November 8, 2024 • 32 mins
James, Robert, and Sophie discuss what we know about the incoming Trump administration's plans to deport undocumented people and how likely we are to see mass deportations in the next four years.
Al Otro Lado: https://alotrolado.org/
Haitian Bridge Alliance: https://haitianbridgealliance.org/
Sources:
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-ELECTION/MIGRATION-DEPORTATIONS/akpeoeoerpr/
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/cbp-enforcement-statistics/title-8-and-title-42-statistics-fy22
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-trump-would-crack-down-immigration-second-term-2023-11-14/
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/mass-deportation
https://www.ice.gov/identify-and-arrest/287g
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media Welcome to it could happen here a podcast
about things crumbling and how.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
To pick up the pieces.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Wooing we love to crumble.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Yeah, and part of that is understanding what is going
to happen and how it is going to happen, and
absorbing that knowledge and what you can do with it.
So today James is going to tell us about Trump's
plans for migrants.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
Yep, yeah, I guess in terms of what's going to happen,
we don't know, right. Trump said a lot of stuff
in his first term and kind of didn't stick the landing,
a lot of it he tried. But they're more experienced
now and I think crucially they have a much more
favorable Supreme Court and then probably will have an even
more favorable Supreme Court by the end of this term.
(00:54):
So a plan to deport up to a million people
this year was one of the very few concrete and
tangible promises that the Trump campaign made, Right. They had
a lot of vibes, nasty vibes, but like in terms
of like we will do X by Y, this was
one of the very few. Now, Trump tried to deport
a lot of people in his first term, right, like
(01:15):
The one consistent part of his policy ever since he
rode sideways down an escalator in twenty fifteen and then
shit talked to Mexican people, has been an anti migrant policy.
He didn't really stick the landing on mass deportations in
his first term. In fact, Biden deported more people in
twenty twenty three than Trump did in any year of
(01:36):
his first term. In fact, Trump also fell behind Obama
in terms of deportations per year. None of that means
that he won't be able to do that this time, right,
I'm just trying to put some numbers on his promises
the last time, so I want to look first at
how he could go about his promise in his second term. Right.
One thing that he said he will do is use
Title forty two again. So if people have not listened
(01:59):
to the series I did last May or June on
Title forty two, I would like to direct them there.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Title forty two is a reminder.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
It's a public health law, and it's public health law that,
in this interpretation, allowed CBP, specifically Border Patrol, to immediately
return people to Mexico without processing them first. Sometimes they
call it catch and release. Right, what it resulted in
was these are not technically deportations. But when Trump said something,
(02:28):
I don't think he's considering the exact meanings of what
he's saying. Right, So, if we look at Title forty
two expulsions, if he's going to bring back Title forty two,
reaching that one million per year number is pretty easy.
In fact, that happened in twenty twenty two again under Biden. Right,
So if he considers those to be deportations, and that's
within his one million per year goal, it's reasonable that
(02:52):
he will reach to say that he will be able
to reach that, and he will be able to do
that with the current infrastructure, right without massively upgrading CBP, ice, ice,
detention facilities, immigration judges.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
All those things.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Yeah, So, like, if we consider those to be deportations,
and one million a year is very much something that
we might well see.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Do you know where we're at this year or it
hasn't been released yet.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
In twenty twenty two was the last stats I could
find I linked to the CBP. If people want to
look at the title forty two and title so Title eight,
it's the immigration law under which people are normally received. Right,
Title forty two ended in May of twenty twenty three.
May eleventh, twenty twenty three with the end of the
COVID nineteen emergency, because the reason they were using public
(03:37):
health law as immigration law was because of this health emergency.
Right now, obviously it was used extremely cynically. For instance,
there weren't exemptions for vaccinated people, but nonetheless that's why
they were using it. And when the federal emergency for
COVID nineteen ended, so did Biden's.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Excuse for using Title forty two.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
That I will link to the CBP data center in
the notes so people can see Title forty two versus
Title late over the last few years. As I pointed
out last week, the US can also fund deportations of
migrants further south, and it's done this at Panama. I've
had a series from there last week. People haven't listened
to it. I would love them to do so, but
the numbers that they've been able to achieve they are
pretty low, and I don't think that's really going to
(04:14):
meaningfully impact his target. So let's talk about what everyone
is most afraid of, which is mass deportations of people
who are already living in the United States. Right that
is definitely what his right wing trolls have been sort
of hyping up, certainly over the last few weeks, right,
the idea that they are going to come to your
house and find you if you're an undocumented person in
(04:37):
the United States. So to talk about this, I want
to talk about, first of all, like the real nuts
and bolts of how he would be able, if he
would be able to do this right. And I draw
very heavily here on a report by the American Immigration
Council who did some calculations on the cost of a
single ice detention, right, the cost of a single raid,
(04:58):
the amount of agents that will be required to meet
this kind of capacity. And there are two models that
they use, and those are the models I think are
most relevant. If we look at people who are in
the United States without permanent legal status, we make an
estimate for numbers, we're looking at about eleven million undocumented people.
(05:18):
That's not going to be perfect, but if we use
that as a ballpark, and then two point three million
people who have entered since the end of Title forty two,
and they're on various forms of bail or parole or
bond and they don't have a permanent status here either rent,
So we're looking at somewhere in the region of thirteen million.
(05:39):
If Trump wanted to deport all of those people now,
to do that, he would need to massively expand ICE
detention facilities. About half of ICE's staff aren't Countrary to
what you might believe about ICE kicking in people's doors
and deporting them, half of ICE's staff work for something
(05:59):
called Home Security Investigations. It's not that those people don't
do deportations. They do, but they mostly focus on human trafficking,
drug trafficking, transnational crime. Now, sometimes as people also do deportations,
people might be familiar with the big HSI raids on
certain employers who are employing a lot of undocumented people.
Those still result in deportations, but that's not their primary tasking,
(06:22):
and HSI has historically preferred not to do the deportation
work because they feel that that makes it very hard
for them to do the other work of like monitoring
human and drug trafficking, because evidently migrants are going to
be scared to go anywhere near HSI if they know
that HSI could deport them, right, so they're not going.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
To talk to them.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Now, it would be very easy for Trump to retask
those those agents, right, that would obviously undermine work it's
done to prevent drug trafficking and human trafficking. Whether or
not he cares is a question that's you know, I
think I probably have an answer for that. I guess
up for debates somewhat. So Trump has already called in
(07:03):
addition to potentially re equipping those HSI agents, he said
he wants to employ ten thousand more Border Patrol agents.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Right now.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
BP agents can do deportations, but it's not BP agents
who are coming to your door in Chicago and coming
after you, right that that's ICE Immigration and Customs enforcement.
He's also said he wants to give borderploal agents a
ten thousand dollars retention bonus and a ten percent raise.
