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- [00:00]
A
Hi, I'm Ben Parker from the Bulwark. I am joined today by the Bulwark's own Adrian Carrasquillo, author of the Huddled Masses newsletter about immigration, as well as Michelle lapointe of the National Immigration Council and Todd Schulte of Forward Us. That's FWD us. This is our immigration expert dream team here. So thank you all for joining me. And let's start right off just around the horn. Obviously, the biggest news we have is that we have birthright citizenship in America. We which actually I don't think is news. So let's start. Todd, if we could with you, what are the most important things we need to know about the Supreme Court's ruling in the birthright citizenship case?
- [00:36]
B
Yeah, I think great place to start. I think there's a couple ways to look at this. This is something that birthright citizenship predates, actually, the country kind of the common law. It predates the Reconstruction Amendments. It has been affirmed by the court four times. It's in Congress. And so this should be a 9, 0 decision. And so it is good, I want to be clear. It is good that it is affirmed. People should wake up, they should go outside, they should touch grass. Life should not have changed in that regard. And also, and I know we'll get into this, really, really troubling to see this as kind of a 6, 3 ish, 5, 4 decision on the kind of basic fundamental question and clear read of the Constitution on birthright citizenship this morning.
- [01:17]
A
Michelle, what do you think is the most important takeaway from the decision?
- [01:20]
C
Yeah, I agree with Todd. We can all breathe a sigh of relief on this one. The Constitution means what it says, and John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett and the three liberal justices all agree that that is the case. But it is really troubling that only five justices thought that the executive order limiting birthright citizenship and excluding the children of undocumented immigrants or those who are temporarily in the country was unconstitutional. We had Justice Kavanaugh agree with the holding, the ultimate holding, that the executive order, executive order had to be struck down, but he would have only relied on the statute, the law passed by Congress, which is troubling. And I think we didn't all see coming from the oral argument, which kind of indicated that there were more justices troubled by this than ultimately said that they would find it unconstitutional or illegal.
- [02:15]
A
Adrian, we just had an emergency issue of your Huddled Masses newsletter go out. So tell us not only what your take is from these, from this, from these opinions, from this decision, but also what you're hearing from people, is this a sigh of relief moment dodged a bullet, or is this danger on the horizon?
- [02:31]
D
I think even prepping for this day, when I spoke to folks like Todd, like Michelle, and just sort of like what they were expecting, you know, there is. It is important to say that this was a blow to the things that Trump and Miller wanted to do. When on, you know, hours after Trump is inaugurated, he puts forward this executive order saying that he wants to get rid of birthright citizenship. And we understand how this is, like, in the fabric, in the DNA of mass deportation and all the pieces that we've seen, we've seen the horrible detention, we've seen National Guard attacking US Citizens, and US Citizens getting their face pressed against concrete. We've seen all of that. But ultimately, what they want is to have less people from other countries coming. We saw Stephen Miller's unhinged rant after this, which, you know, again, they always are really good at giving away the game. And he was just like, people are going to come here from countries where they can't create the wheel.
- [03:29]
E
Being on US Soil does not make you a citizen or qualified to carry on or capable of executing the inheritance of this country. We have people from all over the world, from third world nations, nations that on their own would have never invented the wheel, let alone modern technology, let alone medicine, let alone air travel. And they can just come into the country, have a baby at a hospital paid for by you and me, and then that baby's automatically a citizen. That baby can sit on a jury when he turns 18 and sit in judgment of you and sit in judgment of me, and sit in judgment of our loved ones can decide who our mayors are, our governors are, our presidents are. Citizenship means nothing if it is open
- [04:14]
D
to everyone, whatever's going on there. Yeah, he was just saying, like, basically, these people are not as industrious and as smart as Americans. We all know what's going on there. So, look, this was important and it was important to stop this, but. But again, and we're going to get into it, as Todd said, I think just so many people understanding that there are other parts to this, that there are other parts to these other cases that came down. And so while, yes, for July 4th, we still have a country, ladies and gentlemen, sigh of relief. It's. It is concerning when you see that so many justices were open to letting Trump rewrite the Constitution via executive order. That concerns me. Just, you know.
- [04:50]
A
Yeah, it just, it concerns me, too. But you mentioned those other rulings. We had a major ruling about asylum cases at the border and what the definition of at is, I'm oversimplifying, obviously. And we had a major ruling that Jim Swift wrote about for us reporting from Springfield, Ohio, about whether the Trump administration went through the legal process, right. Of reversing or ending temporary protected status for many, many Haitians and Syrians who were here for a long time built lives re revitalized communities. So Michelle, what about those other rulings? Is this like a sort of glass half full for the Trump administration? It sounds like apart from birthright citizenship, they're kind of getting to do whatever they want.
