It's a Numbers Game: Sen. Eric Schmitt on Immigration Fraud, Denaturalization & Ending Taxpayer Abuse

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

Episode: It's a Numbers Game: Sen. Eric Schmitt on Immigration Fraud, Denaturalization & Ending Taxpayer Abuse
Date: January 16, 2026
Host: Ryan Girdusky (guest-hosting)
Guest: Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO)
Produced by: iHeartPodcasts

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the ongoing debates around immigration enforcement, fraud, and the integrity of U.S. citizenship. Host Ryan Girdusky, filling in for Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, provides data-driven commentary and in-depth interviews. The episode’s central segment features Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri, focusing on his new legislation aimed at expanding denaturalization for citizenship obtained fraudulently, remittance taxes, and broader reflections on legal and illegal immigration policy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Controversy & Context: ICE and Viral Incidents

Segment: [02:47 - 09:50]

• Ryan opens with a viral news story: An off-duty ICE agent shot and killed Keith Porter, an American citizen, after Porter fired an AR rifle into the air on New Year’s Eve.
  • Activists and media have rallied around Porter’s family, demanding investigation and compensation.
  • Ryan emphasizes the rarity of such incidents: “According to ProPublica ... 170 Americans have been detained by ICE agents as of October ... That's probably lower than any police department in a major city in the country.” [05:10]
• Ryan cautions against narratives that use isolated negative events to push for abolishing ICE:
  • “They're hoping that this will lead to momentum to disband ICE altogether, disband immigration enforcement altogether. That’s what they want to do.” [06:20]
• He asserts that current administration efforts on enforcement should not be derailed by “hyper-emotional” arguments:
  • “We need to stand with ICE.” [08:53]

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2. Immigration Statistics & Debates

Segment: [09:50 - 13:19]

• Discussion of new Brookings Institution findings: For the first time in half a century, net migration is negative—up to 295,000 more people leaving than entering the U.S.
  • Contrasts this with Congressional Budget Office estimates of 400,000 net population growth.
  • Emphasizes range and uncertainty in predictions: “They expect the immigration population to continue to decrease in 2026 ... they give a big, big range out. This is a very big deal.” [11:07]
• Cites a BBC story: Visual evidence of mass deportations under Trump is actively deterring would-be migrants in Central America.
  • Notable quote from a Honduran interviewee: “But I see what Trump is doing and this made me think twice, he admits. I'm going to wait to see if the change in government here brings ... Hopefully things will improve.” [12:05]
• Argument: Deportation (or even the threat of it) is reducing incentive for illegal entry.

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3. Michigan Gubernatorial Race Analysis

Segment: [13:00 - 13:20]

• Brief pivot from immigration to polling in the Michigan governor’s race, highlighting the rare three-way contest involving an independent with broad support.

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4. Interview with Senator Eric Schmitt

Segment Start: [16:24]

Denaturalization for Immigration Fraud

• Schmitt’s new bill would allow the U.S. to revoke citizenship and deport naturalized Americans who committed fraud within a ten-year window:

  “If you're going to come to this country, become a citizen, and then you engage in this kind of fraudulent activity, I'm sorry, you don't get to be a citizen anymore ... You can be denaturalized and like I said, sent back home.” [17:05 - Schmitt]

• Key details:
  • 10-year lookback for denaturalization (since 2015)
  • Includes other felonies, not just fraud

Fraud and Taxpayer Abuse in Social Benefit Programs

• Points to cases of fraud in Somali communities (Minnesota and Maine) as rationale for stronger oversight and prosecution.

  "I think there need to be reforms on the front end of how you actually receive these dollars. Not just a wink and a nod, but you actually have to demonstrate that they're real people." [17:20 - Schmitt]

Internal GOP Dynamics and Legislative Prospects

• Claims White House and key figures (e.g., Stephen Miller) are supportive of his legislation:

  “You gotta have a lot of alignment and you gotta take advantage of the opportunities that you have when you have a White House, a House and a Senate.” [19:08 - Schmitt]

Immigration Policy Philosophies & Partisan Division

• Asserts near impossibility of finding Democratic partners for tough immigration enforcement:

  “The core Democrat base now is an open borders crowd. And that's why you're seeing this reaction to ICE. They don’t actually think we should enforce our immigration laws.” [21:57 - Schmitt]

On Changing the Narrative

• Ryan highlights shifting Democratic attitudes post-Trump, referencing polling that support for border enforcement dropped suddenly when Trump took on the issue.

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Taxing Remittances

Segment: [23:32 - 26:51]

• Schmitt advocates a federal tax on remittances (money sent abroad by immigrants).

  “For the first time ever, a remittance tax, it's 1%, but something, it should be higher ... all these things that are kind of a magnet for more people to come here illegally or abuse the legal process... a remittance tax is one way to do it.” [24:10 - Schmitt]

• Notes that some revenue from states like Minnesota may outweigh tax collected, considering the high percentage of Somalians on public assistance.
• Considers enforcement challenges around crypto/alternative money transfers but argues some policy is necessary even if not perfect.