Just to put it in the perspective, there are twenty
thousand BP agents right now, so that would be about
(07:33):
a fifty percent increase.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Right. This is not something he can do quickly.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
They need to go through the academy, They need to
be recruited, trained, background check, et cetera. Border Patrol has
a lot of waivers right now, so you can we
can waive requirements that other law enforcement agencies would have
few to work for them, if that makes sense, right,
be it a ged or a college degree or another
language or whatever. They are offering waivers a lot right now.
They can increase that number of waivers to recruit more people, right,
(08:00):
but that would still take a long time. So the
estimate the American Immigration Council has is that to remove
all of those thirteen million people in that's sort of
in the one mass deportation as opposed to a million
people a year scenario, would require between two hundred and
twenty and four hundred and nine thousand stuff.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Jesus Christ. Yeah, yeah, that is a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
So I mean, like, for comparison as to how many
that actually is the United States military active duties about
a million people.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yes, that was exactly. That's a comparison, Not the Army,
not the Navy, the military, yeah, like all of it.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Yeah, this would put DHS at like substantially more personnel
than like the Marine Corps, right, Like.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, not that people don't want to do, it's just
like it is. Actually, we've talked a lot about how
there are not guard rails on Trump like there were
last time. That is true, and that is a very
realistic thing to like be worried about and scared about.
But that we're not just talking about guard rails. We
are talking about a legist stickle hurdle. It is not
a simple or necessarily possible thing to make an agency
(09:07):
like that that much larger and have it actually function.
Like just this is just physics we're talking about here. Yeah,
it's the same with anything. If cool Zone suddenly received
one hundred billion dollars from Jeff Bezos and he said,
do anything you want with it, we could not scale
up to half.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
A million employees like we have.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
We have absolutely no capacity to handle that.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
Yeah, Like, I think what people have to remember is
that every doal kicking ice agent needs to enable us. Right,
They need paid they need health insurance, they need human resources,
they need training. This would take a very long time. Sorry,
it's one point three million or so. Okay, I think
it's a little less.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
That's twenty seventeen data, so probably it's probably as closer
to a million now, but yeah, slightly over a million,
so but this is close to that's close to half, right.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
Yeah, that's in addition to what they already have. Yeah,
it's four hundred and nine plus whatever they have. It
would also, of course mean like stantially increasing their investigative
capacity because most deportations right now, when ICE arrest someone
happened when someone else has already arrested that person. So
like the person who's in detention federally or on a
state level for something else that they did and they're undocumented,
(10:15):
and that's when ICE can take them and deport them. Right,
So they'd have to also increase their ability to search
out and find people, not saying they can't, but you
can't take you know, fucking Tim Poole bring him into ICE.
He's not going to instantly know how to find people
where to find people, right, So like this, this will
take time.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
There is a practical.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
Constraint on him doing this, even if there aren't other
constraints within the balance of powers. So Stephen Miller, dude
with the giant head.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
I'm sorry, but you're going to have to be more
specific when we talk about like conservatives who are about
to come into power who have like.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
A weirdly huge head.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yeah, okay, that's like, find me a Californian who has
strong opinions on gluten.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah that's me. I'm I'm PROGUREAE.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
Yeah. Yeah, so Stephen Miller is he as the guy
who's crafted a lot of Trump's nefarious border policies.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Right.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
It was Miller who who sook out Title forty two.
And I want to talk about this a bit later.
One thing that Miller did effectively, I don't want to
say well, because it was objectively horrible. But one thing
that Miller was good at was finding this obscure piece
of public health law and mobilizing it against migrants.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Right.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
I think if you'd spoken to me in twenty fifteen
and said what do you think Trump's going to do
against migrants, I wouldn't have said, oh'll be Title forty two,
the United States Code, you know, that regulates public health.
He or people within his team were very effective at
finding that and using that effective enough that the Biden
administration kept it for three years after the Trump administration
did it for one year. Right, And so Miller could
(11:47):
find some niche kind of law. What he wants to
do is use the national guard from cooperative states, right, Yeah,
and to use a national guard from cooperative state in
states that are not cooperative and where local law enforcement
would not cooperate.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Right.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
So some quote unquote sanctuary states, and there's probably an overstatement.
They don't in theory refer and document to people they
arrest to ICE for deportation. Right now, what federal fusion
centers do is allow for that even if it is
a sanctuary state. Actually, but in theoretical terms, a sanctuary
state would not at least contact ICE about every undocumented
(12:26):
person they're arrested.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Right.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
So Bill's plan is to use the National Guard. Again, like,
that's not what the National Guard does right now. They're
not really trained up for doing that either.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Right.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
I've seen plenty of National Guard folks on the border
fort It's a bunch of scared eighteen year olds, right
who are trying to get money from Robert and I
have met Texas National.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Guide on the board, their kids, their kids. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Now, to be fair, that's not saying they're they're like
innocent or inherent Like every group of soldiers who has
done any good or bad things, and often but usually
both at the same time, it's a bunch of scared
eighteen year old kids. Yes, that's been the case for
ten thousand years. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
Anytime you have conflict reporting, you it's always shocking how
young people are.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
It's always just like, oh, okay, all wars are fought
by children. There's no non child soldiers, with the exception
of I mean, that is the weird thing about the
Ukraine War, right Yet, Like I remember the first time
I wound up at the front there, it was like, oh,
this is actually it is actually old men fighting this war,
old men who repeatedly told me it's either me or
my kid shows up here. And I already fucking lost
my soul in Afghanistan. Yes, Like I literally had that
(13:38):
interview with people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
It's crazy to me people who were in Afghanistan and
have fighting again.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Yeah, I mean I think those guys are probably out now.
I'm talking fifty Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Think twenty twenty forty, so it's forty years late. I'm
sure they're too old now.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
But Robert talking of being too old, I'm voting. I'm
not too old to be obliged to transition to advertisement.
