Not in a Gang? That's Actually a Common Indicator of Gang Membership

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: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1140. I'm Thomas Smith. That over there is real life attorney Matt Cameron. How you doing?

0:01:03 Matt: Well, I got about six hours of material on the Alien Enemies Act. I hope you got a comfortable seat.

0:01:08 Thomas: That's tough because we only have a five hour show. So you're gonna have to, yeah, a little bit at least. Yeah, boy. Bucket o' news. Lots going on as usual. To talk about. But first, I want to give a little plug. Latest chunk of Gavelpod is out. And I do want to particularly recommend if folks have been asking and wondering when I can tell my full Andrew story. Turned out there was a part of it that was quite relevant to this part of the Blake Lively thing because didn't even really intend to but as we were recording I talked about my experience and then one thing led to another and then so I told least uh slice of the story, but in pretty good detail. People might want to hear that on the latest Gavelpod. It's up for everybody over on that public feed. So check it out. Just check out the show in general. Really proud of where it's going right now. And I hope folks will give it a listen.

0:01:11 Matt: Oh, all right. Let's see if I can trim it down. Ah, yes.

0:01:59 Matt: It's been really a pleasure to listen along and not know what is going to happen from episode to episode on Gavelpod.

0:02:06 Thomas: Of course, we've got our Q &A planned. That's March 26th, 3 p.m. Pacific, 6 p.m. Eastern. That is fun each and every time. See, So that's next Wednesday. Okay, calendars, everybody. All right, well, announcements aside, we have a lot to get to. Do you want to give any further preview, Matt?

0:02:15 Matt: That is right. Directly being in violation of court orders, but that's actually not what I want to talk about. I want I don't think that's getting enough attention in all of this. It is important that they're trying to violate a court order, but

0:02:40 Thomas: And you know, what's also important is the absolute smackdown that Justice Roberts laid on Trump. The total rebuke. Yeah, we'll get to it.

0:02:48 Matt: We'll probably talk about that too.

0:02:50 Thomas: Absolutely pathetic.

0:02:50 Matt: I want to talk about the new Republican tactic of trying to impeach everybody who disagrees with Donald Trump, but not Trump himself.

0:02:58 Thomas: Including us. Somehow they're going to do that. It's just everybody. Impeach everybody.

0:03:01 Matt: That's right. This whole podcast is a high crime and or misdemeanor. Of course, we got to talk Trump's attempts to reverse Joe Biden's pardons and the absolute nonsense that's based on. We got a quick footnote about your First Amendment right to talk to monkeys.

0:03:13 Thomas: All right. Well, that'll be fun. Was about to, you joke that Trump, it's not really an attempt per se. It's just a, you a truth. Did more than that, I don't know. I just saw the truth post about the pardons. And then I realized like he really does govern in the same way that, you, people on Facebook used to repost the like legal. Jargon about like, I do hereby do not give Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg permission to use my photo. It's like, it's like that. It is like a chain email. Like he thinks he can just like make law like that very similar actually to

0:03:34 Matt: Good. Yeah. Is. It's just, you know, God help us if Andrew Jackson had had that kind of power. Truth all day. I can only imagine.

0:03:49 Thomas: All right. Well, lots to get to. Full day. We'll get to our five -hour show after this break. You can avoid the ads at patreon.com/law. Get all the goodies and support what we're doing here. It's really important. So much to everyone who does. Right. This break, we'll start.

0:04:06 Thomas: Right. Let's start with the pardons. So yeah. Facebook have the right to use my photos or not?

0:04:11 Matt: This is a conspiracy theory that actually got laundered through the Heritage Foundation. And I thought it was worth mentioning just because it is so far out there. And as we've been talking about for many months now, you know, fascism absolutely depends on their version of the truth and making sure that the leader has the truth. And nobody else. And that just no matter how crazy it is, that that's what the truth is. So, you this thing that goes back to Thomas Jefferson of using something called an auto pen. And pretty much what it sounds like, where you can sign multiple things at the same time. And

0:04:37 Thomas: Remember in third grade, I did a little paper on Thomas Jefferson, which of course meant reading a stupid book on it and repeating like four things. I actually remember it was like he invented it, it was didn't a pen where he'd write it and it was attached to some crap and it would just reproduce his signatures.

0:04:50 Matt: Back copiers. It's pretty helpful to execute a bunch of stuff at the

0:04:53 Thomas: Another success of the U.S. education system. I'm just saying. And Columbus sailed the ocean blue of 1492. Oh, no. Okay. That's not as good.

0:05:04 Matt: What I learned today is that auto pens are originally called polygraphs, which is very confusing. So you could, yeah, yeah.

0:05:07 Thomas: Well, that actually makes sense. Poly. Yeah. Oh.

0:05:12 Matt: Yeah. Multiple handwriting.

0:05:12 Thomas: I guess, you know, the polygraph now that I think about it, lie the detector version does have all those thingies going. Like, it's writing the different different readings.

0:05:17 Matt: That's of makes sense.

0:05:18 Thomas: Yeah, okay. It's all coming together.

0:05:19 Matt: But, yeah, I learned a little bit about the history of auto pens. I thought it was interesting to talk about. Was the Oversight Project on X, which is part of the Heritage Foundation, which tried to gather, they claimed, every document they could find with Biden's signature, and they claimed they all used the same auto pen. Turns out the entire premise of this was incorrect because they were looking at the Federal Register, which it turns out just attaches the same basically JPEG of the president's signature. So they just totally got it wrong.

0:05:45 Matt: But, of course, it wasn't too much for our enemy of the show, Andrew Bailey, the Missouri attorney general, who I've ranted at many times before, to write at length. Because what this is really about is about Biden's mental decline. And they're trying to say that who knows who actually signed this? Who knows who's behind it? That was Trump's long thing about how they're all null and void and whatever because, you he wasn't. In his right mind. And it's ridiculous.

0:06:06 Thomas: That's nonsense.

0:06:06 Matt: The entire premise is stupid. I just wanted to point out, I went back and did a little more research because I was curious about the history of signing things by machine, because it is a little strange. The president could maybe just make a call and say, stick signature on this, right? And the very first president actually to sign... not in the room, like abroad, basically, using some kind of device like this, was actually Barack Obama with an extension of the Patriot Act. There was a lot of pushback at the time, and Republicans actually said he should go back and sign it again. But George W. Bush had actually had his lawyers look into this under DOJ. They wrote a 30 -page memo, which concluded what I think we can all agree is that the originalist word meaning of the word sign was not that you personally had to sign it. You could have somebody sign on your behalf. And they took 30 pages to get an originalism to conclude. That a signature can include something that's done remotely. So apart from all of that, obviously Trump has used automatic signature stuff. He's done exactly the

0:06:55 Matt: Same thing many times. We've all seen his...