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Big Picture Immigration Reform

Segment: [27:02 - 30:57]

• On legal immigration levels:
  • Schmitt doesn’t commit to a specific number but insists current levels are too high, citing wage suppression and job displacement for Americans.
• Advocates for restricting or eliminating H-1B and OPT visa programs, arguing they primarily benefit employers and universities at the expense of American workers:

  “The only difference between those workers is, is the foreign workers are more compliant ... and they’re cheaper. I’m not interested in that. That’s a program that has been widely abused.” [29:15 - Schmitt]

• Critiques chain migration policies as counterproductive, especially over the long term.

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Judicial Blocks on Immigration Enforcement

Segment: [32:03 - 37:18]

• Schmitt expresses frustration with “nationwide injunctions” by district court judges, which can temporarily block federal immigration actions.

  "You'd have one district court judge have an injunction that would affect the entire government or the entire foreign policy of the United States of America." [32:21 - Schmitt]

• Supreme Court has reined in some abuses, but manipulation of judge assignment processes remains.
  • Schmitt calls for legislation to enforce true random assignment and even impeachment (“Boasberg”) in cases of observed bias.

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Closing and Further Resources

Where to learn more:

• Schmitt highlights his active presence on X/Twitter and other social media ([37:25 - Schmitt]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On ICE and negative videos:

  “The reason you’re seeing the same videos being played over and over again ... is because they want to make sure that this is negative looking because it’s their way to sit there and win on the issue of immigration.” — Ryan Girdusky [06:30]

• On fraudulent naturalization:

  “If you’re going to come to this country, become a citizen, and then you engage in this kind of fraudulent activity, I’m sorry, you don’t get to be a citizen anymore.” — Sen. Eric Schmitt [17:05]

• On partisan divides in the Senate:

  “The core Democrat base now is an open borders crowd. And that’s why you’re seeing this reaction to ICE.” — Sen. Eric Schmitt [21:57]

• On remittance taxes:

  “The amount of money that comes back to Somalia is bigger than their national budget.” — Sen. Eric Schmitt [24:10]

• On judge assignment manipulation:

  “But for somebody like Boasberg in particular, Boasberg, I’ve called for his impeachment and I don’t say that lightly ... This guy in particular gave a speech to judges before he ever had a case from Trump saying this guy isn’t going to follow the law.” — Sen. Eric Schmitt [33:18]

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Ask Me Anything: Reflection on Political Discourse

Segment: [41:01 - 45:18]

• Ryan answers a listener question about maintaining humanity and empathy amid divisive politics—regardless of whether the “enemy” is political.

  “If you feel like you are losing sense of humanity when politics is just red team, blue team ... it is important to take a step back.” — Ryan Girdusky [43:40]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:47] – Show proper begins: ICE shooting controversy, immigration narratives
• [09:50] – Net migration statistics and deportation impact
• [13:19] – Michigan gubernatorial race analysis
• [16:24] – Interview: Sen. Eric Schmitt: Immigration fraud, denaturalization bill
• [23:32] – Taxing remittances discussion
• [27:02] – Debate on overall immigration levels, legal immigration, and reform
• [32:03] – Judicial roadblocks to enforcement; nationwide injunctions
• [37:18] – Schmitt on public information, where to follow
• [41:01] – Ask Me Anything: Humanity in political discourse

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Tone & Language

The episode is driven by Girdusky’s passionate, data-heavy, often combative style, and Schmitt’s blunt, unapologetic policy arguments. Both are skeptical of progressive narratives, emphasize taxpayer impact, and frequently appeal to “common sense.” The tone is urgent, at times sardonic, and always political.

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For New Listeners

This episode offers a sharp, opinionated look at hot-button immigration issues from a right-leaning perspective, full of both stories “from the headlines” and direct policy advocacy. The conversation describes the mechanics of current and proposed immigration legislation, while also contextually addressing broader American political dynamics.

Transcript

[Ryan Gretusky]

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[Ryan Gretusky]

