← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
Ryan
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- [00:27]
Andrew Egger
No purchase necessary. VGW Revoid or prohibited by law. See terms and conditions 18+ Hi, I'm Andrew Egger. Welcome to the Bulwark. Donald Trump has really been escalating in kind of a dramatic way his attempts to move the country toward mass deportation. He's taking some pretty striking specific enforcement decisions this week and he is reportedly moving in the direction of invoking some very broad new deportation powers in the days to come. I'm joined today to talk about all of that with Adrian Carrasquillo, who is our immigration reporter, writes our new newsletter, Huddled Masses, as well as Mona Sharon, who has written about some of this stuff this week. Well, thanks guys for coming on.
- [01:04]
Adrian Carrasquillo
Pleasure.
- [01:05]
Andrew Egger
So, Adrian, let me just start with you because obviously the big name that's been in the news and all this this week is Mahmoud Khalil, who is this Columbia University grad student. He was involved with organizing a lot of the protests against Israel's war in Gaza over the last year or so. And he has essentially been disappeared by the Trump administration on very spurious pretexts for this. So can you just kind of get people up to speed on where, where that story stands right now? Yeah.
- [01:37]
Mona Sharon
Mahmoud Khalil was taken from, you know, Columbia University and first sent to New Jersey to a center there and then immediately spirited to Louisiana, which is actually a, an extremely notorious ICE detention center in Louisiana. And so of course there's all these, you know, free speech, first Amendment questions which we'll get into. I think as I was reading Mona's piece, I thought others might not it, but I thought that she sort of where she ended is where I began. She wrote, you know, we defend his rights because if his are not secure, neither are ours. Which is basically where I begin. And I have a lot of immigration activists talking to me about, you know, not saying I told you so in some sort of chastising way, but saying we've been saying from the beginning that immigration is the tip of the spear for these kinds of things. And first they start with undocumented immigrants, now they're going for somebody who has a green card. And then next US Citizens is not far fetched. That's the kind of thing that we hear. Then we're like, oh, come on. But there was a Trump supporting Hispanic man who's a US Citizen who was approached by ICE with guns drawn. And there was this big NBC News story about it. So it's again, people questioning, you know, we have these rights, what's going on, what's the government doing? And just in this sort of slap dash way to achieve their mass deportation dream.
- [02:54]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. Mona and I wanted to ask you about your piece because I think it's. There is something kind of like cunning about the way the Trump administration is going about this, Right. They're kind of, they're picking on targets that they think will be popular targets right off the bat in order to kind of like chip away at some of these, some of these bulwarks of protection that citizens, permanent residents, that people living in America enjoy. Can you just talk a little bit about your piece about why Donald Trump has gone after this guy in particular and why you're unconvinced by essentially their argument that like, ah, you know, this is, this is one of the bad guys.
- [03:33]
Adrian Carrasquillo
Yeah. So look, when authoritarians go after dissent, they're not going to pick on the most popular person at first, Right. They're going to soften you up by going after somebody that's very unappealing and unpopular. They're not going to go after Taylor Swift because she endorsed Kamala Harris. Okay? They're going after a guy who I said very frankly in my piece is somebody that he could have been cooked up in a lab as far as I'm concerned, in terms of how much he offends and appalls me with his views. Actually, one of you said a few minutes ago that this group, Colombia Against Apartheid, Divest, which is the name of the umbrella group that he was a part of, that they were protesting Israel's Gaza war. Actually, it's. No, they weren't. They came out in favor of October 7th, on October 9th and 8th and 9th. So before the Israelis even responded, they were already cheering on Hamas. Okay? Really bad, obnoxious, arguably advocating for terrorism, all those things, okay? So really reprehensible speech. But this person has a green card. He is. Then we bestowed on him almost all of the rights of an American citizen. And one of the most sacred Rights of an American citizen is the right to say obnoxious things, the right to say unpopular things, the right to be wrong without fearing that somebody is going to knock on your door and when you've got an eight months pregnant American, by the way, wife sitting in the apartment, drag you off in handcuffs and take you to some black site in Louisiana. All right, it's not a black site, but to some detention facility because you've said things that are unappealing to a lot of people, even arguably supporting terrorism. He did not do anything illegal. He did not give material support to terrorists as far as we know. And the government isn't even claiming that. They're just saying this is the kind of person we don't like and we're going to show that we can kick them out of the country. And so Adrian's absolutely right. It is a flagrant assault on American liberties. And it is, you know, it deserves everybody to get up on their hind legs and say, yep, we have to defend this very unappealing guy. I mean, I don't know what he's like personally. His views are very unappealing because if his rights are not protected, all of our rights are in danger.
- [06:36]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. To me, that has been one of the most staggering things about all of this, is that when the Trump administration has had surrogates, you know, go on TV or sit for interviews to defend this, this, they have almost gone out of their way to avoid. I guess what I should say is they have been very deliberate about saying that they're not charging him with a crime, they're not alleging a specific violation of the law. Because what they're really trying to do is defend this maximalist posture where any non citizen, they think they're now maintaining that they have the ability to just kind of arbitrarily pluck them out and say, well, we see you as having defended terrorism, we see you as having stuck up for terrorism, and we think that under the law, we have the ability then to grab you and support you.