0:06:56 Thomas: It's like when he used to make fun of Obama for being on a teleprompter. It was like, dude, you either spew nothing or the couple of times you actually, you enough to make a speech that makes sense. You use a teleprompter every time.

0:07:09 Matt: That's... It's complete obviously, but they don't need a reason. We have to remember, this is fascism. They just need to say something. And what they want to be able to say, this the reason it really matters, is that all of those preemptive pardons that Biden signed for Anthony Fauci and for his children and for all of these people who are involved in the COVID policy and everybody who is prosecuting him, Jack Smith and everyone else who's prosecuting Trump, they want be able say that those people can still be prosecuted. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if the Trump administration's tries to do that.

0:07:36 Matt: And they're going to be able to come into court with a pardon signed by the president. And I can't imagine a judge... I mean, again, my imagination must be pretty limited because there's all kinds of things I couldn't have imagined. But a can't think that would actually stand up, but it is scary to consider because we're getting into this place where I'm just a lawyer saying that, and all you have to do is find a judge who agrees, and then you can go forward.

0:07:59 Thomas: We really need to revise the schoolhouse rock. I'm just a bill. Really, it's like the process of law now is diarrhea enters Trump's brain somehow, and then he tweets it or truths it. That goes into this other garbage machine known as the MAGA sanitizing, stain washing process to try to form some extremely weak justification legally for it. And then that then goes in, this is going to be a wordy song. We'll have to figure out how to get the song to be little, little catchier. But then that goes in to the washing, which is then the columns that are like, well, There is a debate about whether the such and such and then eventually we get all the way to the Supreme Court is like, I guess, someday down the line. And with this, I feel like they wouldn't go along with this. But I would say the worst case scenario would be so they try to prosecute somebody, Fauci, let's say. Can obviously say, absolutely not. Here's the pardon, among other things. And then I imagine like or they the government can appeal to that eventually and say, no, our argument is that doesn't apply. I think the worst case is like the Supreme Court just says some nonsense about it not being justiciable or something. But I don't know. I feel like they wouldn't go for that, though.

0:09:07 Matt: It is. I mean, it's so explicitly executive power. It's one of the core executive powers in the Constitution. You want to undo everything that's ever been done by Autopen, then we're really going to fall apart. So that's something else. But yeah, no, you're right about the laundering and about, you had people like Jeff Clark, of course, you may remember from January 6th plot from DOJ, we have the oversight project from Heritage Foundation, which as we've discussed many times before, Heritage Foundation has always been pretty hard, right? But it used to be somewhat moderate. It used to somewhat like a respectable Republican organization, and it has just gone full MAGA. So that's kinds of arguments, I think we're just going to keep seeing more and more. And I feel like a fool even having to talk about them on a legal podcast because they're so stupid. But I I had to mention it.

0:09:49 Thomas: We'll keep an eye on if he tries any of these prosecutions. But yeah, it's incredibly dumb. Needless to say, that's not a thing. All right. What's What's our next story?

0:09:56 Matt: Have to talk about the Alien Enemies Act and the deportation of a couple hundred Venezuelans to El Salvador last weekend. I want to unpack this because pretty much all the coverage I've heard about it in the past week has been about how Trump violated a court order. And we'll talk about a little bit about how he did that. That's important. But I really do not want to lose sight of the underlying argument and what they're trying to do here, because quite frankly, it is terrifying. And think this is honestly the single most fascist thing that the Trump administration has done. It's also resulted on by any government official in a court record, which we'll get to. This use of the Alien Enemies Act, I don't think anybody's really stopping enough to just say, this is insane. This is out of control. Using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. And if you remember the same kind of history that you were talking about back, we all at some point learned about the Alien and Sedition Act in 1798, and whole package of bills was generally considered to be some of the most unconstitutional stuff ever passed. And it was passed within seven or eight years of the Constitution. And

0:10:57 Matt: Vigorously opposed it, and his party opposed it because a lot of it was trying to target them. It criminalized quite a lot speech, and it also specifically authorized deportation for speech. Not that, of course, the federal government would ever do that anymore. Included the Sedition Act, and all of that stuff expired except for one part of it, which was the Alien Enemies Act. That is now codified at 50 U.S.C. 21, entitled Alien Enemies. And that was actually bipartisan. For the most part, both parties thought that this was a good idea to have a provision in which whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government. Now, I'm going to read from the current version. And actually, the 1798 version wasn't that different, but it had some differences that don't matter now because it's no longer law. Here's the important part. Any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government, and the president makes public proclamation of the event. What you need is a war, declared war, which we don't really do those anymore anyway,

0:11:50 Matt: Or any kind of invasion or predator incursions. And that's generally understood to mean something like Pancho Villa doing raids at the Mexican border. Whatever, you can imagine like actual military operations and typically military operations supported by that government or some faction of that government, not just people crossing the border. We've talked about this before, about the threat of Trump using the Alien Enemies Act, about all the concerns that I had about that, because it is very concerning because it allows the president to apprehend anybody over 14. Now And it used to just be men over 14, but in World War I in 1918, that was actually changed to everyone. So be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies. Now, back in 1798, they didn't have immigration courts. They did not have removal proceedings. Everything was much less formal. The idea was that you didn't see a judge. There was no administrative review. Nobody got to question it because it's wartime and you're a national of a power with which we are at war. The courts generally have agreed that during wartime, this is sensible. Some degree. And it's only been invoked three times during the War of 1812, World War I, and then World War II. And famously, of course, during World War Two, it was used to justify internment camps because it has this language about how we can restrain or secure people who are alien enemies basically without too much notice. Is the first time, and I just don't think it's getting enough attention in this light. This is first time that the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 has been used in peacetime. You might notice we're not actually at war with anyone, including Venezuela at the moment. This proclamation issued on the 15th of March. And I just want to tell you a little bit about it. This was, of course, just another Trump executive order proclamation. It's called the Invocation of the Alien

0:13:32 Matt: And Tren de Aragua, as we've discussed before, is a violent Venezuelan gang. It certainly does exist, but it is not the Venezuelian government. Let me try to get you there about how they're actually saying this works. This was released, importantly, at 3:53 p.m. on Saturday the 15th. In part, let me read a little bit from the proclamation here. The years, Venezuelans national and local authorities have ceded ever greater control over their territories to transnational criminal organizations, including TDA. Into the United States.

0:14:03 Thomas: They're managing our apartment complexes. Are landlords there.

