has the power right now to cancel all of those contracts if he wants to.

0:24:09 Thomas: Everyone should watch our video and share it. Uh, let's get them to do that. Cancel those contracts.

0:24:14 Matt: That's right. Yeah, it's just an easy little road bump you can put up there. Sort of the archipelago of the system here when you're talking about this.

0:24:21 Thomas: Are you saying archipelago? Man.

0:24:25 Matt: I think about that a lot, the book, is one of those books that really made an impression on me. I think I might have mispronounced it. But it I'm very energized about this because I have spent so much time in immigration detention myself. And I'm not saying that I know what it's like, but I certainly know what it looks like. And, you know, this is just not something that we should be doing to people. And I've seen this done to so many people who, and just the different ways it can throw your life off, even to be held for a few weeks when

0:24:48 Thomas: I was going to say like, what if you're, um, actually undocumented, but you can't prove it and you get swept up in something like this? How long are you stuck there? And

0:24:57 Matt: That usually you can resolve that in a few days, if it turns out you are actually not deportable and you do have lawful immigration status. But, you Know, the question becomes if you have maybe a sort of a questionable criminal record that looks like it may or may not be deportable, and a judge has to figure it out. Or if you have a very strong defense to your case that you need to prepare and go through this while you're in custody, it's going to be a while.

0:25:16 Thomas: You're just stuck in these shitty conditions it's

0:25:19 Matt: Indefinitely. Through your appeal as well. If you're denied bond, then you're going to be stuck there. Potentially, I've seen people in there for years. It can happen. Is the system that they're talking about expanding. And of course, you've already heard stories about places in Texas. I just saw there's actually somewhere in California where they're offering to start building these places, to start coordinating to get bigger facilities built. And of course, Trump has been talking about camps, which is a very concerning word to be using about rounding up groups of people. But that is something that they are talking about. Other major tool that Trump has at his disposal that Biden hasn't really been using, that Obama did use a lot, is under INA 287(g). And that is a special designation where ICE can work with state and local authorities and essentially deputize them to do some immigration enforcement. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be going to house to house looking for people. It means that when somebody comes into the station like we're talking about, you can actually have a local officer write up an immigration charge and send it on to the immigration court. That is force multiplier. That's something that has the potential to allow them to do a lot more than ICE could do. Especially if you're talking about people who are overseeing jails and prisons, 287G was very popular with those. It gives each officer, one officer in each department, that kind of deputizing power to identify non -citizens, interview them, get their documents and biographies together and make sure that DHS has what they need. And then they can issue detainers, which are the documents that put the court on notice that somebody might be wanted by ICE. They can serve warrants and they they can prepare people for removal proceedings and put them into court. So they're taking a lot of the work off of immigration officers by doing that, by doing the legwork. And that is something that is funded somewhat by the federal government, but you also have state and local governments sharing the burden on that. And it's something you might want to be concerned about in your community if you have your taxpayer money being used that way to do federal law enforcement.

0:27:03 Thomas: I did I hear you say something about like even in sanctuary type states they can somehow do some of this or

0:27:08 Matt: So even a lot of sanctuary jurisdictions have in the past had 287(g) agreements with their jails and prisons, especially with the prisons where they have very serious, uh, offenders and convictions. But one of the defining things about a sanctuary jurisdiction for the most part is that they do not work with ICE at all. So, and I think that's something I should mention very quickly. And I want to talk more about sanctuaries another time, but the basic idea is that you do not in any way help federal law enforcement agents at the expense of your local taxpayers. That's what sanctuary jurisdictions come down to. It doesn't mean that you're sending cops out to stand in front of an undocumented person's home the way that sometimes Fox seems to talk about it. It just means that federal law reinforcement is federal, state law enforcement is state, and just let them do their thing. But you can't stop them. I mean, if ICE wants to do major removal operations in Boston, they're going to do it, and they have plenty.