- [05:30]
C
Yeah, unfortunately, I think it's more than glass half full for them. They got what they wanted on almost on every other immigration case this term. And the two you mentioned. I'll start with the asylum decision, the Alot Rolado case, which was brought by the American Immigration Council, my organization, along with partners, partner organizations and co counsel. This is a long running case that deals with restrictions at the border specifically related to access to ports of entry. So the official Customs and Border Protection locations that travelers, not just asylum seekers, but regular travelers, go through in order to enter the United States. And under our asylum laws, you can approach a port of entry if you are an asylum seeker and seek protection from persecution in your home country. Now, this policy, it started actually under the Obama administration essentially was that the CBP officers would turn people back to Mexico. The government calls it metering, we call it the turnback policy. But it was a policy that was substantially expanded under the first Trump administration where they actually had CBP officers standing at the limit line, standing at the border, that literal border between the US And Mexico, and not allowing people to access the ports of entry to start the asylum process. And the plaintiffs won every step of the way. We wanted the district court, we wanted the ninth Circuit. They tried to get the ninth Circuit to reconsider it, the full court, they lost again, the government that is. And so they took it to the Supreme Court, which unfortunately last week decided that the plaintiffs have no recourse, that there is the government can station officers at the limit line and turn people back and that there's no obligation for the government to then inspect and process those individuals to begin the asylum process. They really focused on, as you said, the meaning of arrives in the United States. It's a highly technical, formalistic kind of opinion focusing on that language really divorced from the reality of what was going on, which was that people were fully turned back, not just delayed in their processing, and they were left to Live in squalor, essentially along the border in camps where they were vulnerable to exploitation, to other kinds of abuses. And it was a real humanitarian tragedy and against the laws of the United States. You know, that we had repeatedly won at the lower courts saying that the government had the obligation to allow these people to access the asylum system. So, unfortunately, that is. That was a big loss.
- [08:10]
A
So just so I have this straight, the law says, the asylum law says if you make it to a port of entry, like a crossing, a port on the border or something like that, you get to claim asylum. But the government says you can't do that if we prevent you from reaching the point of entry. So it's like the government's loophole wins in court against the government's law, is that right?
- [08:30]
C
Yeah, that's exactly right. It's like the obligation does not even attach. It does not even begin until the person physically steps across the limit line. They have a foot on the soil of the United States at that point. Yes, the government has to inspect and process them and allow them access to the asylum system. But if they just stand there physically blocking that crossing over, the court has now said that there's no obligation that attaches. Now, the majority opinion drafted by Justice Alito did say if there were a total shutdown of the system, if there were absolutely no way to access, then surely that could be challenged again. But as the dissent by Justice Sotomayor points out, it's really kind of a hollow promise given the facts established in this case.
- [09:16]
A
Right. It's a theoretical case. So, Todd, can you talk to us about the TPS ruling is. That's the other major one from this term. And that's going to affect a lot of people who are living here, working, leading lives, raising kids, going to church.
- [09:29]
B
It's a really tough decision. I don't. I don't like, want to sit here and be like one. All the things you've heard about over the last year and a half, one's worse than the other. This is really, really high stakes. And the efforts taken by this court to streamline the administration's ability to do this are deeply, deeply concerning. And troubling would be a nice way to say it. So tps, or Temporary Protected Status, It's a form of humanitarian relief. If you're in the United States already and the government goes through a process, as it's not safe to return people there, you get Temporary Protected Status. It's in law. It's been around for a number of decades. This is so that when it's not safe to deport people to Afghanistan into the arms of the Taliban after a major earthquake, a place like Haiti or Syria that have been war torn countries. The United States says it's not safe to return you there. And in the meantime, you're going to get temporary protection from deportation and you're going to work permit. TPS has worked for people who need it for a short period of time. And TPS has also been in place for countries where it's not been safe to return people for a really long period of time. So watchers and readers of the Bulwark are probably pretty familiar with the President's comments about Haitians. But just to say whether it is lying about saying people eat pets, talking about how Haitians have aids, talking about shithole countries, there is a clear pattern of, you know, racial animus is the term in the law here.