0:14:07 Matt: The whole thing. Yeah. With Aurora, we talked about. Yep. Yep, yep. The best they can do. Because we were talking about back when this was announced that Trump was planning to use the Alien Enemies Act, we were speculating, like, how could he possibly do this? And we're not at war in Venezuela. Venezuela is not intentionally sending people over. Most of these people are fleeing Venezuela because of the conditions there. And many of them, as we're going to talk about, are politically opposed to the Venezuelan government. You'd think we'd agree with them and maybe give them asylum. Which they're not providing, but evidence irrefutably demonstrates that TDA has invaded the United States. So they're saying it's a hybrid criminal state, that somehow the Nicolas Maduro government is working directly with TDA, or that they've ceded enough of their territory or whatever, that TDA is somehow directly doing this. Is unusual, not just because it's peacetime, but because the Alien Enemies Act makes no provision for designating a portion of the alien enemies. It Alien Enemies Act actually says all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government. It doesn't allow for this kind of subclass. Obviously this is violation of the Alien Enemies Act. This is not how it's supposed to be used. Not being invaded by Venezuela. TDA is not a government. This not a predatory incursion. At the end of the day, there aren't even that many of those people here. I'm not going to deny that Tren de Aragua is a problem and it is a violent organization. And I have a lot of clients who are terrified of Tren De Aragua because it's been running rampant in their countries. That is not something that we can't handle. It's the same thing with MS-13. And this is very typical of fascism, that at the same time, you are both a powerful nation, the most powerful in the world, but you're also terrified of a tiny little gang

0:15:34 Matt: From El Salvador or Venezuela, right? I mean, they're not that big when it comes down to it. Proclamation is so important. This is an opening shot in something that I think can go down a very, very dark path if we let it. Because remember, no administrative review, no judicial review. Only basis for these deportations comes down to trust me, bro. That's what we're talking about. Have here three planes that left Harlingen, Texas on the evening of the proclamation. Remember, it was signed 3:53 p.m. Bosberg took a look at this, had an emergency hearing. Now, previously in the day, he had entered a TRO stopping the deportations of five people who had brought the suit, saying, basically, we're Venezuelans. We have tattoos. We're afraid that we're going to be caught up in this. This order is coming, right? They knew it was coming. So his initial order was to stop the deportation to those five people for 14 days. And then he held a further hearing to see if he should stop for all Venezuelans and to keep him from using the Alien Enemies Act at all. He has this hearing. And in the middle of the hearing, essentially, the government asked for time to go back and check back with their people. It turns out his order enters at 6:52 p.m. In court, he says says very specifically, if there are planes in the air to El Salvador, you're going to turn them around. In his written order, he doesn't say that. And that doesn't really matter because he still ordered it on the record. The actual order was that the government is enjoined from removing members of such class, anybody who would be subject to the order, specifically. And So again, I don't want to dwell on this too much, but the two planes, you can track them. There's been extensive... reporting on this and exactly where they were. One of them was over the Gulf of Mexico, not the Gulf America. The other one was over Yucatan around the time the order went in. They were not turned around. They landed in El Salvador and they created an fascist piece of propaganda. They had cameras ready to go. Just

0:17:10 Thomas: I think I saw this.

0:17:11 Matt: Really scared with terrible music. But Kelly making a big thing about, again, the president of El Salvador, we've talked about before, but running one of the worst prisons in the Western hemisphere. Where he is doing the same thing, where he's just designating anybody that he wants to as a gang member and throwing them into this work camp, basically. And this is the part that I really want to try to pick apart. There's not a lot on it yet, but we have made an agreement to hold anybody that we want to send to that work camp for one year indefinitely. Again, is something that is worth stopping.

0:17:38 Thomas: What? Sorry, Sorry, we're holding them?

0:17:39 Matt: This is why there really might still be a lot of judicial oversight for this. Is a contract, essentially, that we've made with El Salvador to hold our prisoners. And the really terrifying part that I haven't seen people talking about is this could include U.S. citizens. It specifically could.

0:17:53 Thomas: This is part of that? When was this agreement made?

0:17:56 Matt: Is an agreement that Marco Rubio made with Nayib Bekele a little while back, not like earlier in the Trump administration. Really scary because it's the same way that the Guantanamo thing, right? But it's actually worse because at least in Guantano Bay, you're being held by U.S. military. When you're sent to what's called the SICOT, this gigantic work camp in El Salvador. This place is absolutely rife with human rights abuses and you're in there with a lot of people who are bona fide gang members so it's a very scary place and

0:18:22 Thomas: We got two separate things. Just make sure I understand. We got two different things. We had a deal with and it was the deal essentially under the idea that like, hey, your gang members are turning up in our country. We will get them back to this work camp, but we'll hold them for up to a year before that. And then separately, there's the Alien Enemies Act thing as well. What does that do in relation to that? Or am I misunderstanding something?

0:18:46 Matt: He's using the Alien Enemies Act as the pretext to get people out of the country. But now remember, as we've been talking about, Venezuelans in question here can't be deported to Venezuela. Venezuela is not taking them back. So Trump has been looking for a solution. Guantanamo Bay was the original solution, but that pesky ACLU kept getting in the way and I think they were seeing that there's going to be a long slog on this. It was also very expensive. It's much easier to just send them off to a place where we're not responsible for their custody. Bukele had posted a while back on X and made an offer to Rubio specifically saying that we have the opportunity to outsource part of our prison system to El Salvador. He's saying, we got this great prison for you if you want to send us some people. Yeah.

0:19:19 Thomas: Let's not. Have the opportunity to outsource part of our already horrible, just human rights abuse of a system to a place where it's even worse. Dark.

0:19:31 Matt: Are so many pieces of this that I don't think are getting enough attention. And that contract, that agreement, the idea that we could outsource our prisoners to one of the worst prisons in the Western Hemisphere, let alone, I mean, we'd already normalized the idea of Guantanamo, apparently. That's on the table. But that is at least in U.S. territory, something controlled by the U.

0:19:49 Thomas: Yeah, boy, I never thought I'd say, at least I'm in Guantanamo. You know, like, wow.

0:19:53 Matt: Yes, exactly. Yes. Because for all the abuses that have been committed there, at least you're being watched by the U.S. military. Anything goes from what I can tell with the Seekon. So this is very, very bad. And I want to talk about some of these people. I really want to focus, as we always try to, on the people who are actually involved before I talk about what else happened in the case. Because I've seen so much of this saying, well, they're gang members. Anything should happen to them. Doesn't matter. I don't care.

0:20:16 Thomas: First off, no, but yeah.

