Loading summary
Transcript61 lines
- [00:06]
Kate Linebaugh
In the first hours of his presidency, Donald Trump acted swiftly on immigration.
- [00:11]
Michelle Hackman
All illegal entry will immediately be halted and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.
- [00:25]
Kate Linebaugh
Trump signed numerous executive orders restricting legal immigration into the US and giving him more authority to crack down on illegal immigration at a high level. What is the goal of this new Trump administration vis a vis immigration?
- [00:45]
Michelle Hackman
I would say the goal is several fold. It really stems from Trump's really central campaign promise to do a mass deportation.
- [00:54]
Kate Linebaugh
That's our colleague Michelle Hackman.
- [00:57]
Michelle Hackman
During the campaign, you saw Trump almost use immigration as a catch. All you know, immigration is the source of all of your problems. That's economic and nationalist. It's, you know, your house price is going up because there's so many more immigrants in the country. Crime is going up because of immigrants. You know, we're having problem in school because these immigrants are coming and they're not learning English. So it's a whole range of economic and cultural complaints that Trump, I would argue, pretty successfully connected to immigration.
- [01:30]
Kate Linebaugh
And we are in the very, very early days of this new Trump administration. What's most interesting to you in what.
- [01:39]
Michelle Hackman
We'Ve seen so far, they have issued a startlingly large number of executive orders, even smaller sort of memos at the agency level. Changes the that to me suggest this has been an administration in waiting for the last four years that has been really ready to go. I mean, changes that would normally take weeks, months, even a couple years to implement. They've all done in the first day.
- [02:09]
Kate Linebaugh
Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Kate LINEBAUGH. It's Wednesday, January 22nd. Coming up on the show, President Trump acts fast on immigration.
- [02:36]
Michelle Hackman
This episode is brought to you by Workday. Get the whole band together with Workday and pair finance and HR on one platform for an epic performance. With Workday AI at the core, you'll make confident decisions faster than ever. And you'll drive flawless business and finance operations with an agile platform that constantly evolves. To future proof your organization, be a finance and HR rock star with Workday. Visit workday.com to learn more.
- [03:13]
Kate Linebaugh
When I called up Michelle to talk about Trump's immigration policies, I had a little quiz for her. This is a test of you as an immigration reporter. Do you think you could name any each of the immigration related executive orders that he's signed?
- [03:27]
Michelle Hackman
Oh, that's a really good question. I could try, yeah, let's try. Okay. There is the Birthright citizenship order. There is an order halting the refugee program. That's the program that resettles refugees here legally. There is the order declaring an invasion. So that's the order banning asylum. There is. I'm ticking these off on my fingers, by the way.
- [03:51]
Kate Linebaugh
Okay, you've got three so far. Let's keep going.
- [03:54]
Michelle Hackman
Yeah. There's the national emergency. So that is unlocking the ability to send military to the border and use other military assets like money, planes, places to detain immigrants. That's four.
- [04:09]
Kate Linebaugh
Okay, four.
- [04:11]
Michelle Hackman
There is what I would call the extreme vetting order that says everyone being issued a visa needs to be vetted much more extremely than they are now. There is an order declaring that cartels south of the border are foreign terrorist organizations.
- [04:30]
Kate Linebaugh
The orders also included provisions like resume construction of the border wall, restore the remain in Mexico policy, stop the practice of so called catch and release, and increase military presence at the border. How would you characterize the overall impact of all of these executive orders taken together?
- [04:57]
Michelle Hackman
I would say that if you were to put it all in one category, it is an extreme hardening of our immigration laws to basically say all of these channels that were open to people are now closed shut and reinforced.
- [05:13]
Kate Linebaugh
Shut and taken as a whole. What kind of power and funding do these executive orders give the Trump administration to crack down on immigration?
- [05:27]
Michelle Hackman
They've unlocked a huge store of money of assets from the military. So we're talking troops sent to the southern border. We're talking military planes to assist with deportations. We're talking using potentially some military spaces for detention. Attention.
- [05:46]
Kate Linebaugh
Does this essentially close the southern border?
- [05:51]
Michelle Hackman
That is what the Trump administration would argue and lead you to believe. I think it's hard to have a counterfactual because, in fact, the last year the Biden administration illegal crossings fell and there were very few asylum claims being made. And so, you know, they're inheriting a quiet border right now. It's really hard to take that and say these policies are working, because I don't think we're going to see that much of a change.
- [06:19]
Kate Linebaugh
There's also this executive order that you already brought up regarding birthright citizenship.
- [06:24]
Michelle Hackman
That's right.
- [06:25]
Kate Linebaugh
Can Trump actually get rid of birthright citizenship, Kate?
- [06:30]
Michelle Hackman
I think that's a question no one knows the answer to. I think before this, we would have said no, you know, you can't, by executive order, change a constitutional amendment. You know, generally speaking, you have to change a constitutional amendment with another constitutional amendment. I think the court has shifted to the right sufficiently such that it's an open question. How courts will look at this case, you know, if they look at the plain text, it's a pretty easy decision. It says all persons born in the United States are citizens of the United States. But it depends on how they interpret sort of the history or the intent of the collage. And I don't think anyone can say with certainty what the courts are going to do.
