Jonathan Blitzer and Sarah Stillman on Immigration in the Trump Era

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Episode: Jonathan Blitzer and Sarah Stillman on Immigration in the Trump Era
Date: January 15, 2018
Host: David Remnick
Guests: Jonathan Blitzer, Sarah Stillman

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Main Theme:

This episode explores the dramatic shifts in U.S. immigration policy during the first year of the Trump administration. David Remnick speaks with New Yorker staff writers Sarah Stillman and Jonathan Blitzer, both of whom have reported extensively on immigrant communities, to discuss policy changes, their real-world consequences, the political psychology behind anti-immigrant rhetoric, and potential solutions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Changes and Continuities in Deportation Policy

• Notable Statistic: Immigration arrests rose by 40% over the previous year, but overall deportation numbers had not yet surpassed those under Obama (01:29, 02:16).
• Sarah Stillman:
  • Trump’s administration had dramatically increased ICE arrests and created a significant court backlog, but the expected spike in deportations was slow to materialize due to the congested legal process.
  • “We've seen a tremendous backlog in the courts.” (02:16)
• Jonathan Blitzer:
  • Notes over 600,000 cases stalled in immigration courts, with no political will to hire sufficient judges to address the backlog.
  • “The backlog is a huge issue… there are over 600,000 cases that have been stalled in immigration courts.” (02:46)

2. The Immigrant Experience Under Current Policy

• Access to Justice: Many detainees spend extended periods in detention, often over a year, with minimal or no access to legal counsel (03:05).
• Sarah Stillman:
  • Children as young as three are required to represent themselves in court.
  • “You've actually seen immigration judges in the federal system say that a three year old has to represent themselves in court.” (03:19)

3. Trump’s Approach and Policy Shifts

• Method vs. Chaos:
  • Blitzer argues that the administration’s “winging it” approach is actually effective for their agenda, as they swiftly removed Obama-era priorities limiting ICE’s focus to criminals or public safety threats (03:45, 04:13).
  • “It’s actually been quite easy for them to remove some of the protections that the Obama administration put in place.” (03:45)
• Effect:
  • Now, it’s effectively “open season” on undocumented immigrants, with broad ICE authority to target anyone in the country illegally (04:14).

4. Sanctuary Cities and Legal Tensions

• Aggressive Stance:
  • Trump administration has openly threatened legal action against politicians in sanctuary cities. Texas’ SB4 law (held up in litigation) exemplifies this trend; it allows for prosecution of sheriffs who don’t comply with ICE requests (04:40–04:51).
• Real-life Consequence:
  • Stillman discusses a case in Texas where a man was deported after a minor offense and later killed (05:44).

5. Dangers Facing Deported Immigrants

• Violence in “Northern Triangle”:
  • Many deportees sent to Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras face grave violence, sometimes with fatal consequences (06:00).
• Sarah Stillman:
  • “We fail to realize how profoundly violent it has become in the countries known as the Northern Triangle...” (06:00)

6. Due Process and Expedited Removal

• Policy Shift History:
  • Expedited removal policies, first enacted under Bill Clinton, now allow instant deportation for some, removing the chance for judicial review (06:23).
  • Stillman argues at minimum, migrants should have the right to present their case before a judge (06:21).

7. Political Psychology and Rhetoric

• Trump’s Base and Broader Opinion:
  • Only a small, highly anti-immigrant part of the population supports harsh policies. DACA, for example, is widely backed across party lines (07:18).
  • “Over two thirds of Americans support [DACA], even some 60% of Republicans think DACA recipients should have a pathway to citizenship.” (07:18)
• Rhetoric of Fear:
  • Trump’s success centers on conflating immigrants with criminality, focusing on imagery like “bad hombres” (07:18).

8. Numbers vs. Narrative on Crime and Jobs

• Crime:
  • Immigrants, both legal and undocumented, commit crimes at lower rates than the native-born and are more likely to be crime victims (07:58).
  • “Immigrants…commit crimes at lower rates than people who are native born US citizens.” – Stillman (07:58)
• MS-13 on Long Island:
  • Blitzer explains that heightened focus on MS-13 has led to combined racial profiling and victimization of the Central American community (08:34–09:44).
  • “It’s empowered ICE and local law enforcement to go after people who for the most part tend to be the victims of this gang crime rather than the perpetrators of it.” (09:44)
  • ICE is notably less accountable than local law enforcement (10:10).
• Jobs:
  • Both guests refute the claim that immigrants steal jobs from Americans. In fact, immigrants fill crucial roles in the economy, and past anti-immigration measures (like in Alabama) led to agricultural and economic crises (11:13–11:50).
  • “Immigrants, undocumented immigrants, increasingly do the work that Americans wouldn’t want to do… the economic research on this is extensive.” – Blitzer (11:13)
  • “Fruit rotting on the vine in Alabama because there were just not the workers there to do the labor.” – Stillman (11:50)
• Stakeholders Against Harsh Policies:
  • Business, education, law enforcement, and other sectors generally do not support aggressive crackdowns (12:11).