0:27:51 Thomas: It that really is has been oversold like it like it really they make it seem like we're we're guarding we're every uh person with a bunch it was a staff full -time security it's like we're just not helping that's it not actively helping yeah

0:28:08 Matt: Has. That's right. That is all it comes down to. It certainly is a place where undocumented people should feel safer. One of the sanctuary policies that had is that we do not allow ICE to go into courtrooms and we've taken them to court for that. That worked out pretty well. Trump, we were actually able to stop courthouse arrests for the most part and preserve our local systems. That's something else we're expecting to be a big fight ahead is right now ICE has a list of sort of sensitive areas where they do not carry out removal operations. That but it also includes obvious things like doctor's offices and churches and schools, right? Places where it would be extra upsetting to have people getting arrested by ICE. And they're talking about maybe removing some of that too, which wouldn't

0:28:14 Thomas: Better that'd be

0:28:48 Matt: Surprise me. It would. It's the first time that I bust into a church. Because churches have stepped up in the past, and I think they will again to provide sanctuary. Was a lot of that going on during Trump, but it was a big movement in the 80s when we had a lot Salvadoran refugees.

0:28:48 Thomas: Horrifying I'm gonna say which churches it has to be the few that aren't evangelical trump supporters yeah

0:29:05 Matt: Even some of the evangelical ones have been pretty good about it. But in the path, Catholic Church is very good about this. A lot of the other major denominations, Unitarians are awesome. But just generally speaking, that's one thing the churches really can do is provide that sanctuary. I mean, I've had more than one client who's been living in a church just because that's the safest place for them.

0:29:20 Thomas: Do we just need to okay weirdly enough now the new left agenda build massive churches that could just make churches great again here we go let's build a huge ass cathedrals that can house just tons of people I think I've got a new this is it this is my new plan

0:29:36 Matt: Open borders be a religious belief, a good faith belief? I don't know.

0:29:38 Thomas: And not does it it doesn't need to be right it was just church just need a church yeah

0:29:42 Matt: Call it a church. That'S true. We got to have some. Yeah, yeah. Know, that is more or less the way that things have been working the whole time I've been doing this and pretty much the whole time that we've had a modern immigration system. And you've heard Trump talk a lot about Operation Wetback, which was an actual thing. It's just one of those things where you'd have to actually just say this word a lot, unfortunately, to talk about it. But wetback and dryback were actually legal terms back in, and they were used on the floor of Congress to refer to people who had just crossed the Rio Grande versus people who who'd been here a while, and you could actually, yeah, no, I know. Literally to the point that there was a program that allowed farmers to dry off their wetbacks. You could take them down to a CBP office, excuse me, you could take him down to Border Patrol, and they would process them because they needed the farm labor. Of course, it is a vicious racial slur today, and it's not something I would ever say outside of the context of talking about this operation. Operation. As is, this operation under Eisenhower was the, to date, largest immigration operation in history, enforcement. And it was kind of a disaster in a lot of ways. There were many U .S. citizens who got swept up and deported to Mexico. Was at a time when post -war economy when they were trying to prioritize American jobs. There was just obviously a lot of racism behind it. It was a different system. It was a different time and a completely different law enforcement and law that was working with this. I'm not saying that we couldn't get back to something like that, but there's no one -to -one comparison of the legal system in 1952 around immigration and what we've got now. It's

0:30:06 Thomas: Jesus christ cool super chill oh for for the love of god well ice didn't exist right that's

0:31:07 Matt: You're right. We had Immigration and Nationality Services, INS, yep. That was part of DOJ at the time. And I should note that now DOJ handles, as I said, the immigration courts, and it also handles the appellate work when these cases go up to federal appeals courts. But the Department of Homeland Security brings the charges and prosecutes these cases in immigration courts. You do have separate agencies, as we're talking about a little recently, separate agencies that actually bring the and and then review the charge and uphold it. And then DHS actually carries out the the enforcement. Now, again, those are all executive agencies. I'm not saying there's a huge distinction, especially when you're talking about something like the Trump administration, but they are at least, there's some separation. It's not a separation of powers, but it's a separation. That's all how the system is supposed to work right now. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what we know about what Trump is proposing right now, which is to say what Stephen Miller is proposing. Right now is a big, long New York times piece, which tried to lay out everything we know, it interviewed Stephen Miller, and he said while the Trump team would like to seek a revamp of immigration laws, the plan was crafted to need no new substantive legislation, and he contends that it relies on existing statutes. Activists who doubt President Trump's resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error. Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown, Mr. Miller said, adding, the immigration legal activists won't know what's happening. I think we will, but I plan to know. Especially because these plans are knowable, like there's only sort of a limited suite of things you can actually pursue here. And he's laid them out anyway, so let's talk about them. There's been a lot of talk about declaring a national emergency to deploy the military. And this is, I think, probably the scariest thing, The scariest part of all of this. It conjures up this image, as Trump was talking about, of sending National Guard troops from states to come invade blue states and pull people out of our cities. There are all kinds of issues with this. Now, again, when I say legal issues, I understand that these things could all be overcome, that you get these things in front of the right judge, right time, that maybe none of this matters. But I think it does. And I think there are serious legal impediments to doing the kinds of things they're talking about. And Stephen Miller acknowledged this in this piece. He said he knows that there's going to have to be serious legal challenges to all of these things. Starting with the fact that we have something called the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which makes it a federal crime to use any part of the military as a posse comitatus or to otherwise execute the laws. So that's when you're using federal troops to team up with state and local authorities to go execute domestic law.