So that's what we're going to do.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
You're never too old for that, James.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
In fact, the older you get, it's kind of like
how if you reread Moby Dick at different points in
your life, it's a completely different novel every ten years,
different book. The same thing is true with ulysses, and
the same thing is true with these advertisements. That's right,
save them, record them on your home device in every
couple of months, listen and you'll learn something new from
(14:21):
chumpa casino every time.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
All right, we're back, and I hope you've downloaded that
chump of casino advert for later. And in the event
of a great down scenario, you could have a whole
library of those to listen to. So, talking of obscure legislations,
we did right. Trump and his team have mentioned this
thing called the Alien Enemies Act. It sounds like alien
Ant Farm, but it's not in any way related.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Sadly, not nearly as good as for one thing, it's
cover of smooth Criminal Terrible terrible.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
Yeah, no, nowhere near the the same standard. That's a
joke for people who are over thirty.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Yes, anyone who tries to dance to that alien Ant
Farm song today not only has to think about the
fact that Michael Jackson was definitely a pedophile, but also
their needs no longer work.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
It's a lose.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Are just sadly shuffling along, properly mood walking while crying,
uh taking iberprofen.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
I was at a street light show in Portland that
was all millennials and every time, like the pit was crazy,
but also it sounded like a cement mixer when everybody's
knees got.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
Going, doting out hyperprofen in the way out.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
You're going to need this tomorrows.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
So the Alien Enemies Act, it hasn't been used since
the United States used it in the Second World War
for in tournament camps, right, which, at least for many
of us, is a part of national shame. I guess,
like a pretty terrible fucking thing that the United States did. Obviously,
for some folks in the Trump administration, this is something
that they're kind of aspiring to. I guess Trump has
(16:07):
said that he would like to use this to deport
gang members. That's not really what it's for. And like
even sources within DHS have pointed out that they would
have to prove that these migrants were sent by a
foreign government, right, or someone that the US is at
war with. This is going to be hard because, like
if we look at Venezuelans, who are representing a larger
(16:28):
and larger proportion of migrants since the elections, there they
will actively shit talk the government of their country at
the first opportunity. I have met hundreds, if not thousands,
of Venezuelan migrants in California and in the Dallian Gap,
and yeah, you're not going to find people who you
can plausibly say were sent by Maduro that way. Yeah,
(16:48):
but Miller's pretty good at finding these obscure laws and
ways of doing things. So we would be fully to
write this off entirely. But I don't think that will
make up the bulk of these mass deportations. So I
want to go to that American Immigration Council report, which
our link in the show notes, right, assuming a million
deportations a year, which is what jd. Vance said to
the New York Times, that's the sort of steady deportation
(17:10):
scenario as opposed to the mass deportation of thirteen million
people scenario, which a steady one is is more realistic
in terms of practicality rate. The cost of that, assuming
that twenty percent of undocumented people decided to leave on
their own, would be about eighty eight billion a year,
which is a large amount of money. We'll talk in
(17:30):
a little bit about what you could get with that money.
A one off mass deportation would cost about three hundred
and fifteen billion. The detention costs alone for that one
off massed deportation of eleven to thirteen million people would
be one hundred and sixty seven point eight billion dollars,
which is probably why private prison group geo Groups stock
(17:52):
swed this week. Right, if Trump wants to deport people,
the average deportee is detained for fifty nine days before
they're deported, and so they are going to massively have
to increase their capacity. Right now, their current detention contract
includes a minimum of twenty nine seven hundred and ninety
beds between like increases and other facilities they have access to,
(18:15):
and early twenty twenty four, according to the American Immigration Council,
they detain thirty nine thousand people. Astute listeners will notice
that eleven million and thirty nine thousand are quite quite
desparate as numbers go. So, ah, yeah, I mean you're
talking about a huge percentage of Like we'll get into
this later, but in California, Texas, and Florida it's between
(18:35):
five and six percent of the population are undocumented. Right,
you're talking about building prisoned cities. If you were to
detain that many people then one fell swoop. Again, that
takes time, but in this case it's private sector actors
like Geogroup, they can tend to move a little bit faster. Right,
So to put that cost in terms of things that
(18:57):
the government could do with the money instead, right, a
decade of one million deportations a year means foregoing forty
four hundred and fifty elementary schools or two point nine
million new homes, or funding the head Start program for
seventy nine years. A single year of mass deportation would
cost nearly twice the National Institute of Health's annual budget,
or eighteen times a global annual expenditure on cancer research.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
So I guess that's shit that we could have instead.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
But that's not all because undocumented households, contrary to what
you might have heard, paid taxes. And if we deported
every undocumented person in the United States, we look at
twenty twenty two numbers, undocumented households paid forty six point
eight billion in federal taxes and twenty nine point three
billion in state and local taxes. That's a huge amount
(19:44):
of tax revenue forgone right. Absolutely, Yeah, that again, that
won't be the end of it, because some industries like
construction and agriculture rely heavily on undocumented labor. And if
you're worried about the cost of your groceries, now, now
if people voted for Donald Trump because that EGGX costs more,
shit will cost an awful lot more if we deport
(20:07):
the undocumented people working in agriculture. Right, sectors of that
industry do not function economically without underpaid migrant labor.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
And this is something that migrants are very aware of.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Actually I broadcast interview with one of them last week,
But they know that they will be underpaid because they're undocumented,
but they still think that that's worth it for them
to be safe.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Right.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
So for going that, I don't think Trump has not
proposed a solution to this right length these sort of
this long form thinking is not what he does certainly
in his speeches, but that would have a massive impact
on the economy. What he would also need to do
is persuade the countries that these migrants come from to
take them back, and that has historically been something that
(20:49):
has been extremely difficult.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
The State Department.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
Doesn't see the sort of process of persuading people to
accept migrants as really within its remit and it certainly
sort of bristle that having to do this the last
Trump administration. I think a mass deportation like this it
would trigger some nations refusing to take people back, for instance,
to Venezuela. Right, Venezuela is already not taking people back
(21:14):
from Panama. You at the US funds deportations for Panama.
Venezuela and Panama ceased relations after the election in Venezuela
and Panama rightly claiming that that was a fraudulent election,
and as a result, Panama is now looking for a
third country to deport these people too. If the US
attempted to deport potentially millions to people to Venezuela again,
there's no guarantee that Madua has to accept them back, right.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
I can hear a lot of people saying, how is
that allowed.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
To not accept take them back?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (21:45):
I mean international law is like it's a unicorn, Like
you know, if everyone agrees that they see it, and
they see it, but it's not real, right, So like
who is going to make them I guess, like like
whether it's allowed or not, it's kind of immaterial. Madua
is not how to steal the election right, you're not
allowed to abuse human rights. Migrants are allowed to cross
any country they want and claim asylum anywhere that they
(22:07):
feel safe. But like here we are so yeah, in
theory the country should accept its citizens back and practice
will it?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
I don't know, certainly.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
It becomes like a bigger issue when you have millions
of people, right, And if we have millions of people
deported back, then like if we can't deport them, where
are we going to detain them? That gets back to
the cost of detentions, right, talking of costs should probably
cover the costs of our podcasting set up here by
pivoting to adverts again, Yeah, we are back, and for
(22:51):
the final segment here, I want to talk about who
Trump could pursue with these deportations. Right, there's two major groups.
The obvious starting point would be two point three million
people who cross between January of twenty twenty three and
April of this year, before Biden signed his asylum bad
to be prescribed. That to two million, two hundred and
sixty four, eight hundred and thirty. Those people don't have
(23:14):
permanent immigration status. Those are the people who you've heard
from on this podcast who are in cucumber right. The
people who we've interviewed for the last year and a
bit now. They have various immigration status, but none of
them are permanent. None of them have permanent residency. All
of them are obviously registered.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Right.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
They normally have a notice to appear in court, which
would make them easy to find and potentially easy to deport.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
The other group of.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
People are the undocumented migrant who have been here for
longer than that. Many of them have most have been
in the country for more than a decade. They're working,
They often have citizen children right because of birthright citizenship.