Welcome to a numbers game with Ryan Gretusky. Thank you guys for being here again. We have quite the podcast today. On Wednesday we had Senator Tom Cotton and today we have Missouri Senator Eric Schmidt. So that's very exciting. He has a lot going on in Congress that I want to go over before we talk about the interview. I have some numbers to break for you guys today to discuss. First there and then numbers and stories. First there's a story about an ICE agent killing an American citizen that I want to address. This is a man named Keith Porter who was shot by an off duty ICE officer and his daughter made a TikTok and went viral. Millions people viewed it and Americans feeling immense compassion have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to his family. Activists are now urging the LA Board of Police Commissions to investigate his death. So what happened? Did an ICE agent just decide to execute a black American because he was on a power trip? No, of course not. According to ABC7 Los Angeles, Porter was shooting at a rifle, I believe it was an AR into the air on New Year's Eve. The ICE agent who lived in the same complex, I think it was an apartment complex. That's what it suggests. The story where the man was shooting off the rifle in the air, confronted him and told him to stop. Reporter then pointed the gun at him and that's when the ICE officer fired at him, killing him. Look, the left is prepared to tell you every horrible story that involves involves an ICE agent. Every person who makes a mistake every single time anything happens to anybody. But you have to really put numbers into context. According to ProPublica, which is a left wing outlet, 170Americans have been detained by ICE agents as of October. That's 170 out of hundreds of thousands encounters. That's not many. That's probably lower than any police department in a major city in the country in terms of having encounters with innocent people. And by the way, any person who is mistreated by, by any federal agent, but of course, but certainly an ICE agent and they suffer injuries, they should get compensation. I'm not saying that they should. I'm not saying ICE agents shouldn't, the government shouldn't compensate them for anything like that. They should be able to sue and get some kind of compensation if they were actually mistreat, treated they weren't blocking traffic. They weren't trying to swing at an ICE agent or whatnot. But the reason you're seeing the same videos being played over and over again, the reason these people are going there with cameras and they're having one or two agitators do something to try to stop ICE agents while everyone films it from every different angle, is because they want to make sure that this is not pretty. They want to make sure that this is negative looking because it's their way to sit there and win. On the issue of immigration again, they're hoping that this will lead to momentum to disband ICE altogether, disband immigration enforcement altogether. That's what they want to do. They want to end in immigration enforcement. We finally have a president who wants to, you know, enforce the law, who wants to keep a campaign promise, who wants mass deportations winning right now, accomplishing that task of removing illegal aliens. The millions upon millions of illegal islands who broke into our country, refused to abide by our laws, refused to learn our language, had anchor babies in this country, who had all the rights and the privileges and the access to welfare that our ancestors fought for and built and waited their turns for. If you're illegal immigrant and struggled over generations to achieve those same illegal aliens who work off the books and send money back to their foreign country, they need to be deported. It is up for this administration not to give up an inch despite every negative video that you're going to see. It is so important right now more than ever when they're giving this hyper emotional argument. You, you know, we need to just completely back away in the one year. It's only been one year, one year of enforcing immigration law that we need to back away from it. No, we need to stand with ice. So sorry for going on a rant. I know a lot of my audience doesn't like it. I mean, they don't like when I get too emotional. I get it. But I'm Italian. There's only so much I could do. Speaking of immigration, there's another story that I want to go over with you on right now there. The Brooking Institute, a left wing nonprofit, reported that for the first time in half a century, more immigrants left the United States than came. Net migration fell between 10,000, a net loss of 10,000 to 295,000. 2025. This is according to economist Wendy Elderberg and Tara Watson, as well as Stan Ver, I think his last name is. You guys know I can't pronounce names. I think it's Stan Beer from the American Enterprise Institute, which is a right of center nonprofit. They say our results suggest that net migration likely range from negative 295,000 to 10,000. 2025. For 2026, we project. I mean, I can't believe they said this out loud. We project the range will be negative 925,000 to positive 185,000. That is such a ridiculously large range. I can't believe that they even bother writing it. So they expect immigration population to continue to decrease in 2026. This flies in the face of, by the way of the CBO estimate, the Congressional Budget Office estimate, which said that we grew our net immigration population by 400,000. That was earlier this week. I told you they projected that. So we'll see by the end of the year when the census comes out what the actual number is. Believe that while the US imported 2.7 million immigrants through student and work and failure family reunification visas, about 2.8, 2.9 million left on their own. They either they were deported or they left on their own, or they had normal outflow, their visa expired and they just went home. They also estimate that net outflow migration will likely be around 500. 500,000 is the average for 2026. We'll see where it goes. I mean they give a big, big range out. This is a very big deal. Deportation is working not only to remove criminal aliens here, but also to push people to do it voluntarily so we don't have to. And it stops more illegals from coming. There was a story out of the BBC which most Americans probably did not read. But it is the feel good story of the entire ICE and mass deportation efforts. The BBC had a story about a man from Honduras named Ilias Padilla, alias Padilla. He planned to come to the US illegally. Yes, he knew about the laws and he says he doesn't care. He planned on breaking the law, paying human smugglers the worst people of the planet to bring to the United States illegally. The BBC reported, quote. Now, though his plans are on hold. The images of undocumented immigrants. Undocumented illegal immigrants. But undocumented immigrants in major U.S. cities being dragged away by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Their risk being zip tied, having deterred at least one would be immigrant in Central America from traveling north. I want to improve my life condition because we have very little here. Ilas explains as he drove around the city. Take this line of work for example. An Uber drive in the US makes in an hour what I do in a day. Like most honduran immigrants. Elias says the main aim for reaching the US Would be sending remittances home, sending money that he makes off the books home to Honduras out of the US Economy. But I see what Trump is doing and this made me think twice, he admits. I'm going to wait to see if the change in government here brings, referring to the recent presidential elections in Honduras. Hopefully things will improve. He finishes the article by saying that his plans are on hold and he's going to wait to see if a Democrat becomes president in 2028. He can break the law. Yes, we are always just one presidential election away from people breaking into our country. Okay, last story I want to break to you guys and it's not an immigration I know that this podcast has become very immigration centric and focused in the last couple days. I, I know that. I know a lot of people like immigration conversations. But I promise I will diversify this podcast next week and the week after. It's just been the story on everyone's mind, especially with Somalia and the ICE agents and Minnesota. But there's an interesting story, an interesting poll that just came out. It's a political story. The the most exciting race for in the entire country for governor is happening right now in Michigan. A poll came out, it was done by the Glenn Gareth Group and was released by the Detroit News. And they say who do you plan on voting for for governor next year? Now they don't know. Let me explain this. The Michigan governor's race is very, very dicey because there aren't two candidates running. There are three. It's it's likely going to be Republican John James, who is in the polls in the lead with 34%, Democrat Jocelyn Ben 32% and independent Mike Duggan with 26%. So the Democrat, Jocelyn Benson is currently the Secretary of State. She has a primary, two opponents, but she has a big 36 point lead so far in the polls, about the same size that Congressman John James, the Republican has against former Attorney General Mike Cox and former Speaker Tom Leonard. Then there's Mike Duggan. He's the former three term mayor of Detroit, a former Democrat who's been endorsed by both Republicans like former Representative Dave Trott and Democrats like Marsha Bullock. She's a member of the Michigan State Board of Education. He's also received union support. The Detroit Chamber of Commerce is supporting him, which typically supports Republicans, and the Executive chairman of the Ford Motor Company. That's a big deal in Michigan. He's got millions of dollars cash on hand and is already running in the general he doesn't have a primary like the Democrat and Republican do. And the last time that Glenn Garrett repoled this race, which was months ago, but it was Duggan had 22% support. Now he has 26% in a poll. That is a 4% margin of error. So this race is razor far. The one advantage that the Democrats have going into this election is There's a massive 15 point enthusiasm gap. Strong Democrats, 87% of them say they're definitely voting compared to 72% of strong Republicans. So John James running this election really needs to get those numbers up. I am going to try to do a deep dive in this race. I would love to interview these candidates. This is a very exciting race because it's not very often you have a third party candidate with high name id. Duncan actually has the highest name ID of anybody running very high name id, millions of dollars, cash on hand, access to a ballad, support from both Republicans and Democrats and union members and business associates. I mean Duggan is really a different kind of beast as far as third party candidates go. It's extremely, extremely rare. You have such a person. I think probably not since Angus King ran for governor of Maine have you seen such a unicorn type candidate. So it's worth watching. I don't really know exactly what he would believe in, what he wants to do for Michigan. I'm not endorsing him certainly, but just think that it's a fascinating race from a political animal standpoint. So we'll see how it goes. Next up is my conversation with Senator Eric Schmidt of Missouri. It is fascinating. Stay tuned. That's coming up next.