- [10:56]
E
If,
- [10:58]
B
if that doesn't qualify as racial animus, which would forbid the President from getting rid of TPS for that reason, then I don't know what those words mean. And I, and I don't think it's a clear common sense reading. So this case had to do with one, did they go through the proper way to get rid of this temporary protected status? They basically only had to do two things, not show racial animus. And then they had to go through a really basic consultation process where the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department consulted on it. And they didn't do that. Like, they just didn't do it. There was not a basic process here. They didn't follow the law and how they had to get rid of this. And so rather than the court come out and say, here's all the things the President said about Haiti and that's not racial animus. And rather than the court come out and say, well, he didn't actually do like a very basic process. They found this workaround and they said, well, that doesn't really qualify and also it's not really reviewable. So essentially what that means is the following. For hundreds of thousands of Haitians, people who are working and living all across the country, some have been for a handful of years, many have been here for 15 or 20 years. They are working in industries like health care, where they're concentrated in states like Florida and Massachusetts, we are going to have this incredibly cruel and disruptive practice and process in a handful of weeks where hundreds of thousands of people are going to lose their deportation protection or their work authorization. They've also removed basically any basic legal break on the ability for the President to get rid of additional TPS protections. So countries like El Salvador and Honduras, where they've either tried to get rid of it or they've indicated they will try to get rid of it, and you're talking about 1.3 million people who have TPS. Probably a half million of those people have been here since last century or longer.
- [12:39]
D
Whoa.
- [12:40]
B
In a lot of cases, okay, at least 300,000 people have been here from the last century. A half million people have been here close to that. So this is both an incredible humanitarian protection and it is an absolutely unprecedented effort to revoke legal status from people who've been here a really long time.
- [12:58]
A
Yeah. That's a lot of more than a million people. Is a lot. Adrian, in your reporting, are people. Are people, like, getting ready to go to a country they haven't been to in 25 years? I mean, is that. Are we expecting big ice roundups in the coming weeks? Is that what's happening?
- [13:11]
D
Yeah, I mean, we heard Homan saying, you know, after birthright citizenship, that they're doing record enforcement, they're going to do even more. I think in moments like this, I always find that it's really difficult. Difficult when we try to explain to the audience and we even try to wrap our rounds around our arms around 250, 000 people, 300, 000 people. Like, what does that mean? And that's just so hard to scale. And our colleague Jonathan Cohen has done a great job of, like, zooming in and saying, okay, there are a lot of Haitians with TPS in South Florida. So he went to go speak to a woman, you know, and he said, you know, they're basically. They're going to come after the care of our grandmas. Right. And he spoke to a woman, American woman, and her Haitian caretaker and the way that she, you know, her iPad, troubleshooting when she needs it, but also just they play games together and she's her friend. Right. You know, I actually have, you know, my mom has someone who helps her, but also they sort of really help my aunt and. And uncle, who are in their 80s and 90s. My uncle's 92. Right. And so these caretakers become more than just a person to help. And when I was on this call the other day, the American Business Immigration Council did, it was about the fact that they're going to lose these people and not just these people that are very important to their lives. Some seniors have memory problems, so it's actually really problematic to take away their caretaker, you know, and and, and like one of the people in the, the Goodwin Living, you know, center, which is like a faith based center, the CEO, he didn't get mad, right? He, he said he, his number one feeling was sadness for these elderly people who are not going to get the care that they need. So when we talk about these things and it's really easy to hear horrible racist things about Haitians. And like, you know, when Todd says last century, you know, there are people here where they could only get TPS if they were here 25 years or 27 years ago, you know, 2001. So I think it's like oftentimes very easy. And we know, and Michelle knows how wonky immigration is and how like, you know, how dense it can be. It's easy to imagine that a lot of immigrants have come here in the last 12 months or the last two years or during the Biden administration. And then you realize that these people are, you know, in church with you, in the grocery store with you. They're helping your grandma with her care. And so I think that this is like the stuff that we need to understand about how insane that was. And, and I think just to your question, people are going to be scrambling and that's the stuff we're going to be figuring out, you know, in the weeks. And we definitely will, we'll cover, but it's just, it's a really big deal and I think that people should understand that.
- [15:55]
A
I want to get to some of these listener questions now, and I want to get through as many of them as possible. Adam G on Substack asked what these rulings mean for daca, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the so called dreamers. Todd, you tell us if DACA is implicated in any of these decisions.
- [16:10]
B
I think at a high level, the directionality of the court is concerning. But in terms of what this means for DACA, which is a protective program for dreamers, they had to come here 20 years ago or longer. They've had to go through this process. This is probably not directly weighing in on it. At the same time, I do want to say we have seen from this administration and all out.