Silky Shah has been fighting ICE for its entire existence

Transcript

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

0:00:13 Matt: Very pleased to welcome to Opening Arguments leading voice in immigration abolition and someone who has helped me understand my own views on the subject for the last few years, Silky Shah, Executive Director of the Detention Watch Network. Welcome. Thank you for coming on.

0:00:27 Silky: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Yeah.

0:00:29 Matt: Just before we get into it too much, your career is pretty much exactly the same age as ICE. It's about, you started, is that right? Like within a month or two of ICE?

0:00:37 Silky: I did I did yeah I graduated from college in 2003 and I've been

0:00:42 Thomas: Did you and Ice go to rival schools? And then Ice is the Slytherin and you're the... I don't know.

0:00:52 Matt: So that's pretty unique how did that get going that you just immediately came out of the gate fighting an agency that was just born and

0:00:57 Silky: Yeah, I mean, I you know, I grew up in Texas, and I in Houston, and um, I was in school at, in college at the University of Texas at Austin when 9-11 happened. It was a very like, I don't know. I've been thinking about this. It was a time when people were very active on college campuses. And I was in Texas where there was a lot of work against the death penalty. There was these anti-corporate campaigns and a lot of other things happening and then 9-11 happened and so much attention like shifted towards the war in afghanistan and eventually the war in iraq but I was doing all this work around prisons and detention on campus like doing education and I got this job from like my first job doing organizing um, in the initially it was based in New York, but they were like, maybe we should move this to Texas because that's where we were essentially seeing this prison boom at the border. So like, so much of it was what was happening there because of, you know, both ICE being created, and also this sort of, you know, that like often when we talk about the war on terror um it's really about that injection of like resources into you know U.S. militarism but the war and terror like the the domestic war on terror really operated through the criminal legal system so like one of the big prisons that we were fighting um was a u .s marshal's jail that was gonna that still that exists now for immigrants who are both in civil and criminal proceedings um and so there was all these intersections and a lot of it was happening at the border and a little bit of it and a lot of the prison system was like centric like texas was ground zero it had the most attention And so, yeah, that's how that happened.

0:02:48 Matt: You had a journalism degree at that point, is that right so and just to be clear with everybody you're not a lawyer and never have been a lawyer which is

0:02:50 Silky: I did. No, I'm not a lawyer. I love that you know I have a journalism degree. I'm like, who knows that about me? That's hilarious. Hilarious.

0:02:59 Matt: Do my research I just was very curious how you came to this because you have had such a committed uh consistent career just in what you're doing right now which is fighting ice and talking about this stuff way before I think most people were. And did your journalism background give you some indication of what was going on? Were you already plugged into these issues before you came to college?

0:03:18 Silky: Yeah, I was, because like I said, there was like a lot of people supporting student organizing, which is what I ended up doing when I left college. It was like, and in the way I thought about it, you know, a lot OF it was around, Hey, let's have this campaign against Sodexo Marriott, which was, you Know, like in the board of corrections corporation of America. Um, eventually we had this campaign Against Lehman Brothers. Um So it was really great when Lehman brothers went down but against Lehman brothers because um they were you know this higher education bond underwriter and there was this like relationship between all these universities so we're like this is the way we can inject a little bit of understanding of all these connections um but for me I think a lot of it was just getting students to care about this stuff see what power they might have at the university but also like what are they going to do when they leave the university what's their role like how how can they organize whether they do it for work which is what I do but or not like there's... there's a role for all of us to play yeah

0:04:21 Matt: Yeah, no, for sure. And it was very different back then. And I appreciate in your recent book, Unbuild Walls, which I'm sure we'll get into a bit, the holistic view you're giving of the past. And obviously, when I keep saying 23 years, immigration detention, immigration arrest, INS all existed before 23 years ago, but right now we're talking about ICE, of course, and the immediate fight to abolish it and do anything better. But kind of just before we really get into it, how's your perspective right now on our current moment? How are you feeling? I know that's a lot, but hey,

0:04:56 Silky: I mean pretty

0:04:58 Thomas: What an impolite question to ask, Matt. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

0:05:03 Matt: People ask me that all the time,

0:05:04 Thomas: I'm just like...

0:05:02 Silky: I am curious how y'all are feeling I just you know it's absolutely terrifying like it's, it's unbelievable. I think it's, um, there have been six people who've died in detention since January 3rd of 2026. We're seven in the last 17 days. Um, yeah

0:05:04 Matt: Including at at least one homicide side that we know of yeah

0:05:21 Silky: Yeah, and I think, and suicide, like, it's it's just, it's wild to have been fighting this thing. Like you're asking me all these questions, Matt, about doing this work in 2003, nobody knew what detention was, like when I started doing this work, I think a lot of people were like, oh, you work on Guantanamo. I'm like, well, you know, no, not really, but like, yes, there are connections here, and even more now that that feels so present, but I think nobody knew. There wasn't like, now there's much more of a sort of civil society infrastructure like doing work around immigration or detention generally that didn't exist in the same way it does now. And so at the time we were trying to get people to pay attention to what was happening, and I think it was confusing for a lot of people. Detention is sort of a confusing, it's still very confusing to people. And now it's become like, for years we've been saying like, if we don't stop this, it's just going to grow exponentially. And to now see this, and similarly with ICE, it's like, they're like, so much of the argument and the thing I constantly push is like, if we're always going to accept that some immigrants, like accept the dehumanization of immigrants, like it's going to open up space for this to happen to not just more immigrants, to more people generally, which

0:06:37 Silky: Is what we've seen in the last few weeks. And so I think I, yeah, I'm pretty terrified, and at the same time, you know, there is this sort of, on the abolish ICE front, like a lot of people are like, oh, 2018 was a blip, whatever, like that failed, it was kind of, and which is really obnoxious, um, because from my perspective, I mean, yes, there was this really annoying thing where, is this, you know, Sean McAuley, this like white dude, everyone's like, he's the guy who started And it's like, shut up. But yeah,

0:07:07 Matt: Nobody thought of getting rid of ice before that was right

0:07:09 Silky: Nobody thought of it before. And in this tweet, this tweet started, it's, like, get over yourself. But for me, like so much of what we were seeing was that all these local communities, like these organizers on the ground or activists on the the ground who were like I want to do something that was their moment when they started to understand the role of you know detention and these contracts and also 287g programs which are the ice police collaborations um and started to really intervene and they kind of in you know not everybody was doing things forever but there was like a contingent of folks who came in then that are you know dwn members now are a member of our organization and um and we really built up and And we're prepared more in 2020 when there was all these openings. We were like, oh, OK, like, let's go. Let's like win some campaigns. So I think I'm thinking about both like I'm terrified and I'm just like really inspired by like, I mean, just seeing the incredible organizing and defense networks and everything that's happening in Minneapolis. And it's happened in so many other parts of the country. I thinkI just am trying to hold on to that.