Most of the pay taxes. Most of these people have
some form of revocable legal status, so that might be
something called a temporary protected status. We talked about a
(24:00):
temporary protected status last week as well, but it applies
to people who are already in the country when it's granted,
and it allows them to stay for a designated period
of time while it's not safe to deport them to
their home country.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Let's say there's been a war or a natural disaster.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
Right, it's not safe to deport them, but it gets
renewed two months before the end of that period. Let's
say it renews every eighteen months, and you find out
two months before the end of that period if it's
not going to be renewed. If they didn't renew those TPSS,
those people could either change status or would become undocumented.
The TPS has existed since nineteen ninety and they're about
(24:34):
eight hundred and sixty thousand people on TPS right now.
The other major category that people will probably be more
familiar with are dreamers, people who came to the United
States as children and are undocumented, but they benefit from
something called Darker Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and about
eight hundred and thirty four thousand young people benefit from this,
which allows them to receive a renewable two year period
(24:56):
of deferred action from deportation. Trump did try and go
after this in his previous term in twenty eighteen. He
ended up in a two year court battle which sort
of finished up with NAACP versus Trump, and that ran
out the clock on his term and Biden reinstated Darker.
But again, because people have to register for Darker, their
(25:16):
whereabouts are easier for someone like Ice to potentially find.
Then after that, we have people who entered without being detected.
We have people who overstayed their visas. Those people might
be harder to find, right. The model of the undocumented
migrant that people have in their head comes across the
border with carpet shoes, sneaks past a BP checkpoint, and
(25:38):
then lives in the United States without ever encountering migration authorities.
That's actually not the majority model, but those people do exist,
and that they would be harder for ICE to find potentially.
Trump is also vowed to end parole programs that allow
Ukrainians and Afghans to enter the USA and work. I
would think that some of those would be pretty unpopular.
People have been much more broadly in sort of with
(26:00):
Ukrainian migrants than they have with other migrants from other.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Parts of the world.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
They'll say, but it would be an easy one again
for him to end right. The last thing he's really
said he wanted to do is to end birthright citizenship. Yep.
That is I spoke about this before in our Agenda
forty seven episodes. That's pretty clear in the fourteenth Amendment
they have some kind of fringes on the flag legal
(26:25):
theory around this, but like I would think that that
would require a constitutional amendment. But who knows, because he
might have both Houses and the Supreme Court on his side,
so he might just be able to get away with
doing that. This obviously wouldn't rescind citizenship from people who
have previously have children who are citizens. Talking of people
have children as citizens, they are about four million mixed
(26:45):
status families in the United States, so this deportation plan
could potentially separate parents from children and children from parents,
children from their older parents who they take care of.
It could destroy these families, right, Deportations always destroy families.
I've seen this happening myself, and it's horrible. The states
where this would most likely happen the states are the
highest documented population at California, Texas, and Florida. California thus
(27:09):
far retains its sanctuary policies. Texas Florida very much do not, right,
and so those would be the states where they will
be the highest risk of this happening. That's between five
and six percent of their population. And that's kind of
where I want to finish up today. I've got some
more stuff I wanted to say about his border policy,
but I think I'm going to say that for another episode,
(27:31):
because the border and immigration are different things. And I
think sometimes this is something that a lot of legacy
media doesn't understand. They have immigration reporters who report immigration law,
the stuff i've spoken about today, but the border is
not somewhere that they go, and it's not something that
they cover very well. If you've been listening for a while,
you'll know that I've spent a lot of time at
the border on the ground, in the mountains, in the desert,
(27:53):
and that's something that we've covered in great depth here
and I'm pretty happy that listeners have a really complete
understanding of it.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Would California actually be able to enforce being a sanctuary
state or.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Now, yes, in the it's law enforcement doesn't have to
caught ice, right. The federal government cannot compel local law
enforcement to state law enforcement to do its work.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
That is very well established.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Again, nothing's off the cards when you have both Houses
of Congress and the Supreme Court. But again that would
take time and it would take a court battle. So
what they can do now is not report those people right,
not say hey, we got someone here, he came in
because we found him with a bag of weed. He's undocumented.
You know, he was driving thirty five and a thirty,
(28:40):
he's undocumented. These are things that people who are undocumented
have to worry about, right, Like, for those of you
who don't have undocumented folks in your life, Like it's
a speeding ticket, it's the most minor in it's not
paying a parking ticket and ending up in court, right Like,
this shit is so minor to so many people, but
it could tear someone's life apart. And so I want
(29:04):
to like finish up by saying that, Yeah, Texas and
Florida are going to be the places where we see this. Yeah,
five percent of the population is a large amount of
your population. If he even attempts half of that, people
are going to see this. It's going to happen in
your community. Now, I'm not saying he will, but if
it does, like the time to start organizing to protect
(29:27):
people you care about is now. Be that with their nations,
to groups like Alo Torolalo, who have successfully sued the
Trump and Bien administrations for my goods rights. Be that
with organizing such that your own documented friends don't end
up in court because they couldn't pay a parking ticket,
right even if that means you paying someone giving someone
fifty bucks for a parking ticket so that it doesn't
ruin the rest of their life.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Whatever it is. The way that we.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
Prevent this is through strong communities. We have to start
putting those now. I know we've said this a lot
this week, but we're probably going to say a lot
for the next three months. It's like a lot of
people have reached out to me since the Trump election,
which was two days but also like seven years ago,
because that's how time works, saying that they want to
participate in mutual aid at the border. I would love
(30:14):
for you to come and join us, of course it would,
And like I think people have heard a lot about
our mutual aid setup because of something I do a lot,
but that I don't want you to come here and
do mutual aid tourism, Like I want you to come
here and understand and learn what we do and then
do it yourself, or just do it yourself, like there
was a time when this didn't exist and people started
it right and you can start it to And I'm
(30:35):
not going to tell you, like the specifics of what
I think you should do, because I don't know. I
don't know what the legal environment will be. I don't
know what the legal environment will be in your state.
But whatever the legal environment is, it will be better
if we have strong and cohesive communities to look after
one another.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Right. If you're looking to donate your money.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
I've said it before ALOTLAO where I would suggest it.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
It's a L t R O l A d O
dot org.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
They've done really valuable work in defending migrants rights in court.
Haitian Bridge Alliance would be another great example of that.
Will you link that, I'll put them both in the
show notes.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
But the way we confront this is together. And it's
super important that now in the next three months of
that are and documented people in your life so that
you check in with them, that you talk with them
about what the best plan is. We don't know what's
going to happen. I've outlined some scenarios here. None of
them may happen, right, We don't know yet, but we
have these three months and we'd be foolish not to
(31:36):
use them.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Ye.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Yeah, talk to your friends, begin organizing. The solution is
not to spare. The solution is community, and I know
it can be really to spare. And if you're listening
and you are and documented, I understand how petrifying this is,
and just know that, like we're all thinking of you
and hopefully there are people in your life who are
there to help you and to help you get through
a difficult time.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
You listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for
it could Happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks
for listening.