9. What is the Liberal/Comprehensive Solution?

• Legal Protections:
  • Stillman: Reiterates the need to uphold U.S. and international laws protecting asylum seekers and refugees (12:49).
• Comprehensive Reform:
  • Blitzer: Emphasizes that bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform nearly passed in 2013 and would address the status of 12 million undocumented individuals already present, not simply open the borders (13:10).
  • “This refers to actually normalizing or in some way stabilizing their status. There is a political will to solve this problem, but it is so much easier to speak as a kind of demagogue on this issue.” (13:10)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Sarah Stillman on children representing themselves:
  “You’ve actually seen immigration judges in the federal system say that a three year old has to represent themselves in court by themselves.” (03:19)

• Jonathan Blitzer on the Trump approach:
  “The administration’s way is actually quite effective in the immigration context… it’s actually been quite easy for them to remove some of the protections that the Obama administration put in place.” (03:45)

• On the reality of violence back home:
  “Many of us fail to realize how profoundly violent it has become in the countries known as the Northern Triangle, so Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.” – Stillman (06:00)

• On ICE’s low accountability:
  “ICE is definitely notorious for being much less scrupulous even than ordinary police.” – Blitzer (10:10)

• On the economic impact of immigrants:
  “Immigrants, undocumented immigrants, increasingly do the work that Americans wouldn’t want to do... the economic research on this is extensive.” – Blitzer (11:13)

• On policy solutions:
  “We have very clear international and domestic law on protecting people who are asylum seekers and refugees… that’s a very good starting point.” – Stillman (12:49)
  “When you think about what comprehensive immigration reform would do, it would deal with a population that’s already here.” – Blitzer (13:10)

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Timeline of Key Segments

• 01:29–02:16: Introduction, overview of arrest statistics, and initial context
• 02:16–03:19: ICE activity, court backlogs, difficulties faced by detainees, and lack of legal counsel
• 03:45–04:40: Trump admin’s approach; removal of Obama-era priorities and open season for ICE
• 04:40–05:44: Sanctuary city policies, legal threats, and personal stories of deportation consequences
• 06:00–06:46: Life-threatening dangers for deportees to Central America
• 06:46–07:56: Political psychology, public opinion, and fear-based rhetorical strategies
• 07:58–08:17: Crime data refuting the immigrant criminality narrative
• 08:34–09:57: MS-13 in Long Island, racial profiling, and ICE overreach
• 10:10–10:54: ICE’s accountability versus local law enforcement
• 11:13–12:11: Economic myths, real impacts of anti-immigrant laws
• 12:24–13:10: Comprehensive reform, bipartisan efforts, and political barriers
• 13:10–14:13: Need for compassion and legal adherence in policy-making

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Conclusion

Through data, personal stories, and sharp analysis, Stillman and Blitzer dismantle the major arguments used to support Trump’s restrictive immigration agenda while highlighting the complexity and urgency of humane, evidence-driven reform.

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Transcript

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[Dorothy Wickenden]

I'm Dorothy Wickenden. On today's Politics and More podcast, David Remnick talks with the New Yorker Sarah Stillman and Jonathan Blitzer about Trump's immigration policy.

[David Remnick]

Immigration arrests were up 40% last year just in the last couple of weeks. DACA and the status of the dreamers became a bargaining chip in Trump's quest for a border wall. 200,000 refugees from catastrophic earthquakes in El Salvador were ordered home, and the President complained about immigrants from developing countries that he referred to crudely even by his standards, as shitholes. Donald Trump intends to keep his campaign promise to be far tougher on immigration than any of his predecessors. Jonathan Blitzer joins me now, along with Sarah Stillman. They're both staff writers at the New Yorker. Jonathan and Sarah, both of you have reported extensively on immigrant communities. So, Sarah, how does the reality of this first year compare to their expectations?

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Well, you know, in some ways it's more dramatic than we could have expected. And in some ways it is significantly less dramatic insofar as Trump has actually not had an increase in deportations. We saw Actually more under Obama than we've seen thus far under Trump. But what we have seen is a massive rise in the number of people arrested by ice. So I think what we're going to see coming down the pipeline is a dramatic increase in deportations. But we're finding it takes some time to work its way through the courts. So we've seen a tremendous backlog in the courts. Jonathan, I don't know if you have more analysis on that.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

I mean, the backlog is a huge issue. I mean, there are over 600,000 cases that have been stalled in immigration courts. There's, there has not been the political will to hire more immigration judges to deal with this court backlog.

[David Remnick]

What's the typical experience of someone who's been arrested by ICE and put into the current system? What happens to them? What is the current system?

