Future of Immigration and Legal Challenges

As long as Trump is in power, and as long as Stephen Miller is in his White House , we don't have two parties thinking about how to fix the immigration system. We have one party that's trying to remove as many immigrants as possible, and then we have one party that doesn't have a clear answer yet . I'm Jane Coston and this is Wedder Day, a show that can't figure out why so many artists refuse to perform at the definitely nonpartisan Freedom two hundred and fifty Great American State Fair , which was again, definitely not intended just for supporters of President Donald Trump. See, here's Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy explaining just how nonpartisan it is. Okay , to start this off, I think we have to give a big round of applause for our military band in singers way better than those lip tards that canceled on us . So much better . Thank you guys . But don't worry, the dozens of people in attendance also got to enjoy the musical stylings of Alexis Wilkins, better known as FBI Director Cash Patel's girlfriend. On today's show, we talk about the Supreme Court's crackdown on immigration with former Homeland Security and White House offic ial Andrea Flores . Before we get into all that, here's what we're following today. Thursday, june twenty fifth. Nobody wants to be the president of Iran right now because they know they'll get their heads bl own off if they don't do the right thing. This president has scared the eleven daylights out of Iran, and we're going to, I believe we will get a deal that brings peace to the Middle East. Florida, Republican Senator Rick Scott's logic is blowing people's heads off in the name of peace . Do you really believe what you're saying, Rick? Well, no peace as of yet. But the White House has now formally requested eighty seven point six billion dollars, mostly to replenish the Pentagon after the U. S. attacked Iran for reasons . The Office of Management and Budget sent Congress the supplemental spending request Wednesday. The majority of the money is to cover expenses incurred by the Defense Department as part of Operation Epic Fury . It also allocates eleven point one billion dollars to support American farmers , one point four billion dollars for the Ebola virus outbreak in Central Africa, and five hundred million dollars to support the ongoing efforts, quote , to complete restoration and construction projects in and around Washington, DC . You know, Trump's real priority. thirty nine hundred children were separated from their families. One hundred fifty thousand kids were lost during their life. Secretary words, mister Secretary, do not interrupt. Don't you point your finger at me, Don. I wouldn't point my finger. Hypocrite then, then you be fresh and you should be as upset about the four hundred and fifty thousand kids that were lost. You didn't say a word about it. For four years, you never said a word. Mr. Secretary. Could you put him in his place for now? No. You shouldn't be put in your place. Ch . If you ever wonder why the government can't get shit done, that's your answer. Things get testy between Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen and Connecticut Democratic Representative Rosa Dolore during a House Appropriations Committee hearing today . Aside from repeatedly bringing up the Biden administration, Mullin told the committee that his department is reevaluating the eleven warehouses purchased under XDHS Barbie Christie Noome to use his immigration detent ion facilities. When Mullen came into office, he paused any new purchases, and according to the New York Times, federal officials have been looking at ways to offload some of them. During the hearing, Mullen said some of the warehouses just quote , probably won't work and suggested a lack of quote due diligence when it came to purchasing them. If there's a bus somewhere, Mullen is throwing gome under it. I had an opportunity to talk earlier this morning with Delsie Rodriguez, the acting president. We're obviously awaiting the we're already deploying search and rescue teams from Fairfax, County, Virginia and Los Angeles. There'll be some others will add, that's their most immediate need right now is search and rescue efforts. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters how the U. S. is responding to deadly earthquakes in Venezuela. A South American country was hit by two powerful earthquakes overnight, killing at least one hundred eighty and people with hundreds of people still missing. The quakes measuring seven point two and seven point five were centered in the country's northernmost states, and the country will likely experience aftershocks over the next few days. In response, the United Nations announced that it has deployed urban search and rescue teams to Venezuela, and the Trump administration sent a regional disaster assistance response team alongside search and rescue teams to provide support. If you're interested in helping the people of Venezuela recover from the quakes, we've put a link to some resources in the show notes. If someone's calling you in the year twenty twenty six, it's probably a scammer. According to a new AP Nor k survey, most Americans are inundated by scam attempts on a daily basis. But I'm sure you didn't need a poll to tell you that, just checked your call log . I just got one walking into the studio. fifty eight percent of U. S. adults surve ys said they received text messages, phone calls, emails, online messages, or online advertisements that they suspect are scams every single day . The poll, which was conducted in February, also found that about three intent Americans have lost money or personal information to scams . I guess that's your sign to sit back, relax, and turn your phone on Do not Disturb, at least for the remainder of our show. And that's the news. Let's talk about immigration in the U. S. As you probably know by now, I've been loving the World Cup, especially the scenes of foreign visitors enjoying our ranch dressing, breakfast chain restaurants, and more seriously, the general kindness and welcoming attitude of everyday Americans. It's been, in all honesty, extremely nice