0:33:37 Thomas: He gets around it by not having any idea what a posse comitatus is? Well, no mens rea, I don't know what the hell that is, so I can just do it?

0:33:46 Matt: Does that actually translate to? I should probably know that.

0:33:47 Thomas: Comitatus Well, so I assume it's a posse, like no kidding yeah

0:33:51 Matt: Of the county. Oh, boy. Those county sheriffs already think they're in charge of everything. Thing uh So, you know, it's kind of the western movie thing, right, where the sheriff gets a bunch of people together to go hunt for somebody. Um, this was actually passed after Reconstruction because the South was so annoyed that the military had been used to go after the KKK, which was a terrorist group in the South, obviously, that was hindering Reconstruction. But it really went over the top when Rutherford B. Hayes deployed the military to put down the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. So we don't want that, we don't want active duty military troops coming in to put down a labor strike. That's a very bad look. And it's really bad. It's very fashy. Certainly, it's a really good idea to have the military staying out of domestic affairs. That is something we generally take pride in in this country. We have until now. I will say that presidents have made exceptions to this all the time. And there have been a lot of gray areas, a lot places where I think that they probably have violated the law and nothing has been done about it. Generally speaking, under a lot this stuff, there is no judicial review of how the president uses the military. So, yeah, I know it's a little scary. Even at the time that President Hayes signed it, they was a military deployment out hunting down Billy the Kid, among other people, like New Mexican miscreants. And he had to sign a special proclamation to permit that operation to continue. Has been used through, Waco, they've been used at, you know, West Virginia coal miners. And of course, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all briefly at some point sent National Guard to the border to help with enforcement operations. And that's generally been justified as a border thing. It's sort of like an international enforcement. Trump, for the first time ever in American history, used active duty military in 2018, sent them down to the boarder. That was arguably an issue. Now, they were providing, this is kind of the exception to all of this, and I think how Trump is going to get around this, just off the bat, is they can provide support. So they can do things like arguably provide supplies,

0:34:23 Thomas: Not good like cheer

0:35:36 Matt: Build camps. That's right. Yeah.

0:35:36 Thomas: On the fascism you get him

0:35:38 Matt: That is from the sidelines. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I would expect that they're, you know, they try to use the Army Corps of Engineers to build camps. I would totally expect that would be something that would the kind of thing when he's talking about national emergency to do this. Trump did declare a national emergency at the time when he sent those people down there. This is all open territory here. We really don't know how this might be used or applied, but he's saying he's going to actually seek an actual state of emergency that will relate to non -citizens in this country. And that potentially could provide some extra power. But generally speaking, even when I was looking through the state of urgency statute, it's for military support. It's not going to be to actually allow active -duty military to get on the streets, as it shouldn't. That's something we really want to watch out for. Now, there are some exceptions, potentially, and some ways around that. Insurrection Act, which Trump was threatening to use several times during his presidency, especially during the protests of 2020, all the way through there.

0:35:39 Thomas: Get him be positive think yeah hang in there sorry I thought it was clear, out people to do that photo op and that was like the whole— you to take a picture with the Bible upside down or something, I Think it was that one, yeah I think it was, it wasn't that the controversy like they used the military but I, yeah I didn't, I wasn't saying he used the, declared anything but I think he just, they just did it real quick.