0:20:18 Matt: Right. Absolutely not.

0:20:19 Thomas: I saw what I think was that propaganda video, was it the one where they're like they're being rough with them, forcing them in a place and they're, like, holding down their heads and stuff? Is that that one? So I don't understand how I guess a lot of the country works, but there's no person hypothetical or otherwise that I would be happy that's being done to. Like, I don't, I don't get it. Like I don't actually understand it. It's just a real of just how little compassion a lot of our country has for literally anyone. Why that good? That's not a good thing.

0:20:27 Matt: Shackled at night. Yeah, being taken in. Think it's a good test of fascism to show somebody that video and see how they react, because if you think that's great and you're excited about it and it's getting you off, then that's where we're at. There are a lot of people that feel that way. Point I want to continue to make, and I know I've made this point many times, including last week when we were talking about Mahmoud Khalil, is that we cannot start carving out exceptions of people, that we can just say, well, you're a terrorist, you don't get to see a judge, we don't have to show. Why we're doing this. This week, there was another man, a Georgetown faculty member who was taken in under exactly the same grounds, the foreign policy grounds that Mahmoud... Yeah, someone who's a postdoctoral researcher who's very well respected. Got a PhD in peace studies, essentially.

0:21:23 Thomas: Faculty member? Oh, wow. Dangerous person I can imagine. Get them out of the country. Someone with a PhD in peace studies. Get him out of here. They're a danger to our children.

0:21:38 Matt: Again, I want to say in the same way that I did with Mahmoud Khalil, now there may be statements out there from him that are a little more extreme. His wife does have a tie to Hamas directly, but that's his wife, that's not him. What they're saying here is that he was actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting anti-Semitism on social media. That's the best that they've got for this, this Georgetown University academic. And what they is that he is presenting a threat to their foreign policy in the same way that Khalil was. They're not saying that he's espousing or endorsing terror, which is an option. They are not bringing that charge. And that would be because that would require evidence. And as we've discussed before, doing it this way with the foreign policy grounds, that only requires a letter from Marco Rubio and absolutely nothing else. And this is my concern last week when we talked about Khalil, is that they would start normalizing this idea that the Secretary of State gets to point at certain people and just say, are a threat to our foreign policy, you're out of here. And that's what we're seeing. Again, I have to remind listeners, no matter what you think of some of this speech, no we have to hold the line on this because we cannot have people deported for things that they say and their associations. That's what we're talking about here. If they want to bring some kind of allegations that they're terrorists, they know how to do that. That is a whole thing that they can do with evidence. But instead, they're going the easiest possible route. And that's what they're doing with these gang members as well. I want to tie those two things together because they are purposely picking two populations that are deeply unsympathetic for a lot of people. There are a lot this country who believe that if you have said anything that sound like it was in any way supportive of what Hamas did on October 7th, that you don't belong in this country at all. Or it could be interpreted that way. There are a lot of people who believe the government says as a gang member shouldn't be in this at all, and me just tell you about who some of these people actually are, because we know a lot from the record now. A lot has come out recently. Because I want people listening to be able to understand and go past the headlines, because I'm looking directly at the court record here, and there has not been enough about these people. So we have Herce Reyes Barrios. He's a professional soccer player from Venezuela.

0:23:32 Thomas: Slash assassin?

0:23:33 Matt: Apparently, he also just had time to be a gang member on top of being a professional

0:23:37 Thomas: That takes a lot of practice. Should be applauded if he had time to squeeze in gang membership.

0:23:43 Matt: He's a hard worker. He was actually detained and tortured by Maduro, by the regime, with electric shocks and suffocation. Again, this is a political prisoner.

0:23:50 Thomas: Jesus Christ.

0:23:51 Matt: This is somebody seeking political asylum in the United States. His family wasn't notified that he was on this flight until three days later. And I will send you a picture right now of... I

0:23:59 Thomas: Are deporting someone who we were... God, that is so horrible. Want to be the country that protects those people is what I would want to

0:24:06 Matt: That's what we have been historically. I'm sending you a photo right now of the evidence. This is from his lawyer's affidavit about what they know about the allegations. Got two tattoos. One of them is the Real Madrid logo, well -known terrorist Real Madrid for one is described as a crown sitting atop a soccer ball with a rosary and the word Dios. God. Typical kind of tattoo for somebody. Yeah.

0:24:30 Thomas: Sound gangy.

0:24:31 Matt: These two tattoos, there's nothing about this that says gang worship whatsoever. And then we have a picture of a hand gesture.

0:24:37 Thomas: That seals it. I see. He's making a hand gesture that every single dude except me in high school made forever.

0:24:40 Matt: How would you describe that hand gesture exactly rock

0:24:46 Thomas: The hang loose thing, really. Like a double rock on hang loose something.

0:24:47 Matt: It is like rock on right and he looks pretty cool doing it I gotta say but he doesn't look like a gold gang member he looks a lot cooler than I would doing it is outrageous. I mean, this is from his attorney's affidavit, and this is what they have, that he's got a pending asylum case based on credible allegations that he was tortured by the Maduro regime, and he has two soccer -related tattoos.

0:25:07 Thomas: Pending asylum case. I thought if you had a pending asylum case, I thought you got to stay here until...

0:25:12 Matt: The problem with the Alien Enemies Act, and I really want to hammer this in. The Alien Enemies Act has no exceptions. We'll analyze the law a little bit more in a minute here, but I want to talk about the people. But the Alien Enemies Act is so strict, it's designed that way, it does not have any review, no matter what else is going on. Want to shout out from Immigrant Defenders in California. I met her in an Uber in a lot of traffic in Tijuana. We had some time to talk a while back and she's doing incredible work. She posted on X about a client that they have who disappeared and they found out was in this group. Is a man who has an asylum claim pending because he is LGBTQ. This is adamant that the tattoos that he has have nothing to do with gangs and that he is in real danger if he goes back to Venezuela or anywhere else. He's not named, obviously, for his protection here. Trust Lindsay completely on this, and she says the tattoos are benign. These are two people. I can keep going. There's more. They have released the whole list, but we know from the affidavits in this case about some of the details on the others. Francisco Javier Garcia Cacique is a 24-year-old barber. Mother is absolutely adamant that he was deceived, and he was forced to sign something that said he was going to be deported to Venezuela, and now he's in El Salvador.

0:26:20 Matt: Brother have matching tattoos that read, God gives his toughest battles to his strongest warriors. Was identified by his family in that propaganda video. They were shocked to see that he was in El Salvador. It's horrible to think, right? Have Gustavo Adolfo Aguilera Aguero, who was a roofing contractor. He's taking his trash out when he's detained. Tattoos include his mother and his first son's names. That's what we've got on that. That exactly.