Also media Welcome to it could happen here a podcast
about things crumbling and how.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
To pick up the pieces.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Wooing we love to crumble.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Yeah, and part of that is understanding what is going
to happen and how it is going to happen, and
absorbing that knowledge and what you can do with it.
So today James is going to tell us about Trump's
plans for migrants.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
Yep, yeah, I guess in terms of what's going to happen,
we don't know, right. Trump said a lot of stuff
in his first term and kind of didn't stick the landing,
a lot of it he tried. But they're more experienced
now and I think crucially they have a much more
favorable Supreme Court and then probably will have an even
more favorable Supreme Court by the end of this term.
(00:54):
So a plan to deport up to a million people
this year was one of the very few concrete and
tangible promises that the Trump campaign made, Right. They had
a lot of vibes, nasty vibes, but like in terms
of like we will do X by Y, this was
one of the very few. Now, Trump tried to deport
a lot of people in his first term, right, like
(01:15):
The one consistent part of his policy ever since he
rode sideways down an escalator in twenty fifteen and then
shit talked to Mexican people, has been an anti migrant policy.
He didn't really stick the landing on mass deportations in
his first term. In fact, Biden deported more people in
twenty twenty three than Trump did in any year of
(01:36):
his first term. In fact, Trump also fell behind Obama
in terms of deportations per year. None of that means
that he won't be able to do that this time, right,
I'm just trying to put some numbers on his promises
the last time, so I want to look first at
how he could go about his promise in his second term. Right.
One thing that he said he will do is use
Title forty two again. So if people have not listened
(01:59):
to the series I did last May or June on
Title forty two, I would like to direct them there.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Title forty two is a reminder.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
It's a public health law, and it's public health law that,
in this interpretation, allowed CBP, specifically Border Patrol, to immediately
return people to Mexico without processing them first. Sometimes they
call it catch and release. Right, what it resulted in
was these are not technically deportations. But when Trump said something,
(02:28):
I don't think he's considering the exact meanings of what
he's saying. Right, So, if we look at Title forty
two expulsions, if he's going to bring back Title forty two,
reaching that one million per year number is pretty easy.
In fact, that happened in twenty twenty two again under Biden. Right,
So if he considers those to be deportations, and that's
within his one million per year goal, it's reasonable that
(02:52):
he will reach to say that he will be able
to reach that, and he will be able to do
that with the current infrastructure, right without massively upgrading CBP, ice, ice,
detention facilities, immigration judges.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
All those things.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Yeah, So, like, if we consider those to be deportations,
and one million a year is very much something that
we might well see.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Do you know where we're at this year or it
hasn't been released yet.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
In twenty twenty two was the last stats I could
find I linked to the CBP. If people want to
look at the title forty two and title so Title eight,
it's the immigration law under which people are normally received. Right,
Title forty two ended in May of twenty twenty three.
May eleventh, twenty twenty three with the end of the
COVID nineteen emergency, because the reason they were using public
(03:37):
health law as immigration law was because of this health emergency.
Right now, obviously it was used extremely cynically. For instance,
there weren't exemptions for vaccinated people, but nonetheless that's why
they were using it. And when the federal emergency for
COVID nineteen ended, so did Biden's.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Excuse for using Title forty two.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
That I will link to the CBP data center in
the notes so people can see Title forty two versus
Title late over the last few years. As I pointed
out last week, the US can also fund deportations of
migrants further south, and it's done this at Panama. I've
had a series from there last week. People haven't listened
to it. I would love them to do so, but
the numbers that they've been able to achieve they are
pretty low, and I don't think that's really going to
(04:14):
meaningfully impact his target. So let's talk about what everyone
is most afraid of, which is mass deportations of people
who are already living in the United States. Right that
is definitely what his right wing trolls have been sort
of hyping up, certainly over the last few weeks, right,
the idea that they are going to come to your
house and find you if you're an undocumented person in
(04:37):
the United States. So to talk about this, I want
to talk about, first of all, like the real nuts
and bolts of how he would be able, if he
would be able to do this right. And I draw
very heavily here on a report by the American Immigration
Council who did some calculations on the cost of a
single ice detention, right, the cost of a single raid,
(04:58):
the amount of agents that will be required to meet
this kind of capacity. And there are two models that
they use, and those are the models I think are
most relevant. If we look at people who are in
the United States without permanent legal status, we make an
estimate for numbers, we're looking at about eleven million undocumented people.
(05:18):
That's not going to be perfect, but if we use
that as a ballpark, and then two point three million
people who have entered since the end of Title forty two,
and they're on various forms of bail or parole or
bond and they don't have a permanent status here either rent,
So we're looking at somewhere in the region of thirteen million.
(05:39):
If Trump wanted to deport all of those people now,
to do that, he would need to massively expand ICE
detention facilities. About half of ICE's staff aren't Countrary to
what you might believe about ICE kicking in people's doors
and deporting them, half of ICE's staff work for something
(05:59):
called Home Security Investigations. It's not that those people don't
do deportations. They do, but they mostly focus on human trafficking,
drug trafficking, transnational crime. Now, sometimes as people also do deportations,
people might be familiar with the big HSI raids on
certain employers who are employing a lot of undocumented people.
Those still result in deportations, but that's not their primary tasking,
(06:22):
and HSI has historically preferred not to do the deportation
work because they feel that that makes it very hard
for them to do the other work of like monitoring
human and drug trafficking, because evidently migrants are going to
be scared to go anywhere near HSI if they know
that HSI could deport them, right, so they're not going.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
To talk to them.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Now, it would be very easy for Trump to retask
those those agents, right, that would obviously undermine work it's
done to prevent drug trafficking and human trafficking. Whether or
not he cares is a question that's you know, I
think I probably have an answer for that. I guess
up for debates somewhat. So Trump has already called in
(07:03):
addition to potentially re equipping those HSI agents, he said
he wants to employ ten thousand more Border Patrol agents.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Right now.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
BP agents can do deportations, but it's not BP agents
who are coming to your door in Chicago and coming
after you, right that that's ICE Immigration and Customs enforcement.
He's also said he wants to give borderploal agents a
ten thousand dollars retention bonus and a ten percent raise.
Just to put it in the perspective, there are twenty
thousand BP agents right now, so that would be about
(07:33):
a fifty percent increase.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Right. This is not something he can do quickly.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
They need to go through the academy, They need to
be recruited, trained, background check, et cetera. Border Patrol has
a lot of waivers right now, so you can we
can waive requirements that other law enforcement agencies would have
few to work for them, if that makes sense, right,
be it a ged or a college degree or another
language or whatever. They are offering waivers a lot right now.