0:08:19 Silky: Yeah, so I don't know. I did, so I started this last year, but I was watching an episode of Eyes on the Prize, which is like the civil rights documentary from back in the day, last night on MLK Day.

0:08:31 Thomas: I think I watched that in eighth grade. And yeah,

0:08:33 Silky: Exactly. But it's like, it just puts everything in perspective. You're like okay like we can talk about these times as if they're unprecedented sure they're unprecedented but let's like actually not that long ago like conditions were quite bad for large categories of people in this country yeah

0:08:34 Matt: It's great yeah

0:08:54 Thomas: Really, that has been my lesson, is that kind of the privileged idiot of this is like, having growing up with this view, the sheltered view of like, end of history, you know, well, we dealt with all that stuff, you know, in the 60s and all that. And then, and then like now seeing it as more of one continual thing, you know? Just one continual fight. Like it really, it really has been an adjustment to realize like, oh, it's not just a matter of what white people are focusing on. Like this fight's been going on this entire time. And I'm kind of the uninitiated when it comes to this. Obviously, Matt knows both from his work experience and from reading your book. But I wanted to make sure um as a stand -in for the listener what do you mean when you say they were building up border prisons uh I think you said like right around 9-11 I don't know anything about that because you could you expand on that a little bit like is that that's been going on since literally then sure

0:09:49 Silky: It's been going on before then. So, I mean, the modern detention system as we know it, um, largely started to take shape in the early 1980s. So like a lot of what I argue in the book, and a lot of, I think, the sort of thing I'm trying to push is that the growth of immigration detention is very much tied to the growth of mass incarceration. There's not they're not like separate things that happened.

0:10:09 Thomas: They're like another branch of the business model kind of thing like another

0:10:14 Silky: And I think that business model, I think people often place it on private prisons, which is absolutely true. But it's also just these like, you know, it's the federal government, it's these state and local, like especially local county jails, like all of them play a role in this. And so, you know, for a long time, like, I mean, basically since the 50s to the early 80s, often when people would go into detention, they'd be in there for a day or two, and then they'd like be released on their own recognizance and be able to like, go through their immigration proceedings, like while they could still like be with their family or work if they could work. And then in the early 1980s that started to change and the system started to grow and so you know one of the big sort of shifts that happened was actually five years before 9-11 in 1986 which I'm sure Matt knows very well any immigration lawyer can probably go on and on about, 1996, but and, you know, Detention Watch Network, our organization started in 1997, sort of in response, where you had these two laws passed that basically expanded the set of crimes called quote-unquote aggravated felonies, that don't have to be an aggravated or felony in the immigration, you know, it doesn't have together, but that meant people were just like sort of fast-tracked to deportation, they no longer had the right to due process, and it also like made people feel trapped in the U.S. People, if they left the U.S., then they could have a bar to re-entry for long periods of time. And so it sort of ended up doing both, expanding the detention system and deportations for especially asylum seekers and legal permanent residents, and then growing the undocumented population at the same time. So both of those things are happening. 9-11 happens, and you get this like injection of political will and institutional support, the creation of DHS. And so all these things are happening at the same time. And like I said before, I do really think one of the things that happened and the reason why I was fighting this prison at the border was because they started like this is the point where you start seeing immigration crimes become the number one crime in the federal courts. And so this is in 2004, that's when they become the number one crime. And it's for people who are entering the country without documentation. So you can be in the U.S. without documentation and it's not considered a crime. Time. But if you, I mean, Matt, you know all this, but if

0:11:11 Matt: They've

0:12:51 Silky: You come, you know, like if you enter without documentation, you could get up to six months in jail. If you do it twice, you can get up to 18 months, two years in federal prison. And so that like number starts to go up and actually all those immigration crimes just skyrocket because they have more border patrol. They have more people targeting people for criminal prosecution. So all, like, these, these are sort of parallel systems where it's like, yes, people are in, quote-unquote, civil immigration detention, where they're going through their sort of immigration deportation proceeding. And then, you know, there's these layers of punishment, like, once somebody is done, if they get prosecuted, then they end up in detention afterwards, and then they get deported. And if they try to come back, they could end up into detention for another two years, five years longer, and or in prison, and then go to detention again. It's just this kind of cycle that starts to happen, and it just grows both systems and more people, and which

0:12:51 Thomas: How much

0:13:47 Silky: Means more prison beds yeah

0:13:47 Thomas: Capacity did oh sorry sorry yeah Well, that's kind of like, how much capacity did they have, and like, roughly, and like, how has that increased, has that boomed like, like prisons and stuff.

0:13:57 Silky: So, like, pre-96, it was like some, like, seven, eight thousand, like people on it, like, any given day, like, that was roughly the capacity. After 96, like in 98, it was about 15,000, so you see this really big shift because of 96. Um, and then around pre-9/11, it was about 20,000. Right now, 73,000. It's like the highest it's ever been.

0:14:23 Matt: Never had more. And actually, I'm sure you saw today, I'm sure you've been following the the funding bill that, is looks like it's on its way now. So we should probably talk about that.

0:14:32 Matt: I didn't see the exact number, but they're authorizing, of course. They did reduce some of ICE's funding. They gave them a very minor haircut, I think, but not

0:14:39 Silky: I mean, not quite. I actually am like, let me, I'm like, our policy person was sending us messages about this. And I am like it, it's like, they think they're reducing, but they're not actually doing anything quite significant. I'm, I mean, for ICE custody operations, it's going from 3.43 billion to 3.84 billion. And ERO, which is Detention Enforcement and Removal Operations, it is 5.08 to 5.45. So there's still a little bit of an increase happening, actually.

0:14:43 Thomas: Wait

0:14:51 Matt: Yeah, it's just, of

0:15:03 Thomas: Yeah

0:15:13 Matt: Course. Of course.

0:15:14 Silky: Which is always the way it is. It's like a ratchet. So they do this thing. This is often it. It is like, oh, we're just going to overspend or we're going to have more people in detention. And it makes the case to members of Congress, which has included both republicans democrats that they need to raise the amount over and over again um so that's yeah yeah

0:15:31 Matt: And You reminded me in the book, I actually had to put this together, but exactly how they were doing it. But I remember when they were doing this, the DHS would report back at the end of the year because they'd move money around. Like they'd take money from the asylum office and give it to ERO for enforcement, right? And then just tell Congress that's what they were doing, and then use that as a new baseline for ERO. And I just like, there's so many different ways to lie with numbers here and to play with it and to pretend that you need that much money. And now, of course, we should talk about this. They're going to have more money than they're literally going to know what to do with, I think. You look at what's coming.

0:15:57 Silky: I mean it's why like you know I I have this piece at some point coming out in truth out but like to me when I think about this last year the funding bill like every you know you can talk about all the horrific things that have happened on immigration, so many horrific things, um, which, you know, the transfers to CECOT, or like the student detentions, et cetera, et cetera. But like, to me, the thing that was really the turning point was the funding bill in July.