0:36:35 Matt: He did abuse, I think, his power there to clear out the protesters near the White House whenever they do that photo up, upside down.

0:36:52 Matt: And had Mark Milley in uniform. He was furious about it. He didn't want want to be seen standing next to him while he did that. Yeah, the Insurrection Act has been used very rarely. George W. Bush actually used it during the Rodney King riots to determine that things were out of hand. It is very rare. It's not exactly martial law because it's not military takeover of civilian functions. It just allows the military to intervene in places where they wouldn't usually. So that is an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act. There's been some some speculation about how he might use the combination of a national emergency and an Insurrection Act order to say that there are parts of the country that are so out of control, right, that the border is so unsecured and that there's so many people among us that we can justify that. I think it's a really extreme abuse, obviously. You know, it may not be as reviewable as you might hope when you use the Insurrection Act that way. So it's interesting to see how that plays out. I not going to really try to predict what's going to happen there. I can just tell you that's how I think they're going to try to do it. There's been a lot of talk as we've raised this before as well about the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. the Alien Enemies Act can only be used in times of declared war, or when a foreign government is undertaking an invasion or a predatory incursion against U .S. territory. The last time this was used in U. S. history was unfortunately Japanese internment, because it was determined that we had these enemies among us and we had to round them up. A great law to be using. As we've discussed before, it really should be repealed in its entirety. It's a dangerous thing to have on the books, I think. At the same time, we are not in a state of war any of the countries that are supplying migrants right now, and they are not invading or incursioning on our territory. It is just not happening. So these are individual decisions to come to the United States. They are not being coordinated by some massive governmental conspiracy. You and I know that. They can get the Fifth Circuit to agree this amounts amounts to an invasion because there's so many different people. I don't really know how that works when the people are from so many countries, but I guess I'm not as creative as a Fifth Circuit justice. So yeah,

0:38:46 Thomas: Remind me what this would do. So let's say they get that declared or whatever. They're just like, yeah, it's actually they're invading us. They want to do that. Needs to happen? Does Trump just need to say that? Or does there have to be some sort of like finding of that? Who needs to who needs to to that assertion for this to happen and then what happens if they do? Do what is that so it allows the use of the military just like domestically to do a bunch of this stuff oh

0:39:09 Matt: Potentially you'd have the right... So the way it would be carried out is the same way that Roosevelt did through an executive order, where he's saying, we're using in this way to do these things. It allows them to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies. So that would imply pretty strongly that they don't have to go through the existing due process, that they can just round them up and send them out.

0:39:29 Thomas: So that would bypass all of the like immigration court slowdown stuff that's not just like oh we can detain um them that's like the whole the whole thing

0:39:32 Matt: And, potentially if you're treating them that way. And that's about as flashy as this could get if we're to that point. And again, I'm not going to speculate on what might happen with this. I'm really hoping, of course, that we still have enough judges in this country that are honest and that even the Supreme Court can recognize that this is not an invasion or incursion on our territory by a foreign government. I just think that is an extreme thing to say. I would hope that that would not be a pill, but we have to be prepared that that is the argument they're going to make. And I feel like even by talking about it as an argument, that I'm giving it too much space. It just doesn't deserve this kind of oxygen because it's such a stupid thing to saying. And it is so clearly not the intention of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. That is just not what it was written for, if you care. We talked about

0:40:17 Thomas: Anyone cares about the original intent or even the plain meaning any part any any analysis.