- [07:13]
Kate Linebaugh
The executive order would take away citizenship rights to children born in the US if their parents are either undocumented or are in the country on a temporary visa.
- [07:24]
Michelle Hackman
I would say the classical use case is children of immigrants in the country illegally. That a lot of people believe it's really unfair for these people to cross into the country illegally, live here for, you know, a couple years. And sometimes, much less, sometimes people come here and they're pregnant, have a baby, and that baby is a US citizen. And maybe, you know, 20 some odd years down the line, that child could then sponsor their parents for, for green cards.
- [07:51]
Kate Linebaugh
More than 20 states have sued Trump to block this executive order. They said it violates the 14th Amendment and asked for a preliminary injunction. A White House spokesperson said that the Trump administration is ready for these legal challenges. The administration must have expected challenges. Have you asked them about it?
- [08:12]
Michelle Hackman
I have. I mean, this is a fight that they're picking purposefully. I don't think anyone in or around the Trump administration believes that what they are doing, they are 100% going to get away with. I think they've always thought about it as a, this is a fight we should take up because if we don't, the status quo will remain. And so we need to try. Even if we fail, we can tell our supporters that we tried.
- [08:41]
Kate Linebaugh
One of Trump's major promises around immigration that hasn't started in full yet is mass deportations.
- [08:48]
Michelle Hackman
We will begin the largest deportation operation in American history, larger even than that of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
- [09:00]
Kate Linebaugh
That's coming up after the break.
- [09:05]
Michelle Hackman
FOREIGN.
- [09:09]
Kate Linebaugh
This episode is brought to you by CBOE Global Markets. CBOE is a global exchange operator committed to building trusted markets worldwide. CIBO delivers cutting edge trading, clearing and investment solutions and products in multiple asset classes, including equities, derivatives and fx. Learn more about the exchange for the world stage@cboe.com ahead of the inauguration, Michelle reported that the incoming Trump administration was poised to start mass deportations within its first 24 hours, starting with raids in Chicago.
- [09:55]
Michelle Hackman
But within about 24 hours of us reporting that the administration seemingly actually called it off.
- [10:01]
Kate Linebaugh
Why?
- [10:02]
Michelle Hackman
Because they don't like to telegraph to people that they're going to come and arrest them, you know, or else people are going to learn their rights, not open the door to an immigration agent, et cetera. And so I think what's going on is they're now actually regrouping. We've seen officials go on TV and say that they've performed, you know, several hundred arrests yesterday of serious criminals. But as far as I can tell, that's sort of in keeping with what ICE normally does.
- [10:30]
Kate Linebaugh
The Trump administration also cited officer safety concerns. If mass deportations do start ramping up, as promised, how do you think that will play out?
- [10:43]
Michelle Hackman
It's hard to predict. I think that they are sort of gathering their troops and are going to target several major cities. They're really interested in cities where the sort of largest concentrations of immigrants go. And so those are places like New York, Chicago, L.A. boston, Denver. And they have the added benefit that those cities tend to be blue, and the leaders of those cities tend to sort of want to stick their finger in the eye of the Trump administration and say, we're not going to help you. In fact, we're going to block you.
- [11:22]
Kate Linebaugh
Who is Trump targeting in these raids?
- [11:27]
Michelle Hackman
When we've asked that question, the Trump administration says that they want to go after criminals. It's an interesting answer because the Biden administration's deportation policy was also that they targeted criminals. So I've asked repeatedly, you know, what's the difference between your policy and theirs? And they say that they're looking at a much broader set of criminals than the Biden administration did. Biden would argue that if someone committed a really minor offense, let's say a traffic violation or even a dui, that maybe they shouldn't be targeted, that there are some mitigating circumstances if that person has lived here for 20 years, has US citizen children. So suddenly all those people who have really minor offenses are on the table. The other thing, and this is the way the Trump folks talk about this, is that they'll say, you know, if we come to arrest you criminal, and your family is there and they're here illegally, we're taking them, too. They literally call those people collaterals. And I think the collaterals are going to be the sort of big difference between what we've seen before and what we're going to see now, that's going to drive up the numbers of people they're deporting.
- [12:46]
Kate Linebaugh
But what about people who don't have criminal records?
- [12:51]
Michelle Hackman
It's a really hard question to answer because there are so many scenarios, you know, a lot of people in the country when we Think of someone in the country illegally. We're thinking of the old school. You cross the border illegally and undetected, and you're living here with sort of no documentation whatsoever. That really was the case up and through about the 2000s. But now the vast majority of people, it's almost a misnomer to call them undocumented because they're in a government system in some way. If they've asked for asylum, that means they're in the system. They have a work permit. They actually can't be deported until their case is over. And in a lot of cases, that's not going to be for years unless this administration figures out a way to speed up all of the cases.
- [13:41]
Kate Linebaugh
The agency expected to carry out a lot of these raids is ice, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. And who is the person who has to orchestrate these raids? Who's in charge?