0:16:24 Silky: Like, No question. And from my perspective, I mean, $170 billion, it's gargantuan amounts of money. But I think about this, and I'm curious, Matt, if you like also think about it this way, like, I remember the moment. So in 2013, there was this moment under Obama where there was a potential for comprehensive immigration reform. And the Senate bill passed. And the only way it passed is that they added this $46 billion border surge amendment.

0:16:50 Matt: Border. Yeah?

0:16:51 Silky: So it felt like it feels like, you know, there is a sort of history to these things that build on each other. And I think that's what's so scary, is that, you know, obviously, no Democrats voted for that bill last summer, but that those years and years of this sort of like bipartisan support have kind of gotten us to this place.

0:17:10 Matt: Well, but at the same time, Democrats, of course, as we know, voted for Laken Riley last January and before Trump came in to hand it to him. And I still can't forgive. I might have a lot of trouble.

0:17:15 Silky: 100%. 55 Democrats.

0:17:22 Matt: And ICE at the time comes to Congress and says, you can't pass this because we won't be able to mandatorily hold everybody. We can't hold everybody this would be subject to, right? And so, what do you do? Give them more money. That's how it works.

0:17:21 Thomas: That that really sucked yeah sorry

0:17:33 Matt: And the chart, you're right. I think it is overall the most horrific thing. And it's also, it's kind of like climate change. We just know it's coming. It's just there. It is on the horizon. It has been appropriated.

0:17:41 Silky: And they barely spent any of the money yet. You know, I mean, already they have 22,000 ICE agents compared to 10,000, you know, it's wild.

0:17:47 Matt: I don't know how you're feeling about this, but it just seems to me Minneapolis and Chicago and the others have been a preview of what they want every American, especially blue city, to look like. How is it feeling there?

0:18:02 Silky: Well, so this is, you know, going back to this sort of like intersection, like the way that ICE operated for so many years and was able to bring deportations up to over 400,000 in the Obama years, was through these ICE police collaborations, um, you know, there's a 287G program which gives local police the sort of authority to be immigration enforcers. There's, you know, various digital programs like Secure Communities that had a fingerprinting system within jails. And then they have this thing called the, I don't know, the name has changed a lot, the quote criminal alien program, whatever we're calling it now, where ICE officers are in county jails and like bringing people in. So for a long time, this is this like, local counties and like sheriff's departments and county jails were the gateway to the deportation pipeline. Like that's for the most part, yes, people were being picked up. Yes, there were raids. And especially under, this was like, like, this is sort of the difference between Republicans and Democrats, right? Republicans love the raids and the sort of criminalization. And Democrats were like, oh, let's make this like more effective and efficient by going through the criminal legal system. And with all these sanctuary policies, you know, deportation started to go down, like they had a huge, huge impact on bringing deportations down. But now Trump is like, this is where, you know, these sanctuary places have become like the site of the attack, and like where he can kind of, and now bringing ICE agents up this much, like to 22,000, it's like they're essentially like his occupying army, right? Like, it's, and so I I think, yeah, I think the question, I mean, it's been so many places, from Los Angeles to Chicago to Portland to now Minneapolis, like, so I think, yeah, I'm, I think that's what's so hard about this moment, is like, we're just in year one, like, where does this go from here, and um

0:20:05 Matt: We're all feeling it.

0:20:06 Silky: Yeah

0:20:06 Matt: On a more positive note, I think this is actually a good time to talk about Detention Watch Network and the many wins that your organization has secured and the ways that you work with organizers and activists on the ground. Because I know that a lot of our listeners want to get more involved and want to do more against ICE where they live. And we've got people all over. And one thing in your book that I thought you detailed really well that I think is very inspirational is what you call the site fights, where you take it to the ground, you take to the places where they're going to put new detention facilities or where they can cancel contracts. And I want to give you a chance to talk about some of your favorite examples of ways that communities have thought back and been able to keep those, because that is certainly coming. We've got promises of massive new detention facilities that keep floating different places, including potentially up here in New Hampshire, north of Maine. Yeah.

0:20:49 Silky: The New Hampshire warehouse I the

0:20:52 Matt: Unimaginably large, I can't even imagine. But how do those fights happen? How do they work? What's been working?

0:20:53 Silky: What's That's a hard question right now, I'll be honest, um, you know, and I say this a lot, like there was, I mean, as you mentioned, I've been working against detention roughly for 23 years, and there was like a 10-year period where we just like lose every campaign, like we're just constantly losing campaigns. And then all of a sudden there were openings. There was openings for a few reasons, I think it was, like, you know, very conjunctural, like it was a combination of many years of Trump, and or having several years of Trump's attack on immigrant communities, um, the pandemic, and then also the uprisings for Black lives at George Floyd summer, like, those things all helped us start to get to a place of like, oh, actually, maybe we can push a little bit further. So on these campaigns, I mean, I think there's so many inspiring ones. I'll point to Illinois, which I think still remains such a, it's so critical to me that Illinois won its fight, because thinking about what happened in Chicago, if there were a detention center in Illinois right now, like it would have been so much worse. It would have been so much easier for them to bring more people into the system. And that's the thing that people don't realize about detention. They think about it as like, it's hard for people to think about. It's like far away. People don't totally understand it, but it's, it helps facilitate deportation. Like you have detention beds. It helps them pick up more people to then put into deportation proceedings. And so it's an important piece that for some, some years would drive deportations right now. I mean, I think deportations are being driven because of the Trump administration. But for a long time, it was a very like, even the private prison companies said this after 9-11, there was like, it's an if you build it, they will come mentality. And it was true because both the private prison companies and these local counties, whether it was a local jail or private prison, were getting revenue from having these beds in their community, whether it was like a dollar a day or they're having some lucrative contract with the federal government. There's this like symbiotic relationship. And so a lot of our strategy, because all of ICE detention is outsourced for the most part, there's only five owned and operated facilities, ICE owned and upgraded facilities.

0:23:12 Silky: Everything else is county jails and private prisons. Now we're seeing more federal prisons be used, but that's sort of another story. Um, so what we did, you know, we started to bring folks together in terms of these site fights. And with Illinois, a lot of what they did was really look locally. It was like, oh, in Joliet, like there is this community that's like fighting, oh, here's another community. It basically became this incredible game of whack-a-mole, where I think there was like eight or nine sites over several years, all over, like near Chicago, also in like Gary, Indiana, and other places where, at every single place, they were like, we want a thousand bed detention center, or we want to start using this county jail, or we wanna start doing XYZ. And a combination of like support from people in Chicago, incredible organizers, incredible organizing there from the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant Refugee Rights, the National Immigrant Justice Center, so many incredible organizations, organized communities against deportations. They would connect, and then we would try to like figure out how to support. And they would be like, you know, in one place, I remember it was just like, like my friend Fred Tao who worked on these campaigns, he was just like, oh, this father and son just got really excited and want to fight it. And you have a town that's pretty small, you can have a small number of people really fight back. And so it was just years of them kind of playing this game of whack-a-mole. And eventually, finally, one town, they couldn't do it. And I think it was Dwight. And they, like, basically were like, no, we're going to get this private prison in here. We're going to get a dollar a day for every person who's detained here. This is going to be great revenue for the county. And then the state legislature actually decided to end the use of private prisons for like, there were like no more, no private prisons for immigration

0:24:58 Silky: Detention. So, that all together, it was like no detention in Illinois. And obviously they circumvent our wins, they do everything they can to kind of figure out other ways. They're building in Indiana, Michigan, but at the same time, again, these like raids in Chicago could have looked really different if they still had detention in Illinois. Right. So I think there's just a I think that's a really important story. You know, I yeah.