to see. But those world cup visitors could afford tickets, flights, and hotels. And today, the Supreme Court left a very different message for people who come to the U. S. for safety and protection . Leave . In two six to three decisions, the court ruled that the Trump administration can block asylum seekers at the border and withdraw deportation protections from immigrants fleeing violence and war in their home countries. In short, while so many people are enjoying visits to the U. S., the court says that the people who need our country most may not be able to stay. So for more on how the court's decisions will shape U. S. immigration policy, I spoke to Andrea Flores. She's a former homeland security official under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden and the founder of Securing America's Promise, a pro immigration newsletter. Andrea, welcome back to Day . Thanks for having me back . The Supreme Court made two major immigration decisions today , ruling on the Trump administration's changes to the US policy on asylum and the Trump administration's deportation protections policies. Can you walk us through these decisions ? Yes. So the first one is a case about an asylum policy that was used under the Obama administration that I used to serve in the Obama administration, and it's about something called metering where border patrol officers at ports of entry would turn back asylum seekers before they could get to the United States to claim asylum. And so what this court essenti ally said is that it is okay essentially for the government to continue to do that. But it's a bit of an odd case I just want to say for listeners, you know, if this involves an asylum restriction from twenty sixteen when right now asylum at the border is unilaterally suspended . And if I remember correctly , the Biden administration withdrew that policy in twenty twenty one, but the Trump administration wanted to bring it back, is that correct? That's right. So when I was serving in the Biden White House in twenty twenty one, we knew metering was not an effective tool to manage the border at that point, but essentially, yes, President Trump wanted to bring it back even though there are not a lot of asylum seekers at the border right now, but they are just trying to unilaterally end asylum as we know it. So they're fighting this sort of almost old policy. They don't even need on a day to day basis because they are deporting anyone who tries to seek asylum at the border. This is a completion of a longer case, but it really opens the door to like what on earth will Congress do with asylum policy because each president , if they like suspend it, ban it, temporarily pause it. And we've just been going that way now really since the Obama administration. So it's a little bit more, I mean, it will impact as many people as case number two , which is about temporary protected status , which there are one point three million people with TPS protections living and working in the United States today. And the court decided that the president has the authority to terminate their legal status without judicial review from the courts , opening the door for what a lot of people are calling the biggest delegalization of immigrants we've seen in modern history . We'll get back to my conversation with Andrea Flores in a moment to talk about what the court's decisions mean for the future of immigration in the US. But if you like the show, make sure to subscribe , leave a five star review on Spotify Apple podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads . This podcast is sponsored by Casper. Kasper makes reliable, high quality mattresses designed to deliver consistent, comfortable sleep night after night. 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You can use the grounds in your garden, add them to curbside compost , or mill can even pick them up and get them to a small farm for you . Genuinely, our office kitchen has totally changed since we got our mill. We can just put our banana peels and lunch scraps into it and that's it. No mass, no smell, and we're doing something for the planet on a daily basis. Try Mill Risk Free for ninety days and get seventy five dollars off at mill dot com slash wad. That's seventy five dollars off at mill. com slash wad . Let's summer run wild . You can almost hear it , the crackle of a fire, laughter carrying through the trees , and one more story before calling it a night . At Suncadia, days are sun soaked and full of adventure . Trails, rivers, open skies , and nights are made for slowing down, gathering close , and letting the moment linger. It's the kind of summer you don't rush . You remember . Make it a summer to remember at suncadia. com We all take good care of the things that matter our homes, our pets, our cars . Are you doing the same for your brain? Acting early to protect brain health may help reduce the risk of dementia from conditions like Alzheimer's disease. Studies have found that up to forty five percent of dementia cases may be prevented or delayed by managing risk factors you can change. Make brain health a priority , ask your doctor about your risk factors and for a cognitive assessment. Learn more at brainhealthmatters. com Let's get back to my conversation with Andrea Flores . So how will both of these decisions impact U imm.ig Sr. ation policy and practice. I know that they're quite different and one impacts people who haven't even gotten here yet, but what does this mean for immigration? For the asylum case, it means that asylum law is barely surviving this administration, right? They've already suspended it at the border and now they can just physically block the few people who may even still make it to the border and still have some procedural right to seek protection. So that impacts people as you said who haven't arrived . The second case actually impacts a population in some cases of people who have been here since the nineteen nineties . They have a lot of TPS holders, so say if you have TPS and you're from El Salvador, you've been here for three decades or more. And if you are from Haiti, you may have been holding TPS now since twenty ten. These are