- [07:25]
Adrian Carrasquillo
You know, the law in this case is a bit murky because there is this loophole which says that if the Secretary of State, that basically it says you should never deport somebody with a green card for their opinions, except if the Secretary of State certifies that this particular person would represent a serious threat, or I forget the exact words in the statute, but would represent a severe threat to American foreign policy. And it is perfectly possible that Marco Rubio will say that. And then we're in the position with this particular case, we're in the position where courts tend to defer to administrations on matters of foreign policy. And so here you're going to get a loophole where he could actually be at serious risk of deportation because of that particular loophole in this case. But we have to bear in mind that this, again, I'm just going to draw a dark line under what Adrienne said, because it isn't just this. It is an assault on the rights of Americans across the board. So, for example, look at what the administration is doing to Perkins Coie, okay? This is a law firm that represented Hillary Clinton and that hired Fusion gps. So Trump has been bearing a grudge against this firm all this time, and now he's using the power of the state to basically crush this law firm and put it out of business by saying that anybody who hires Perkins Coie cannot have business with the federal government. Anybody who is a lawyer with Perkins Coie can't enter a federal building. You know, that is an attempt, clear, to put a private business, to put them out of business because they've offended the king. And that's authoritarianism right there. If it stands, if it's allowed to stand.
- [09:38]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. Adrian, let me come back to you about the politics of this a little bit, because in your latest newsletter, you kind of wrote about how the Trump administration has plainly been moving toward this maximalist deportation policy for a while. But because it's been kind of nebulous, there haven't really been any flashpoints, specific flashpoints of controversy about it. It's been a little hard for these pro immigrant groups to know really how to organize against it. Right. And you wrote a little bit about how this particular, this Mahmoud Khalil case may prove to be kind of a flashpoint for them in terms of finding that place to take their fight.
- [10:19]
Mona Sharon
I think that from the beginning, it's sort of playing a little bit of whack a mole with so many different cases going on, so many different types of flagrant attack on the Constitution, things like that. I talked to Joaquin Castro, Democrat in San Antonio, and he told me, if you can do this to a guy with a green card, what's going to stop them from getting a legal permanent resident and saying that in Texas and saying that they are aligned with the cartel? Again, this is what we're talking about, right? There's no evidence. There's no formal charge of a crime. And I think if you tie that to what else has been happening on mass deportation from the beginning, it's this effort to show that like none of this stuff matters. Your green card doesn't matter. Oh, you're here legally as a refugee and you came from a war torn country. That doesn't matter. They're canceling all this stuff from the beginning. Right. And that's been part of the administration's posture, the president, Stephen Miller, their worldview. And so as you challenge these things, I've talked to these legal groups that are in this constellation of advocacy groups and, you know, they're trying to fight as many of these things as possible. And as we're seeing, a lot of them are getting through and causing trouble for a lot of people.
- [11:29]
Andrew Egger
So let me move real quick from this specific case to what, you know, reporting suggests is likely coming next. Let me just quote you quote to you from a CNN headline this morning. The Trump administration is expected to invoke a sweeping wartime authority to speed up the president's mass deportation pledge in the coming days. The little known 18th century law, the Alien Enemies act of 1798, gives the president tremendous authority to target and remove undocumented immigrants. The legal experts have argued it would face an uphill battle in court. The law is designed to be invoked if the US Is at war with another country or a foreign nation has invaded the US or threatened to do so. And this is a thing, I mean, like, we've had these conversations for years and years about the MAGA movement's rhetoric about invasion. Right. Talking about, you know, migrant caravans coming to the border or just the fact of people crossing the southern border at all being an invasion. And a lot of that has, we've tended to chalk it up to basically just overheated rhetoric and kind of scaremongering. But in this case, I mean, it might end up really becoming like a sort of legal flashpoint as to whether they're able to invoke this law as again, reporting suggests they're moving toward doing. Adrian, what do you make of all this?
- [12:41]
Mona Sharon
Yeah, I've read about this from the beginning and it's so interesting because we were talking about invasion rhetoric. We've seen that in Texas. We've seen that with Greg Abbott. We've seen that a lot of places. But literally, Trump on day one made it U.S. government decree that we are under invasion as part of his executive orders. That unlocked for him the national emergency that he declared, unlocked for him the ability to bring, for example, military soldiers to the border to deal with. What he's saying is even though in the New York Times, two days before he's inaugurated, wrote the border's pretty quiet, but, you know, so he's saying that we're under assault. This is very similar. And where I want to zag is this is a big deal, and we definitely should need to be covering it. We definitely need to be watching. You know, this. This is what led to, you know, Japanese, Italian, Germans being in internment camps during World War II. Okay, so this is serious. Where I think what is overlooked is Trump is really good at, like, mastering a news cycle and taking control of a news cycle. I wrote about this in one of my first newsletters when he was sworn in, where he's basically saying, we can use this, you know, alien Enemies act to track down these Venezuelan gang members. No one is on the side of Venezuelan gang members. If they're in this country, you're going to say, yeah, great, this is cool. Do that. Where he gets away with it is that act is supposed to be declared against a country. You're not declaring it against. Who are you declaring it against? You know, so this is, again, where they just use these. I mean, this laws from 1798. Right? They just use these things that are not meant for this at all to say. And, you know, one of the things I've written about is, yes, gang members bad. Every American can agree, but it's actually an overblown threat, and it's part of his border fantasy to make it so scary and such a big deal that when you. When Americans hear this while they're getting ready for work and taking care of their kids, they're like, yeah, I support that. Sounds good. You know, and meanwhile, we're seeing what this could lead to.