0:25:25 Thomas: Can I ask, um, how, Matt, how does the the law of that work, like, it isn't just like the federal government can just be like, we're doing this because we're the federal government, like, how does, how does that go who

0:25:34 Matt: If the state doesn't want to build a private prison, they're, and certainly the municipality has to sign off on permitting. And that was kind of my point at the beginning of this Trump administration especially, was that I think there's a lot of leverage. And certainly Silky would know a lot more about this than me, but a lot of leverage to go to town councils and just say, you know, like make them meet the letter of the law and everything. I mean, I think about the Burlington field office here in New England. They snuck in a detention facility. They didn't, like they were in a nondescript office park next to the mall. And of course, there's, as there is in every field office, there is a tiny little holding cell or set of holding cells. They never told the town council they were going to be holding people there, like in a jail, they just didn't tell them it was going to include one, um, and by the time they found that, it was too late. Right? And that kind of stuff with more eyes on it, but that was back before anybody was really watching. And the reason I was really excited to talk to you, I mean, lots of reasons, but one of them is just this moment right now, and it feels like so many things could be possible. As you said, it's pretty dark, but the the numbers on people being willing to say that they don't want ICE to exist, and the numbers of people just showing up for their neighbors right now in so many different places in so many different ways, um, you know, that's what's giving me hope right now. So, it's exciting to hear about these campaigns and how they've worked in the past. I want to come back to something, actually. You mentioned in your book, I actually hadn't heard before. I feel like I should have known this. But you mentioned that they actually offer discounts, basically, for a certain number of people. Remember the numbers on that? Yeah,

0:26:49 Matt: It's like the

0:26:50 Thomas: Who's offering a discount for what

0:26:51 Matt: Private

0:26:52 Silky: It's like a coupon. It'S like this thing called they have like guaranteed minimums and then tiered pricing. So guaranteed minimums, it's sort of just like, oh, like, you know, I live in Washington State. There's a detention center here, the Northwest Detention Center. It's a GEO Group facility. And so they're like, ICE is like, we will always pay you for at least, like, 1100 people to be detained there, even if it's lower than that. But that incentivizes ICE to be like, let's make sure at least 1100 is there.

0:26:52 Matt: Prisons. Yeah, that's right. Tiered pricing, yeah.

0:26:54 Thomas: Get

0:27:21 Silky: Yeah. And So then what they do then is have tiered prices. Anything it's,

0:27:20 Thomas: Our money's worth yeah it's like ice has a gym membership that's not using enough god damn it like ah we gotta go I gotta gotta make use of this I'm paying this amount no matter what

0:27:32 Silky: I mean, look at that. I mean that's why, you know, like I had a, well that's like my colleague I remember calling tiered pricing a coupon and I was like it's so messed up to think about it that way but that's really what it is it's basically so the tiered pricing is like anything over 1100 ice gives g or like they geo gives ice a discount on those numbers above so that's the thing there's all these and that that was one of the things that really happened in um in the first trump administration they just like expanded the guaranteed minimums like it went up and up and up so like it went from like 15 ,000 beds guaranteed to like 30 ,000 that's guaranteed you know so like and then those things just become much more permanent whenever those things are baked into the contract

0:27:36 Thomas: It's the mentality like it's yeah god it is yeah what

0:28:16 Matt: Is right. And as you said, when it's near a major urban area, they have every reason to not discriminate about, well, I mean, obviously discrimination is baked in, but to not even really think about the categories of people or who they're coming after. Like if you have all of those beds available, you're going to fill them. And it's just like you build a six lane highway, you are going to get six lanes of traffic, right? And it just sort of seems to be how it works. And I think people really do understand that. I really appreciate the point you made because we're thinking so much right now about the point of arrest. But I do think we got to keep the focus on where these people are going and how it's working and where it's not. And I guess I wanted to ask you, since you're talking about the force multipliers of the 287G agreements, which have been huge. And obviously, I think it's safe to say an unprecedented number of 287Gs were just signed in the past year, just kind of staggering number. And of course, that adds quite a lot. Those are the agreements that allow local

0:29:02 Matt: Officers to... Not just bringing back 287GS, but they're bringing back the ones where officers are actually out doing immigration enforcement or can be deputized to do immigration enforcement, the more collaborative ones. Whereas before, they were kind of doing paperwork for ICE, which was bad enough. And there are plenty of local police departments that I'm sure are happy to do that. But really, I think the other major disturbing story, I totally agree with you about the funding bill, but the growth of, unfortunately, I guess we have to call it this, Alligator Alcatraz, what they're calling the Cornhusker Clink, whatever other stupid names you want to use for these facilities. But these are state-run facilities. And I'm not even clear, even now, there's no transparency in any of this, even less transparency than what you usually have. But I thought

0:28:59 Thomas: Are those the cooperation yeah I

0:29:42 Matt: You'd know maybe what's going on right now with all of this and what we know from the inside.

0:29:46 Silky: There's like four of them, and this strange alliteration happening, so like Louisiana, Nebraska, Indiana, Florida, I mean, to me, you know, Florida is really like central to what's happening with this administration. Like, I think about these different moments on immigration, and the Obama years were about Arizona. The recent Biden years were really about Texas. Like Texas played such a big role. And right now Florida is just kind of the testing ground for everything. Let's make everybody have 287 agreements. All of these county jails now have agreements with ICE to detain people.

0:30:22 Silky: We're gonna have these different experiments where the state is now like building, you know, the Everglades detention camp, or what they're calling Alligator Alcatraz, that then is like being sent to other parts of the country, right? It's like, here, let's start this thing here, and then like go elsewhere. And I think with these state prisons, I mean, one of the things that's so challenging, and what you're just talking about, Matt, in terms of like where is our leverage, and so the thing that we learned for so long was like, actually, our leverage is more at the local level. We can, you know, pressure county commissioners, county councils, even state legislators to some degree, depending on where you are. And like seven states have passed anti-detention legislation. So like we've seen some significant movement there.

0:31:08 Silky: But in the context of these states, like, there's really, like the levers are very limited. I think, at least in the case of the Everglades detention camp, like some of it's litigation, like, this is why we actually need to still have a legal strategy briefly

0:31:21 Thomas: Thought that got that didn't get stopped I thought that got like that's oh man

0:31:26 Matt: Briefly, unfortunately.