really long established immigrant communities who are living and working in American businesses . They've gotten married, they have kids. I mean the one point three million doesn't even impact all of the ties that they have to our communities. And I think it's important for people to realize that TPS holders contribute six billion dollars of revenue to the American economy per year. So it's a stunning decision. I'm still processing it myself as an immigration expert because it's opposite of how immigration law should work. Most presidents try and make more people legal immigrants. Now we have a president who wants to grow the number of undocumented immigrants in order to deport them by going after these very longest ablished bipartisan protection . And I don't know if you were struck by this, but in the majority opinion in that decision , the conservative justices basically said like, oh, Trump's statements about for instance, Haitians weren't racist and they didn't have anything to do with racial animus . And you look at the minority opinions and they point out how he talked about how Haitians bring aides and are living in shit hole countries. It was just a real like, we're looking at the same thing and the conservative justices are like, doesn't mean anything to me . I mean, these conservative justices, and we saw this at the voting rights cases, will do anything but acknowledge racism on its face. Like it's just so consistent since they gutted the Voting Rights Act and in their immigration cases , you could be not be more textually racist than what President Trump has said about Haitians. And you know, his solicitor general and the argum ents didn't even repeat those statements that he said. None of the justices repeated those statements. Why? Because they're extremely racist . And so that's why it's hard to believe, you know, they did create one exception. They said, a court could review a constitutional claim about TPS being revoked . But if they already communicated out to every court that what Trump has said about Haitians is not racist, I don't know what kind of constitutional claim could protect TPS holders from having their legal status revoked and from them being deported . So we are almost at the end of the Supreme Court term, which feels like it began three thousand years ago, but there are still a few big cases that have not been decided, including the challenge to the constitutional right to birthright citizenship . I know that raiding tea leaves sucks, but what do you think the court is going to do in that case. So reading Chief Justice Robert's strategy for many terms now as a lawyer, he seems to like to pair something really controversial and bad with something that seems like really institutionalist fair and neutral, right? And so I suspect today was the more far more radical, far reaching delegalization of one point three million people , and that we will likely see Roberts choose birthright to say we know we decide against the administration. You can't amend the Constitution with executive order, which is what he's trying to do. And this is well settled law. Now you're right, predicting things really is the worst because this court has made some pretty radical decisions this time, going back to Kalay and voting rights and this TPS decision. So I fear that they may side against the president but cre,ate a road map for him to follow for how to change birthright citizenship anyway. That's kind of one of my fears because they've done that in the past. Justice Kavanaugh did that with racial profiling when they allowed the racial profiling IC by agentsE to continue . Justice Kavanaugh said, these are all the ways you can make this essentially legal. So I fear there might be a win with like a roadmap going forward. What do you think the cour t's decisions mean for U. S. immigration going forward? Because on the one hand, you have the Trump administration wanting to enact even more restrictive policies going forward , but on the other hand, you also have a Congress that doesn't want to do anything at all , and a voting public that is largely in opposition to those policies. So what does this mean for the future? What it means is that this is now firmly on the table for Democrats to figure out quite honestly. Because for the last ten years they have not had a very clear immigration strategy , but now the fact that one point three million more people will be undocumented is a governing issue for them. If they back w toin the house , there will be pressure there. There will be pressure today from advocates to take up bills to try and secure some form of legal status . They used to be very clear in fighting for the legalization of the undocumented community. That was a core democratic issue. And they kind of came away from that in the Biden administration. And I talk about Democrats because as long as Trump is in power and as long as Stephen Miller is in his White House , we don't have two parties thinking about how to fix the immigration system. We have one party that's trying to remove as many immigrants as possible and then we have one party that doesn't have a clear answer yet. So it really is now a big issue for Dems. It'll be an issue in the midterms in some states . I mean, the decision today will decimate the health care industry in Miami. Like it will impact races across the country just because TPS holders are established and a lot of businesses employ them. Andrea as, always, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me . That was my conversation with Andrea Flores, founder of Securing America's Promise. Before we go, the Supreme Court is about to break for summer vacation, and as usual , they're working up until the very last minute on some of the biggest decisions of our lives birthright citizenship, trans athletes, absentee ballots, and more. Constitutional law professors, Kate, Melissa and Leia, break the mostdown consequential decisions and the most consequential legal battles on strict scrutiny. New episodes drop every Monday , and keep an eye on your feed for emergency episodes when the big opinions come out . Watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.