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[Ryan Gretusky]

R O Senator Eric Schmidt is a representing the great state of Missouri in the U s Senate since 2023. Before that he served as the state's Attorney General and Treasurer, a Drac Jack of all Trades for Missouri. Thank you for being here Senator.

[Senator Eric Schmidt]

Great to be with You, I can.

[Ryan Gretusky]

Proudly say as a New Yorker, I have been to St. Louis and to Missouri many times. I was actually in a car crash and ended up in East St. Louis. And so I've had experiences in that state, but it's a wonderful place. Senator, you're working on a bill that seems to be very common sense. It's almost baffling how it doesn't have universal support. Your bill would look to expand denaturalization process for illegal aliens who commit fraud. Can you tell my audience in detail about the bill?

[Senator Eric Schmidt]

Yeah, there's really not been an effective way to do this until now. And I think the, the fraud that we're seeing in Minneapolis and this one of the Somali strongholds, it's not exclusive there. I mean, it's happening in other places. You're seeing it in Maine and other places, I think calls for a real response, not just a lot, not just talk. And so I think there's a few things that should happen. One is there should be real prosecutions. And I think you're seeing that. I think you're seeing those investigations that will lead to prosecutions. Also. I think there need to be reforms on the front end of how you actually receive these dollars. Right. Not like just a wink and a nod, but you actually have to demonstrate that they're real people at a place like this before dollars ever flow. I think Scott Besson's taking that very seriously within the administration. There's probably some things we can do legislatively there, but I think. And thirdly here is if you're going to do this, if you're going to come to this country, become a citizen, and then you engage in this kind of fraudulent activity. I'm sorry, you don't get to be a citizen anymore. You're denaturalized and you're sent back home where you came from. That's it. And so I think we should take a really strong position on this. Move it. So what the legislation would do is a 10 year look back, basically, so that if that fraud happened anytime within that period of time of you being a citizen, you can be denaturalized and like I said, sent back home. It would also include other felonies, you know, violent crimes, things like that too. I think it would add more meaning to what it means to become a citizen here as opposed to the taxpayers getting ripped off, like we've seen in Minnesota.

[Ryan Gretusky]

So it would look all the way back to 2015, basically, since. Since the Obama administration. Wow. Okay.

[Senator Eric Schmidt]

Yeah.