They can increase that number of waivers to recruit more people, right,
(08:00):
but that would still take a long time. So the
estimate the American Immigration Council has is that to remove
all of those thirteen million people in that's sort of
in the one mass deportation as opposed to a million
people a year scenario, would require between two hundred and
twenty and four hundred and nine thousand stuff.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Jesus Christ. Yeah, yeah, that is a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
So I mean, like, for comparison as to how many
that actually is the United States military active duties about
a million people.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yes, that was exactly. That's a comparison, Not the Army,
not the Navy, the military, yeah, like all of it.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
Yeah, this would put DHS at like substantially more personnel
than like the Marine Corps, right, Like.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, not that people don't want to do, it's just
like it is. Actually, we've talked a lot about how
there are not guard rails on Trump like there were
last time. That is true, and that is a very
realistic thing to like be worried about and scared about.
But that we're not just talking about guard rails. We
are talking about a legist stickle hurdle. It is not
a simple or necessarily possible thing to make an agency
(09:07):
like that that much larger and have it actually function.
Like just this is just physics we're talking about here. Yeah,
it's the same with anything. If cool Zone suddenly received
one hundred billion dollars from Jeff Bezos and he said,
do anything you want with it, we could not scale
up to half.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
A million employees like we have.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
We have absolutely no capacity to handle that.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
Yeah, Like, I think what people have to remember is
that every doal kicking ice agent needs to enable us. Right,
They need paid they need health insurance, they need human resources,
they need training. This would take a very long time. Sorry,
it's one point three million or so. Okay, I think
it's a little less.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
That's twenty seventeen data, so probably it's probably as closer
to a million now, but yeah, slightly over a million,
so but this is close to that's close to half, right.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
Yeah, that's in addition to what they already have. Yeah,
it's four hundred and nine plus whatever they have. It
would also, of course mean like stantially increasing their investigative
capacity because most deportations right now, when ICE arrest someone
happened when someone else has already arrested that person. So
like the person who's in detention federally or on a
state level for something else that they did and they're undocumented,
(10:15):
and that's when ICE can take them and deport them. Right,
So they'd have to also increase their ability to search
out and find people, not saying they can't, but you
can't take you know, fucking Tim Poole bring him into ICE.
He's not going to instantly know how to find people
where to find people, right, So like this, this will
take time.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
There is a practical.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
Constraint on him doing this, even if there aren't other
constraints within the balance of powers. So Stephen Miller, dude
with the giant head.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
I'm sorry, but you're going to have to be more
specific when we talk about like conservatives who are about
to come into power who have like.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
A weirdly huge head.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yeah, okay, that's like, find me a Californian who has
strong opinions on gluten.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah that's me. I'm I'm PROGUREAE.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
Yeah. Yeah, so Stephen Miller is he as the guy
who's crafted a lot of Trump's nefarious border policies.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Right.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
It was Miller who who sook out Title forty two.
And I want to talk about this a bit later.
One thing that Miller did effectively, I don't want to
say well, because it was objectively horrible. But one thing
that Miller was good at was finding this obscure piece
of public health law and mobilizing it against migrants.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Right.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
I think if you'd spoken to me in twenty fifteen
and said what do you think Trump's going to do
against migrants, I wouldn't have said, oh'll be Title forty two,
the United States Code, you know, that regulates public health.
He or people within his team were very effective at
finding that and using that effective enough that the Biden
administration kept it for three years after the Trump administration
did it for one year. Right, And so Miller could
(11:47):
find some niche kind of law. What he wants to
do is use the national guard from cooperative states, right, Yeah,
and to use a national guard from cooperative state in
states that are not cooperative and where local law enforcement
would not cooperate.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Right.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
So some quote unquote sanctuary states, and there's probably an overstatement.
They don't in theory refer and document to people they
arrest to ICE for deportation. Right now, what federal fusion
centers do is allow for that even if it is
a sanctuary state. Actually, but in theoretical terms, a sanctuary
state would not at least contact ICE about every undocumented
(12:26):
person they're arrested.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Right.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
So Bill's plan is to use the National Guard. Again, like,
that's not what the National Guard does right now. They're
not really trained up for doing that either.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Right.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
I've seen plenty of National Guard folks on the border
fort It's a bunch of scared eighteen year olds, right
who are trying to get money from Robert and I
have met Texas National.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Guide on the board, their kids, their kids. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Now, to be fair, that's not saying they're they're like
innocent or inherent Like every group of soldiers who has
done any good or bad things, and often but usually
both at the same time, it's a bunch of scared
eighteen year old kids. Yes, that's been the case for
ten thousand years. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
Anytime you have conflict reporting, you it's always shocking how
young people are.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
It's always just like, oh, okay, all wars are fought
by children. There's no non child soldiers, with the exception
of I mean, that is the weird thing about the
Ukraine War, right Yet, Like I remember the first time
I wound up at the front there, it was like, oh,
this is actually it is actually old men fighting this war,
old men who repeatedly told me it's either me or
my kid shows up here. And I already fucking lost
my soul in Afghanistan. Yes, Like I literally had that
(13:38):
interview with people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
It's crazy to me people who were in Afghanistan and
have fighting again.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Yeah, I mean I think those guys are probably out now.
I'm talking fifty Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Think twenty twenty forty, so it's forty years late. I'm
sure they're too old now.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
But Robert talking of being too old, I'm voting. I'm
not too old to be obliged to transition to advertisement.
So that's what we're going to do.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
You're never too old for that, James.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
In fact, the older you get, it's kind of like
how if you reread Moby Dick at different points in
your life, it's a completely different novel every ten years,
different book. The same thing is true with ulysses, and
the same thing is true with these advertisements. That's right,
save them, record them on your home device in every
couple of months, listen and you'll learn something new from
(14:21):
chumpa casino every time.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
All right, we're back, and I hope you've downloaded that
chump of casino advert for later. And in the event
of a great down scenario, you could have a whole
library of those to listen to. So, talking of obscure legislations,
we did right. Trump and his team have mentioned this
thing called the Alien Enemies Act. It sounds like alien
Ant Farm, but it's not in any way related.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Sadly, not nearly as good as for one thing, it's
cover of smooth Criminal Terrible terrible.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
Yeah, no, nowhere near the the same standard. That's a
joke for people who are over thirty.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Yes, anyone who tries to dance to that alien Ant
Farm song today not only has to think about the
fact that Michael Jackson was definitely a pedophile, but also
their needs no longer work.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
It's a lose.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Are just sadly shuffling along, properly mood walking while crying,
uh taking iberprofen.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
I was at a street light show in Portland that
was all millennials and every time, like the pit was crazy,
but also it sounded like a cement mixer when everybody's
knees got.