0:40:21 Matt: That's not uh yeah when we talked about this before I told you a little bit about going through and I looked at you know it's just basically looking through founding fathers writings for mention to this and it's it's very clear what they were thinking of and it was not this there's just no way it was this so that is one way that he's talking about potentially getting around it I I want to believe that because the legal argument for this is so bad that there's no way that this could eventually finally be upheld and used. I think there's going to be an injunction against this kind of thing. The harm is so obviously bad that I would think a federal court would stop it until it was figured out. That's just something to look out for to see how they try to do it. Other much more lawful way that they can do this, that they can bypass or subvert the existing system, is through the use of the expansion of expedited removal. So that is a provision that already exists under existing law. It's covered in 8 U .S .C. 1225, but it lays out ways that you can completely bypass the immigration court system. And this is designed really for people who just got here, for people that were found recently coming across the border. If they can't prove that they've been here for 14 days and caught within 100 miles of the border, then it gives special powers to immigration to essentially send them back without a hearing and to issue an administrative deportation order. And the Trump administration, using pretty broad authority, which exists in the INA, I have to concede this is probably legal and the D .C. Circuit has upheld that it is probably illegal under existing law. Expanded that to two years and anywhere in the United States. So they essentially created a short circuit bypass for people who have not been here for very long that allows immigration officers to find people in that situation. And if they cannot confirm, you know, within whatever period of time while they're being held that they are here lawfully and that they've been here for more than 10 years, then they can be deported. And the only exception to that would be if you request a credible fear interview because you say that you're afraid to go back to your country. So if you can get an to agree that there is a credible reason to believe that you might be afraid to go back, that you might qualify for asylum, that screening interview will get you into immigration court for that purpose, to apply for asylum. So that exception will still exist. It does protect people, at in theory, from being deported who are actually in fear for their lives. Of course, the Trump administration was doing things like having ICE officers do those interviews instead of asylum officers,

0:42:33 Matt: Which is not a good idea. Asylum officers are very well -trained. They know exactly how to conduct these.

0:42:38 Thomas: You just do that? Why can they get away with that?

0:42:41 Matt: Did that as a pilot program. And again, they have broad discretion to enforce this law. And they decided that they should have ICE and CBP do it instead of, you know, they're all part of the same department. They're all DHS. It's just that because it's asylum, that's, you name it.

0:42:52 Thomas: But Chevron deference, it'll save us. Cause like that, no, no wait, it won't. Cause that's just a way for the conservatives on the court to say whatever they want or

0:43:00 Matt: No, for sure. Um that is something I'm concerned about because initially when is one of the first things they tried to do that they announced that they were going to do it was stopped by a court by district court on 2017 uh

0:43:09 Thomas: Which part of it? Sorry. Which specific part of It?

0:43:12 Matt: Expansion that we're talking about so that the initial attempt to expand it to two years and anywhere in the country but then unfortunately the dc circuit uh that and found that it was actually lawful in 2020 and uh make the road v be Wolf. And so that technically did exist for a little while there. And then the Biden administration obviously canceled that ability just as soon as it came in. It rescinded that executive ability. There's no reason at all to believe that Trump will not reinstate it. It'll be challenged again, but there's good reason to believe it will be upheld again. So that is something I'm particularly concerned about for expedited removal.

0:43:48 Thomas: They try to go further? Could they try to make the limits, the geographical limits huge and the time limits longer?

0:43:49 Matt: They could, yeah. The statutory limit right now is two years, and that's what they went up to. And the problem with this, too, the way it's written is that the designation is in the sole and unreviewable discretion of the attorney general, which is, you So this how they designate expedited removal and who it applies to. So there is this two -year period that's built in. The D .C. Circuit had to find that that's the law, that they're allowed to do it. It's not great. But

0:44:06 Thomas: Designation of which thing exactly? But there's no geographical part in the statute, just the time period? Interesting.

0:44:23 Matt: Generally speaking, it's either for people who have just arrived or otherwise people who are described in this other section, which is up to two years prior to the evaluation. So it's a broad reading, but it's not a completely illegal reading, unfortunately. It's very concerning because you're intentionally subverting the existing system. Now that said, most people that are going to be concerned about this have been here for longer than two years. On average, the average undocumented person, I think, has been here for at least eight years, something like that. Most of my clients have been here from more than 10 years, the people that I work with. So this is not necessarily going to result in giant sweeps, but it's certainly, if you can't prove that you've been here For more than two years, it could be an issue. And it's not always easy to do that, especially if you're undocumented. That is a potential challenge there.

0:45:06 Thomas: A good point. The burden of proof there? Trump just starts saying, or whoever just starts saying, well, prove you haven't been here for two years. And then they don't accept whatever proof they have.

0:45:14 Matt: You could immediately file a habeas disclaim and try to have a court review that, if they're holding you while they do that. And at least be some review of the standard of evidence that was used there. But it is, I mean, it's not court. It's even far less due process than immigration court, and that's why Trump wants to use it.

0:45:27 Thomas: Well, and I know like how many mats are there? Like there aren't, it's not like every immigrant has a

0:45:32 Matt: No?