[Ryan Gretusky]

And yeah, obviously this issue of, of fraud has been amplified because of the Somalians in Minnesota. Now this legislation that you introduced is, is part of what we're seeing a lot of, or about to introduce, rather. A lot of Republicans are introducing some kind of variations on this. Is there like real energy within the party to actually get something done, something passed?

[Senator Eric Schmidt]

Yeah, I was in the Oval Office last week and spoke to the President about it directly. He's, you know, the White House is supportive, Stephen Miller is supportive. So I think this vehicle. Yeah, right, right. But, but I think that's important because, you know, if you want to have real momentum, you gotta have a lot of alignment and you gotta take advantage of the opportunities that you have when you have a White House, a House and a Senate. And so I think that's what our intention is, to push this strongly, hopefully as a standalone bill and push. I just think we have to continue. There's been so much discussion and we might talk about some of these other things too, about illegal immigration and rightfully So. I mean, 20 million people came here illegally in a four year period. President Trump has effectively closed the border. We, for the first time in 50 years have a negative net migration, which I think is a good thing. We're deporting people. And what you're seeing now is native born Americans are actually getting jobs as opposed to foreign born individuals, which was all the job growth you saw in Biden's four years. So all those things are positive, but we have to do something about legal immigration and the abuses that we've seen with legal immigration. And this is just one part of it. So if you're going to come here and go through the process and lie and then commit fraud and rip off taxpayers, you don't get to be a citizen anymore.

[Ryan Gretusky]

So what, you know what a lot of people are curious about and they just don't know is what is the working relationship like between Republicans and Democrats. And there's only 100 of you, you obviously work together for longer periods of time than House members. Do you guys talk to one another or are they. Are any Democrats or even pro immigration willing to have this kind of conversation?

[Senator Eric Schmidt]

I would. Well, I think that there are some issues where you can work with Democrats on. And a lot of those issues are ones that I would say haven't been as, don't have as clearly defined partisan lines. Right. Wrong or indifferent. Right. Like, so let's take like a crypto thing or nil in college sports, like those kinds of things or you know, where it's not really, or daylight savings time, like let's say whatever, you know, things like that. Those are different kind of coalitions, some of which are geographic, some of which, you know, water issues, you know, those don't necessarily break down. Red jersey, blue jersey. I would say, though, that as relates to immigration, it probably falls in the camp that it's really hard to find. A lot of Democrats were willing to go down the road of the kind of reform Republicans would want. A good example of this was, I guess it's two years ago now. It really kind of was a fig leaf to get more money to Ukraine. But there was this kind of quote unquote, bipartisan negotiation on immigration reform. And it was a bad deal. And Chris Murphy was kind of stringing our folks along. It was a bad deal. It would have made the problem worse. And my contention was at the time, because when I was Attorney general, we sued. We had the Title 42 lawsuit, we had the remain in Mexico lawsuit, and we'd won for a while. So I knew what the Democrats DNA was on this, which is they just, they don't believe in borders anymore. That's the truth. Like, the core Democrat base now is an open borders crowd. And that's why you're seeing this reaction to ice. They don't actually think we should enforce our immigration laws. So that's a big gap. That's a funny big gap between what we want to do and where they're at.

[Ryan Gretusky]

Yeah, it's so funny. On Twitter, you'll see them say, we can, we can enforce immigration laws without ice. Okay, well, is it the police? Is it the National Guard, Is it the military?

[Senator Eric Schmidt]

Well, they send a social worker in to de conflict or to de escalate or whatever the BS is. It's just ridiculous. And by the way, this is a pretty big shift. I mean, you're seeing stuff online now, things that even Obama said, certainly Bill Clinton. These guys deported millions of people. This wasn't controversial. It's only controversial now because they have become radicalized. Like there's this weird. Whether it's a pure power play for votes or it's this weird toxic empathy. Whatever it is, something has changed pretty dramatically.

[Ryan Gretusky]

The people who are orange man bad. That is part.

[Senator Eric Schmidt]

Yeah, well, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's a reaction to Trump. Everything's a reaction to Trump. And that, by the way, I think that's one of the reasons they haven't hit rock bottom yet as a party, because they really don't stand for anything except opposing what Trump is for. And that's not, not a great way to build A movement.

[Ryan Gretusky]

So yeah, there's. There was a Washington Post poll right in 2015 when Obama's President building a border wall and it got like something like 45 or 50% of Democrats support. And then Trump proposed it like, you know, a couple months later when he announced his running and it felt like 11 and like it was literally just a knee jerk reaction. You also have another bill that you put out, that thing I'm massively in favor for, which is taxing remittances for my audience. Immigrants, both legal and illegal, send over $85 billion out of the US economy in remittances to foreign countries. Only one state so far taxes it, which is just the state of Oklahoma. How would your bill address this? What's the tax rate? What would that look like?