- [14:29]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah.
- [14:31]
Adrian Carrasquillo
Can I jump in, Andrew? So, yeah, the average American might have that reaction to. But the fact is, this is going straight to the courts, and it is going to wind up at the Supreme Court, where this will be such a clear test of integrity for the conservatives. Because what are they? They are originalists and textualists. And if you're a textualist, you have to look at the words in the law and say, is it even remotely the same thing to say that when immigrants are coming across the border and when tanks are coming across a border? It's the same thing. It's an invasion. You know, they're going to say, well, hang on. No, you're stretching the meaning of this term to such an absurd degree that it cannot be supported. If they have integrity, that's what they'll say. And, you know, it's such an absurd suggestion that because we have more immigrants than we can handle, in theory, that this represents a wartime threat, like an invading army. I'm sorry, it's just, it's apples and oranges. It's ridiculous. And, you know, I keep saying, sorry to repeat myself, but the great question of our time is how will the courts rule? And if they rule against him, will he abide? Will this administration abide by court rulings? That's the ball game. Because if they don't, then we are truly losing our republic. And I don't know how it's going to go. I'm not making a prediction, but they are. This is the kind of thing that is squarely unconstitutional, anti law, anti rule of law. And, you know, these are the kinds of issues where, you know the fate of the country. I'm sorryi mean, I don't want to be melodramatic, but the fate of our democratic republic rests on how these issues are going to get resolved.
- [16:46]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. I'll just add one thing, which is just that one of the things that I find so frustrating about all of this is that when Trump was president, before he took this very maximalist reading of presidential emergency powers, he would, he was invoking them for all kinds of sort of pretextual reasons where everyone was like, oh, man, can he do that? Can he actually do it? And most of the time, the answer was yeah. I mean, the president has enormous latitude when he evokes emergency powers to do all kinds of things he wouldn't be able to, if. He wouldn't be able to do if he were not invoking those powers. And there really are no, like, hard and fast, you know, legal checks on when he can and can't do that.
- [17:27]
Adrian Carrasquillo
I mean, so I would disagree with that, actually. I would disagree a little bit with the. There are no, there's no way to push back. The fact is, he does have a lot of authority. He has way more than he should, partly because Congress keeps giving it to him. But this. During the first term, Trump was pushed Trump, the courts went against him more than any other president, and he lost most of the cases, and he did abide by court rulings in the first administration.
- [18:03]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. And don't get me wrong, I'm not disagreeing with what you were saying a minute ago at all. I do think that there is a serious, at the very least, we should hope that the courts will strongly check him here. The thing that frustrates me is just that because we saw this all happen in the first term, you could have seen Congress under President Biden move to kind of curtail some of Those emergency powers, there actually were some movements during Biden's term to do it. And instead of, and I mean, this is just yet another kind of extra grind against President Biden, I guess. But instead of like supporting those efforts and kind of closing that door in a way that would have made it harder for Trump, now Biden instead kind of availed himself of some of the same sorts of things, which is a small part of the reason why we are where we are now. A small part of the reason.
- [18:51]
Adrian Carrasquillo
No, that's an excellent point. And it really was a disastrous missed opportunity. I mean, they could have, they could have, you know, done many things to diminish the President's authority. They could have reduced drastically his ability to impose tariffs, for example, which is mostly statutory. It doesn't come from the Constitution at all. And, but, but they didn't. There was one thing they did, the Electoral Count Reform act, which was good, but there should have been, that should have been the whole focus, honestly, of first two years of the Biden administration should have been, you know, paring back the powers of the presidency because it was clear that we were now living in an era when they were being abused. But of course, that didn't suit Biden. He wanted to abuse those powers too, to a degree. Obviously not to the same extent as Trump, but he also stretched his authority.
- [19:43]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. And yes, I mean, like, to be very clear, not along the lines of the stuff that we are seeing today, which is just so far, so far beyond the pale. Okay, I think we can leave it there. Thank you guys for coming on to talk about all this stuff. We'll obviously keep following it and we'll be back on here to talk about it in the days ahead. Thanks to you all as well, for watching, for following, for subscribing, for doing all the YouTube things you do. Thanks and we'll see you again soon.
- [20:09]
Ryan
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- [20:32]
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