0:45:33 Thomas: Right?

0:45:33 Matt: Are many more immigration lawyers than there were when I started doing this, but there aren't that many of us.

0:45:36 Thomas: That's good. Yeah.

0:45:38 Matt: Many more coming, fortunately. And again, Again, these exceptions that I'm talking about, we have to see how they play out. I do think that there's still a chance to stop expedited removal. I certainly think there's a chance to stop the Own Enemies Act and the Insurrection Act, everything else we've been talking about. But, you know, at the end of the day, I think that they are still going to, at least in this initial period, be focusing on the people that are immediately removable, that they can put on some headlines, that they say we're going after the worst of the worst. And, you concern is that they do that And then a year or two later, people are so used to strict immigration enforcement, they're so used to so many people being sent out, that they don't really start to look and or care about the stories of the families and the people that have been doing everything that this country has asked them to do, except to be here with permission. So that is a concerning thing. And going to say I'm Not worried. I'm going to say that we're not in for a hard time in our office and doing doing this work. But I remain positive only because... Hold

0:46:34 Thomas: Only because of a traumatic brain injury that he had when he was, no, I'm just kidding.

0:46:39 Matt: Was just feeling something like that. Very optimistic because we do still have most of the federal judiciary has not been appointed by Trump. And even the people appointed by Trump aren't completely insane all the time. The more extreme things, the more fashy things that I think are still coming down the pipe. I'm not saying that that is not going to be possible and that a court might authorize that. Again, the logistical limitations of all of this, even if you're talking about building camps, even if talking about having support from local law enforcement, even talking about support from the military, support has to be somewhat limited for the moment. And ICE is still a limited force. I've been trying to do when I'm thinking about this triage is to think about sort of the developing situation and how we can be prepared for the immediate targets, how we know that the people that have removal orders right now, people who have any kind of contact with the criminal justice system right now, even if you've been here a while with a green card, you really should talk to an immigration lawyer if you have had any contact with a criminal justice systems at all. It's just a really good idea, just to be sure. And if you had the ability to naturalize, if you'd been here for more than five years or more than three years with marriage, then you should just do that. If you plan to stay here, because then we're stuck with you. And that's how it should be. So I want to make sure that if you have the chance to join and not have to worry about this, you should do it.

0:47:56 Matt: The criminal legal system is deportable, not by far. You should know, you should be sure, because it may be things that you don't even think are convictions. It could be things that are extremely minor that may have far more reaching consequences than you could could imagine. It's just a good idea right now. That is my top priority. And this is what I think about all day is the intersection of these two systems. I know for sure that's where they're going to start and what the main focus is going to be. People after that, it should be people who are concerned that have removal orders, and we should be looking out for them. And you should do what you can to try to reopen that order and see what you Can do to get around it. And, you know, just to make sure that you have some plan right now?

0:48:32 Thomas: Yeah is there a sense in which we we can just, if everybody is fighting everything all the time, that we can gum up the works a bit, you

0:48:38 Matt: For sure. You have a whole bunch of people trying to reopen their removal orders at the same time. If you don't just accept voluntary departure, if you're being put into immigration court, exercise your rights, fight every step of it, do everything you can. Still have a lot of good immigration judges on the bench and we will for quite a while. People who don't have to worry as much are people that have never had any contact with the criminal legal system, people who are here and have been here on professional visas, on student visas. Where my concerns are right now, but I think that it's not helpful to just talk about mass deportation as this kind of giant force, right?

0:49:08 Thomas: Thing that is on off switch that he can just do. Yeah, yeah.

0:49:12 Matt: Right. That it's either a huge, massive operation that's going to start on January 21st. I think it's really more like the existing system, but a lot more of it. I think that's what we're going to be seeing for a while. Not to say they can't ramp up and not to say that this won't turn into something that we haven't seen before, because I believe them when they say they want to do something that мы haven't seen before. But I also think that there are plenty of ways along the way to exercise the rights of everybody in the system and to make sure that if they're going to break the law, that they do it to our faces, that if they're gonna violate court orders, that we have court orders to break, that we get into court and make sure that we are doing everything we can.

0:49:44 Thomas: Let's all not be Christopher Wray and just like go ahead and give up ahead of time and make stuff way easier for him.