Speaker 4 (15:36):
Going, doting out hyperprofen in the way out.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
You're going to need this tomorrows.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
So the Alien Enemies Act, it hasn't been used since
the United States used it in the Second World War
for in tournament camps, right, which, at least for many
of us, is a part of national shame. I guess,
like a pretty terrible fucking thing that the United States did. Obviously,
for some folks in the Trump administration, this is something
that they're kind of aspiring to. I guess Trump has
(16:07):
said that he would like to use this to deport
gang members. That's not really what it's for. And like
even sources within DHS have pointed out that they would
have to prove that these migrants were sent by a
foreign government, right, or someone that the US is at
war with. This is going to be hard because, like
if we look at Venezuelans, who are representing a larger
(16:28):
and larger proportion of migrants since the elections, there they
will actively shit talk the government of their country at
the first opportunity. I have met hundreds, if not thousands,
of Venezuelan migrants in California and in the Dallian Gap,
and yeah, you're not going to find people who you
can plausibly say were sent by Maduro that way. Yeah,
(16:48):
but Miller's pretty good at finding these obscure laws and
ways of doing things. So we would be fully to
write this off entirely. But I don't think that will
make up the bulk of these mass deportations. So I
want to go to that American Immigration Council report, which
our link in the show notes, right, assuming a million
deportations a year, which is what jd. Vance said to
the New York Times, that's the sort of steady deportation
(17:10):
scenario as opposed to the mass deportation of thirteen million
people scenario, which a steady one is is more realistic
in terms of practicality rate. The cost of that, assuming
that twenty percent of undocumented people decided to leave on
their own, would be about eighty eight billion a year,
which is a large amount of money. We'll talk in
(17:30):
a little bit about what you could get with that money.
A one off mass deportation would cost about three hundred
and fifteen billion. The detention costs alone for that one
off massed deportation of eleven to thirteen million people would
be one hundred and sixty seven point eight billion dollars,
which is probably why private prison group geo Groups stock
(17:52):
swed this week. Right, if Trump wants to deport people,
the average deportee is detained for fifty nine days before
they're deported, and so they are going to massively have
to increase their capacity. Right now, their current detention contract
includes a minimum of twenty nine seven hundred and ninety
beds between like increases and other facilities they have access to,
(18:15):
and early twenty twenty four, according to the American Immigration Council,
they detain thirty nine thousand people. Astute listeners will notice
that eleven million and thirty nine thousand are quite quite
desparate as numbers go. So, ah, yeah, I mean you're
talking about a huge percentage of Like we'll get into
this later, but in California, Texas, and Florida it's between
(18:35):
five and six percent of the population are undocumented. Right,
you're talking about building prisoned cities. If you were to
detain that many people then one fell swoop. Again, that
takes time, but in this case it's private sector actors
like Geogroup, they can tend to move a little bit faster. Right,
So to put that cost in terms of things that
(18:57):
the government could do with the money instead, right, a
decade of one million deportations a year means foregoing forty
four hundred and fifty elementary schools or two point nine
million new homes, or funding the head Start program for
seventy nine years. A single year of mass deportation would
cost nearly twice the National Institute of Health's annual budget,
or eighteen times a global annual expenditure on cancer research.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
So I guess that's shit that we could have instead.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
But that's not all because undocumented households, contrary to what
you might have heard, paid taxes. And if we deported
every undocumented person in the United States, we look at
twenty twenty two numbers, undocumented households paid forty six point
eight billion in federal taxes and twenty nine point three
billion in state and local taxes. That's a huge amount
(19:44):
of tax revenue forgone right. Absolutely, Yeah, that again, that
won't be the end of it, because some industries like
construction and agriculture rely heavily on undocumented labor. And if
you're worried about the cost of your groceries, now, now
if people voted for Donald Trump because that EGGX costs more,
shit will cost an awful lot more if we deport
(20:07):
the undocumented people working in agriculture. Right, sectors of that
industry do not function economically without underpaid migrant labor.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
And this is something that migrants are very aware of.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Actually I broadcast interview with one of them last week,
But they know that they will be underpaid because they're undocumented,
but they still think that that's worth it for them
to be safe.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Right.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
So for going that, I don't think Trump has not
proposed a solution to this right length these sort of
this long form thinking is not what he does certainly
in his speeches, but that would have a massive impact
on the economy. What he would also need to do
is persuade the countries that these migrants come from to
take them back, and that has historically been something that
(20:49):
has been extremely difficult.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
The State Department.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
Doesn't see the sort of process of persuading people to
accept migrants as really within its remit and it certainly
sort of bristle that having to do this the last
Trump administration. I think a mass deportation like this it
would trigger some nations refusing to take people back, for instance,
to Venezuela. Right, Venezuela is already not taking people back
(21:14):
from Panama. You at the US funds deportations for Panama.
Venezuela and Panama ceased relations after the election in Venezuela
and Panama rightly claiming that that was a fraudulent election,
and as a result, Panama is now looking for a
third country to deport these people too. If the US
attempted to deport potentially millions to people to Venezuela again,
there's no guarantee that Madua has to accept them back, right.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
I can hear a lot of people saying, how is
that allowed.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
To not accept take them back?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (21:45):
I mean international law is like it's a unicorn, Like
you know, if everyone agrees that they see it, and
they see it, but it's not real, right, So like
who is going to make them I guess, like like
whether it's allowed or not, it's kind of immaterial. Madua
is not how to steal the election right, you're not
allowed to abuse human rights. Migrants are allowed to cross
any country they want and claim asylum anywhere that they
(22:07):
feel safe. But like here we are so yeah, in
theory the country should accept its citizens back and practice
will it?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
I don't know, certainly.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
It becomes like a bigger issue when you have millions
of people, right, And if we have millions of people
deported back, then like if we can't deport them, where
are we going to detain them? That gets back to
the cost of detentions, right, talking of costs should probably
cover the costs of our podcasting set up here by
pivoting to adverts again, Yeah, we are back, and for
(22:51):
the final segment here, I want to talk about who
Trump could pursue with these deportations. Right, there's two major groups.
The obvious starting point would be two point three million
people who cross between January of twenty twenty three and
April of this year, before Biden signed his asylum bad
to be prescribed. That to two million, two hundred and
sixty four, eight hundred and thirty. Those people don't have
(23:14):
permanent immigration status. Those are the people who you've heard
from on this podcast who are in cucumber right. The
people who we've interviewed for the last year and a
bit now. They have various immigration status, but none of
them are permanent. None of them have permanent residency. All
of them are obviously registered.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Right.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
They normally have a notice to appear in court, which
would make them easy to find and potentially easy to deport.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
The other group of.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
People are the undocumented migrant who have been here for
longer than that. Many of them have most have been
in the country for more than a decade. They're working,
They often have citizen children right because of birthright citizenship.