0:31:27 Silky: It's kind it's like all these things are it's like the Guantanamo stuff like that didn't really go anywhere because they actually don't have the ability to do what they were claiming to do there, but all these things kind of, like, you know, some of them have kind of stayed, some of them keep going. And I think with these particular state facilities, so that's, you know, there's all these distinctions between different types of county jails, private prisons are like what it's mostly been, now it's like state prisons. And I think with them, they're short-term contracts, so this is the thing I'll say, is that many of them are one-year contracts, so they're not like necessarily long-term. And I think this is what we also have to think about with these, it's like, how permanent is this going to be, um, and you know, they're using Angola in Louisiana, which has a very long, disturbing history um, in terms of mass incarceration. And I think, so I think from my perspective, there's not a lot of levers here. I think maybe there's some litigation in the Florida example because of the location and because there's environmental concerns. But beyond that, I think for the most part, our work is to just really expose and try to do everything we can to make sure those contracts don't continue after that year. Um, in, like, I, yeah, I, you know, I think it's like really hard whenever you get to a place when you're starting to win campaigns and have really clear strategy, and now you're kind of back in the raising awareness stage. And I kind of feel like that's where we are, like, this is the time for political education, this is time for raising awareness, like, are there, like, let's learn about what's happening in these places, where can we throw the wrenches. And there's some places, places like Leavenworth, Kansas, there's, you know, a prison they're trying to turn into a detention center there. And there's like zoning and other like local strategies that have been successful. And so I think, yeah, it just really depends on the location, and trying. And I think a lot of our work right now is to document and expose.

0:33:27 Matt: Do you have a sense, and I think I know the answer here, but a sense of the difference in the conditions in the Florida facility versus the very bad conditions in many other state or private run facilities?

0:33:39 Silky: I mean, the conditions are just terrible everywhere, right now. Like they're like, everything's just heightened. Um, I, I haven't, I haven't like looked specifically at those conditions in Florida versus other places. I, there's, you know, there's great reports out actually about other facilities in Florida that have been so horrifying. Um. One of the things to name, so like, you know, the first, one of the first detention centers that really started detaining people in the early 80s, Haitians in particular, um, is the Krome Detention Center and um, and then they have some other private prisons in Florida, so Krome is, you know, outside of Miami, and they have other private prisons in the area, and then, like, a federal prison, there's all these prisons being used in South Florida. And what they discovered is that, actually, because Krome was an ICE owned and operated facility, like, they could just keep filling it, so it would be overcrowding more and more and more. Whereas the private prisons could be like, no, we're not going to take anyone else because we don't actually have room. So it's, it's an interesting thing where I think everyone just makes the assumption that the private prisons are worse, but the reality is, like, all of them are bad. And you have these conditions in these both, like, state run, or federal run, or county level run, you know, especially these county facilities. I mean, these are meant for short-term stays, a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, and people spend months or years

0:35:07 Matt: Years.

0:35:08 Silky: In them. They never step foot outside. So I think that's something to kind of, like, think about the conditions. I think there's just this assumption, oh, like, private prison companies, they're trying to make their bottom line, so they're going to cut costs, but kind of everybody's doing that, because ultimately these counties are making money off of this, these other states are maybe making money off of this now. I mean, I think with the state stuff, so much of it is about these governors just trying to be like, look at us, we're supporting the Trump agenda.

0:35:37 Matt: We're doing it too. Totally. Totally, yeah. But yeah, I think that is a very important point that it's bad everywhere. There are no good immigration detention facilities. I've been to quite a lot of them myself. I'm sure you have too. And there's just a particular horror in the Florida one, the Everglades one, just because it's just a black hole in a way that even regular detention isn't. And we still don't really even know what the legal status of some of these people is. The immigration courts refusing to even recognize that they're there. I mean, it's just, this to me, I was very concerned this might be the future, that this is where we're going.

0:36:10 Thomas: Very confused I don't know what's happening there I thought they stopped it, but like, are there people there? Are you saying we just don't know the details?

0:36:16 Matt: There was an order to shut it down on the environmental suit, but then I believe that was overruled shortly after. And it is still there. There are still people there. That's what I know. So yeah.

0:36:22 Silky: It's still there. And I think this is such an important point Matt and it's interesting because when I think about the Obama years probably the most one of the most important reforms that Obama implemented was creating the ice locator system which was like for years before there was like a database to like find people in detention nobody nobody knew where their loved ones went. Like, like a lot of times people would come to Detention Watch Network because they would be like, we had a map and people would be, like, okay, how do I find my loved one? How do I find my client? Like, here's, they are, I'll just start calling Detention Center, see if I can find them.

0:36:58 Matt: I remember those days. No,

0:36:59 Silky: Yeah, yeah. Like and now, I mean, and that was what was actually, like it was procedural, but it was, it was significant, hugely significant. And so that, like not having that information, I think, yeah, no, I Think you're absolutely right. This sort of like I know people were it's still there but not

0:37:17 Matt: It's still there, fortunately.

0:37:15 Thomas: Wait, they shut that down or something? Oh. Oh, you're saying not having information before. Oh, gotcha.

0:37:20 Matt: It's way

0:37:22 Silky: Having their and the isolate locator system is there but how much it like there's a question with these folks in the everglades attention camp or with these you know like what what information are we getting sometimes people are being transferred the information's not updated like it's way behind yeah yeah

0:37:25 Matt: Behind. But it also says a lot that one of the best reforms of the Obama years was literally a system to find out where in the Google system somebody is. I mean, that's just such a bare minimum.

0:37:47 Silky: It really was huge though

0:37:49 Matt: I know, I agree. I agree as a practitioner.

0:37:49 Silky: It's it's like I'm yeah yeah

0:37:52 Matt: Yeah. No, I mean, but it's just kind of a sad comment that that's one of the best things they were able to do was tell us where they were. Which I guess, yeah, that brings me to something I wanted to get into here. I was determined to talk to more activists and advocates. We talked to a lot of lawyers, obviously, on this show. And I really appreciate, I do a lot of work with organizers and activists, and I just really appreciate the perspective. And you've said some good things in your book about how we can't lawyer our way out of what's going on, especially right now. It's going to require a full press, it's going require everybody. And obviously, lawyers have to do the things we have to. I have a lawyer brain, I'm just going to admit it. I am stuck in a lawyer's brain. I agree with you on just about everything, but my first programmed response to a lot of these things is, how do we fix this in court? How do we go to a judge? How can we talk to somebody who's going be able to listen to do something about this in the legal system? And that's becoming less tenable than it was, but we're still getting wins obviously in court.

0:38:49 Matt: But how do you see, I guess since we're a law podcast here, how do you see the role of lawyers in the system at this moment and organizers and how we can better work together?

0:38:48 Silky: I

0:38:58 Thomas: Like the good lawyers or the evil lawyers? Or both?