0:49:46 Matt: That's right, that's right. Quit. Quit. Exactly.

0:49:50 Thomas: Like legitimately, did him a huge favor with that uh then again matt I'm worried that you're just a little biased because this is how you get more clients and then you make millions and millions of dollars

0:50:01 Matt: That is my secret plan, yeah, no, Tressa, that

0:50:03 Thomas: So because right now you're twiddling your thumbs with nothing not enough to do but if you start if

0:50:08 Matt: Is right, nobody is being deported right now, that right, yeah really would prefer that Donald Trump were not the president for any number of reasons but mostly professional reasons on top of everything else because,

0:50:09 Thomas: Only there was something that could have been done to stop that dear

0:50:20 Matt: Yeah, if was some way that everybody could have come together and not had that happen. But here we are. Certainly, because people were joking about that. I don't think it's a very funny joke, but like, wouldn't you rather Trump be president? You'll have more business? No, I'll have plenty of business either way. And this is not the way we want this business.

0:50:32 Thomas: Who would say that yeah

0:50:35 Matt: Idiots. Idiots online. But because it was a tough four years for my office, and it's going to be again.

0:50:36 Thomas: You yeah you have plenty of business like all the time there's no shortage of yeah um

0:50:44 Matt: Do. Yeah, I'm a busy man. Yeah. Less stressful business for the next four years. But, you know, here we are.

0:50:52 Thomas: Okay as we're coming to a close what have we learned you've you've wanted to triage for us um learned that this is obviously it's going to take longer uh anyone would have thought it's gonna be harder than people are talking It's not like a thing he can just do. But in terms of triage, what does this mean for person or maybe even the average undocumented person just kind the rundown here? Fight everything we can, you voluntarily. What average citizen do? Do

0:51:17 Matt: I want people to understand who the targets actually are going to be and what we know right now and the people we can help. So if you are a U .S. citizen who was born here and you are an ally who wants to help, I think the very best thing to do is to give to direct legal services, not to advocacy organizations. Nothing wrong with advocacy organizations, but make sure that the money you're giving is to a local organization that actually has lawyers on the the ground. Is the one thing that people need because, of course, you don't have a right to an attorney. There's no appointed attorney in these proceedings. So we need to get lawyers out there. You are in a jurisdiction, and we're going to link to the map, but if you're in a jurisdiction that is already working with ICE, you can put pressure on your community, on your state and local governments. And you can make this argument from the law enforcement perspective. You don't even have to make it from the leftist side. You can talk about how this is a disrespect to law enforcement to have them coming into our courthouses and interfering with our state and local prosecutors and police uh is not necessarily a partisan issue uh those contracts can be canceled maybe

0:52:07 Thomas: Yeah you can be like look I'm concerned we don't have enough manpower in the police to be going after the woke leftists who are indoctrinating our children in our community so we can't be

0:52:17 Matt: Not I got that far that's

0:52:19 Thomas: Using oh I was just trying to appeal to the to the I don't know the police or whatever that the kind of person that there's a whole lot of critical race theory going around that the police aren't cracking down on enough and we can have them assisting immigration enforcement enforcement. Otherwise, how are they going to get rid of all the critical race theory in our community?

0:52:34 Matt: That's it that's fine well there is somebody right now who lives in a community where these agreements are already in place, and you could make that your thing. You can just get a few people together and advocate to explain to people how bad this is and how much it is going to hurt your community. That is something you can do right now on the local level to prepare.

0:52:53 Matt: And it's just nice to know that there are ways to do this. But support lawyers and keep ice out of your community, and we'll get a little further. But going to keep watching. We'll try to see the different ways they're going to try to get around the law. But I thought everyone should at least know what the law is, how the system works right now.

0:52:52 Thomas: Yeah, good tip. Right. Breakdown, giving us a lot to think about, a lot zu do. So much, Matt. Thanks everyone for listening, by the way. Please support the show. Hey, and please share that video. We'll keep it in the show notes. Share that видео around because Biden could do a lot tu help all of this, everything we've talked He still can right now, still has about a month to do that. So that would be nice.

0:53:23 Matt: And be on to some more non -immigration topics pretty soon. I just wanted to hit this stuff while it's in the news right now, and certainly I'm energized about it. But more soon.

0:53:34 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.