[Senator Eric Schmidt]

Well, we were able to get successfully. There was a lot of pushback. Even though you and I are on the same page, there was a lot of pushback on this, but we were able to get in the working class tax cut this summer for the first time ever. A remittance tax, it's 1%, but something, it should be higher than that because I mean, my contention is there's a couple reasons. There's a fairness argument that's involved. But secondly, all these things that are kind of a magnet for more people to come here illegally or abuse the legal process. Right. This is one of those magnets in Mexico, by the way. They don't like this at all because they know a lot of their revenue that comes into their, into their, into their country to spend in their economy comes from the United States. I think it's like 40% of households in Somalia get, you know, remittance dollars from somewhere else, like in the country of Somalia. So this diaspora that's around the world is sending money. The amount of money that comes back to Somalia is bigger than their national budget. So, you know, I just think that, look, we, we ought to take away some of these weird incentives and a remittance tax is one way to do it.

[Ryan Gretusky]

It's almost certain. I would, I would guarantee that more money goes from Minnesota to Somalia than to the Minnesota tax dollars from, from Somalians and Minnesota.

[Senator Eric Schmidt]

Well, yeah, yeah. Especially if you consider the fact that it's like some crazy number of 70 plus percent are in some sort of government benefits there. Somali immigrants to Minneapolis or Minnesota. It's one of the reasons why Besant, the Treasury Secretary, I think is taking this seriously too. He's saying that we're gonna, you can't, you can't move remittance dollars out if you're on public assistance, I think that's a good reform too.

[Ryan Gretusky]

Now, I question this all the time. How do you, how do you work around crypto and other non traditional banking and monetary transactions? Is there a way? I don'. If that's an answer, but is there a way?

[Senator Eric Schmidt]

That's a fair question. Because actually in the debate about remittance tax, if you were pushing back on it, what I did here was, okay, if you get to a certain number and I don't know exactly what that number is, like percentage wise, money might then start moving a different way. And so maybe there is this balancing of what you can actually tax in that percentage then would be lower than maybe what you and I would want to, but you're capturing more dollars because it's not moving to crypto or something else. So it's a fair, it's a fair discussion point. And I don't pretend to know exactly where that perfect, you know, where the Y axis meets the x axis. I don't know exactly. But I do think from a policy perspective we should do something here. And I think we're taking steps.

[Ryan Gretusky]

You know, you spent a lot of time talking and thinking about immigration and you've gotten a lot of heat from progressives. Mother Jones said you were the most dangerous man in the U.S. sen.

[Senator Eric Schmidt]

That is now framed in my office.

[Ryan Gretusky]

I will be proud of that, as someone's been called a lot of things by lefties. But what is if, what if you. So I have two questions. One is how many legal immigrants do you think should come to the US Every year? And, and just give me a ballpark. If you have, you have that number in your head and what is your vision for a functional immigration policy? Because you can't have a 21st century economy with a mid 20th century immigration policy.

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Yeah.

[Senator Eric Schmidt]

And I think that what happened in the back half of the 20th century has proven to be not a wise decision. So I don't know exactly what the number is, but certainly too many right now. You put me in the camp of saying what we saw over the last four years should inform how we handle these issues moving forward. And so I said from the illegal immigration perspective, that's gotten so much of the attention, and rightfully so, because there were so many. And that was the point. And the Democrats take on all of this was make the problem so big that the only real solution then is amnesty. That's their play. Like if you really want to boil it down was you make it big enough that the Only thing you could do then is throw your hands up and say, well, I guess I don't know, path to citizenship for everybody. And that's the wrong way to do it. So I think we have a president now that's very seriously committed and I support this. To meet mass migration with mass deportations, okay? That's what's happening right now. And it's a shock to the system that has been put up not just by Democrats, but some Republicans who are perfectly happy with importing low wage workers to displace working class Americans in places that I grew up. And so I think, and then getting to the second point of it, from the legal perspective, the legal immigration side, let's just take two programs in particular that vastly need to be reformed or limited, eliminated. The H1B program, which is sold as, hey, this gets some of the best of the best around the world people we don't have in this country, and let's get them here to do jobs that we don't have enough people for. That's been a lie. That's just not true. When you see companies like Microsoft laying off thousands of workers and replacing them through the H1B program of foreign workers, the only difference between those workers is, is the foreign workers are more compliant because they're here as guests, essentially, and can be sent away. If they're not compliant and they're cheaper, I'm not interested in that. And that's a program that has been widely abused. And then the OPT program, which is effectively a way for universities become visa mills and they bring in foreign students. And guess what? The universities benefit because they pay full freight, they pay a higher tuition number, but they come in and then they're able to work on that visa for a year or two years if it's a STEM program. But guess what? The employer doesn't have to pay taxes and that's abuse. So you're displacing American students and you're displacing American workers. And I just don't think that we've thought about this kind of in this way in a very long time in this country. And so part of what I'm doing is try to, and I know you are too, sort of move that debate along because I think we've been lied to. We've been lied to by people who've benefited from the system. This kind of managerial elite that has no real sympathy or empathy for people whose jobs, in the name of globalism or quote unquote, free trade, their jobs were sent to China and Then when they were looking the double whammy. Then when they were looking for jobs, after those jobs went somewhere else, they're met with a flood of legal or illegal immigrants that undercut their wages. That's not good for America. That's not good for Americans. And so when you talk about America first first that's what I mean is taking on those kinds of issues.