0:26:28 Thomas: And that's horrible. Would be a weird gang, Matt. Right. Everyone who likes my mom and my first child, let's form up a very violent gang. Don't there's too many. There's so many. Like, what are you talking about?

0:26:52 Matt: Yeah. I say, obviously, as an immigration attorney, these are affidavits that are relying on statements from immigration attorneys. I tend to trust my colleagues. They're summarizing the evidence that's been put in against their clients previously on some of these cases. A couple of these people had already been released on bond, which means an immigration judge did not think. To list some of the tattoos that are in question here. Quok with the daughter's birth time on it.

0:27:14 Thomas: Weird gang. Matt, another very weird gang that's

0:27:17 Matt: A tattoo artist who was asked about his tattoo and said that it was just basically like an eyeball design that he thought was cool that he found on Google.

0:27:24 Thomas: How it starts. And then murder.

0:27:26 Matt: Right, right. Got somebody who just went to a party with a friend where he knew no one else, and the government is claiming that he was associating with gang members when he showed up because he was seen at this party. Have another asylum seeker who was beaten after being thrown into a Black SUV and detained and that they were going to kill him next time. This was somebody who was actively supporting an opposition candidate against Maduro regime.

0:27:46 Thomas: That happened in.

0:27:47 Matt: Venezuela, yeah.

0:27:47 Thomas: In Venezuela. And that's why they're

0:27:48 Matt: That's his asylum claim. And I've worked with a lot of Venezuelans. This is not an unusual claim. The Maduro regime is doing terrible things to people. And it's extra bad when you consider the way that Republicans talk about communism and about Venezuela, that we're not doing everything possible. You'd think you'd have an amazing PR opportunity to grant asylum to every one of these people and put their claims out there and say what Maduro is doing. And instead, we're sending these people to hell. Is just, I wanted to focus on the people for a moment because I haven't seen enough about that. When you hear that these 238 people are hardened gang members, there are a few. And it sounds like there are well -known actual gang members who were sent down. Actual gang members do exist,

0:27:48 Thomas: Here. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. Mm

0:28:24 Matt: I'm not denying that. But the problem is that under the Alien Enemies Act, we have no way to know any of that, and the government doesn't have to provide any evidence whatsoever.

0:28:32 Thomas: Of whether or not that should exist it should at least be revealed there's got to be more than the president or the site or Rubio says so that can't be that's there's no way that's no one could possibly want that you're

0:28:43 Matt: Do not want to live in that country. I don't think that anyone should want to in the country where the executive branch can say, this person is a terrorist. This person is gang member. Oh, you want evidence? No, no, no. We're deporting him. He's out. Is going to one of the worst places we can send him. History of sort of using tattoos against people in this way is pretty convoluted. Personally, we have a big Central American population in the greater Boston area. I've personally done quite a few deportation cases involving people accused of gang members. Universally, they were kids who were just in high school. I mean, I will tell you that having... the name of a gang member as a Facebook friend or in your phone as a contact. And if you went to school, obviously, with people, you're going to have people in your contacts. You're going Facebook friends. Maybe you don't know them that well. They basically gather up this sort of rubric with this point system, and they try to find out how they can add up these points to make you into a gang the point that being named in a police report with a gang member can get you a bunch of points. And that can include if you were being pulled over because he was giving you a ride home and somebody you didn't even know was a gang members giving you ride home or you're in a car with four people and it turns out one of them has been flirting with gangs or whatever. And again, it doesn't have to be a hardened gang member because people who actually are actual sworn members of gangs have to do terrible things to join a gang for the most part. They include gang associates or people who are gang affiliates. And there's a CBS News piece that everybody really should take a look at. That really lays it out, where Margaret Brennan goes on a ride along with ICE in Long Island to look for MS-13. And they can't find anybody. What they end up finding is a 20 -year -old kid with a BB gun in his house. And I'm going to just play, gonna pull this clip up. This is very important. What the ICE officer says to explain this, because this really nails everything we're talking about in one sentence.

0:30:16 Clip: His known crime is entering the country illegally. Correct. But that's it at this point. That's all you definitely know. That is correct. The purpose of classifying him as a gang member or gang associate is because once he goes in front of an immigration judge, we don't want him to get bail because the whole point of this operation is to get these known gang members off the street. Both men were taken here to Alphonse D'Amato Federal

0:30:39 Thomas: Known

0:30:35 Matt: There it is. So, exactly. Exactly. Now again, yeah.

0:30:42 Thomas: Don't understand. The point of saying he's a gang member when he's not is so that he gets treated like a gang members. Are you not understanding this? So that bad things happen to him. Am I speaking a different language here? It is crazy.

0:30:50 Matt: It is incredible. He's standing in front of a camera, talking to reporters, saying this out loud. Out loud.

0:30:59 Thomas: That's how much they are proud of it. They don't even understand why you're asking.

0:31:02 Matt: Incredible. Literally saying that we tell the judge he's a gang member so he doesn't get bond. That's it. And if you watch the whole piece, which I have to link to, they're just doing a ride-along. They're trying to find some guys. They can't find them. So they just kind of settle on this guy who is known to be whatever gang associate or gang affiliate, which just means that he knows somebody or has seen at a party or has a tattoo or whatever. And then he just calmly explains why they do this. And I'm taking the time to explain all this because I want people to understand just how bad this is, how arbitrary this is and why we cannot accept. And if you really don't understand this, just ask the nearest adult of sound mind, please, because I don't understanding. There's so many people that are just accepting this. They're just like, oh yeah, they're gang members. Government says they're gang members, government says that they support Hamas, whatever. Not how it's supposed to work. Going to look because I want to see the latest on what law enforcement is saying about tattoos, and it's all over the place. There's a statement from the El Paso County Sheriff's Office where they went off script a little while back. This is incredible, and this is going to mirror something I'm about to read in a bit. Are very strategic in that they are not freely identifying themselves as members of the gang or have indicators on their bodies such as tattoos. So in cases, you know, they're not gang members because they don't have tattoos, is what he's saying.

0:32:08 Thomas: Yes. That is what the gang members do. They are devious. They do not want you to know. Sometimes the absence of gang tattoos proves their gang membership.

0:32:16 Matt: If you dunk underwater and they drown, well, they were gang members. That's how it goes, or whatever. Or they're innocent. I don't remember which one we guys spent.

0:32:22 Thomas: They weigh the same as a duck. Yeah, wow.