- [13:58]
Michelle Hackman
It's a man named Tom Homan, who Trump brought in to this newly created role that he calls the border czar at the White House, where Homan is going to be coordinating across the government to make sure that ICE and the military and all these other groups are all working together Right now. We're going to shut that border down and get a hold of this problem. What's happening on our border is the biggest national security vulnerability I've seen in my career, and I've got over 35 years doing this. We need to take action to secure the border.
- [14:27]
Kate Linebaugh
Have you spoken with him? What's he like?
- [14:30]
Michelle Hackman
I have, many times. He is. How would I put this? He is a very sort of gruff, plain spoken talker. He really likes to use tough language to describe immigrants. He's sort of bombastic. In an interview recently, he was sort of threatening gang members and saying, we're gonna deport you. And he said, my gang is bigger than your gang. Your days are numbered. My gang's bigger than your gang and we're going to take you out of the country. We're going to port you out of here. So that's the sort of thing he'll say. But by all accounts, he's a pretty smart guy. I mean, he was a federal agent sort of investigating mass smuggling rings and other sorts of things like that for almost 40 years. And so I think he does sort of have the know how to pull off some kind of large scale operation.
- [15:27]
Kate Linebaugh
Homan is one of the people who came up with the idea of family separation, which was put into action in the first Trump administration.
- [15:36]
Michelle Hackman
He called it zero Tolerance. You know, he said we should be prosecuting people if they cross the border illegally, we should prosecute them, even if they're parents. And that would have sort of the double effect of punishing them, because that would then take their children away from them while they're being prosecuted.
- [15:55]
Kate Linebaugh
In his inauguration speech, Trump promised to deport millions and millions of people. Do you think that's realistic? And will Tom Homan be able to carry that out?
- [16:09]
Michelle Hackman
That is like the question of the hour, Kate. I have written a lot about the challenges that they're going to face to deport people. Everything from limited government resources to sort of legal hurdles they face that most people are going to need to go, you know, have a court hearing before they can be deported. All sorts of things that they're going to have to navigate. But if there's any group of people who could potentially try to pull this off, I think it is these people. And so I also don't want to underestimate them. And something interesting that I've observed since the end of the campaign is that Tom Hoen actually has been really narrowing this promise of a mass deportation. Trump, you know, during the campaign would say, we're going to deport 15 million people, 20 million people. Now Tom Homan's on air saying we're going to go after criminals. Well, you know, we don't have an exact estimate of how many immigrants in the country illegally have criminal records, but I would ballpark it as somewhere between half a million to maybe a little bit over a million. That's a much smaller universe of people than Trump was talking about. And I think part of the reason that's gone unnoticed is because Tom Homan has a real talent for at once saying things that are realistic, but sort of saying them in this gruff, tough talking way, which is what Trump wants.
- [17:38]
Kate Linebaugh
Where does Homan fit in the Trump immigration team?
- [17:43]
Michelle Hackman
Homan is nearly at the very top of the food chain. The only person who perhaps outranks him in the government is Stephen Miller. You know, Stephen Miller, I think, is familiar to most of our listeners. He is the architect of Trump's immigration agenda. He's really the true believer who's sort of at the heart and soul of all of his nationalist policies. And Stephen Miller is now the deputy Chief of Staff of the White House. Stephen Miller is very ideas driven, very policy driven, very sort of messaging driven. And Tom Homan is very operational. And I can see those men sort of complementing each other in that way.
- [18:23]
Kate Linebaugh
What's your thought on whether Trump's policies will face as much opposition as they did in his first term.
- [18:32]
Michelle Hackman
I think that Trump's opponents, as with sort of the resistance writ large, are a little bit worn down, and we're seeing that in a few different ways. The immigration organizations that are in position to sue are less well funded than they were last time. Fewer people are giving money. And so something I've heard is that they really feel like they're going to have to pick their battles a lot more the second Trump administration than they did last time to sort of say where are the most sympathetic places where we can weigh in or we can fight back. But I think this administration, broadly speaking, is coming into office in a much stronger position because they ultimately cleared a lot of those legal hurdles they had last time, and so they can go full throttle on a lot of policies this time where people will have less grounds to sue.
- [19:25]
Kate Linebaugh
How will these executive orders and the Trump administration's approach to immigration change the way immigration works in the U.S. if.
- [19:39]
Michelle Hackman
These first few days are any guide, I think that we're going to see sort of an unprecedented level of activity to slam the doors of immigration shut and to do so in increasingly creative ways.
- [19:54]
Kate Linebaugh
What are you watching for in the coming days and weeks?
- [19:58]
Michelle Hackman
I really am watching to see whether the raids that we've been anticipating and reporting on are going to materialize and whether they're going to look different from ICE operations in the past. There is a world in which this administration could sort of conduct business as usual, or even a slightly stepped up version of business as usual, but amplify it in a way where it looks very sinister and it looks like it's a new scale. And so that's something I'm going to be watching really closely.
- [20:35]
Kate Linebaugh
Yesterday, the Department of Justice said it would investigate state and local officials who obstruct immigration enforcement. And today officials said that the Pentagon is sending up to 1500 active duty troops to the southern border. That's all for today. Wednesday, January 22 the Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Nancy Youssef and Tarini Parti. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.