0:39:01 Matt: The ones who are willing to work with organizers, so I guess whether you think there's a good or bad.

0:39:05 Silky: Mean I'd be I'd be curious to hear from you all on this because you are talking to lawyers all the time and I'm curious what your you know listeners think I I just really like I think you know Derecka Purnell who um you know is an activist and did a lot of work around blm has a book called becoming abolitionists I think she wrote something like we can't um um you know like outsource the resistance to lawyers right

0:39:31 Matt: That was the phrase. Yeah, love that. Yeah.

0:39:32 Silky: And I think it's such a good point because I think the default like I appreciate you having that default like you're a lawyer like from my perspective like this framework of movement lawyers I I have mixed feelings about it because I Think it's just a way to make lawyers feel good about themselves um and I and I'm just Just like, if you want to, like this Kangli who used to be at the Southern Center for Human Rights and has organized for many years, who was an amazing litigator, they were just like, being a good movement lawyer is just being a Good Lawyer. Like, just be good at your job and think of the thing that's going to, I think one of the challenges, right, is that often lawyers will think about their client first and not think about the system. That's like the biggest challenge, right? So like, oh, I'm going to think about my client. I would much rather have my client on this, you know, GPS monitoring system than be in detention. Of course, totally makes sense. But if you keep advocating for this other thing, all that happens is detention goes up and GPS monitoring goes up. So more people are in the dragnet, more people aren't surveillance. And so not thinking about how the system works and operates to just kind of grow up on itself. And so I think that's an important part of being a quote unquote movement lawyer is like, Like, think out, you know, like, yes, understand that you're going to have to make arguments for your client, like somebody like Mahmoud Khalil, of course, it makes sense that they're going to make an argument that he's innocent, of course, that makes sense. But like, in a broader context, let's talk about these kind of questions of criminality and innocence and how they're used against like large categories of people. And that's basically what we got. You go from, you know, for many years, good immigrant versus bad immigrant, we're in the era of every immigrant is bad, because we did that for so many years, right?

0:39:47 Matt: Yeah that's legit.

0:41:15 Silky: And I think so I think for me being a good lawyer is one like like what you're doing don't spend all your time with other lawyers like it's just like not actually a strong recommend um as somebody who spends a lot of time with lawyers um and you know I think yeah I think there is this element of like I I would love to have more lawyers who are ready to kind of really strategically think about litigation strategies around these detention centers like there's not a lot of capacity because like those folks like that we don't have a lot those folks or yes we need the direct service work but I think we do need this like bigger picture thinking um and it's been great because we have been working with folks within our we have a communities not cages campaign like sort of subgroup on these questions of environmental justice and litigation strategies and having having like that sort of connection happen on these site fights. Um, but are there more that we can do? Like, what are the different strategies we can, you know, play out here? And I, I know there are some folks doing that, but the capacity is so limited. So yeah, I mean, I just, in terms of movement lawyering, like be a good lawyer, don't be an asshole. Um. You know, like show respect to organizers. I think there's, and, and likewise, I, yeah ,I mean ,I think there is like dismissal on both fronts. But, you know, as I write in the book, like, the most innovative strategies were when organizers and lawyers were working together. That's

0:41:25 Matt: You're Strong recommend. Absolutely.

0:42:46 Silky: When we got to a place where deportations were coming down, like thinking up of DACA, thinking up these strategies against 287G or secure communities, like all of that was people coming together and working together?

0:43:00 Matt: Yeah. No, and I've certainly sensed the tension sometimes on both sides amongst my colleagues on the other side. And I understand how it happens. Sometimes we all want the same thing at the end of the day. I mean, we really, well, I shouldn't say that actually. I think there are actually a lot of lawyers who are perfectly fine with detention remaining pretty much as it is, to be honest, or at least maybe reducing detention. Tension.

0:43:18 Silky: Well, that that's that was probably one of the you know when going back to the question about the site fights, like that was one of our biggest challenges where I was on the phone with lawyers when they were trying to end detention in New Jersey at the Hudson County Jail in particular. I remember a lawyer like who had been given funding to provide legal service provision at the jail was like, we don't have enough detention in new Jersey.

0:43:42 Silky: And it was like they, there was the, it's like, and that's, that's sort of what happened. It's like the social service provision then makes them think it's this framework that James Kilgore calls carceral humanism like oh the jail we can provide services at the jail therefore we should keep the jail um and sometimes lawyers start thinking that way right and we have to push back against that

0:43:44 Matt: That's real. It's an incredible thing to say out loud, but I can see how you get there. I can see how that happens.

0:44:08 Thomas: I remember, I mean, I worked for CDCR for a while in the budgets before all this life. And I remember there, there's a kind of a contradiction where it is like 2014, 15, 16. And as you know, as more and more people were talking about like abolishing private prisons and all that on, on the end that I was working in, I just did data stuff. I wasn't part of it, but like around the office, it was like, well, the prisons have been so overcrowded that California doesn't allow private prisons but because the courts had ordered like the conditions are too bad you have to do something then we had to like contract with private prisons to do more beds to alleviate the overcrowding and the bad conditions and it was it was just a weird thing feeling for me to be like what is the right answer for who in that moment where it's like oftentimes I feel like these systems have just led themselves to these awful dead ends where it is It's like, well, you can't keep them overcrowded. That's bad. But then there's nobody on that end that has any control over how many people are being put in prison. Like there's zero control over that. So it's like OK, I guess the solution is contract with these private prisons to alleviate those conditions, I Guess. And it's this weird thing where this system has gotten so big and unwieldy that it's like oftentimes I think people can't get out of it or even if they wanted to, I don't know. You know, it's like, what, what is, what is the right answer in a, in a question like that? You know? It's like the, it, it it's like the source we need to, somehow we need to be incarcerating fewer people, you know, in order to get ahead of that. But then which, which end of it, I know, I know you've talked about like building the prisons or building the detention centers leads to more detention. It's like, where does, where do you think it is the start of it? You know. Is it the system that feeds back on itself or what is really driving it? Where can we get at the source of the the problem, I guess.

0:46:06 Silky: A great question I mean I you know if you're talking about California the sort of really important important text for understanding how California came to have so many prisons and so many people in prison is Golden Gulag by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, who's been a really important mentor to me and thinker, which really gets at these questions about political economy. I mean, I think a lot of this is about, like, how does the U.S. have an economy that isn't based on the military and prisons? Like, what does that look like, right? Like so much of the investment is in these really really harmful infrastructures. And, and it just grows upon itself constantly why it's called the military industrial industrial complex, why it'S called the prison industrial complex. Right. And so I think everything you're saying is right. And it's in it. And It's also the reason why detention became a thing. So actually, back in the 80s, when they were using all these federal prisons, but because of the war on drugs, and because federal policy was getting worse, on in like tough on crime was happening, like the number of people in federal prisons and also jails and prisons across the country just started to skyrocket. The system was snowballing. So you had like so many more people inside. And Rudy Giuliani, who was working in the Justice Department at the time, came up with this plan to build like INS, Immigration Naturalization Service, their own detention centers. And so that was when we started to see ICE have more of its, or INS at the time, have more its own detention centres in its own right. It was because federal policy was getting worse, more people were being funneled into the system, and it was harder for them to get out. That's the other thing. There was this period of time where people used to leave prison and come back to prison. That was a thing that happened.

