Transcript
A (0:00)
Hello everyone. This is JVL here with my best friend Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark. We're talking about immigration today because there's some stuff happening that maybe isn't what was exactly promised, or maybe it was what was exactly promised really depended on what you wanted to believe. Back in November of 2024, we're going to start with a case in California where a newlywed couple showed up for what they thought was their final interview for the Brazilian born wife to get her green card. It turns out it was an elaborate sting operation in which US authorities lied to an American citizen and his wife in order to separate her from their attorney so that they could then detain her. Let's have a listen.
B (0:54)
We let her out of our sight. She never came back. We were lied to, we were tricked in order to have her separated from the attorney that we brought with us specifically for any kind of worst case scenario like this.
C (1:09)
Barbara was sent to a facility in Adelanto, California and then one in Arizona. Her husband sent her urgent court filings for signature. These would likely halt her deportation and he believes the detention center withheld them for a week and still isn't processing them in a timely way. He got a call at 4am Monday morning from his wife saying she's in Louisiana. He fears this is the last stop before deportation to Central or South America.
B (1:36)
There is a serious clock ticking here. If my wife is sent from this country, if we cannot stop that, it very realistically could be years before she's able to rejoin me here in the United States. We did everything by the book, as much as we could. This is how we treat the people who dream of becoming Americans.
A (1:57)
Sarah, does that call to mind any sort of historical examples where a disfavored group was told, oh, just come with us, we're taking you someplace nice. And then it turns out they were put to a camp of some sort.
C (2:12)
Boy, you went right there. Look, I do think this is not what people anticipated when they said, yes, we want something done about illegal immigration. I do think I hear this all the time in the focus groups where voters think. And again, I think you're right. The way you introduce this in terms of people telling themselves a certain kind of story, right? They told themselves that what Donald Trump was going to do was go after gang members and criminals and drug traffickers, but not like, you know, people who were just working or who were on a path to citizenship or people who were legitimate asylum seekers. I think that Americans have a certain amount of faith that I think was quite clearly misplaced that we would do the kind of immigration in their minds, right. And they. We would do it in a humane way. And I think that some people, especially the people closest to the process, like if you talk to Hispanic voters, which is one of the groups that Trump is now doing the worst with, like he did sort of overperformed with Hispanics during the election and they were as pro securing the border as any group I listened to. They were indistinguishable from other sort of MAGA voters. But now they do sound much more like, hey, I see a lot of this in our communities. Kids are seeing their parents get pulled out of schools. I didn't think they were going to go after the grandfather who lived here for 20 years. And I think that it's a little bit. We've had this conversation where I hear this and so I know it's true that people kind of had their own sense of what it would be like. I also know that's not really what Trump said. I mean, they did say they were going to do mass deportations, that they deport millions and millions of people, tens of millions.