Most of the pay taxes. Most of these people have
some form of revocable legal status, so that might be
something called a temporary protected status. We talked about a
(24:00):
temporary protected status last week as well, but it applies
to people who are already in the country when it's granted,
and it allows them to stay for a designated period
of time while it's not safe to deport them to
their home country.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Let's say there's been a war or a natural disaster.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
Right, it's not safe to deport them, but it gets
renewed two months before the end of that period. Let's
say it renews every eighteen months, and you find out
two months before the end of that period if it's
not going to be renewed. If they didn't renew those TPSS,
those people could either change status or would become undocumented.
The TPS has existed since nineteen ninety and they're about
(24:34):
eight hundred and sixty thousand people on TPS right now.
The other major category that people will probably be more
familiar with are dreamers, people who came to the United
States as children and are undocumented, but they benefit from
something called Darker Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and about
eight hundred and thirty four thousand young people benefit from this,
which allows them to receive a renewable two year period
(24:56):
of deferred action from deportation. Trump did try and go
after this in his previous term in twenty eighteen. He
ended up in a two year court battle which sort
of finished up with NAACP versus Trump, and that ran
out the clock on his term and Biden reinstated Darker.
But again, because people have to register for Darker, their
(25:16):
whereabouts are easier for someone like Ice to potentially find.
Then after that, we have people who entered without being detected.
We have people who overstayed their visas. Those people might
be harder to find, right. The model of the undocumented
migrant that people have in their head comes across the
border with carpet shoes, sneaks past a BP checkpoint, and
(25:38):
then lives in the United States without ever encountering migration authorities.
That's actually not the majority model, but those people do exist,
and that they would be harder for ICE to find potentially.
Trump is also vowed to end parole programs that allow
Ukrainians and Afghans to enter the USA and work. I
would think that some of those would be pretty unpopular.
People have been much more broadly in sort of with
(26:00):
Ukrainian migrants than they have with other migrants from other.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Parts of the world.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
They'll say, but it would be an easy one again
for him to end right. The last thing he's really
said he wanted to do is to end birthright citizenship. Yep.
That is I spoke about this before in our Agenda
forty seven episodes. That's pretty clear in the fourteenth Amendment
they have some kind of fringes on the flag legal
(26:25):
theory around this, but like I would think that that
would require a constitutional amendment. But who knows, because he
might have both Houses and the Supreme Court on his side,
so he might just be able to get away with
doing that. This obviously wouldn't rescind citizenship from people who
have previously have children who are citizens. Talking of people
have children as citizens, they are about four million mixed
(26:45):
status families in the United States, so this deportation plan
could potentially separate parents from children and children from parents,
children from their older parents who they take care of.
It could destroy these families, right, Deportations always destroy families.
I've seen this happening myself, and it's horrible. The states
where this would most likely happen the states are the
highest documented population at California, Texas, and Florida. California thus
(27:09):
far retains its sanctuary policies. Texas Florida very much do not, right,
and so those would be the states where they will
be the highest risk of this happening. That's between five
and six percent of their population. And that's kind of
where I want to finish up today. I've got some
more stuff I wanted to say about his border policy,
but I think I'm going to say that for another episode,
(27:31):
because the border and immigration are different things. And I
think sometimes this is something that a lot of legacy
media doesn't understand. They have immigration reporters who report immigration law,
the stuff i've spoken about today, but the border is
not somewhere that they go, and it's not something that
they cover very well. If you've been listening for a while,
you'll know that I've spent a lot of time at
the border on the ground, in the mountains, in the desert,
(27:53):
and that's something that we've covered in great depth here
and I'm pretty happy that listeners have a really complete
understanding of it.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Would California actually be able to enforce being a sanctuary
state or.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Now, yes, in the it's law enforcement doesn't have to
caught ice, right. The federal government cannot compel local law
enforcement to state law enforcement to do its work.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
That is very well established.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
Again, nothing's off the cards when you have both Houses
of Congress and the Supreme Court. But again that would
take time and it would take a court battle. So
what they can do now is not report those people right,
not say hey, we got someone here, he came in
because we found him with a bag of weed. He's undocumented.
You know, he was driving thirty five and a thirty,
(28:40):
he's undocumented. These are things that people who are undocumented
have to worry about, right, Like, for those of you
who don't have undocumented folks in your life, Like it's
a speeding ticket, it's the most minor in it's not
paying a parking ticket and ending up in court, right Like,
this shit is so minor to so many people, but
it could tear someone's life apart. And so I want
(29:04):
to like finish up by saying that, Yeah, Texas and
Florida are going to be the places where we see this. Yeah,
five percent of the population is a large amount of
your population. If he even attempts half of that, people
are going to see this. It's going to happen in
your community. Now, I'm not saying he will, but if
it does, like the time to start organizing to protect
(29:27):
people you care about is now. Be that with their nations,
to groups like Alo Torolalo, who have successfully sued the
Trump and Bien administrations for my goods rights. Be that
with organizing such that your own documented friends don't end
up in court because they couldn't pay a parking ticket,
right even if that means you paying someone giving someone
fifty bucks for a parking ticket so that it doesn't
ruin the rest of their life.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Whatever it is. The way that we.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
Prevent this is through strong communities. We have to start
putting those now. I know we've said this a lot
this week, but we're probably going to say a lot
for the next three months. It's like a lot of
people have reached out to me since the Trump election,
which was two days but also like seven years ago,
because that's how time works, saying that they want to
participate in mutual aid at the border. I would love
(30:14):
for you to come and join us, of course it would,
And like I think people have heard a lot about
our mutual aid setup because of something I do a lot,
but that I don't want you to come here and
do mutual aid tourism, Like I want you to come
here and understand and learn what we do and then
do it yourself, or just do it yourself, like there
was a time when this didn't exist and people started
it right and you can start it to And I'm
(30:35):
not going to tell you, like the specifics of what
I think you should do, because I don't know. I
don't know what the legal environment will be. I don't
know what the legal environment will be in your state.
But whatever the legal environment is, it will be better
if we have strong and cohesive communities to look after
one another.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Right. If you're looking to donate your money.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
I've said it before ALOTLAO where I would suggest it.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
It's a L t R O l A d O
dot org.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
They've done really valuable work in defending migrants rights in court.
Haitian Bridge Alliance would be another great example of that.
Will you link that, I'll put them both in the
show notes.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
But the way we confront this is together. And it's
super important that now in the next three months of
that are and documented people in your life so that
you check in with them, that you talk with them
about what the best plan is. We don't know what's
going to happen. I've outlined some scenarios here. None of
them may happen, right, We don't know yet, but we
have these three months and we'd be foolish not to
(31:36):
use them.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Ye.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Yeah, talk to your friends, begin organizing. The solution is
not to spare. The solution is community, and I know
it can be really to spare. And if you're listening
and you are and documented, I understand how petrifying this is,
and just know that, like we're all thinking of you
and hopefully there are people in your life who are
there to help you and to help you get through
a difficult time.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
You listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for
it could Happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks
for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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