[Ryan Gretusky]

Well, I mean in 1965 when they did the immigration act, everything they predicted would happen did not happen. Numbers were wildly larger. And I would ask, I would say one other thing too is just look at chain migration. You know, there's a conversation happening about Indian immigration right now. We have such successful, successful Indian immigrants in this country compared to the nation of India, obviously. But that's because chain migration has not hit yet. When people are bringing over their deadbeat second cousins and entire villages like they did with Mexico. The first Mexican immigrants were very successful and it was a down some, you know, downward trend because of chain migration to family vacation. Yeah, that's the point. I have one other question to ask you. The, you know, you were attorney General. A big problem for this administration to successfully carry out their immigration stuff has been district court judges. Right. They've been really trying hard to sit there and stop the administration. And obviously there's a big, you know, there's a stop gap basically by the Supreme Court and by higher court judges, but non profit's ability to district shop and shop for liberal judges who will just as a. What's his name now? I blanked his name. Jonesboro or Ginsburg.

[Senator Eric Schmidt]

Yeah.

[Ryan Gretusky]

Is there, is there anything that the legislature can do to try to bring in? Because it doesn't feel like we're having equal branches of government. At some point it feels like these district court judges are, are equal to the President of the United States, which is insane. Yeah.

[Senator Eric Schmidt]

So a lot to unpack there. So let's take like the broadest lens here in zoom out one. What you saw early on in the Trump administration, Trump 247 was that they were doing these nationwide injunctions. So you'd have one district court judge have an injunction that would affect the entire government or the entire foreign policy of the United States of America. So you have some district court judge in New Mexico that's deciding the foreign policy of the United States. Totally ridiculous. To the Supreme Court's credit, about seven months ago they weighed in and said, we see the abuse on these nationwide injunctions. The district courts were limiting basically your authority to the issues and the parties in front of you. So that is a big win. But early on that was getting a lot of attention and rightfully so because it was at least temporarily blocking some of Trump's big initiatives. So that one has been kind of, that's a good result. So what do you do now? You see real abuse in the randomness of these assignments. And so like when I was attorney general in Missouri, when you go to the appellate court, there's a bunch of different judges that go on a three judge panel. Well, there can be abuse if that's not random who ends up on the panel and then the random assignment of cases to particular judges. And so I do think there's some reform that needs to happen. We've got some legislation to make sure it's truly random, that this is not being, not being rigged. But for somebody like Boasberg in particular, Boasberg, I've called for his impeachment and I don't say that lightly. I'm not, you're not going to hear me. It's like impeach everybody. But this guy in particular gave a speech to a bunch of judges before he ever had a case from Trump saying this guy isn't going to follow the law. He's not going to listen to court cases. That's wildly inappropriate for a judge to say later that week. Then while he's on vacation, he somehow gets the turn the planes around case that ought to be investigated. There's just the odds of him getting these number of high profile cases when he's not the assignment judge that day is just, it's not possible. But he was getting these cases and then the Supreme Court slapped him down and said you had no jurisdiction to tell those plains to turn around. Yet he still wants to have these weird contempt hearings for Justice Department lawyers. So there's a lot of abuse that's happening. I would say, like you put all that in one pot. The truth is though, that as these cases by and large have made their way from those district court cases with some temporary losses along the way as they've made their way to the appellate cases, whether it's personnel and programming decisions or even on the immigration front, President Trump and they get to the Supreme Court, by and large has been pretty successful. Their record is pretty successful. But there's certainly a frustration when you see the, that district court judge and a temporary restraining order for something that makes total sense and looks legal. And you're like, why is that happening? Well, you have a radical judge that Biden put in at the end of his term and it's a it's a temporary roadblock is I guess, the best way to describe.

[Ryan Gretusky]

Yeah. Excuse my ignorance, but who picks the court cases? Who would assign a judge a court case? I don't know. Yeah.

[Senator Eric Schmidt]

So if you're coming in like for a, let's say something bad's going to happen, you as a as well. Let's just take when I was attorney general and you would file a case like we sued China, we sued on the vaccine mandates. You're going to randomly get assigned a judge. That's how it's supposed to work, especially on what's an emergency docket. So, like there's one assignment judge that day and that's where the case goes. What Boasberg was doing, it appears as chief judge was manipulating that process. So he got a lot of high profile cases, not the assignment judge for that day. So that is some abuse that can happen there. And then also, like, for example, this is a lot in the weeds and so hopefully everybody's not falling asleep with this.

[Ryan Gretusky]

But no, this is interesting. Yeah.

[Senator Eric Schmidt]

But like, let's say when I was attorney general, the 8th Circuit is pretty conservative. There's all but one of the members on that court of appeals is a Republican appointee. There was only one Democrat. Somehow on all of our really politically sensitive cases, the one Democrat ended on a three judge panel. That's statistically impossible. And so we've raised that issue and now that clerk who was in charge of that's been fired.

[Ryan Gretusky]

Clerks are doing this.