0:47:59 Silky: Prison just looked very different in that time and even people who went to jail like they you know they would get out on bond and just be out and it would be fine and that just became so much harder after those years and so all these systems snowballed um and that precipitated detention becoming its own thing you know so I think I think like everything you were saying just points to how much this is to me it's about the policy and and of course the narratives that kind of like got us to the policy and then on the flip flip side you have the prison boom happening so you have these counties or these states being like or you know like in Louisiana like oh let's build a new prison because they're this is going to bring jobs like it's a people called it a recession -proof economy right like that was the framework and this is like you know especially post -cold war in California like defense industry has gone down what is the thing that we go to oh we turn this air force base into a detention center now um so anyways that's a lot of different things there's a lot

0:48:43 Thomas: Great for the economy. Oh God. Yeah.

0:49:03 Silky: To say about what you were saying but I think there's it's it's I mean it's so central to these questions um and why it it's worth going deep like I think a lot of people are so like this is just about racism yeah it's about racism xenophobia sure absolutely but it's also about how these political economies work and the biggest challenge anytime we've done a site fight has been hey we're gonna lose some revenue like what does this mean or how are we gonna you know like we're We're going to lose jobs. You know, like that's number one thing.

0:49:32 Matt: Yeah, there's an interesting thing happening in Massachusetts right now. This kind of touches on something that you mentioned in the book and I know that you've been thinking about. Our only remaining county jail that holds us detainees in Plymouth.

0:49:43 Silky: Plymouth, right? Yeah.

0:49:45 Matt: It's home of Plymouth Rock, of everything this country became in 1620.

0:49:54 Matt: I've been to Plymouth so many times and sometimes I'll just go over there and take a look at the rock. It is one of the most disappointing landmarks in America, just FYI, if you ever want to visit. The town is nice, nothing against Plymouth. But there's an interesting thing happening where Massachusetts just set aside a pretty decent amount of money. So it's potentially going to go up to $10 million for immigrant legal defense. And our office was able to hire a lawyer to just take advantage of that grant. And they're not going to do any private work, they're just going to be working through that. I'm very happy we're going to give them the space to do that. But there is an interesting happening here. And I know this is one place and it might be one of the only places where I think that organizers and activists activists routinely clash.

0:50:01 Silky: Not worth going. That's great. Yeah,

0:50:34 Matt: Because I've been going to Plymouth for a long time. It's still 40 minutes south. And they used to have a facility in Boston. It was extra bad. It was in the Suffolk County Jail. And that closed actually because ICE refused to even communicate with the county to what they were even doing in their own facility. It Was really bad. But there are also a lot of pressure, obviously, from Boston activists. But one of the ways they're justifying keeping Plymoth open is that they're going to redirect the $25 million that they get from Plymouth. They're going try to redirect at least most of that back to immigrant legal defense, which does make a lot of sense.

0:50:42 Silky: Of course.

0:51:03 Matt: I know, it's loaded. And I will tell you, as an attorney, I'm also an advocate, but as an attorney just thinking straight up logistically, Massachusetts is one of the best places in the country to file a habeas claim to get people out of custody, and Plymouth is the only place they're going to hold them in Massachusetts. Otherwise, you have to file that habeas claim while they're on their way north to New Hampshire or Maine within the first 30 minutes or so, sometimes more an hour. One of the first ones I filed under Trump was actually denied because it turned out the guy had, I mean, we tried to get them to prove this, but in 20 minutes, there's a difference of 20 minutes from when we filed it to when he'd crossed the New Hampshire border, right? So just in terms of having a place where we know we can get habeas relief, having a space that's reasonably close to families and attorneys and everything else, I'm struggling with it too because I want to close every detention facility. I want everything out. And I know that every lawyer is probably having the same kind of conversation in every state about, well, what about the one right next to me? What about the one that could

0:51:03 Silky: Oh, oh, of course.

0:52:02 Matt: Potentially pay for more funding?

0:52:02 Thomas: For convenience or not?

0:52:04 Matt: But for the

0:52:04 Silky: It is convenience. No, there's no question. Like it was, I mean, I, yeah, it it's, it's both.

0:52:08 Matt: Families too, it's not just us. I mean, they need to be able

0:52:11 Silky: And I think it's you know, this has been probably the biggest tension and I write write about this in the case of new jersey um and I think so the thing I'll say is that we have data showing that by having a detention center in a particular place like when the atalanta detention center geo group facility in southern california opened up in in the region in the inland empire region the number of ice arrests like san bernardino county shot up to having the the highest number of ICE arrests in the whole country, but it was also a different time. So like, this is, I mean, I think these aren't easy questions at all. Um, and from my perspective, it's a, it's question of priorities. Like at some point I would love Plymouth to be shut down. Is that the priority right now? I don't know, you know, like based on everything you're saying. And I think, um, it'S much better if like a lot of energy in Massachusetts goes to stopping a new detention center in new hampshire probably right like so I think you know and I say this because I do think we are in very different times where detention is just skyrocketing everywhere I don't in a case of new detention centers I think we have to do everything to stop them they're like oh we don't have detention in maryland anymore but we're gonna start having detention now so lawyers can get closer I think that's a bad idea like ultimately

0:52:11 Matt: To visit them. Yeah. No,

0:53:31 Silky: Whenever you have the facility in the area it's easier for them to detain people and put them in deportation proceedings regardless And that is true for Plymouth, but in the context of the conditions we are in, I'm not, you know, like it's up to the community there, but, you know, I think these questions of priorities and, but like doing that work to make sure more detention doesn't just go up elsewhere in New England at the same time.

0:53:55 Matt: It stuff. I can't see anything else opening. I mean we're certainly never going to allow private prison. We're not going to allow another county jail if we can possibly help it here. I just don't see it happening. But But yeah, no, it can get so complex. And yeah, knowing, no.

0:54:05 Silky: These are not easy questions, but again, prioritize what's going to be best for the community. What's going to be best I think don't I mean I think one like that was the biggest challenge about the new jersey case like I said is that you know literally these set of lawyers came together to write to the hudson county like commissioners freeholders whatever they called them at the time um to be like we believe in abolish ice but keep this jail open like that seems problematic right right? Like that is not the way to go about it.

0:54:36 Silky: And yeah, so I don't know. I mean, I think also like gather data, like how many people are coming into Plymouth from the, that region, how, like, what are the, what are like, I Think just understanding the facility is so important to like knowing the impact it could have if it were to get shut down, or if there were to be another facility in the area, like I think all that data is so importante for us to know how best to protect as many people as possible yeah yeah

0:55:03 Matt: Yeah, no... Like I said, there's no easy answers. We're not going to solve it today. But I just wanted to talk about that. Because that is the one place, I think, that I've seen activists and lawyers butting heads the most, is these kinds of things. And I totally understand both sides. But right.