0:32:24 Matt: There's also some examples from the Department of Public Safety in this picture of known gang tattoos, which include things like stars, crowns, firearms and grenades, trains and dice. Trains and dice and out audience roses.

0:32:35 Thomas: It's a crime to really like trains, huh? Can't they make illegal any of the actual bad tattoos, which is like Chinese characters that white people have that don't mean what they should mean, you know, like or, you

0:32:51 Matt: You want proof a of gang membership, I mean, that's that guy. Yeah, I've seen those things. Mean, I was very distressed to learn that I live with a gang member because my primary partner, Casey, has a predatory feline on her body. And that is apparently, yeah, she's got a beautiful black cat. Predatory felines are another sign of gang membership. So I got to talk to her about that. See See what she's been doing all day.

0:33:09 Thomas: Hopefully she knows an immigration attorney.

0:33:12 Matt: Also a Puerto Rican rapper who just endorsed Trump a couple weeks before the election named Anuel AA, and he has something that's considered to be immediate proof of Tren de Aragua membership, the phrase Real hasta la muerte, real until death, crown tattooed. So obviously he's a gang member too. This is how it goes. So really hammering this in, I hope you get the idea that we cannot trust the government to say who's a gang member. We have to put this in front of judges. Even immigration judges at least know how to do this. Kind of administrative or judicial review has to happen.

0:33:42 Thomas: Show's brought to you by NPR's Up First. News, breaking news, it's just constantly breaking news. I know we're all doom scrolling all the time. It's not our fault. There is so much doom, top quality, top shelf doom of to scroll upon, I don't know, upon which, I point is, I get it if you're over the news. That sounds like you, I I will say you might want to try the Up First Podcast from NPR. First frees you from the all -day scroll obsession by telling you everything you need to know in an easy 15 minutes. NPR's Up First provides the top three stories to start your day. With digestible 10 to 15 minute episodes, it's all the news you need so you can get back to your life feeling informed or, you know, get back Recently, I listened to one where they had Mahmoud's wife on, which wife of that Palestinian student that we've talked about on this show. It's stuff like that. It's the top stories covered in great way that keeps you informed by being thorough, but somehow and short, which it's only, like I said, 10, 15 minutes, and it's a great way to start your day. Importantly, it's fact -based, which, you know, that's in your news. I recommend you check out the Up First podcast. You can start your a little little bit more informed. A little more in the know than when you went to sleep. Listen now to the Up first podcast from NPR.

0:35:06 Matt: The case that they're citing, because there aren't very many cases on the Alien Enemies Act, there were sort of a flurry of cases after it passed. The very first instance, actually, there's an unpublished case that I've started reading about that John Marshall, the first chief justice, wrote in which he actually applied a broader standard than the one in the case I'm about to read and made an argument that the executive had less power than they're going to say here, if you want to get originalist on this. In case, Ledecky v. Watkins, I the petitioner in this case, Ledecky, was a German who was arrested in 1941, and he was held until 1946 or so, I think. Was looking for habeas corpus released from detention. And the court basically said that during wartime, Alien the Removal Act allows us to do pretty much whatever we want to enemy aliens. And

0:35:46 Thomas: Well, it's not wartime though.

0:35:47 Matt: That's important. Making the point that this is a statute that precludes judicial review in this. And that's kind of scary. That doesn't sound great. Act Concerning Alien Enemies, which confers in the president very great discretionary powers respecting their persons. This is John Marshall again in one of the early cases. He says, it appears to me to be about as unlimited as the legislature could make it. Again, not great. The court says, barring questions of interpretation and constitutionality, it's kind The Alien Enemy Act is such a statute. So there is some case law. Again, there's not a lot of case law on this. But there's a case from around that time in which the court found that even though it doesn't have that much power to review, it still had power to view the person's citizenship to make sure that they were actually a citizen of that country. That's a pretty important threshold determination. If a court reserves the power to determine during wartime if the person in front of them in a habeas petition is actually a person of that county, I think they should have the power if somebody's actually a gang member and to see if this is an interpretation or constitutionality issue because we're talking again about a use of it during peacetime with a country we're not at war with, with one subset. Of a population of that country.

0:36:47 Thomas: We're at war, that seems pretty important, Matt. I feel like that part is important. Yeah.

0:36:51 Matt: Everything. Is everything. So we to have a judicial review of this, and we need have it immediately. And it is happening with Judge Boasberg. Boesberg has not been very patient with the government in this case. He is not happy about the fact that they deported people when he said not to deport them. You not a far left radical judge. He was actually originally appointed by George W. Bush and then elevated to where he's at now by Barack Obama. And he was actually one of the judges who ordered the release of Hillary Clinton's emails and ordered that Donald Trump's taxes not be released. So this is not somebody who's necessarily anti -Trump all the time. He just a few hours ago issued an order and is very unhappy about the things that he has been seeing. And I want to tell you about one of Robert Cerna, who is the acting field office director in Harlingen, Texas. Harlingen is a very important nexus for immigration enforcement. The border stuff goes through Harlingen. A lot of people who are held on their way to deportation go through Harlington. It's an important ICE position. And he filed something that I just can't still really believe. The ordered the government to come back and explain. About what was going on with the third plane, which actually left after his order. Serna swore under oath that that third plane was actually full of people who had lawful deportation orders. It wasn't about the Enemies Act. And for now, the judge still wants more proof of that. But for now that's where we're at. The judge was also looking to find out more about why they thought these people were gang members. Let me just read this directly from the declaration so you can really think about what he's saying. This is very much along the lines of the tattoo thing about how if you don't have tattoos, you're a gang member.

0:38:17 Thomas: Right, here we go.

0:38:18 Matt: It is true that many of the Tren de Aragua members removed under the Alien Enemies Act do not have criminal records in the United States, that is because they have only been in the The lack of

0:38:27 Thomas: Okay. So, yeah, they're having that time to be criminals. Gotcha.

0:38:31 Matt: A criminal record does not indicate that they pose a limited threat. In fact, based upon their association with Tren de Aragua, the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose. Demonstrates they are terrorists, with regard to whom we lack a complete profile. Really soak that in. Just really take that in what that is so fascist that no record.

0:38:50 Thomas: So anything is proof of gang membership or whatever, like just the lack of, yeah. No record. Well, of course. You think they would have a record? They're too smart for that.

0:38:58 Matt: Of course, it just means we don't know enough about them yet. You know, we haven't had enough contact with them. We know they're gang members. I don't why you're pushing back, Judge, because we're telling you that they're ordering them to say, basically, give me this information or tell me there's some kind of state secret thing here, because they're arguing national security as well. Called the entire response woefully insufficient. Not even producing anybody that he can explain any of this. It's based on unsubstantiated understandings. It's just the regional ice official, he says. He wants to get a cabinet -level officer in here.