[Dorothy Wickenden]

So they'll go often into detention and sometimes they'll sit there for a very long time, more than a year perhaps. And what that means is that you have a lot of immigrants who for the most part don't really have access.

[David Remnick]

To a lawyer, and they end up defending themselves oftentimes.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

I mean, you've actually seen immigration judges in the federal system say that a three year old has to represent themselves in court by themselves. So a lot of the unaccompanied minors who've come through previously came through on what's known as the rocket docket. So they were sped through the system and they had no lawyers and most of the time they were deported.

[David Remnick]

Jonathan, it's your sense that the Trump administration is approaching the issue of immigration methodically, or are they kind of winging it as they go along?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

I think in some ways, winging it, which is the administration's way, is actually quite effective in the immigration context. And so for the Trump administration, which is obviously dead set on arresting more people and on deporting more people, it's actually been quite easy for them to remove some of the protections that the Obama administration put in place toward the end of its second term. So at a certain point, the Obama administration recognized that deportation are up on our watch and we have to find some ways to mitigate the number of deportations.

[David Remnick]

And what were the protections?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

So they created a series of enforcement guidelines essentially for how ICE should go about its job. So rather than going after anyone who was in the country illegally, the idea was that ICE would go after people with criminal records, people who constituted a so called public safety threat. One of the first things the Trump administration did on taking office was gut all of those enforcement priorities, which makes it kind of open season on the undocumented community.

[David Remnick]

The other day, the acting head of ice, Tom Homan, said he wants to charge politicians in sanctuary cities with crimes. Is that Trumpian bluster or what's going on here?

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Oh, I think they're dead serious. And I think we've seen state legislation also pushing to that effect. So in Texas, we've seen SB4, which is a piece of legislation that's currently held up in litigation, but that would actually allow for the prosecution of sheriffs who refused to cooperate with the Trump administration's request for keeping immigrants in ICE hold. So detainers in their jails. And this has pretty serious consequences. So this week in the magazine, I write about a case that took place in Texas directly after Trump announced that they were going to crack down on sanctuary cities, where ICE started showing up in the courthouse in Travis county where they had just declared themselves a sanctuary city, and they rounded up a guy who was there on two minor offenses, and he was apprehended by ICE for a prior immigration offense and was deported and then was killed.

[David Remnick]

How much was that an outlier story? Or in fact, how many people who are living in the United States who fear deportation are really facing violence if sent back to Honduras or Salvador or Mexico?

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Oh, I think many of us fail to realize how profoundly violent it has become in the countries known as the Northern Triangle, so Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. And I think you're seeing a lot of people who are being rounded up up for minor traffic violations or minor misdemeanors, low level drug offenses, who may now face very real life or death consequences.

[David Remnick]

And in your view, what do we owe those people?

[Dorothy Wickenden]

At the very least, I think we owe them a shot before an immigration judge. So it used to be in US Policy that most people got a chance to make their case before a judge. And we saw a dramatic change that actually occurred under Bill Clinton, where legislation was passed that allowed for something called expedited removal. So people who had just arrived at the border could be deported almost instantaneously. And a lot of people lost their chance to have their cases heard.

[David Remnick]

Sarah, I want to get to the psychology of the political situation here where it comes to immigration. Clearly, part of the support for President Trump as a candidate was anxiety about immigration and immigrants. And when we look at the numbers, the numbers of people deported during the Obama administration, the fact that, in fact, immigration numbers and certainly illegal immigration numbers have gone way down, why so much anxiety, and why did it help Trump so much what's he playing on?

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Yeah, I find it interesting that we often forget how small Trump's highly anti immigration base really is. When you look at the data on daca, for instance, there's overwhelming support for daca, not just with Democrats, but also Republicans. So well over two thirds of Americans support it. Even some 60% of Republicans think DACA recipients should actually have a pathway to citizenship. So going even beyond where we are now. And nonetheless, I think Trump has very, very successfully mobilized the rhetoric of fe. And of course, we're all familiar now with the notion of bad hombres and how much he has hammered home this idea that immigrant criminality, immigrants in crime, go hand in hand. And so I think, does he have.

[David Remnick]

Any numbers to support it?

[Dorothy Wickenden]

In fact, the numbers show quite the opposite, that immigrants, both documented and undocumented, commit crimes at lower rates than people who are native born US Citizens, and also show that immigrants are actually disproportionately victims of crime, often because they feel that they can't come forward to law enforcement to report crime out of fear.