0:55:14 Silky: And I've been I've been on the like it's always good to shut down detention I think right now I'm in a place of like it is just growing everywhere we just have to stop the new detention centers as much as possible I

0:55:24 Matt: I think it's harm reduction at this point. Yeah. So yeah, in our last few minutes here, I want to talk to you a little bit about what abolition means to you. We have a lot of listeners very interested in this, and certainly I am, and Thomas is. But in the context now at a moment when the mainstream, it seems like maybe, the mainstream democratic position is edging toward at least, a lot of them are saying it. They're using the words. I don't know if it's going to come out the same way the funding bill. But I just wanted to ask you about what that looks like and leave us some hope here about what life after ICE in America could look like.

0:55:47 Silky: Wish more so but yes it's not an easy question because I think I mean in some ways it's easy like just get rid of ICE like we don't need to have an agency that sole function is to arrest, detain, and deport immigrants. Like, you know, let's just stop doing that. We, you know, we didn't, yes, INS wasn't great, but it, it was like, it had a different purpose than just that.

0:56:13 Matt: Easy stuff. Yeah.

0:56:23 Silky: It had different roles, which, you know, are part of USCIS and CBP now, but like, ultimately, like, we don't have to look, we don't have to have ICE agents. Like, things will probably be fine if we don' have ICE agents, right? Right.

0:56:38 Matt: Better, yeah. And they also didn't see themselves as national security agents, which they are trained to do now.

0:56:42 Thomas: Where are Nazis going to get a job?

0:56:44 Matt: Yeah...

0:56:44 Thomas: Have you thought about that?

0:56:44 Matt: Of

0:56:46 Silky: Again, this is what it all comes back to, because this is ultimately for me, abolition is about more than just shutting down prisons or, you know, ending police or reducing police. Um like why are we in this place where we have so much investment in that these sort of like security forces and imprisonment and deportation and so little investment into things that would like actually make people feel safe and make people feels secure like housing and healthcare and other resources so to me I think it's a bigger conversation and you know detention's kind of like like, both detention and also immigration is kind of about everything. So it's like, there's this weird thing that happened for many years in the immigrant rights movement, where it was like, everything in immigration is just about getting citizenship, and then everything will be fine, which is just not true in any way. Like, it's connected to so much. It's connected to climate catastrophe. It'S connected to US imperialism. ItS connected to, you know, social benefits, like so much stuff. And we all kind of have different ways of doing this work. And, you know, I work against enforcement. But I think from my perspective, like, abolish ICE. Yes, get rid of this agency. Like, why do we need to keep this agency? I mean, and even DHS, this framework of Homeland Security has hurt us in so many ways. Could we move away from that? And I think people have talked about this before. Immigration used to be in the Department of Justice. Maybe it makes sense for immigration to be in the department of labor. Maybe for immigration in

0:56:46 Matt: Course.

0:58:23 Silky: A different place. The thing is, what ICE and this homeland security narrative and this criminalization narrative has done is basically made immigration about public safety and national security. That's what it's about. That is the idea. But that's a lie. Like, that's not really what immigration about. Immigration is about family relationships, of course. It's about, you know, seeking refuge. Like those are the things that people think of, but it's about labor. Like that's ultimately what it's about. And so, yeah.

0:58:24 Matt: It was. It's something I always tell my students on the the first day is, you know, you can see the entire history of American immigration because we start with Department of Treasury because we understand that they're good for money. We've got a Department of Labor because we know that they are workers. We go to Department of Justice because they might be criminals. We got to DHS because they're Homeland Security threats, right? There's just like this obvious through line through American history. And I completely agree that just like taking it back to a better agency, better model. And just the framework means so much, like the fundamental framework of how we see it. That's such a good point. Any other closing closing thoughts, anything that's giving you hope right now?

0:58:55 Thomas: That's really interesting.

0:59:30 Matt: Sorry, that's a loaded question.

0:59:30 Thomas: For the listeners, a very terrified look is on Silky's deer in the headlights look of like ah I didn't study for this test thanks

0:59:36 Silky: I mean, I'm really, yeah, no, I mean, it's been a really rough start to the year. I'm not gonna lie. I was, yeah I got to spend some time abroad. I had like a break from work last fall and I got to spend time abroad and it really just like it's like this is this is not everything that's happening, right? Like Like there's more that's going on in the world. And I think, and a lot of people, you know, I was at this conference and people were very like inspired in South Africa. And I was just like, this is, this is great to be in a place where people feel inspired. And I do think ultimately when I think about this moment, the thing that gives me hope is like so many people are actually seeing this clearly. Like I'm in this space where last week I was on a conversation with DC types who are like, Oh, well, we can't really say abolish ICE. This is so fragile this is so whatever you know oh we have to like hedge and what if this happens and you know we might make the Republicans mad I'm like we have no control of the Republicans like we need to do the thing we need to do and have some vision and I think a lot more people get that than like sometimes the we think they do because of you know like what the mainstream media is telling us and so my hope is just like yeah like it's so many ordinary people it's It's not, you know, I work in this sort of civil society infrastructure and we're like, you know and we are working a lot with like local communities but like broadly like from my perspective the thing that's inspiring the most is ordinary people being like this is not okay in my community and I'm going to figure out how to do something about it and that is how we make change and I want to do everything we can to foster that. So that's what's giving me hope and what's going to keep me going.

1:01:24 Matt: Same. Love it. Love to hear it. Well, thank you so much. It's great to have you on. I just really appreciate this conversation so much, and your book, of course, Unbuild Walls, Why Immigration Requires Abolition. Wait, did I get that right?

1:01:37 Silky: Why immigration needs abolition?

1:01:39 Matt: Needs abolition. Let me say that again.

1:01:40 Silky: I know.

1:01:41 Matt: We can edit that.

1:01:41 Silky: I'm like it's like that thing I'm like it almost it's been a year and a half since it'll come out I was like

1:01:44 Matt: A little bit. Yeah, I want to say it clearly. And of course your book on Build Walls, Why Immigration Needs Abolition, which is a great read and really an amazing resource for anybody trying to understand this whole issue in one place. So thank you so much. Yeah,

1:02:00 Thomas: So much for joining us really appreciate it I learned a lot

1:02:01 Silky: Yeah thanks for having me it's nice to chat with y'all awesome

1:02:05 Matt: You too.

1:02:08 Clip: This has been Opening Arguments, produced by Thomas and Lydia Smith, with editing help from Peter Baird. The intro is by Thomas Smith. This outro is by Matt Cameron. Support the show at patreon.com/law. Contact us through Patreon or openarguments@gmail.com. Make sure to follow our blue sky at OpenArgs. But most of all, please share the show. Thanks for listening.