0:39:34 Matt: He I want to talk about the Republican response to Boesberg because it's very alarming and it's part of a trend that I want talk about very quickly. A very disturbing trend. Right now, it is a silly trend that we can make fun of, and I certainly intend to. March 18th, 2025, Representative Brandon Gill from Texas filed articles of impeachment against James Boesburg, the judge who had just ordered these planes turned around. We've had some fun with the articles of impeachment against Alejandro Mayorkas, which were completely ridiculous, but did actually manage to get through the House. This has no chance of getting through the house currently, but this kind of thing, as we'll talk about, might. And obviously, you need high crimes and misdemeanors to impeach a judge. And what he's alleging is that Judge Boasberg did knowingly and willfully use his judicial position to advance political gain while interfering with the president's constitutional prerogatives and enforcement of the rule of law.

0:40:20 Thomas: Advance political what?

0:40:21 Matt: Political gain.

0:40:22 Thomas: Advance political gain.

0:40:25 Matt: It's not impeachable conduct. And if we're going to impeach people for advancing political gain and ignoring the law, then we've got the president to contend with.

0:40:25 Thomas: That a phrase I don't know about?

0:40:33 Matt: But yeah, I don't know. It's meaningless. He was unable on camera, he was unable to name what the actual high crime or misdemeanor was. I just wanted to note this part because he cites the Ledecky case we were just talking about. He says it's not for courts to question the president's determination under the Alien Enemies Act because they are matters of political judgment for which judges have neither technical competence nor official responsibility. Notwithstanding this binding precedent from the highest court in the land, Judge Boasberg has done exactly what the Supreme Court commanded not be done and has illegitimately tried to substitute his own judgment for that of the elected president. So, yeah, is one article of impeachment. I started going back and I realized that there have been multiple articles of impeachment filed against multiple judges, mostly with the Doge stuff. I wanted to talk about a couple of the other ones because this is a tactic now. It's just a thing that they're doing. Got Paul Engelmeyer, who's one of the judges who made some rulings in the Doage cases. Engaged in judicial misconduct, and this is filed on February 21st, 2025 by Eli Crane from Arizona. Engaged in judicial misconduct when he halted President Donald J. Trump's executive order on purely political grounds, demonstrating clear bias and prejudice against the president and the 137 ,400 ,000 Americans who voted for him. I don't know why you need to put that number in there.

0:40:33 Thomas: Advancing political gain, 113, oh wow,

0:41:40 Matt: 137 million, 400.

0:41:42 Thomas: Million.

0:41:42 Matt: Is that right? Yeah. Engelmeyer has acted outside the bounds of judicial propriety by submitting this ruling that demonstrates clear bias against the President. That is enough to get you impeached, apparently. From Derek Von Orden, talking about also against Paul Engelmeyer. Got, I think, the most trivial articles of impeachment ever filed on February 24th, 2025 from Representative Andy Ogles from Tennessee. This is about John Deacon Bates from the D.C. District Court. Engaged in a pattern of conduct that is incompatible with the trust and confidence placed in him as a federal judge, as follows. Bates ordered the CDC and HHS and FDA to restore socially divisive and destructive LGBTQI plus content on taxpayer subsidized government web pages. That's what he's being impeached for. Restoring webpages. They go on about, whatever, the usual thing about surgical mutilation or whatever, but ordering the government to put that webpage back up, engaged in conduct so utterly lacking in intellectual honesty and basic integrity that it's guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. An absolute joke.

0:42:37 Thomas: The way, I guess they're, are up both elections? Is that what they're trying to do with the voter numbers? It's, what did they say, 100 and what?

0:42:42 Matt: A good point. I'm not so good with the numbers. I'm sorry. That's the way I copied it in. It is 74 million Americans. I'm so sorry. I copied in in such a way that it looked like it was a lot more. That's still too many Americans.

0:42:54 Thomas: 77 is the actual amount, so

0:42:56 Matt: Shooting low. All right. So one more about... Amir Ali from the USAID case, which we've talked about extensively, who of course ordered that the government resume spending on USAID. They're very mad about that. I couldn't help but notice that when they're talking about Judge Paul Adam Engelmeyer, they only called him Paul Engelmire. Maybe this is a small detail. Maybe it's not. But when they were talking about this judge, they made sure to call him Amir Hatem Mahdi Ali, right?

0:43:20 Matt: What a funny Islamic -sounding name. Spelling that out for you. Like the people insist on calling him Barack Hussein Obama, right? It's that same kind of approach. In issuing a temporary restraining order against the pausing of funds promulgated in the executive order, Judge Ali has without merit marginalized the president's article to authority, etc., etc. The patent violation of constitutional precedent based on ignorance of the supreme law of the land is entirely inconsistent with serving the United States as a district court judge. That's the allegation. That is the high crime or misdemeanor. He doesn't like the way that he applied the law. He mentions that some USCID money once accidentally went to feeding lunch to some people who might have been with Al Qaeda. So because of that, He's causing irreparable harm because we might feed some people from Al -Qaeda lunch, the millions of people who might die because of these things that we're withholding now.

0:43:20 Thomas: Yeah, yep. Not to worry, Matt. Got a vigorous defender in Chief Justice Roberts who absolutely owned him, just totally rebuked him. Stunning rebuke, I'm told. Absolute stunning rebuque.

0:44:12 Matt: Is pretty unusual that the Chief Justice came out of nowhere and actually said something. But if you want to read that statement, that is actually worth mentioning right

0:44:19 Thomas: You ready for this? Join the resistance. Hashtag resistance. Chief Justice Roberts. So this is, again, in response to the president of the United States calling for impeachment based on entirely reasonable decisions, which is an extremely bad thing to be doing. This is just another way in which these people have constantly enabled Trump by underreacting at all times. It's this. OK, for more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. Normal appellate review process exists for that purpose. Wow.

0:44:57 Thomas: I'm surprised Trump could even get up after that. I'm he was doing a firing squad to the judges and just shooting them, I imagine we could expect the same thing. Hey, this is what the appellate review process is for. Actually, it's shoot him. Maybe, like It's not appropriate for you to execute them via firing squad. I'll just say inappropriate.

0:45:18 Matt: Why didn't I think of that?

0:45:19 Thomas: Yeah. Is like he's being a helpful. He's like, he's clippy. Or something. He's been a helpful... Oh, it looks like you're trying to do an appeal.