[David Remnick]

Jonathan Blitzer, you, because we're trying to cover immigration so comprehensively, you had a piece in the New Yorker in which you describe the situation in Long island and the gang called Ms. 13. And the President of the United States has a keen focus on it. What's going on there and what's the story you tell there?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

Sure, it's a gang rooted in El Salvador that actually got its start on the streets of Los angeles in the 1980s. And over time, after mass deportation of these gang members, the gang kind of took root throughout Central America. All of the countries that Sarah's discussed, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala. And so what's happened in places like Long island, where there's a huge Central American population and a very big Salvadoran population, is that these gangs have been active actually since the late 90s. And the crime kind of spikes. And at the current moment, the crime seems to have gone up. This, of course, against a backdrop of reductions in crime across Long Island. But the perception has very much been because of how grisly some of these murders have been on Long island, that, you know, the streets are being overrun by these gangsters. These are American streets, these are suburban towns. And so Trump has talked a lot about the need to ramp up enforcement to crack down on these gangs on Long Island. And one of the kind of adverse and perverse consequences of that rhetoric is that it's empowered ICE and local law enforcement to go after people who for the most part tend to be the victims of this gang crime rather than the perpetrators of it.

[David Remnick]

Why would they go after the victims and not the perpetrators?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

I think there's such an attitude of kind of fear and confusion and a lack of understanding of what's actually happening that there's essentially widespread racial profiling going on.

[David Remnick]

But what you're describing is like the behavior of a bad cop in any sense. Is ice, in other words, are there violations that ICE is committing that are at a much higher rate than ordinary police?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

Two things in response to that. Yes, ICE is definitely notorious for being much less scrupulous even than ordinary police.

[David Remnick]

Why?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

I think, for the most part, there isn't the same vetting of who the officers are. And they also don't generally interact with the criminal justice system. So this is one of the reasons why ICE is so pernicious on Long island in dealing with the gang problem. The local police is trying to root out gang members. The local police faces basically a public safety threat. They have to then prove eventually in a court of law that the people they're arresting have some gang tie and have been involved in crimes. ICE doesn't have to prove any of that. All ICE has to do is round up people who are here illegally.

[David Remnick]

Jonathan, in addition to the argument that immigrants are making life unsafe and raising the crime rates, which both of you say is untrue statistically, it's also that they're taking our jobs. And we hear this in all parts of the country. We hear it in political debate all the time. Is it true?

[Jonathan Blitzer]

It's not true. In fact, it's emphatically the opposite. That they, immigrants, undocumented immigrants, increasingly do the work that Americans wouldn't want to do, such as construction, home care, service industries. I mean, the list goes on and on. The economic research on this is extensive. That the vibrancy, the economic vibrancy that immigrants bring to the community speaks for itself. The problem is, of course, it's very, very easy as a matter of political rhetor rhetoric to suggest otherwise and to cherry pick statistics to mislead.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

It's interesting we got a sneak preview of this back in Alabama and Arizona a while back, prior to Trump, when they did pass some pretty draconian anti immigrant policies that led to fruit rotting on the vine in Alabama because there were literally just not the workers there to do the labor and usually just led to severe economic problems.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

Every stakeholder in all of these issues, whether you're talking about the business community, the educational sector, law enforcement, all of them beg the administration not to pursue these policies. But I think the administration sees that it has a captive audience.

[David Remnick]

I think a lot of conservatives would say, okay, Sarah Steeleman and Jonathan Blitzer, that's nice that you're liberals on immigration. What's your solution? Because unless you're saying, unless you're saying a country like the United States or Germany or whatever should just let everybody in, what's your solution? And what is the more liberal solution to a comprehensive understanding and policy for immigration?

[Dorothy Wickenden]

There's always going to be quandaries about who you let in and who you don't. I think we have very clear international and domestic law on protecting people who are asylum seekers and refugees. And I think that's something that Trump has turned around, that has been so fundamental to how we define ourselves as Americans. So I think that's a very good starting point, is protecting people who have come here fleeing gang violence and fearing for their lives.

[Jonathan Blitzer]

Yeah, I mean, two thoughts on that. I mean, to begin with, in 2013, there was bipartisan support for comprehensive immigration reform. And the only thing that scuttled it, it wasn't in the Senate. There were Republican votes in the Senate at the time. What scuttled it were extremists in the House. And so it's always been this is an issue that has always been dominated by a small minority that can mobilize fear to prevent people from backing these kinds of thoroughgoing solutions. And so one of the things that the administration and anti immigrant conservatives play on is the idea of letting people in. But in fact, when you think about what compet comprehensive immigration reform would do, it would deal with a population that's already here. So you have roughly 12 million people here who are undocumented. This doesn't refer to allowing more people in. This refers to actually normalizing or in some way stabilizing their status. There is a political will to solve this problem, but it is so much easier to speak as a kind of demagogue on this issue. And politicians tend to fall into line.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

That was Sarah Stillman and Jonathan Blitzer talking with David Remnick.

[David Remnick]

Right now, we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Corey Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Charlamagne, the God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour. Wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

From prx.