[Senator Eric Schmidt]

Yeah. So in some of the staff that's there that works for that clerk. You know what I mean? The clerk's tied to the one Democrat judge. There's some of that stuff that's there. And really the judiciary has to police itself to fix this. Or that's when we come in on something like impeachment with Boasberg. So we're actually calling for the, the lead judge in the D.C. circuit to discipline Boasberg. But you know, if they don't do that and it doesn't look like they're making any movement on it, we should impeach Boseberg because it can't. Impeachment can't just be a scarecrow. It shouldn't be used in every instance and it shouldn't be used, by the way, just because you disagree with an opinion. But when you see a judge who's no longer wearing a black robe and is wearing a blue jersey, it's time to do something about it.

[Ryan Gretusky]

Senator, where can people go to read more about what you're working on legislation you're doing and anything that's going on, especially to Missouri listeners.

[Senator Eric Schmidt]

Yeah, so I'm pretty active on the on social media. Ericschmidt S C H M I T T that's my personal we also have official Senate, Senate or Sen. Eric Schmidt. So Senator Eric Schmidt and then Facebook, Instagram. We're pretty active and we try to keep people informed. We try to keep it a little light too. So it's not all. Not all business, all the time. But. But we've got some pretty good threads, good content. People can follow us and then of course they can go to the, you know, my Senate web page too.

[Ryan Gretusky]

All right. Thank you. So coming on this podcast, I really appreciate it.

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[Ryan Gretusky]

Now it's time for the Ask Me Anything segment. If you want a part of the Ask Me Anything segment, email me. Ryanumbersgame podcast.com that's ryan@Numberspluralgame podcast.com I actually went through all the emails. We've got nothing in the docket. So if you email me after this episode, I will absolutely be able to get to it next week. I look forward to hearing from you. It's a really interesting and important thing. And some guys, some people ask the most fascinating question. This question comes from my buddy Greg in New Jersey. He's written me before. Greg writes, I'm glad you do a podcast on Minneapolis shooting and I wanted to compare the Republican response, especially J.D. vance's response, which I believe is completely dehumanizing from someone that calls himself a Christian Question. As a proud supporter of ICE and Trump's removal across the country, I also want to say that I love the woman who kill who was killed. The mother, I guess. Renee Good. And I love the ICE officers around the country and hope they are safe and the protesters are safe as well. I can love someone like Ashley Babbitt and the officer who killed her on January 6th. If we learn anything from Charlie Kirk's Life is Life and love is the only response to Division in that we have in our country. That's, I mean, that's very profound, Greg, as far as you know. Look, I said on this podcast we should pray for Renee's soul. If you are a Christian and you're Catholic like me, I think it's very important to look at her as a mom, as someone to say, okay, I don't know how you ended up in this place. I don't know how you ended this place in your life. I never knew you, but I can feel compassion and sympathy certainly for your loved ones and hope that somebody learns from your life and doesn't make the same, same mistake. I didn't read JD Vance's comments, so I don't know what he exactly said. I've been, it's been a very busy week. But I, I will say that when it comes to these sorts of high profile deaths where a political football is in the middle of it, people do lose their sense of humanity. We saw that with Charlie Kirk, we saw that with Ashley Baba, we saw that with George Floyd. And there are moments where politics has to not be the most important thing in your life. And if you feel like you are losing sense of humanity when politics is just red team, blue team and you can see people behind it, it is important to take a step back. I will say this, and I don't like talking about religion that much because I don't want to sound preachy. This is my own experience. I'm not telling anyone else what to say, do or believe. Right. There are times I have very negative thoughts and very bad thoughts about people. And it is only when I really take a step back and think of everybody as being a spiritual creature, someone who has a soul, someone that was made in the image and likeness of God and is seen as an equal in his eyes, that it takes me, takes a step back from my ugliness, from my personal ugliness where I sit there and say, that's not what you should think. You're not made to think like that. And I can breathe, take a step back and see someone else in the same footing as me who I just happen to disagree with or I think made a bad decision, decision that's perfectly, I think, healthy, normal. When we see somebody who, and on both sides of the aisle, we see this a lot with, a lot with leftists who I don't think have personal religion, but we see this with some right wingers too, who maybe have personal religion and they don't necessarily exercise it in a healthy way that they can't there's so much hate and vile and ugliness in those kinds of conversations that they can't let any of that go. And they say the worst kinds of things about people, people. So if you find yourself in really having deeply negative thoughts about somebody, I think that in those moments it is the most important time. Even though it is sometimes the hardest time to take that breath and to realize them as a child of God, as a creature. Even if they don't see themselves like that, even if they don't see you like that, even if they think of you as their enemy, your fellow American is not your enemy. They may be your political adversary, but they're never your enemy. And it is important to sit there and to remember that in those moments. So Greg, thank you for this question and thank you for making me think about it because I think it is important. Thank you guys for listening to this podcast. If you like this podcast, please like and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, YouTube. Wherever you get this podcast, please watch out on YouTube. I'm so excited that this YouTube channel is growing and I will talk to you guys next week. Have a great weekend.

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