0:45:25 Matt: It looks like he might not like a judicial decision. You considered not impeachment?

0:45:26 Thomas: Yeah. I guess you've been going about that the wrong way.

0:45:32 Matt: Will point out that Alexandria Ocasio -Cortez and other Democrats did attempt to impeach Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito in a similarly, you know, obviously doomed to fail for good reasons in July 2024.

0:45:38 Thomas: For, yeah, real reasons. Not for their decisions, which, honestly, some of them you could argue. But not for that. It's for the corruption and the other stuff that's unbecoming of a Supreme Court justice. Yeah, we've

0:45:51 Matt: Actual demonstrable corruption and being beholden to far right interests who are controlling cases that go before the court. Just for reference, last the time that a federal judge was actually convicted and impeached, I had to go back and look just to assuage myself on this. Porteus in 2010. He's a Louisiana district judge. Was part of the FBI's Operation Wrinkled Robe, which I think is a pretty cool way to investigate judges. Yeah, he was all kinds of corrupt. Wrinkly robe. Prosecution is that he filed for bankruptcy and he wanted to avoid public notice. So he filed as Thomas Orteas instead of Porteos. And he got away with it. Pretty smart. Just looks like a typo.

0:46:17 Thomas: Stupid. Wow.

0:46:28 Matt: The last one before that was just 1989. It's extremely rare. And that was a pretty solid bipartisan effort to impeach this judge and convict him. And he was actually removed from office because he had demonstrable corruption. That's how it's supposed to work. That might be the last time that anybody's impeached and convicted for anything in the United States. That really could be the end of it. I just want to make the point that, as we've discussed many times before, impeachment is supposed to be a serious remedy. And as we talked about last time, it's a remedy that's really no longer available for the president at all, no matter the many, is the latest that we have on the Alien Enemies Act, on what's going on with Judge Boasberg, and or people who just generally... And I will say that the numbers right now are pretty across the board. The judges who have ruled against Trump, it's a pretty down -the -middle kind of thing. You can't really see trends for conservative or liberal. These are just following the law.

0:47:10 Thomas: Well, that's a bummer, Matt. Is all stuff that I'm really glad we have you to keep an eye on. Don't know what to say. I mean, it's and I really, really hope that we can put a stop to this.

0:47:24 Matt: Would be obsessively keeping an eye on it either way, and I'm thankful for the privilege to get to talk to all of you about it.

0:47:29 Thomas: We'll take a break, and then a we'll palate cleansing footnote fetish.

0:47:37 Thomas: Right, what's with the monkeys? What are we doing here? It's monkey feet? Is it a monkey foot fetish?

0:47:41 Matt: Is about your First Amendment right to communicate and to view monkeys, which I'm all about. I think it's very important that we get to talk to monkeys. Is the first time in U.S. history that we have any organization or person seeking to establish a First Amendment to communicate with animals. I thought it was kind of interesting. PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and they're filing against the National Institutes of Health and a number of doctors and researchers who are doing experiments on monkeys. And they are suing for the right to have a live stream for the monkeys so that they can watch their behavior and they can see because they're saying that the monkeys communicate. That there's things you can learn from their vocalizations, facial expressions, head and limb movements, body postures, and other behaviors that we can learn just from watching them. And they're saying that they have this First Amendment right to communicate with animals who are in custody. I thought it was a really interesting argument to make. We'll

0:48:29 Thomas: I don't totally get it, but... where are they? What monkey? Whose monkeys are these?

0:48:33 Matt: Are monkeys in a government research lab that the government is apparently still paying for, for now, at the National Institute of Health. Health as well, National Institute on Mental Health. Just saying that it's a violation of the First Amendment not to be able to have the right to communicate with monkeys in a lab. And I thought that was a really interesting application of the first amendment. I'm also very interested in animal rights law, and the First Amendment guarantees the right to receive communications from what's called willing speakers, people who want to talk to you. So obviously, if you're incarcerated, you have the right call people.

0:48:50 Thomas: Is the reasoning there? I don't totally get it. If it was humans, would we have the right to talk to them? Be called, I guess, right?

0:49:05 Matt: Or it didn't be called, defendants through the lawyers denied the request from PETA to open a channel of communication. Saying that these macaques who are held captive are willing speakers who would like to speak to them. I don't know if they specifically want to speak PETA, but they probably would like people to know what's going on.

0:49:16 Thomas: This is a call from a monkey correctional facility. Is calling. You want to accept the call? Would. I would, always.

0:49:20 Matt: From a primate. Oh, yeah. I'd take a call from a monkey, especially a video call when I hang out with a monkey. I think it's a really creative way to get animal rights into the courtroom, and I'm all about it. I have no problem with this. I think that we should know what's going on with these experiments and in these laboratories. And don't think there's a problem at all with extending it to First Amendment rights. Also saying there's Fifth Amendment right as

0:49:28 Thomas: Hundred percent. It's monkey see monkey do process.

0:49:47 Matt: Tube process there you go that's the one all

0:49:51 Thomas: That was, I just said that was

0:49:51 Matt: That was pretty solid off the cuff there

0:49:54 Thomas: Boy. Right. We're just calling. Just end it there. All Not going to beat that one. Yeah.

0:49:59 Matt: We gotta laugh folks we got a laugh out of this episode this is some heavy stuff yeah

0:50:05 Thomas: That's fascinating. I do. I mean, for one, I do think it's not going to matter because there's no such thing as government research anymore. But, you know, yeah, like it did matter. And, you the previous world.

0:50:13 Matt: So long as there is yeah

0:50:14 Thomas: So good effort. I like it. But no, That's a delight. And I, too, would like to receive a video call from a monkey once in my life. That would be nice. Right. Well, that is our show. At that's a tough one, Matt. I'm really, really worried about this. And I hope the courts can put a stop to this. But that's love being in that position.

0:50:30 Matt: Got to tell you, it's very important that we see the whole picture here with Mahmoud Khalil's case and what's going on with the Ilhan Edamez Act here, because this is one picture. There's a reason I'm doing these back to back. These are the two most important stories, I think, in the country right now. Know I have my bias as an immigration attorney, but I think that this has severe implications for all of us, and I really appreciate people tuning in.

0:50:50 Thomas: All right. Well, thanks so much for listening, everyone. Reminder, check out Gabble Gabble. Go check out the latest episode and also that hangout next Wednesday. Look for that on Patreon dot com slash law and all that. We'll get social media and stuff will notify you. And otherwise, we'll see you on Monday.

0:51:05 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.

0:51:22 Thomas: Total rebuke. Calling.

0:51:27 Matt: Yeah. I'd take a call from a monkey, especially